☠️ Death and Assassination -

Baba is known to have a penchant for the more sinister intrigues and sometimes people deemed to have no appropriate uses, just seem to disappear. Other Players too, may start to believe that the only way to go up, is to have someone else taken out.

In these cases, whether by gambit or execution the penalty for death to a Player is somewhat trivial for the Player themselves, yet quite final for their character in question. This distinction is made, not to distance the Player from their character persona but to give consequences to their actions without removing Players from the game. The penalty for a character’s death in play, takes the form of the Player instead occupying the position of a descendent in their House.

The Player must find their House’s family tree, adding an entry for their new character (and determining a spouse if they are a direct descendent) drawing in the new line to indicate their new Player character’s position in the family. All Gambits that were in progress from the previous Player character will end, unless they were already actioned, and the Player starts anew, possibly and crucially, one step further away from, or closer to the Tribunate. Now, what could a particularly motivated young courtier do about that, I wonder? If a Player, picked to be an apprentice candidate to Baba dies, they follow the same process but do not have to return to Baba as a hostage unless a new arrangement is made. What the House in question does about that situation is between them and the Hag.

Death can happen for a variety of reasons in the game. Maybe a defeated Banner Lord is executed instead of ransomed, maybe an ambitious Player lays a Gambit to knock out a rival, etc. Assassinations between players are handled through Gambits like any other scheme. Affected Players will normally be informed by Control that they have been assassinated if the Gambit was successful, or in some cases can be given an opportunity to avoid the outcome.

If a Player submitted a Gambit in the previous round to increase their personal protection or alert level for assassinations, the attempt may silently fail with the Player none the wiser. This is also where a Player might use ‘Intelligence’ to help gain information about potential assassination attempts or to find out who may be most interested in their demise.