Eliminate the Impossible (GLOG Class: Sleuth)

jim steranko

Lord John Martin-Evos. The Duchess, Issandra Mything. Tellurus Oath. Mary fucking Majors.

 

Great minds actually have very little in common. 

 

* * *

 

This is the third class for the Victorian setting collab I'm working on with Noblesse Goblige, the same setting as last month's Psychopaladin. It was made in collaboration with Noblesse Goblige and Nothic's Eye, and also stolen from Numbers Aren't Real in large, jagged chunks.

 

This isn't just a detective class, although the influences are front and center. It's a catch-all for thinkers, inventors, scientists, renaissance men, egomaniacal intellectuals, soon-to-be-eaten-by-an-eldritch-horror professors, and so on.

 

The mysteries are a bit of a cheat - instead of introducing setting details organically, they're stashed in a player-facing document. Is this better? worse? I'm honestly not sure. its a draft anyway

* * *

 

SLEUTH
Start with: photographic memory; flawless timepiece worth 33g; incorruptible yet bumbling goon.
+1 Brains and +1 Language per template
A - Intellectual Authority, Deduction
B - Great Mysteries
C - Immune to illusions, disguises, and booby traps
D - Mentor, Immune to ego death
 

A: Intellectual Authority
You can walk around laboratories, college campuses and crime scenes unimpeded. No one will stop you from fucking around with dangerous and/or delicate artifacts and/or equipment; they assume you know what you’re doing.

 

Everyone has to call you your choice of doctor, inspector, professor, or some other appropriate honorific. Yes, even people who don’t know you. Yes, even the old gods. Yes, even your mum.
 

A: Deduction
If you consider two clues for a minute, you have a revelation about how they are (or aren't) connected. Every time you do this, Save with Brains or suffer a splitting migraine, preventing you from thinking clearly until you rest or self-medicate.

B: Great Mysteries
Each Season, choose one of the Great Mysteries to pursue (see below). You spend sleepless nights turning it over in your mind. You can only pursue one Great Mystery at a time, in your obsessive way.

 

As long as you are pursuing a Great Mystery, you have its cantrip. If you solve it, gain the cantrip permanently.

 

The list of Great Mysteries is not exhaustive.

 

D: Mentor
Those who can’t do, teach. You are the exception that proves the rule.

 

If you spend a season tutoring someone else, they gain 200XP OR begin pursuing a Great Mystery (your choice). If you choose the Mystery, they gain its cantrip for as long as they like.

 

When one of your students solves a Great Mystery, gain its cantrip permanently.

 

8 Great Mysteries

1. What separates men from beasts?
Evolution! Hah! That John, what funny ideas he has! But men are not mere beasts, no matter what the radical phylogenists say – and the proof is inside of you! Nurse, scalpel!
Cantrip: You can learn someone’s name by tasting their blood. This works on more than just people – for example, you can learn the make and model of an automobile by tasting its brake fluid.

2. Who discovered the Doggerlands?
Each House claims the whole of the Doggerlands as their ancestral home. Of course, your House was first to set foot on its salt-caked shores – but how do you prove it?
Cantrip: You can tell the exact time since an object was made or broken by smelling it.

3. Who stole the Philosopher’s Stone?
Ever since the Night of Tarnished Truth – the greatest heist in recorded history – the Catlani have been slowly draining this country of all its gold reserves. Your ancestors figured out alchemy a long time ago, so why are you still in debt?
Cantrip: You can smell gold through walls and inside locked chests and shallow graves. You can smell especially ludicrous quantities three miles upwind.

4. Where did the dragons go?
The Ayt speak of dragons on the docks. You didn’t believe them, until you saw today’s paper: dragon bones discovered, half-buried on Mither’s Finger. Imagine the headlines if you found one – a dragon, that is – and put it in Eldon Zoo where it belongs.
Cantrip: Your pipe is ALWAYS lit.

5. Where does color come from?
Once, the world was monochrome, as seen in old photographs and ancient stone reliefs. Now there are nauseating greens and pinks and robins-eggs and chartreuses and and a
Cantrip: You see in silversight, which illuminates fingerprints, footprints, other peoples’ line-of-sight, and thieves with less templates than you.

6. Who puts the stars in the sky?
Every few months, a new star appears in the sky, to astrologer’s delight... and sailor’s chagrin.
Cantrip: Your eyes are both magnifying glasses and telescopes. They switch every hour.

7. Who is Fate (and Why does she hate you)?
The colonies have fallen. The sea is receding. The Houses are crumbling to ruin. You keep losing your socks, and that dancer from Shakies isn’t returning your missives.
Cantrip: You can learn if someone is your enemy by kissing them.

8. How does one sail backwards?
There are five winds – the four Cardinals, and Time. The former have been stalwart allies of the Doggerlands, except the lazy and sluttish West wind. The latter has not.
Cantrip: You can see exactly eleven minutes and six seconds into the past by covering all but one of your eyes.