Top­i­cal skills define your knowl­edge, craft­ing abil­i­ty, and capac­i­ty to assess val­ue in a giv­en top­ic. Unlike acquired skills, they are unlim­it­ed in their poten­tial vari­ety.

Com­mon top­ics: Ances­try, Armor­smithy, Bal­lis­tics, Black­smithy, Blade­smithy, Bowyery, Car­pen­try, Ceram­ics, Clock­work, Cloth­iery, Con­struc­tion, Cooper­age, Coro­ners, Cul­ture [coun­try], Cut­lery, Duel­ing, Enam­el­ing, Engi­neer­ing, Engrav­ing, Fash­ion, Fau­na [region], Fet­tleism, Flo­ra [region], Flo­ri­og­ra­phy, Gold­smithy, Gun­smithy, Jew­el­ry, Lap­idary, Leather­work­ing, Machin­ery, Mason­ry, Met­al­lur­gy, Met­al­work­ing, Mil­i­tary, Millinery, Moors, Plague, Recent His­to­ry [coun­try], Sail­ing, Seas, Smelt­ing, Spin­stery, Streets, Swamps, Tai­lo­ry, Tan­nery, The Church/Ecclesiarchy, Uphol­stery, Weapon­smithy, Weav­ing, Whal­ing, Woods, Wood­work­ing

Uncom­mon top­ics: Acad­e­mia, Adven­ture cap­i­tal, Aris­tos­phere, Avethan Buri­als, Bank­ing, Ban­shees, Biol­o­gy, Black mar­ket, Blight, Chimeras, Elec­tric­i­ty, Fet­tleism, Hobben, Illa Cor­voy, Indus­tri­al Enlight­en­ment, Knights, Lemures, Med­ical His­to­ry, Mon­sters, Pan­tea, Pix­ies, Recent his­to­ry, Shim­mel­ing, Sirens, The Gate of Sloe, Strat­e­gy & Tac­tics

Obscure top­ics: Aar­time­try, Aga­dion, Ampul­lo­nia, Ancient his­to­ry, Arcana, Chimerae, Chi­rol­o­gy, Epiphaenid Revival, Fairies, For­bid­den forests, Human mutants, Idra, Idran Beau­ties, Incunab­u­la, Knuck­le­bones, Lost waters, Naus­sia, Nör, Occultism, Sea mon­sters, Ser­pents, Sor­cery, Tefelk, The Dark Con­ti­nent, The High Steppe, The Near-Anther Con­tin­u­ance, The Oth­er, The Under­world, Tombs

knowledge

Roll to call upon a lore sub­ject. It’s rar­i­ty may pro­vide a mod­i­fi­er:

• 0; Pro­fes­sion­al
• -2; Aca­d­e­m­ic
• -4; Eso­teric
• -6; Arcane
• For every addi­tion­al relat­ed top­ic you know, get +2 to the roll.

If you suc­ceed, the Book­keep­er will recite what you remem­ber. If you fail, you don’t know or remem­ber that sub­ject. You can roll again if you gain access to a book or teacher that holds skill lev­els in the top­ic.

In order to gain prac­tice in a top­ic, you must have a source of knowl­edge at hand; be it a teacher, book, or oth­er­wise. You can gain prac­tice from a source so long as its lev­el in the top­ic exceeds your own. Sources with infe­ri­or skill offer you noth­ing.

appraisal

Roll a top­ic to deter­mine the val­ue of an item:

• For every addi­tion­al top­ic you know relat­ed to the item, you receive +2 to the roll.

If you suc­ceed, you have an accu­rate under­stand­ing of the item’s real val­ue at sale. You know the first dig­it of its price, and the pow­er of ten fol­low­ing it. If you fail, you can­not price this par­tic­u­lar item.

crafting

Craft raw goods into func­tion­al, valu­able prod­ucts.

To craft a prod­uct, you must pos­sess each of the product’s craft­ing require­ments. See the craft­ing matrix for prod­ucts’ require­ments. Each prod­uct requires:

• A set of relat­ed craft­ing top­ics,
• one essen­tial tool,
• a num­ber of addi­tion­al, relat­ed tools of the craftsman’s choice,
• a peri­od of work time,
• and a quan­ti­ty of req­ui­site mate­ri­als.

