Factions (AX.C.07)
A Faction is an organization a character can belong to, work for, or answer to: a guild, a military order, a syndicate, a research compact, a faith. Where a Lineage defines what a character inherited and a Profession defines what a character does, a Faction defines who a character answers to, and what that relationship is worth at the table.
Genre Catalogs already publish narrative Faction write-ups (history, structure, operations, relations, plot hooks — see any Genre Catalog's own Factions section). This chapter does not replace that narrative layer. It provides the mechanical layer underneath it: the Standing Track, Faction Access, and Faction Boons that turn "the party has a good relationship with the Bureau" into something that resolves at the table the same way a Talent roll does.
Faction Overview
AX.C.07.01
Every Faction provides three things, the same shape as a Lineage's three-part kit or a Profession's three-part kit:
- Standing Track — a tracked relationship between one character and one Faction, rising and falling with play (AX.C.07.02).
- Faction Access — a circumstantial Talent bonus available only to members in good standing, granted at Affiliated Standing or higher (AX.C.07.03.01).
- Faction Boons — a three-stage set of abilities unlocked as Standing rises, granted at Affiliated / Trusted / Sworn (AX.C.07.03.02).
A character may hold Standing with more than one Faction simultaneously, and Standing with one Faction never automatically affects Standing with another — even rival Factions — unless the GM rules that a specific action is visible and consequential to both. Track each relationship independently.
Two layers, not one: Faction Standing (this chapter) is a per-character mechanical resource. Faction position — who's gaining ground, who's losing it, what a Faction is currently pursuing — is the GM's own world-tracking tool from AX.C.16.08 (three fields: current position, recent gains/losses, current pursuit). The two layers talk to each other: a PC's Standing actions are exactly the kind of event that should update a Faction's tracked position, and a Faction's tracked pursuit is exactly what should generate the jobs that let PCs raise Standing in the first place.
Standing Track
AX.C.07.02
Standing is tracked in Standing Points, gated identically to the way XP gates a Progression Track (AX.C.08.01), but earned through service to the Faction's interests rather than through session play generally.
| Standing | Points Required | Grants |
|---|---|---|
| Unaffiliated | 0 (default) | None |
| Affiliated | 10 | Faction Access + Stage 1 Boon |
| Trusted | 25 | Stage 2 Boon |
| Sworn | 50 | Stage 3 Boon |
Structural Note: These thresholds are deliberately identical to the Progression Track's own Stage 1/2/3 XP thresholds (AX.C.08.01) so a GM already running Profession advancement can reuse the same pacing intuition for Faction Standing without learning a second cadence.
Gaining Standing
The GM awards Standing Points for actions that plausibly serve the Faction's stated interests: completing a job on its behalf, protecting something it values, supplying information or resources it wants. Suggested baseline, deliberately mirroring the XP-award guidance in AX.C.14:
- Minor service (a small favor, a single useful piece of information): +1 to +2
- Significant service (a completed job, a meaningful risk taken on the Faction's behalf): +3 to +5
- Major service (resolving a threat to the Faction's core interests): +5 to +10
Losing Standing
Standing falls when a character acts against the Faction's interests, is caught betraying its trust, or embarrasses it publicly — GM's call, scaled the same way gains are.
Access is gated on current Standing, not a permanent unlock. Unlike a Profession's Progression Track, where a trained Perk is kept permanently once earned, Faction Access and every Faction Boon remain available only while the character's current Standing Points total still meets that tier's threshold. If Standing falls below a tier's threshold, for any reason, that tier's Boon (and, if it falls below 10, Faction Access itself) becomes unavailable immediately, and stays unavailable until Standing is rebuilt back up to the threshold. This rule applies uniformly across all three Stages, not just Stage 3.
Faction Pull costs 10 Standing Points per use. This is what "overuse degrades your standing" (AX.C.09.02.04) means mechanically. A Sworn member (50 points) who invokes Faction Pull immediately drops to 40 points, below the 50-point Sworn threshold, and loses access to the Stage 3 Boon on the spot, not after five uses. Calling in a second Stage 3 favor requires rebuilding Standing back to 50 first. The cost is a real tradeoff on a single use, not a five-use budget.
Standing does not decay passively from inactivity alone; a Faction a character hasn't interacted with in months still remembers what they're owed, for better or worse.
