Cutters

“Next,” said the clerk. The queue lurched ahead. A young woman stum­bled to the counter. Over­sized boots; mousy brown bangs; a wine stain around one eye. A bat­tered, sheathed cut­lass. Thin fin­gers wor­ry­ing the leather.

Behind his grille, the clerk cast her with a rheumy stare.

“Not much to look at, are you?” A cig­a­rette wob­bled in his mus­tache. “Have you worked with the Com­pa­ny before?”

“No,” said she.

“Name?” sighed the clerk, pluck­ing up a pen.

“Mel Bin­ter of Fir Reach.”

The clerk scrib­bled in a ledger. Lit­tle wafts of smoke curled from his mouth. Dox­bells spi­raled for the ceil­ing. “License?” he said, drib­bling ash. 

“I haven’t one yet,” said Mel. The scab­bard creaked in her hands.

“Two crowns.”

A pouch jin­gled on the wood­en counter. The clerk swiped it behind the grille and emp­tied it. He divid­ed coins with a yel­low fin­ger­tip, scud­ding them into groups: Sev­er­al cop­per half­pen­nies, six­ty sil­ver pence, four shillings, and a sin­gle iron­bound gold­en pound. A week’s wages. * With a scale and caliper, he mea­sured the pound’s weight and diam­e­ter. He har­rumphed, rung open a till, and tipped the coins in. From a stack of fresh leather folds, he took one, stamped its inner page with an elab­o­rate broad green imprint, and slid it over the counter. “Sign this and keep it,” he said. “And see the pho­tograv­ist next for your head­shot.” He coughed. “Now, you sign­ing on to a ven­ture?”

“Yes,” said Mel, tak­ing the leather fold.

“Lead­er’s name?” said the clerk, pro­duc­ing anoth­er ledger and begin­ning to scrib­ble.

“Mar­cazy Hado­cland of Norole.”

The clerk removed the cig­a­rette from his lips. He blinked slow­ly twice at her. “Hado­cland’s lead­ing the ven­ture to Lieudepur Climb,” he said, inclin­ing his head. “It’s the third attempt.”

Mel shift­ed, held her sword and license close. “I know,” she trem­bled.

“It’s your skin, Lady,” said the clerk, shak­ing his head. He pulled the fas­tened the smoke back in his mouth and pro­duced a doc­u­ment. He began to read aloud.

“For this ven­ture, the share for a cut­ter with no stand­ing with the com­pa­ny is point two per­cent of extract­ed yield. Share increas­es com­men­su­rate with fatal­i­ties, should they have no will. Tiber and Fel­lowes pro­vide no assur­ance to the safe­ty of this ven­ture or the nature of the tasks that you may be required to per­form. Do you agree to these terms?”

“Yes,” said Mel.

“All right. This copy­’s for you.” He slid an enve­lope over. Mel took it. “Thank you,” she said. The clerk did­n’t meet her gaze. She turned from the counter.

“Lady,” said the clerk, sud­den­ly.

Mel looked back.

“Good luck.”

The gold­mines of the Coast are long ago aban­doned. They are deplet­ed or dug per­ilous­ly close the labyrinthine Under­world. New mines are not con­struct­ed: The prospects are too mea­ger; the locales too wild.

But gold yet lies beneath the sur­face of the world. It was buried there by ancient hands, interred in the dark and elab­o­rate depths of tombs: the tes­ta­ment-realms of an occult and calami­tous world his­to­ry defend­ed by ancient sor­ceries and undy­ing mon­sters. They are bur­ial places craft­ed not mere­ly for extinct cul­tures’ hon­ored dead, but for the secrets that end­ed their civilizations⁠—for tech­nolo­gies and evi­dences too shame­ful to bear the light of day but too beau­ti­ful and too seduc­tive to destroy. In these places, the Coastal econ­o­my has found fresh specie aplen­ty, and in extract­ing it engen­dered an indus­try to define the mod­ern world: Adven­ture cap­i­tal.

For these adven­tures are hired cut­ters: Tomb raiders, vio­lence-work­ers, and des­per­a­dos. ** Mer­ce­nar­ies, bur­glars, mad­men, and thrill seek­ers. Charmed by trea­sure beyond imag­in­ing, they embark on ven­tures to the edges of the world and beyond; to the worst places built and buried by humankind.

