Bureaucracy
Charms
Frugal Merchant
Method
Cost: 1 mote
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 1
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: None
This Charm allows an Exalted to evaluate
the quality of goods offered for sale. The character has an intuitive sense of
if the goods are shoddy, exceptional, average or whatever. Note that this
doesn’t give the character market knowledge he doesn’t have. If a character has
no idea how much a good is supposed to cost, use of this power still won’t tell
him if he’s being overcharged. Likewise, this power grants no actual knowledge
of the good under examination, only knowledge of its quality. Presented with a
totally unfamiliar object, the character will be able to tell if it is shoddy
or broken but will still not know anything about its purpose or operation. This
Charm works on found objects as well as those offered for sale and can, for
example, tell if a piece of First Age magic is still functional or not simply
by handling it.
Insightful Buyer
Technique
Cost: 3 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 3
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: Frugal Merchant Method
Through the use of this Charm, the
character gains an intuitive feel for a marketplace at a given instant, allowing
her to intuit roughly how much a given object will fetch in any one market.
Though the character need not be physically present in the market, this Charm
must be used with a particular sales venue in mind. A character cannot discover
previously unknown markets through the use of this Charm. She can, however,
review markets she is familiar with, even distant ones, to determine which
would be the best place to sell a given good. The more specific the venue
contemplated, the more accurate the forecast.
This Charm is perfectly accurate if used at
the moment of sale. However, the more time that elapses between the use of the
Charm and the actual sale of the goods, the greater the chance of an error in
the character’s projection.
Consumer-Evaluating
Glance
Cost: 3 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 3
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: Frugal Merchant Method
An Exalted using this Charm may evaluate a
given buyer’s intentions and budget with but a glance. He can tell if a given potential
buyer has no real intention of purchasing, if she’s already decided to buy or
if she requires swaying. The Exalted also has a good idea of the target’s
budget for the purchase, at least in relation to the price the Exalted desires
to obtain. Finally, the character will know if the target plans to attempt to
swindle or betray him in some fashion, making it an essential tool for
characters dealing in illegal or extremely valuable goods.
Irresistable Salesman Spirit
Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Consumer-Evaluating
Glance, Insightful Buyer Technique
A character utilizing this Charm becomes
the ultimate high-pressure salesman, able to sell practically anything to
anyone for outrageous prices. If the target’s Willpower is equal to or lower
than the Exalted’s Essence, he can be sold literally
anything at any price — the Exalted may cause him to sell himself into slavery
for a handful of potsherds or a kiss. If the target’s Willpower is less than
twice the Exalted’s Essence, the Exalted’s
player must make a Wits + Bureaucracy roll. The number of successes is how many
times the object’s normal price the character manages to extract from the
target. This Charm does not work on characters whose Willpower is greater than
twice the Exalted’s Essence.
Note that this Charm does not actually
enforce the deal in any way, and that it works only for a single scene.
Afterward, the target will be acutely aware of having just been swindled — the
greater the swindle, the more likely he is to seek redress.
Deft Official’s
Way
Cost: 6 motes
Duration: One task
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 1
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: None
An Exalted who uses this Charm becomes preternaturally
adept at navigating through bureaucracies. The character can naturally sense
who to talk to in order to produce results, who expects or is amenable to
bribes, which functionaries are actually useful or friendly and which are
simply petty individuals enjoying their tiny sliver of power.
A player whose character uses this Charm
may add the character’s Essence score in automatic successes to any Bureaucracy
rolls when attempting to achieve a given result in a bureaucracy (for example,
obtain a license, passport, grant or audience). Note that this Charm does not
make the impossible possible or allow an impoverished character to pay bribes
she cannot afford, but it may allow the character to find away around such
obstacles.
Speed The Wheels
Cost: 8 motes
Duration: One task
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Deft Official’s Way
Through the use of this Charm, a character
can cause a bureaucracy to accomplish a task in record time. An Exalted using
Speed the Wheels causes the bureaucracy to work (her Essence + 1) times faster
for the duration of a particular job. For example, a character with Essence 3
who uses the Speed the Wheels Charm to expedite an appeal to the ruler of a
city to use the naval dry-docks to repair her ship would be able to make the
appropriate appointments and cause the proper papers to be read four times
faster than normal. Note that this Charm simply speeds the process, it does not
increase the character’s chances of success. Characters who wish to improve
their chances of success should use Social Charms or Deft Official’s Way.