Faction Components
AX.C.07.03
Faction Access
AX.C.07.03.01
At Affiliated Standing or higher, a member gains a circumstantial +1D to one Talent named in the Faction's write-up, when acting visibly on the Faction's behalf or within its specific domain of influence. This is a situational bonus, not a permanent Talent increase — it does not count against the standard 5D Talent maximum (AX.C.04) and disappears immediately if Standing drops below Affiliated (AX.C.07.02).
Design Note: Faction Access deliberately does not grant Odd Talent access. The Extra-Normal Access rules (AX.C.09.03's Extra-Normal Access subsection) name only Lineage, Profession, or a Progression Track unlock as valid grantors. A Faction whose fiction revolves around an Odd Talent tradition (a magical order, a psitech program) may require Power Access as a precondition of membership — the character must already have it from their Lineage or Profession — but the Faction itself never grants it. Genre Catalogs and GMs should not deviate from this without flagging the change, since it would put AX.C.07 in conflict with AX.C.04/09/10's established Access Rules.
Faction Boons
AX.C.07.03.02
Faction Boons use the same three-stage shape as a Profession's Progression Track (AX.C.08.01) and the same Perk table line format used by the Profession samples (see 08 Professions/Warrior.md, Diplomat.md): **Name** | Category | Stage | Action | Scope | Recovery.
Default Boons — reuse, don't duplicate: The Faction Perk category already defined at AX.C.09.02.04 (Professional Standing → Network Contact → Organizational Authority → Faction Pull) is the default Boon set for any Faction that hasn't defined its own. It maps directly onto the Standing tiers:
| Standing | Default Boon (AX.C.09.02.04) |
|---|---|
| Affiliated | Professional Standing + Network Contact |
| Trusted | Organizational Authority |
| Sworn | Faction Pull |
Domain Boons: A Faction may substitute one Domain-flavored Boon per Stage in place of the default, the same way a Genre Catalog's Layer 2 Setting Perks may substitute for a Profession's Layer 1 Core Perks. This is not required — a Faction with no distinct flavor of its own can simply run on the AX.C.09.02.04 defaults — but the six sample Domain Archetypes below each define a full alternate set to show how it's done.
Profession-granted Organizational Perks are a separate resource. A Profession's own Progression Track may independently grant an Organizational-category Perk (the Diplomat's Stage 3 Faction Pull, for example) with no tracked Faction relationship behind it at all — that copy is not gated by, and costs no Standing Points from, any specific Faction, unless the GM explicitly declares it tied to one particular Faction the character also holds Standing with. Don't assume the two automatically share a pool; make the GM's call explicit at the table when a Profession Perk and a Faction Boon share a name.
Building a Faction
AX.C.07.04
Five steps, mirroring the Profession builder (AX.C.08.01):
- Define the Drive — one sentence: what does this Faction want, and how does it get it. ("A militant order that hunts what regular authority can't." "A trade network that will move anything for the right price.")
- Assign the Domain — Martial, Economic, Informational, Ideological, Academic, or Underground (or a Genre Catalog-specific Domain). Domain determines the flavor of Faction Access and Domain Boons available; it does not restrict which Talents a member might have.
- Set Membership Preconditions (optional) — does joining require an existing capability (Power Access from Lineage/Profession, a minimum Talent value, a Lineage restriction)? Most Factions have none; some meaningfully do.
- Build the Standing Track — use the default thresholds (10/25/50) unless the campaign's pace calls for a different cadence, and decide what specifically raises and lowers Standing for this Faction.
- Review against the Drive — does Faction Access reflect what this Faction actually trains its people to do? Does each Boon stage feel like a natural escalation of the Drive, not a grab-bag of unrelated abilities?
Sample Faction Domain Archetypes
AX.C.07.05
Six genre-neutral Domain templates, one per Domain named in the builder above. Like the Lineage Templates (AX.C.06.03) and the Profession Samples (AX.C.08.03–08.17), these are defined by structural role rather than by setting-specific identity, so a Genre Catalog can reskin any of them freely. A catalog's own published Faction (its Vanguard Unit, its Bureau, its Hollow Market) should declare which Domain Archetype its mechanics are drawn from, the same way a catalog Lineage declares which Core Template it reskins.
- Martial Order — AX.C.07.05.01
- Mercantile Network — AX.C.07.05.02
- Information Web — AX.C.07.05.03
- Ideological Circle — AX.C.07.05.04
- Academic Compact — AX.C.07.05.05
- Shadow Network — AX.C.07.05.06