Equipment, Services, and Flargons

Dort is a feudal world with flying ships, guild economies, active magical trade, and a material culture that runs from peasant iron to enchanted plate. Characters move through all of it. This chapter tells you what things cost, what they do, and how much you can carry before the weight starts working against you.

The flargon is Dort's standard currency. How far it goes depends on where you are and who you are: a laborer's daily gold barely stretches to a meal and a roof, while a merchant's gold bars buy weapons, passage, and favors.

Currency: Flargons

The flargon is the coin of Dort, minted under royal warrant and accepted across guild territories, city-states, and most of the known plane. Two denominations circulate: silver and gold flargons. The exchange rate is standardized by Accord decree and enforced by guild contract: twenty silver flargons to one gold.

A common laborer earns roughly one gold flargon per day, and a skilled hand thirty to fifty silver. A meal at a roadside tavern costs ten or twenty silver flargons. A decent sword costs a few gold. Full plate armor is measured in Gold Bars. Magical items (foci, enchanted gear, crafted implements) start expensive and run higher.

Haggling

The prices in this chapter are what a fair seller asks. Whether you actually pay that is a different question, and in Dort, where bargaining is a way of life in some markets and an insult in others, it is worth resolving properly.

Haggling uses a static social check, not an opposed roll. The question it answers is not "can this character negotiate?": it is "can this character talk this particular seller into a financially unfavorable decision?" A skilled negotiator has a real edge, but no one walks away with a discount every time they shop. Most merchants would rather wait for the next customer than sell something valuable at a loss.

This is the same framework used for all social checks against a resistant NPC; one rule, not two. The commercial version simply has a harder ceiling (up to Severe) because money is harder to part with than wariness. The general procedure is in the GM Guide, Chapter Two, Social Checks Against Resistance.

Haggling settles a single price on a single item. For the larger game, buying cargo in bulk, running it through risk, and selling it into a hungry market, see the Trade and Mercantile Play rules in the GM Guide (Chapter Eight). Haggling changes a deal; trade creates the deal.

The Procedure

You may haggle over a single item or a small group of closely related items. State your offer before you roll: the actual price you are proposing. Then make one check, using Negotiation by default; Charm, Intimidation, or Deception may apply depending on your approach and on what failure will cost you.

You get one attempt per transaction. A failed haggle ends the bargaining over that item, further attempts require genuinely new leverage, a different seller, or a real change in circumstances. (Otherwise the party just passes the item around until someone rolls well.) On a success the seller accepts your stated price; do not squeeze a larger discount out of net Successes afterward. You chose your risk when you named the number.

Step 1 — Base Difficulty: The Marketplace

Whether bargaining is even expected sets the floor.

Step 2 — The Seller's Resolve

Upgrade the difficulty once for each point of the seller's Willpower above 1. This upgrades Trial Dice to Crisis Dice: it makes a stubborn seller volatile to deal with, not merely harder.

A merchant whose entire livelihood is the deal may warrant one additional upgrade: that is trained expertise, not raw stubbornness.

Step 3 — Size of the Ask

The first 15% of price movement is free. Every additional full 15% adds a Trial Die. The same scale governs selling, asking a markup above fair value works exactly like asking a discount below it.

Examples. Ten percent off a sword at a flea market begins at Average. The same ten percent off in a conventional weapon shop begins at Severe. Thirty-five percent off at a market stall begins at Average, then adds two Trial Dice for the size of the ask. Selling an ordinary gem for 25% over its fair value uses the same scale in the other direction.

Step 4 — Circumstances

Use Trial Dice only for major factors that genuinely change whether a deal is reasonable. Use Boon and Bane Dice for softer leverage, relationships, presentation, timing, minor complications. This keeps the pool readable.

Illegal Goods

An illegal item does not automatically make a seller easier to pressure: it can cut either way. A smuggler who controls a scarce prohibited item expects a risk premium; a thief trying to dump a recognizable chalice before the guard arrives is another matter entirely.

Defects and Deception

The defect discount is not free for the asking. A player cannot simply declare "this armor looks scratched."

Reading the Result

A haggle is more interesting when failure is more than "the price stays the same."

Weapons

Weapon entries list the following profile: Damage, Crit, Range, Enc (encumbrance), Qualities, and Price. Damage is the incoming amount before Resistance on a successful hit. Crit is the number of Boons that must be spent to trigger a Critical Injury with this weapon (a Breakthrough may always be spent instead). Range is the distance bracket the weapon operates at. Enc is the item's encumbrance count toward your carry threshold. Qualities are special mechanical properties defined in the Item Qualities section of this chapter.