Before craft­ing, all a product’s require­ments must be ful­filled in order to craft it. Addi­tion­al­ly, aim for a qual­i­ty lev­el you want to achieve. This applies a mod­i­fi­er to your Top­ic roll, which must be made while craft­ing the item:

• Rough: +0
• Impro­vised: -4
• Stan­dard: -6 
• Mas­ter­work: -8

If you suc­ceed, you cre­ate a prod­uct of the tar­get­ed qual­i­ty lev­el. If you fail, roll again with the same mod­i­fiers. If you suc­ceed this sec­ond time, you cre­ate an item 1 qual­i­ty lev­el low­er. If you fail again, you waste all mate­ri­als involved and cre­ate noth­ing of val­ue.

Adding Value

To increase the val­ue of a craft­ed prod­uct, you must pos­sess Top­ic skill top­ics beyond those required to craft the item. These val­ue-added skills must be plau­si­ble in their appli­ca­tion to the prod­uct.

Each val­ue-added skill must be accom­pa­nied by two addi­tion­al tools, plus a quan­ti­ty of extra, rel­e­vant mate­ri­als. For instance,

Each val­ue-added skill will increase the item’s val­ue, plus the val­ue of the added mate­ri­als,  by 15%.

Remove wear

To remove wear from an item, you must pos­sess the first list­ed skill top­ic required to craft said item.

For instance, to repair a worn sword, you need skill in Top­ic: Blade­smithy. You must also pos­sess one rel­e­vant tool, such as a whet­stone, plus one hour of time.

You may remove a max­i­mum num­ber of wear points from an item deter­mined by their Craft skills’ rela­tion to the item’s req­ui­site craft top­ics:

• If your skills are insuf­fi­cient to craft the item, you remove all but 1 point of wear.
• If you have 50% or more of the skills required to craft the item, you remove all wear.

Remaking Broken Items

To repair total­ly bro­ken items, you must ful­fill all the item’s craft­ing require­ments, save its required mate­ri­als. The repair may be under­tak­en in half the item’s required craft­ing time. Doing so removes all its wear.

If you pos­sess all the require­ments to make the same weapon in high­er qual­i­ty, they may upgrade the bro­ken weapon’s qual­i­ty com­men­su­rate­ly.

Topic: armorsmithy

Repair and con­struct armor.

patching armor

Breached armor items may be patched using a unit of repair mate­r­i­al (usu­al­ly a patch kit,) Top­ic: Armor­smithy, and a rel­e­vant tool. Patch­ing a breach requires 1 hour.

Topic: Bladesmithy

Main­tain and craft blades.

Resharp

With 10 min­utes and a sharp­en­ing tool, sharp­en a blad­ed weapon. When next it gains wear from a roll of 1/12, roll Blade­smithy. If you suc­ceed, the wear does­n’t occur.

Topic: Gunsmithy

Under­stand and main­tain the works of gun­springs.

reoil

With 10 min­utes and an oil­er, lubri­cate a gun. When next it gains wear from a roll of 1/12, roll Gun­smithy. If you suc­ceed, the wear does­n’t occur.

Clear Jam

Roll Gun­smithy roll to unjam a gun­spring that has jammed. Suc­cess clears the jam (the jammed fléchette is destroyed.) Fail­ure inflicts d4 - 2 blud­geon­ing dam­age to your thumb unless you dodge.

Overclock Coil

Using ten min­utes, you may over­wind a gun­spring coil, increas­ing its effec­tive num­ber of charges. A coil may be over­clocked to a max­i­mum of 12 charges. Over­clocked coils are unsta­ble. They have a chance of explod­ing when the weapon they are loaded into breaks.

When an over­clocked coil breaks via a wear roll, roll Gun­smithy minus the num­ber of addi­tion­al charges the coil has been clocked to. Fail­ure means the coil explodes. Suc­cess indi­cates the gun jams as nor­mal.

* * *