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Academic Compact

AX.C.07.05.05

A body organized around accumulating and protecting knowledge: a university, a research consortium, an archive. It moves slowly and argues with itself constantly, but what it knows, it knows precisely. Its value to a member is expertise on demand, and its price is that it will always want the knowledge you bring back more than it wants you.

  • Domain: Academic
  • Faction Access (circumstantial, Affiliated Standing or higher): +1D to Lore when researching a subject within the Compact's holdings

Standing Drivers

  • Gains: Contributing verified findings to the Compact's holdings; recovering or protecting a significant text, specimen, or dataset; correcting a documented error.
  • Losses: Publishing or acting on unverified claims under the Compact's name; damaging or losing entrusted materials; withholding findings the Compact is owed.

Boons

Archive Access | Expertise | Stage 1 | Free Action | Self | Session

Once per session, consult the Compact's holdings on a specific subject. This does not require a roll; if the Compact plausibly has documented the answer, you get it, subject to the same honesty limits as an Aeon's Deep Memory (AX.C.06.03.04) — accurate, not omniscient.

Limit: Once per session.

Peer Review | Expertise | Stage 2 | Free Action | Self | Scene

Once per scene, before making a Lore, Medicine, or Technical roll on a subject within the Compact's expertise, gain Advantage on that roll, representing a standing body of prior work you can draw on rather than working from first principles.

Limit: Once per scene.

Commission the Compact | Organizational | Stage 3 | Primary Action | Organization-scale | Full Rest

Request the Compact dedicate real research effort to a specific question: an expert consultation, access to a restricted holding, or a small research team's attention for a matter of days.

Limit: Once per Full Rest. Costs 10 Standing Points, per AX.C.07.02. The Compact expects the results, whatever they are, to come back to it first.

Adventure Hooks

  • Commission the Compact turns up an answer that contradicts something the Compact has published for years, and the Compact would rather that stay quiet.
  • Archive Access reveals that the PCs' current problem has happened before, and the Compact's prior account of how it ended is wrong.
  • A rival scholar within the Compact is trying to discredit a PC's Standing to protect their own contested findings.