Editing Age of Metal/Active Loresheets

[[Category:Age_of_Metal]]
==New Loresheet: Beggar's Cross Citadel==
''Beggar's Cross was once a tramway crossroads beneath the city of Magnificent Ink, a sprawling patchwork of service tunnels, maintenance shafts and staff lunchrooms. After the usurpation, the stations of the city were largely either covered up or destroyed and soon the tunnels came to harbor a number of Wulin who had fled for their lives into the shadows. Over the years, the Beggar Fraternity have sealed off sections of Beggar's Cross, transforming them into a hideaway beneath the city from whence they plan their missions of aid.''

''Beggar's Cross nowadays takes the form of a ramshackle fortress. Sections of wall have been removed to open up the central area into something resembling a dojo, with tatami laid down at night for the assorted scoundrels who make this place their home. Strange situations present themselves all throughout the confusing ratways of the Citadel. There are dormitories that you need to crawl through half a mile of service tunnel to access. There are danger rooms in which random jets of flame and steam spurt throughout a massive and seemingly inexplicable room filled with pipes and machinery of unknown purpose. To many, the first oddity to greet them is the discovery that the primary sparring area consists of a shaft piercing deep into the earth, layered with regular levels of metal meshing and ladders which divide each sparring area from the next.''

''Most who visit the Citadel know neither how they enter or exit the Beggar's Cross. Instead there are designated beggars known as Ferrymen, each of whom know the ways and secrets of but one entrance to the Citadel, and who will meet Citadel warriors at a designated time with blindfolds and convey them to the innards of Beggar's Cross.''

===General Benefits===
*Status (Beggar's Cross Citadel) - 2+ - At the start of the game, you automatically receive status with the Citadel equal to your status with the rest of the Wulin, minus one. If you posses status with the Beggar Fraternity, you may substitute status (Beggar Fraternity) for status (Wulin).
*Loyal Followers - 1+ - Some of the members of the Citadel have begun to look up to you, perhaps merely as an inspirational figure but perhaps as a direct mentor. You may be able to request small favors of them from time to time, and in exceptional circumstances you can count on them to have your back. Requires Status (Citadel) 2 or greater.
*Ratway Master - 3 - You've become accustomed to the labyrinthine twists and turns of the ratways of the Citadel, and as such you may never Fear another character when fighting in the Citadel or the surrounding tunnels. You also gain a Tactics specialty (Enclosed Spaces).

===The Three Masters===
====Fisher Quan====
''This elderly man is a living legend to an entire generation of wulin who have dreamed of studying him. It is said that he holds the secrets to the lost Earth Age technique known as the Art of Mind. His powers of understanding others are certainly legendary, and his skill at tactics is immense. Unfortunately, he now wastes away his prodigious talents in the Beggar's Cross Citadel, providing only token aid to the Beggar Fraternity's efforts. ''

''He has lost his legs from just below the waist and now shuffles around on a wheeled cart, looking every bit the part of a dirty clothes division beggar. Long dirty hair covers his face when he talks, and he seems to always bow his head as if weighed down by shame.''

*Involvement - 1+
*Flawless Planning - 2 - Gain +5 to Stealth when acting in accordance with a plan that has been researched and prepared at the Citadel.
*The Fisher's Trick - 5 - Spend a point of Joss to determine whether or not what was just said is a lie.
*Light and Mirror Misdirection - 1 - Gain a Perform Specialty (Creating Distractions)
*Redefining Self - 5 - Grants you an additional Persona, which you may switch into with five minutes work. This Persona has different speech patterns and mannerisms, and may grant you skills that are not normally available to you. These Personas grant you benefits to attempts to imitate people whom they are based on, with the specific bonus dependent on how close to the target your Persona is. Spending too long in a Persona other than your own will eventually cause Chi Conditions to accumulate from the dissonance of maintaining a mindstate that is not natural to you.
*The Art of Mind - 10 - Transcendent Technique

====Crimson Heart Tanla====
''Crimson Heart Tanla is one of the founding members of the near-legendary group of guerilla warriors known only as the Fire Fighters. These warriors are famous throughout the land not only for their daring assassinations and lightning raids but for the way they blend back into the shadows after assaults, leaving only the dead with the sight of their faces. They are well-known for employing a number of unique techniques that combine Fire Sutra techniques with long-ranged attacks. Tanla is both the originator of many of these techniques as well as the mind behind a number of their key strategies. She has achieved some degree of reputation amongst the wulin resistance for penning an introductory guidebook to guerilla warfare which is alternately famed for its cunning strategies and shunned for the dishonorable behaviour described therein.''

