Peo­ple make the fiercest foes.

They play by the same rules cut­ters do. They roll the same skills. They fight with the same com­bat rules, aim­ing shots, bypass­ing armor, and exploit­ing edges. They par­lay, retreat, regroup, and ambush. They die accord­ing to the same 12 stress box­es; ago­niz­ing­ly, slowly—unless killed instant­ly. Every rule applic­a­ble to cut­ters applies to them. They play as cut­ters do: lethal­ly.

Peo­ple are the last foes cut­ters should want to fight. They are not nat­ur­al or intend­ed foes. They do not inher­ent­ly con­tribute to expe­ri­ence earned when killed or defeat­ed. If cut­ters are fight­ing mor­tal peo­ple, some­thing’s gone wrong, and they should know it.

Peo­ple trained in violence—soldiers, police, gang­sters, rival cutters—make for dead cut­ters. Warn against pro­vok­ing them.

Harm­ing non­vi­o­lent people—clerks, shop­keep­ers, passers­by, commoners—leads to con­fronta­tion with those trained in vio­lence.

Peo­ple make bet­ter friends than ene­mies.

They are use­ful. Filled with top­i­cal skills cut­ters might nev­er care to learn, often at high lev­els. Rich in resources cut­ters strug­gle to obtain: Armor is pre­cious, scarce, and always break­ing, but a friend­ly armor­er can keep you in good sup­ply. Ancient lore is obscure and jeal­ous­ly guard­ed, but a librar­i­an can source illu­mi­nat­ing tomes. Injury and sick­ness are a cut­ter’s con­stant com­pan­ions, but a doc­tor can mend what would oth­er­wise go on bro­ken.

Reward help­ful cut­ters with alliances and friend­ships. Kind­ness, fra­ter­ni­ty, and kin­ship should earn rewards as read­i­ly as vio­lence earns loot off dead mon­sters.

Cut­ters are vio­lence work­ers, they may be tempt­ed to turn force against com­mon peo­ple. Warn that this is a mis­take. Ban­dit­ry and brig­andage earns no XP—and no friends.

Building NPCS

Do not con­duct exhaus­tive char­ac­ter cre­ation for non-play­er char­ac­ters (NPCs.) Char­ac­ter gen­er­a­tion and metic­u­lous XP expen­di­ture exist for play­ers por­tray­ing grow­ing cut­ters, not for NPCs built alto­geth­er by the Book­keep­er. Build NPCs freeform, in as much com­plex­i­ty and detail required for their pur­pose.

Most NPCs require noth­ing more than a base skill—a holis­tic lev­el for all their skills. A base skill of 2 suits nor­mal peo­ple. If desired, grant them weak­ness­es and strengths. For char­ac­ters skilled in a pro­fes­sion, grant a high­er base skill in their spe­cial­ty genre; no need to list all poten­tial top­ics at their dis­pos­al. For NPCs built for trou­ble, con­sid­er adjust­ing their Agili­ty, Per­cep­tion, and Sub­tle­ty, as these are most use­ful in dan­ger and per­il.

If an NPC engages in vio­lence or suf­fers wounds, start a health track for them (12 stress.)

Cre­ate a short list of pos­ses­sions for NPC antic­i­pat­ed to die.

What­ev­er else—virtues, issues, mor­bid skills—is entire­ly up to you.

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