Bureau-Rectifying
Method
Cost: 8 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One investigation
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Speed the Wheels
An Exalted who knows this Charm may use it
to aid in an investigation of corruption in a bureaucracy. In order for this
Charm to work, the character must either request or take part in the
investigation. The result will be an actual investigation — there will be
genuine inquiries, real punishments and, potentially, even meaningful reform.
If this Charm is used by an Exalted who is heading an investigation, it causes
questioned individuals to be much more cooperative than they would be
otherwise, and subordinates who would otherwise go through the motions of their
jobs will instead actually attempt to ferret out the corruption.
Note that there is a finite upper limit on
the how wide-ranging an investigation this Charm can support. If the character
is reforming an entire bureaucracy, the Storyteller should feel free to force
him to commit Essence to this Charm more than once. Typically, an Exalted can
bolster the efforts of (her Essence rating x 20) individuals per use of this
Charm. This Charm does not cause an investigation to be launched, merely
reinforces one that is already in progress.
Indolent Official
Charm
Cost: 4 motes
Duration: One task
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Deft Official’s Way
Solar Exalted can use their powers to slow
as well as hasten the actions of a bureaucracy. Through the use of the Indolent
Official Charm, a character may bring the wheels of government to a screeching,
grinding halt with regard to a single task. Papers will be lost at every turn,
every petty official who could possibly interfere or request a bribe will do
so, and petitions and requests will inevitably end up neglected at the bottom
of the pile. For every point of Essence the character possesses, the amount of
time the bureaucracy needs to accomplish a given task is multiplied by one.
The character need not be part of the
matter to be delayed, but must know about the situation well enough to specify
it. Characters may invest Essence speculatively (for example, “the ongoing
secret police investigation into my affair” is a perfectly valid target, even
if the character isn’t sure one exists) but will not know if the Charm had an
effect or not — as long as she keeps the Essence committed, an investigation
that meets her criteria will be hampered.
As with Bureau-Rectifying Method, there is
an upper limit to the size of the delay that the character can impose. Each use
of this Charm can hinder the efforts of a number of investigators equal to (the
character’s Essence x 20).
Foul Air Of
Argument Technique
Cost: 12 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One task
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Indolent Official
Charm
The character can cause a request, project
or initiative to become the kiss of death for a bureaucracy. Meetings produce
nothing, initiatives fall into pointless squabbling, and departmental
infighting hampers even the simplest matters. Worse, the fighting spreads,
rippling out from the issue in question to other matters and, eventually,
hampering or even crippling the bureaus involved. When bureaucracies are
subject to the Foul Air of Argument Technique, they operate at a fraction of
their efficiency equal to 1/ (1 + the Essence score of the character), so a
character with Essence 1 would make a bureau work at 1/2 efficiency, one with
Essence 2 would make it work at 1/3, Essence 3 at 1/4, and so on. A character
cannot use multiple invocations of this Charm on the same bureau at once.
Bureaucratic Concealment Technique
Cost: 4 motes
Duration: Special
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Indolent Official Charm
Using this Charm,
a character can effectively cause a single item to disappear into the depths of
a bureaucracy and remain hidden from all efforts to find it until the Exalted
ceases committing Essence to the Charm or chooses to retrieve the item herself.
The item may be virtually anything that can be moved through human effort: a
letter, an artifact, a piece of jewelry ― even a statue or the like. It
is shuffled from place to place, stored and forgotten, and it draws no
attention to itself. Investigation attempts to find the concealed item have
their difficulty increased by the Exalted’s Essence.
Forgetful Bureau Charm
Cost: 10 motes, 1
Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum
Bureaucracy: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Indolent Official Charm
Forgetful Bureau
Charm allows an Exalted character to erase all evidence of one item or
individual from a particular bureaucracy. Records are lost or destroyed,
officials misremember facts, and so forth. The effects take some time to make
themselves felt. A small local bureaucracy is affected within a day. Larger
organizations may take weeks, or even months before the process is complete. So
far as the bureaucracy is concerned, the item or individual in question does
not exist. Those with direct contact with the subject still recall it normally,
but official records and other documentation do not support their
recollections. New records can come into being after this Charm is used, but
previous records on the subject are permanently lost.
This Charm allows
the Chosen to create difficulties for others by eliminating all official record
of them or for the Exalted to protect their own secrets, such as removing
evidence of a Circle’s activities or of the location of a particular Demesne or
Manse.