Weapons are organized by the skill used to wield them.

Unarmed

The default unarmed profile is Damage equal to your Might, Crit 5, Range Engaged, no qualities. This profile is free; every character has it. Species with natural weapons use a profile defined in their species entry. The Unarmed skill covers brawling, grappling, and trained fighting arts; it does not cover improvised weapons. Swinging a bottle uses Light Melee with Inaccurate 1; throwing one uses Light Ranged with Inaccurate 1.

Light Melee

Fast, precise weapons designed for one-handed use: daggers, short swords, rapiers, hand axes, clubs, maces. Governed by the Light Melee skill, linked to Might.

Heavy Melee

Weapons built for power, reach, or two-handed grip: longswords, greatswords, battleaxes, warhammers, spears, polearms. Governed by the Heavy Melee skill, linked to Might.

Light Ranged

Carried, drawn, and thrown arms: shortbows, longbows, hand crossbows, slings, thrown weapons, javelins. Governed by the Light Ranged skill, linked to Agility.

Ammunition

Bows and crossbows require appropriate ammunition. Running out mid-encounter imposes the Out of Ammo condition (you cannot use the weapon until reloaded; an Action to retrieve from a pack, or a Maneuver if you carry a loaded spare). After most encounters, roughly half of spent arrows and bolts can be recovered from the battlefield (GM discretion based on conditions). Alchemical and special ammunition cannot be recovered.

Heavy Ranged

Weapons requiring bracing, winding, or a setup action: heavy crossbows, siege weapons, ship-mounted arms. Governed by the Heavy Ranged skill, linked to Agility.

Armor

Armor can increase your Resistance, your Defense, or both. Resistance is calculated as half Might (rounded up) plus armor bonus. Shields add Defense rather than Resistance. Armor entries list: Resistance Bonus, Defense Bonus (if any), Encumbrance, and Price.

Full plate applies 1 Bane Die to Athletics and Reflexes checks while armored.

Encumbrance

Characters can carry a number of items equal to Might + 5 without penalty. This is your carry threshold. Encumbrance measures what is awkward to actively carry: weapons in hand, shields, loose packs, bundles, tools, and the bulk of gear worn on the body. Most weapons and pieces of gear count as one item of encumbrance; exceptions are noted in the tables above.

For every point of encumbrance you carry above your threshold, add 1 Bane Die to physical checks (Athletics, Reflexes, Stealth, and combat checks where movement is a factor).

Worn armor is easier to carry than armor in your arms. When armor is worn properly, reduce its listed encumbrance by 3, to a minimum of 0. When armor is carried, packed, or slung over a shoulder rather than worn, it uses its full listed encumbrance. Shields are not armor for this rule; a readied shield counts normally.

Backpacks increase your carrying threshold. A worn backpack counts as 1 encumbrance, but increases your carry threshold by 4 while worn. If you drop the backpack, you lose both the backpack's 1 encumbrance and its +4 threshold.

Trivially small items (a handful of coins, a belt pouch, a folded note) do not count against encumbrance. The GM has final judgment on what qualifies as trivial.

Adventuring Gear

General equipment for field use. Encumbrance is listed per item where it matters; trivial items (candles, chalk, a note) are not counted individually.

Poisons and Alchemicals

Poisons are regulated (and absolutely used) throughout Dort. Guild chemists, apothecary houses, and independent operators all supply them. Acquiring poison legally requires either a licensed trade affiliation or the knowledge to find an unlicensed source. Acquiring it illegally requires Streetwise.

Poison has three delivery methods: injury (applied to a blade, takes effect when the coated weapon causes the target to suffer at least 1 Wound), contact (skin exposure; touching an item treated with it, or a successful Unarmed attack), and ingested (must be eaten or drunk).

Poison entries state whether Resistance applies. If an entry says the target suffers Wounds, those Wounds bypass Resistance unless the entry says otherwise. If an entry says the target takes poison damage, apply Resistance normally.

Unless stated otherwise, a creature that is aware they have been poisoned may attempt a Fortitude check at the listed difficulty to reduce the effect. The GM may rule that certain creatures (constructs, undead) are immune.

Applying an injury poison requires a Maneuver. This can be done before entering structured play (at no cost, outside initiative) or on a character's turn during combat using one of their available Maneuvers. If a character has already used their one free Maneuver on their turn (for movement, aiming, or anything else), applying poison in the same turn costs 2 Strain as a second Maneuver. A coated weapon retains its poison charge for one successful hit or until the encounter ends. Applying contact poison to an item (a door handle, a cup) requires an Action and persists until triggered or cleaned off.

