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Mercantile Network

AX.C.07.05.02

A trade body organized around moving goods, capital, or services across boundaries that would stop an individual actor. It is not sentimental about who it deals with. Its value to a member is access, and its price is that everything, eventually, gets billed.

  • Domain: Economic
  • Faction Access (circumstantial, Affiliated Standing or higher): +1D to Persuade in negotiations conducted on the Network's behalf or under its name

Standing Drivers

  • Gains: Closing deals favorable to the Network; protecting shipments, contracts, or capital; opening a new market or route.
  • Losses: Costing the Network a deal through carelessness; dealing behind the Network's back in its own territory; defaulting on a debt owed through it.

Boons

Preferred Rate | Organizational | Stage 1 | Free Action | Self | Session

Once per session, purchase goods or services at a meaningfully reduced rate (GM sets the discount, typically 25-50%) from any vendor the Network has influence with, or secure standard credit terms where cash would otherwise be required.

Limit: Once per session.

Manifest Access | Organizational | Stage 2 | Primary Action | Self | Long Rest

Once per Long Rest, arrange for a shipment, a person, or a modest quantity of goods to move through a checkpoint, border, or customs process without the scrutiny it would normally draw, riding the Network's existing manifests and bribes.

Limit: Once per Long Rest. Does not cover contraband the Network itself would refuse to move.

Called Debt | Organizational | Stage 3 | Primary Action | Organization-scale | Full Rest

Call in a significant financial favor: a large sum fronted against future service, a competitor's supply line quietly disrupted, or a piece of market-moving information surfaced early.

Limit: Once per Full Rest. Costs 10 Standing Points, per AX.C.07.02. The Network keeps ledgers; this one gets remembered.

Adventure Hooks

  • A shipment moved through Manifest Access turns out to contain something the PCs didn't know they were smuggling.
  • A rival Network faction offers a better rate for the exact same route, and taking it means undercutting the PCs' own Standing.
  • Called Debt gets exercised against the PCs by someone else who holds it, not the other way around.