''Tanla is a member of Shen Zhao's small population of Baharati migrants, a woman whose deeply tanned skin and tendency towards flamboyant clothing would mark her out anywhere she goes. As such, she tends to stick to Beggar's Cross as much as possible, and generally only leaves when assured of a stealthy escape.''

*Involvement - 1+
*Strike up a Flame - 5 - Contacts the local Fire Fighters to provide FIRE SUPPORT for a mission. Fire Fighter teams are typically averse to openly fighting, and prefer to use ranged weaponry to provide artillery strikes and distractions.
*Hawkeye Strike - 2 - Formless Technique - For this round, you may make attacks with a Ranged weapon at any target within your line of sight, regardless of actual visibility or distance.
*Flight of the Phoenix - 3 - Fire Formless Technique - Ranged projectiles you fire this round catch on fire, causing them to ignore your target's Armor threshold when dealing Rippling rolls. If you know any *Fire Sutra Techniques that cause a Burn effect, you may expend them to improve your Ranged Strike instead of providing their normal effect (see Dragon Chi for examples, much like I'll see Dragon Chi to provide better wording for what I'm getting at).
*Master of the Fire Fighters - 1+ - Probably some other interesting Kung Fu techniques costing up to 5 based on Fire Sutra and Ranged Weapons.

====Keeper Wei Lee====
''Keeper Wei Lee is considered by many to be the "heart" of the compound. Certainly, he posesses an immense strength of heart - many in the compound consider him to have achieved Enlightenment! However, he lags behind the other masters in terms of both age and skill, at a mere 27 years of age. Nonetheless, he is both officially and unofficially considered the leader of Beggar's Cross Station. He supervises the comings and goings of its inhabitants, and he provides promising wulin with mission requests from elders in both the Fraternity and other organizations in the wulin resistance. Some in the Citadel consider him a direct political rival to Tanla, as he seems far happier to hand out peaceful aid missions than anything which directly targets Imperial infrastructure or personnel. Fortunately for the stability of the Citadel, Tanla does not appear to share this opinion, giving him both gratitude for the hideout as well as a form of grudging respect for his wisdom.''

''Wei Lee is a lanky youth who has adopted the guise of an itinerant street preacher. He hides his youth under loose fitting, grubby robes and several layers of grime. He appears to subsist entirely on scraps gathered by scavenging on the streets above, and visually appears to be one of the most destitute of the beggar fraternity. The Keeper can often be seen on the streets above, preaching in ways that may or may not contain hidden messages to any of the Jiang Hu amongst the crowd who gather to watch his bizarre displays.''

*Involvement - 1+
*Hidden Message - 2+ - You are provided with additional important information about a mission, for example the name of an informant or the location of a secret tunnel.
*Sanctioned Mission - 5 - Wei Lee sponsors you to lodge a mission of your own design with the wulin resistance network. Achieving righteous missions is one of the foremost methods of acquiring prestige amongst the wulin resistance, and so you may reasonably expect your mission to be achieved (or at very least thoroughly attempted). However, the time of completion and the methods used to achieve the mission are uncertain.
*Friends in Low Places - 3 - Wei Lee teaches you the way he navigates the world's complex social strata. This lets you spend a joss to spot someone in a crowd who can be of aid to you. They will only necessarily aid you if your need is righteous and you take efforts to minimize their risk, however this skill does work on any crowd - even at a training ground of the Liquid Metal Delegates, you can always find someone with a compassionate heart and a righteous mind. This skill gets its name from the fact that the assistance you receive will almost inevitably come from those in the lowest castes of society.
*Ferryman - 2 - You are granted the knowledge of one of the entrances to the Citadel. This comes with great responsibility, as you are expected to ferry anyone who needs entry to the Citadel at their appointed time. Additionally, outside of the masters there is only one person who has knowledge of any particular entrance at any time and as such you are nearly automatically considered guilty if this entrance is discovered. Many of the Citadel's Ferrymen reach a level of paranoid fervor in how seriously they take their duties.
**+3 - The entrance is rarely ever used; it may well be known only to yourself and Wei Lee without any other masters of the Citadel or the Beggar Fraternity being in on the secret.