Services

Common services priced in flargons. Costs assume a guild city or established trade settlement. Remote locations may charge double or refuse service.

Weekly Lifestyle Costs

Between sessions, the GM may ask what standard of living the party maintains. This matters when living costs become relevant to the fiction: a character running short on funds, maintaining a social front, or trying to live below notice. Most of the time this runs in the background; state your lifestyle and it is handled.

Characters who neglect to pay lifestyle costs for a week are assumed to have maintained Frugal living by default. At GM discretion, sustained poverty-tier living in a context where it is visible (a noble court, an expensive city, a faction negotiation where appearances matter) may add to social checks where status is relevant.

Hiring help for more than a day's odd job, guards, guides, a household, or followers runs on the full Hirelings, Followers, and Retainers rules (loyalty, morale, hazard pay, and stat templates) in the GM Guide, Chapter Eight.

Trade and Mercantile Play

Haggling (earlier in this chapter) handles a single price on a single item. Trade is the larger game: buying a commodity where it is cheap, carrying it through risk, and selling it somewhere it is dear. If your character has a mercantile career or background (Merchant, Factor, Privateer, Navigator, Sailor, or similar), this is part of what you do.

The full trade procedure is in the GM Guide, Chapter Eight. Here is what you need to know as a player.

The Four Steps

A trade run has four moments where your skills matter.

1. Find the opportunity. Use Streetwise, Negotiation, or Lore to identify what is undervalued here and wanted elsewhere. A well-traveled character asks around; a scholarly one consults trade records. Success names a profitable commodity and destination. Failure means the route is crowded or the information is stale.

2. Buy the cargo. Only roll if you are pressing for better terms than standard. Use Negotiation (or Deception if misrepresenting yourself or the goods). Standard wholesale needs no check. You are trying to improve the margin, not guarantee the purchase.

3. Transport it. The GM calls for one check per meaningful leg of the journey. Which skill depends on how you're moving: Survival overland, Operate by river or road vehicle, Piloting by flying ship, Riding for a beast train, Leadership to hold a caravan together. This is where things go wrong, or don't.

4. Sell. Use Negotiation or Streetwise to convert the cargo into coin at the destination. A market that needs your goods badly is easier; a saturated market is harder.

The Money

Profit is a margin, not a precise calculation. The GM sets a base percentage by route type: an established safe route might return 10%, a dangerous or distant one 40% or more. Your rolls across all four steps shift that margin up or down. A Breakthrough anywhere improves the margin significantly; a Calamity creates a complication the GM plays out.

The trade system does not replace Haggling; they work in sequence. Trade decides whether the opportunity is good. Haggling sharpens one specific term within it: a purchase price, a tariff, a storage arrangement.

What This Means at the Table

A character with Merchant or Navigator as their career has the skills this takes. A character without those careers can still run a trade route; the checks are just harder. The GM sets market conditions, complications, and what events happen along the transport leg. Your job is to make the right calls and survive the interesting ones.

Magical Foci

Arcane casters (those working in the Arcana tradition) rely on physical technique to draw power from the Arcana plane. Gestures, vocal components, material components, and focal devices form the grammar of the working. A focus is the practitioner's primary physical instrument: the channel through which trained intention becomes structured effect.

A focus does not change which spells a caster knows or what tradition they work in. It is a quality tool, nothing more, and quality tools make the work more reliable. Using a quality focus adds 1 Boon Die to casting checks made with the Arcana or Primal tradition. Divine casters use prayer and covenant rather than focal devices, but some do carry holy symbols that function analogously; see the entry below.

Foci must be held or worn and accessible to provide their benefit. A focus that is taken, destroyed, or fumbled in the middle of a working removes the bonus immediately.

Foci do not stack. Regardless of how many foci or holy symbols a character carries, the casting bonus is always exactly 1 Boon Die per check. Wearing an arcane amulet and carrying a journeyman's staff provides no more benefit than either item alone. The quality of attention and attunement is the resource, not the number of objects.

Required Focus. Some spells list a Required Focus in their spell block (for example: Required Focus: Holy symbol). This is different from the standard optional focus bonus. A required focus is a necessary component of the working; the spell cannot be cast without it. It does not grant an additional Boon Die on top of the standard focus benefit; the required item fills the same slot. If the required focus is also an appropriate optional focus for the tradition, the caster benefits from the +1 Boon Die as normal while holding it.

Combined Tradition Foci

Casters who have learned a combined tradition (Theomancy, Necromancy, or Shamanism) or High Magic work at the seam between schools, and the instruments that serve them must be built to hold that tension. A standard arcane focus was not made with Theomancy in mind; a holy symbol was not crafted to steady a Necromancer's grip on the boundary between living and dead. A practitioner who wants a casting bonus for their combined tradition must carry a combined tradition focus keyed to that specific blend.