They embark at the behest of hun­gry banks. The fat finan­cial titans of the Coast, vicious­ly com­pet­i­tive, who in the year 3.221 formed the Lit­toral Adven­ture Cap­i­tal Com­pact, an inter­na­tion­al­ly rat­i­fied finan­cial agree­ment grant­i­ng them unlim­it­ed autho­riza­tion to con­duct “spec­u­la­tive cap­i­tal expe­di­tions” in any ter­ri­to­ry where­in they are char­tered to accept deposit. Over 229 years, this com­pact has bloat­ed them with wealth, mak­ing the banks might­i­er and rich­er than many of the small­er king­doms they stron­garmed into sign­ing two cen­turies ago. †

These orga­ni­za­tions orga­nize and dis­patch expe­di­tions from East­ern wilder­ness set­tle­ments. On these dan­ger­ous fringes of civ­i­liza­tion, there is no short­age of Tombs to sack, and no lack of folk brave, fool­ish, or des­per­ate enough to raid them. 

The occu­pa­tion of raid­ing Tombs under a cut­ter’s con­tract is known as “ven­tur­ing.” Hope­ful cut­ters trav­el­ing East are said to have joined the “ven­ture rush.”

When a would-be cut­ter arrives in a wilder­ness town, their first stop is the local con­sor­tium. Any set­tle­ment of rea­son­able size will have such a place, where all the present banks and mer­can­tile pow­ers hold offices. Here, a new cut­ter may buy a ven­tur­ing license, which marks all legit­i­mate cut­ters.

At the price of two gold­en crowns, such a doc­u­ment is a major pur­chase. It serves as a cut­ter’s mode of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with a bank. †† With it, they track their stand­ing, their spe­cial­iza­tion, and the num­ber of suc­cess­ful ven­tures they have embarked on. High­er stand­ing is award­ed to more effec­tive cut­ters, who are grant­ed a high­er dec­i­mal share of any prof­it yield­ed from a ven­ture.

The dan­gers encoun­tered on a ven­ture depend on the vari­ety of Tomb to crack. Agadese tombs are like­ly lay­ered with all manor of traps. Idran ruins are unspeak­ably old, but yet hold a quan­ti­ty of gold. Nauss­ian crypts are among the most ter­ri­fy­ing to raid; they risk of con­nect­ing to the near-inescapable Under­world. 

Many cut­ters are dis­charged sol­diers. Easy enough to con­tin­ue a life of dan­ger. Some are crim­i­nals, flee­ing to inde­pen­dent fringe set­tle­ments to escape pros­e­cu­tion. Many more are fool­ish, ide­al­ist farmhands or bored aris­to­crats blessed with too much coin and no great deal of sense. 

Some call cut­ters heroes. Paragons of brav­ery, skill, and romance. Oth­ers know them as woe­ful wretch­es, folk will­ing to inden­ture them­selves to the dead­liest of tasks out of des­per­a­tion, bore­dom, or greed. In real­i­ty, no cut­ter is the same.

They are unit­ed only by the dan­ger of their shared pro­fes­sion.

Note

This arti­cle has been the start­ing place for many tales.

Since writ­ing this, some have asked me if cut­ters are sup­posed to be “real­is­tic adven­tur­ers.” To this, I say they are verisim­i­lar adven­tur­ers. They are a caste with as ground­ed a place in their world as cow­boys and pirates have, myth­i­cal­ly, in ours.

I have been asked why more cut­ters don’t just raid tombs on a free­lance basis, tak­ing 100% of acquired loot. In my games, free­lanc­ing is doable, but car­ries the risk of encoun­ter­ing bank-hired com­pe­ti­tion. The com­pe­ti­tion have license to kill, and are as tricky as a par­ty of play­er char­ac­ters.

Thus, when dis­cov­er­ing an uncracked tomb, it’s worth a pon­der whether some­one knows of it before giv­ing it a delve. In some areas, there’s a great enough pletho­ra of tombs that com­pe­ti­tion appears ⅓ of the time. In the deep­est wilder­ness, the chance reduces notably.

In my expe­ri­ence, com­pet­ing cut­ters are a plen­ti­ful, mem­o­rable font of recur­ring vil­lains and dra­mat­ic char­ac­ter death.