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Law & Honest Work

Town life in three parts: what happens when you cross the watch, what the taskmasters pay for honest work, and what the road pays for a safe escort.

Justice — the roll

Every region keeps its own roll of the wanted. Commit a crime in view of the watch and your name goes on it for about an hour:

  • A botched pickpocketing. Get spotted with your hand in someone's purse and the alarm is raised immediately.
  • Raising a hand in a watched square. The watchman's warning holds once. Try it again within the half hour and he takes your name.

While you're on a region's roll:

  • No merchant in the region will trade with you — shops, buying, selling, even a price quote. "Not with the watch asking after you."
  • The watch meets you at the door of every safe room. Carry the fine — 50 silver + 10 per level — and it is collected on the spot, your name struck through, no hard feelings. Arrive without the coin and you are walked back out of town with unhurried, professional firmness.
  • Time also heals: lie low and the notice comes down on its own.

Each region minds its own business — a thief wanted in Coldhollow drinks freely in Emberford — and the wilds between towns know no law at all. HELP JUSTICE in game.

One door stays open to the wanted: a fence trades with anyone, and is the only merchant who'll touch stolen goods — see Stealth: picking pockets.

Bounties — the taskmaster's writs

Nine settlements keep a bounty desk, from the Emberford Registry to the wreckmistress on Kingsholm. BOUNTY at the desk takes a writ; BOUNTY in the field reads your tally; BOUNTY back at any desk collects. One writ at a time, ten minutes between jobs, BOUNTY REMOVE abandons one (at half the cooldown).

The writ pool deals every trade, not just the sword's — each desk draws one job-kind per morning from what its ground offers:

  • Cull — kill 4–8 of a named local creature.
  • Pelts — bring 2–4 skins off named kills (SKIN them).
  • Gather — forage 3–5 of a named find (FORAGE where they grow; the Delvings' desk wants ghostcaps, Brinemoot's wants samphire).
  • Angling — land 3–5 fish; any water that bites counts.
  • Locks — pick open 2–3 locks; boxes and doors both count, each lock once.

Turn-ins pay bounty points (25 + 9×level), field experience (200 + 40×level), and silver (100 + 30×level) — the same regardless of trade, so work the writ that suits your build.

The weekly ledger

The guild also keeps a week: five writs turned in within one ISO week (UTC) pays a bonus of points and field experience on the fifth turn-in, and hitting the mark in consecutive weeks grows a streak that raises the bonus (capped at five kept weeks). Miss the mark — or skip a week entirely — and the streak dies; the count itself simply starts fresh each week.

The week gates only the bonus. Writs are never limited, the ten-minute cooldown is unchanged, and nothing about hunting ever locks — that promise is written into HELP BOUNTY. The turn-in line and the BOUNTY readout both show where the week stands.

The points shelf

BOUNTY STORE shows the desk's shelf; BOUNTY BUY <item> spends. Every desk carries the three services — the guild whetstone (+5 AS, 30 min, 150 pts), a hunter's respite (full restore, 300), and hearth balm (the grave-chill lifted, 500) — and the shelf now runs deeper: a campfire kit (120), an invar lockpick (400), a wolfram lockpick (900), and the taskmaster's oiled longcoat (800) — a coat nobody sells, earned writ by writ.

Escorts — the road pays

Some travellers pay for a safe road. You'll find them waiting where the road turns dangerous, fretting at the weather and eyeing anyone armed.

  • ESCORT <npc> takes the job. Your charge falls in beside you and follows your every step — through every room, down every slope — until you deliver them.
  • Reach their destination and the thanks, the silver, and the experience are yours (it feeds the same pool as hunting and every other craft).
  • They are not patient forever: drag the trip out and they lose heart, turn back, and find their own way home.
  • ESCORT alone reports your current charge; ESCORT STOP releases them. One charge at a time — the road rewards attention, not ambition.

Where to start: an old pilgrim outside Coldhollow's leaning inn needs an arm for the forty paces to the town square. When you're ready for real work, a nervous seed merchant on Chapel Street pays 150 silver for the long, icy, wolf-ridden walk south to Emberford — bring a weapon, and maybe a friend. HELP ESCORT in game.