Combined tradition foci follow the same rules as standard foci: they must be held or worn, they do not stack with other foci or holy symbols, and they provide exactly 1 Boon Die per check, but only to casting checks made within the combined tradition they are built for. A Theomantic lens does not aid a Necromancy cast; a Necromancer's ossuary focus does not aid a Shamanism working. Only a character with the appropriate tradition talent (Theomancer, Necromancer, Shaman, or Archmage) may attune to and use a combined tradition focus.

The triadic focus is extraordinarily rare, typically commission-crafted for a specific Archmage or recovered from one. No market stocks them.

Mounts and Vehicles

Mounts and mundane vehicles are sold in any sizable market. Full mount profiles, characteristics, skills, and abilities, live in the Ix Adversary Catalog, Chapter Thirty (Beasts & Animals); vehicle profiles, Speed, Handling, and cargo, live in the GM Guide (Chapter Fourteen). The prices below are typical for a guild city in peacetime, and run higher on the frontier or in war. Flying ships are not casually bought: they are commissioned, inherited, or seized (see the GM Guide).

The mounted-combat rules in Chapter Thirteen read off your mount's Wounds and Resistance, so the numbers you need as a rider are repeated here.

Magic Items

Magic in Dort does not come off a shelf. There is one hard truth beneath everything here: permanent enchantment is Ancient magic, the direct imposition of will upon the planes (Chapter Nine), and no mortal, however masterful, can do it. What a mortal can make is one of two lesser things: a consumable (a spell poured into a vessel) or an augmentation (magic worn in a living body). Every permanent magic object, every true magic weapon, ring, and relic, was made by an Ancient or a god, once, for a reason, and is found in play, never bought. That is why there is no "+1 sword" in Ix.

The bespoke and sentient items, relics, the Zoranti weapons, are GM-placed treasures; their rules are in the GM Guide, Chapter Seven. What you can buy or make is below.

Attunement: the Soul's Load

A permanent item works for you only once you have bound it to yourself, a quiet settling over days of carrying and use. You can hold a number of attuned permanent items equal to your Willpower; beyond that, further items go inert for you. Augmentations are bound to the body, not the soul, and counted separately; you can sustain three by default (the Augmented talent in Chapter Seven raises this to four, and may only be taken once). Consumables need no attunement; you use them and they are gone. See the Consumables section below for full usage and crafting rules. Foci never stack (above).

Consumables

The everyday magic item, and the only one a party can reliably manufacture. A caster binds a spell they already know into a vessel using their casting skill, time, and materials. Consumables come in three forms: scrolls, potions, and wands. Using a consumable costs no Strain to the user. That cost was paid by the maker during crafting.

Scrolls

A scroll is a spell inscribed onto treated vellum by a caster who already knows it. The inscription does the hard work; using the scroll completes it.

Who can use a scroll. You must possess the casting skill matching the scroll's tradition (Arcana, Divine, or Primal), or hold the Scroll Reader talent with that tradition selected. A scroll for a combined tradition (Theomancy, Necromancy, or Shamanism) can be used by anyone who possesses at least one of the component skills or holds Scroll Reader for one of them.

Using a scroll. Reading a scroll requires an Action. Make the casting check for the spell at the difficulty listed on the scroll. The scroll is consumed regardless of outcome, success or failure. Extra successes, boons, and calamities apply normally. A calamity on a scroll cast produces the same result as a calamity while casting the spell directly.

Potions

A potion is a spell poured into liquid form, shaped to affect only the one who drinks it. Where a scroll requires a roll, a potion guarantees its effect.

Who can use a potion. Anyone. No casting skill is required.

What potions can contain. Potions hold spells that affect the drinker directly: healing, removing conditions, granting temporary characteristic or skill bonuses, or conferring a limited ability for a duration. A potion cannot hold an attack spell, a spell that targets another creature, or an area effect. If a spell would not logically benefit the person drinking it, it cannot be made into a potion.

Using a potion. Drinking a potion is a Maneuver during structured play. The effect is immediate and guaranteed; no roll is made. Any bonus to numeric effects baked in during brewing applies automatically.

Wands

A wand holds a fixed number of charges of a single spell. One wand, one spell. The spell cannot be changed after the wand is made.

Who can use a wand. The user must possess the relevant casting skill at any rank. Wands are caster tools, not general-use items.

