Downtime Endeavors

Along with learning new lore, you can undertake one endeavor during downtime. Endeavors require specific lore to undertake. 

Only heroes can initiate endeavors. But friendly NPCs with relevant lore can participate in a hero’s endeavor. Heroes can also participate in one another’s endeavors.  

Each endeavor says which lore is required to undertake it, and which lore is helpful. Lore that’s required must be known by at least one person working on the endeavor. A hero doesn’t need to know the required lore to initiate an endeavor, but they must work on the endeavor alongside someone who does, and they must know at least one helpful lore.

It’s fine if NPCs don’t directly work on any endeavors during downtime. And some NPCs won’t want to work on certain endeavors. For example, if a hero wants to work on Governance with an imperial panjandrum, they might be tempted to ask a local Kananite who knows Civilization to help. But if that Kananite is a rebel who hates the Empire, at minimum, they’ll need to be Persuaded to participate! 

Work and Projects

Everyone participating in an endeavor with relevant lore—either required or helpful—makes a work roll, which represents the amount of useful work (◈) each person contributes to the endeavor over time. A work roll always uses a character’s Compel die. 

For each endeavor, add all the participants’ work rolls together.

Each hero and NPC can only make one roll per downtime. 

Work can be converted to specific projects associated with the endeavor. For example, the Festival endeavor includes two projects, Good Cheer (8◈) and Festival Food (2◈). Most endeavors include several projects you can “spend” your work on. Each says how much work it requires. 

If you don’t spend all your work toward an endeavor, keep track of the excess. You can make use of the extra work during the next downtime, provided you continue the same endeavor in similar circumstances.  

𐤇 Resources and 𐤑Credits

Work toward one endeavor can’t directly be used in another endeavor. But many endeavors and their projects let you “spend” 𐤇 resources or 𐤑 imperial credit as inputs, converting them into work points. Some endeavors, like Commerce and Gathering, generate resources or credits as outputs, which can then be used in other endeavors. 

Putting resources or credit “to work” can make up the difference toward developing a useful feature. The table that follows shows the resource/credit inputs and outputs for each endeavor, per 1◈ work point. 

The Endeavor Advantage Die

You can’t invoke ideals while working on endeavors. Instead, describe the endeavor to the group. Aside from NPC helpers, what assets will you bring to bear? How does your hero approach and feel about their work? How do they interact with other workers? 

Fill in the details and color. Based on your description, the Guide will award you an advantage die on your Compel work roll. Like an ideal die, the Guide determines how big this advantage die is. Only heroes can benefit from an endeavor advantage die. 

Endeavors offer heroes a chance to rebuild an island and reshape its society as they see fit. It might be tempting to resolve endeavors between sessions. But playing through endeavors can provide opportunities for roleplaying and strategizing. 

In this section, we’ll look at how a Guide runs endeavors with Chom, Wandu, and Matreyis.

To help with the festival, Chom rallies the priest who taught him Lord Adod, along with another NPC the heroes rescued—the island’s Mazrian panjandrum, who offers to help with his knowledge of Politics.

On the heroes’ Island Sheet, Chom checks off himself and the two NPCs who helped him, and tallies 9 work toward the festival. Meanwhile, the Guide moves on to Matreyis, who explains she wants to work with a Mazrian factotum they rescued. The factotum is literate in Glyphs. 

Matreyis tries to Persuade the rebel that she’s an expatriate who is no fan of the empire, which is true. She says she wants to share the Wisdom for the benefit of everyone on the island, along with knowledge she’s taken from the empire. She appeals to their common Freedom ideal—and succeeds! 

Matreyis now checks off herself, the factotum, and the rebel from their Island Sheet, and tallies 13 work toward Scholarship. 

Wandu shares her song with the group, to varying degrees of amusement. 

At this point, all the heroes have made their work rolls, along with all the NPCs they could manage to wrangle. Now it’s time to “spend” their work on projects. 

Matreyis’ endeavor is more complicated. It involves tallying lore references found within texts. (The benefits of these references are explained in the Scholarship endeavor entry.) 

Matreyis notes the lore references in the Wisdom of Adod: 2 for Wisdom, along with 1 each for Lord Adod, Path of Air, Scrolls of the Sorcerer, and Code of the Clay King—all in the Oxhouse script. 

The faience is a magical Mazrian encyclopedia. When installed,  it yields 1 reference for every Mazrian lore, which Matreyis notes on the Island Sheet. She now has many references in Glyphs, along with a few from the Wisdom in Oxhouse.