Using a wand. Activating a wand is an Action. The spell fires with no casting check and no strain cost to the user. One charge is spent per use.

Wand charges. Each wand has a maximum charge capacity set by the creator's casting skill rank at the time of creation (minimum 1, maximum 5). A wand below capacity can be recharged by anyone who can cast its spell.

Crafting Consumables

Any caster who knows a spell may attempt to craft a consumable version of it during downtime. The crafting check is an Average difficulty check using the relevant casting skill (Arcana, Divine, Primal, or the applicable combined tradition). If the spell being scribed or brewed lists a Consumed Material, that material is also required and consumed during crafting. See the individual spell entry for what the material is and what it costs. Most spells have no consumed material requirement; the costs below cover the consumable vessel itself.

All crafting: 1 Boon reduces the crafting time by 1 hour (minimum 1 hour).

Scribing a Scroll

On a failed check, the scroll sheet and components are consumed and no scroll is produced. A Calamity consumes materials and may produce an additional consequence at GM discretion. Quality results from the scribing check are inscribed into the scroll itself; they apply when the scroll is used, not when it is made.

Brewing a Potion

On a failed check, all materials are consumed and no potion is produced. A Calamity consumes materials and may produce an additional consequence. Quality results are built into the potion at brewing time and apply automatically when it is drunk.

Creating a Wand

One crafting check is made per day of work. A success completes that charge slot. A Calamity loses that day's gem foci and material components without completing the slot.

Recharging a Wand

Make one check. On a success, charges are added up to the wand's maximum capacity. On a failure, materials are consumed and no charges are added. A Calamity consumes materials, adds no charges, and the GM may apply an additional consequence.

Augmentations

Permanent yet routine, because the magic is carried by your own life, not bound into dead matter. A specialist (a tattooist inking planar pigment, an alchemist, a primal shaman, a divine marker) sets it over time and coin, with a Fortitude check to endure it.

An augmentation grants one bonus, and a bonus is not the same as raising the trait. It adds to a derived value, grants a Boon Die on a category of check, an extra rank in a skill, a sense, or +1 to a characteristic. Because it is a bonus laid over you, not a true increase:

• it is dispellable (suppressed by dispel magic or a nullifying field such as the Well of Void) and removable (by an invasive procedure);
• a characteristic bonus can never raise your effective value above 5;
• it does not touch the Growth-talent economy, and it fills one of your augmentation slots (three by default).

Identifying an Item

The Auralight cantrip (Chapter Nine) reads an item's tradition (Arcana, Divine, Primal, or combined) and rough strength (cantrip-level, Journeyman, Adept, or Master-tier). That is all it tells you. Tradition and approximate power, nothing more.

Deeper identification (specific properties, effects, prerequisites, history, provenance) comes from Arcana, Lore, Secret Lore, or Planar Lore checks, from extended research, or from the item's own history. The GM sets difficulty based on how obscure, ancient, or deliberately hidden the item is. There is no spell that tells you everything; the reward for investigation is what makes powerful items feel like discoveries rather than purchases.

Some items hide their gifts until you attune, meet a condition, or simply use them enough to learn them. A sentient item tells you what it wants you to know, when it wants to.

Item Qualities

These qualities appear on weapons and armor throughout this chapter. Where a quality has a numeric rating (Vicious 2, Pierce 1, etc.), the number sets the magnitude of the effect.

Starting Gear Packages

Starting packages give players a functional kit without requiring item-by-item shopping. Players may take a package as written or build an equivalent package with GM approval.

Each package lists items, their field encumbrance, and the character type it fits. Field encumbrance assumes armor is worn and a listed backpack is worn. Packages do not replace starting coin: every starting character receives 2d10 gold flargons in addition to their package.

Warrior

A fighter ready for field work: armed, armored, provisioned.

Scholar

Books, instruments, and the tools of someone who reads the situation before acting in it.

Rogue

Light, mobile, and prepared for options the other characters pretend don't exist.

Tradesperson

Guild-certified, practical, and carrying the gear that earns money.

Mage

Arcana tradition. What they lack in armor they make in options.

Wanderer

A traveler prepared for the road and not much else. Adaptable.

Devoted

A cleric, pilgrim guide, or temple guard: faith-forward and prepared to tend the wounded.

Pair this package with the Pilgrim Guide, Cleric, Healer, or Temple Guard career. The holy symbol is the starting focus for Divine casting.

Primal Adept

A shaman-in-training, hedge witch, or wilderness caster: draws on the natural world rather than study or faith.

Pair this package with the Herbalist, Wandering Shaman, Hedge Witch, or Scout career. The elementalist's focus provides the Primal casting bonus.