A Minimal Setting Document - Equipment

The original wager was that a setting document needed only three things to properly function - a class list, a language list, and an equipment list. The classes are coming along quite nicely, so I thought I would spend some time thinking about equipment.

My first thought is that I am not really temperamentally equipped to approach this from first principles. I sometimes find minutia interesting and fun, but putting 100 mundane objects in their relatively correct economic niche would require an extended flow state (or Ritalin) that I am not currently in the mood to attempt to invoke. Instead I will write up some equipment unique to the setting, and allow these to sit atop the ultra-core work of others.

Even writing this makes me think that redoing the ultra-core work yourself is a worthwhile exercise so I may revisit this. In the meantime I have forwarded to some good lists by Cyberspace and Anti e - one of them is a magisterial 43 page document available under open license, the others appear in common reference works like the AD&D 1e PHB, or Skerples' ever-excellent Many Rats on Sticks. You can pick your flavour.

Equipment V0

DRUGS

The culture of the Barony is a drug culture, socially organised around hygiene, conspicuous displays of wealth, and the management of brain chemistry with chemicals. Drugs are important as medicines but also as social binders. Alcohol is around, but the majority of recreational drugs are smoked from pipes. Every adult has a pipe, and most people own a good quality one that might be ornamented or passed down in a family. 

This means that what we would consider party drugs are cheaply available almost everywhere. Their quality and purity are generally high, unless you are very poor. Addiction is handled socially, in much the same way that alcoholism is in our society. 

All drugs are listed in smokeable doses. There are also exotic drugs that are imported from the Empire of the White City - these are of much higher chemical purity and can be synthetically mixed and filtered to give precise effects. These arrive in single-use glass injectables that cannot be manufactured outside of the White City (the tech base isn't there). They are rare but famous, and how most people know about the empire (it is called the Glass Kingdom by most people who don't know much about it, solely by reference to these ampules). 

Medicine

• Prophylactics, 10 silver per dose.
• Curatives, 35 silver per dose.
• Immune Boosters, 1 silver per dose.
• Painkillers, 10 silver per dose. Painkillers are highly addictive. The search for an effective, non-addictive painkiller is this setting's Philosopher's Stone, and there are parables that invoke the search as a noble but impossible goal (it's not the drug that they need, it's the absence of pain). 

'Working Drugs' 

People in the Barony believe that dissociative and manic states are tools, and that each is appropriate for different types of work. Everyone uses these (many of the classes use them for their class features), much like we drink coffee to help us get up and into the office. You can get very cheap doses of each (10 copper), which have a nasty taste and smell, and a chance for unpleasant side effects (things like minor memory lapses, or a blood nose). 

• Stimulants, 2 silver per dose. 
• Sedatives, 2 silver per dose. 

Social Drugs and Cosmetics

• Narcotics, 2 silver per dose. The most common social drug, often mixed with sedatives or stimulants for different flavours of social bonding. Cheap and effective, used by everyone. Culturally, most private houses and all inns will have a private space dedicated to taking these with intimates. Mildly addictive. 
• Psychotics, 5 silver per dose. Used for intense, high-speed social bonding, often by soldiers, business partners, clergy, labour gangs, criminals etc. The group experience a (more or less) controlled psychosis together, which can have powerful bonding effects, although it can also destroy trust. Considered high-risk but acceptable behaviour, vaguely analogous to drinking until extreme intoxication. Also called the poet's drug. A minority of people find psychotics powerfully addictive; this is thought to be linked more to character and temperament than anything physiological. 
• Psychedelics, 5 silver per dose. Psychedelics are associated with the academies, artists, and the nobility, although they are enjoyed in private by people across societal strata. They are popularly believed to open the mind to difficult or abstract concepts, and to allow travel into dream landscapes. There is some truth to this - some entities are known to only communicate while the student is under the influence of psychedelics. 
• Cosmetics and Perfumes, prices extremely variable. There are a vast array of cosmetics available in the Barony, and anyone of any standing at all will make extensive use of them. The cultural expectations are that any adult will make their face beautiful, healthy-looking, and of uniform complexion, something that wards against disease and its disfigurements. There is a countercultural fashion among criminals, urban gangs, and teenagers to mimic the symptoms of various diseases in their makeup (particularly common; wet red or pink makeup around the eyes), which is considered shockingly bad taste and profoundly irreligious. 

How irreligious punks will probably look when they come at you. 

Exotic Drugs

These are imported from the White City and injected using single-use glass ampules. Using them is a display of great wealth and privilege; it also indicates favour with the Baroness and the merchant houses. 

• Imperial War Drugs, 200 silver per dose. War drugs sharpen reflexes, increase aggression, and suppress pain and fear. They can turn a meek person into a killer quickly and efficiently. They are also ruinously addictive and using them is generally frowned on and viewed as vaguely suicidal. They are very easy to overdose on. 
• Imperial Psychotics, 250 silver per dose. These induce an intense hallucinogenic trance during which adrenalin and cortisol production spikes dramatically. They dramatically increase physical strength, creativity, mental sharpness, and paranoia, and completely dampen any trauma shock response from the body. They are beloved by artists and students, but like War Drugs (Imperial shock troops often use the two in conjunction on campaign) their use is considered deeply antisocial.
• Imperial Teacher Drugs, 1200 silver per dose. Smoking a dose of Teacher Drugs has a chance of teaching you a skill - roll a CON save, on success you learn the skill. The process is very hard on the body, but also induces intense euphoria. Doing this too much can cause early-onset dementia. 
• Imperial Patterners, 2500 silver per dose. Patterners can change a person's beliefs and ideals and imprint them with new ones - roll a CON save; on a failure your personality is overwritten. They are not often taken willingly (although there is a niche market in rich people trying to get over heartbreak), and must be prepared with specific 'patterns' built in (you now hate the Baroness, you now think your wife is trying to kill you, etc.). These are completely illegal in the Barony. Someone subjected to many patterns will develop early-onset dementia. 
• Imperial Communers, 800 silver per dose. Communers will allow you to enter a trance in which you can adopt the neural chemistry of a target person or entity and hold a conversation with it. The effect is basically like having a conversation with someone or something in your head. The specific entity or person must be prepared into the dose, and the neural copy that you converse with only has the information that was originally prepared into the dose. Uses are various, they are used by Imperial diplomats and generals to commune with a copy of the Emperor, and sometime used by wealthy students and priests to talk with copies of God or other entities when they are otherwise cut off from them. More mundane uses include talking with loved ones, or easy access to specialists in specific fields. The copies are perfect but mindless and incapable of creativity. 
• Imperial Lobotomisers, 800 silver per dose. This is a reversible, chemical lobotomy. A single dose will put someone into a vegetative coma, a second dose will bring them back. There is a non-trivial chance of brain damage each time this happens.
• Imperial Sterilisers, 450 silver per dose. Reversible sterility, effective on all genders. One dose to switch on, one dose to switch off. No known side effects.
• Imperial Torture Drugs, 300 silver per dose. Increase sensitivity to pain and massively increase anxiety and fear responses in the body. See much use by criminal gangs and the fixers of the nobility. There are not many things more feared in the Barony than being dosed up with these and then tortured to death. 
• Imperial Calculator Drugs, 1000 silver per dose. Massively increases mental acuity and the raw computational power of the brain. This leads to savant like calculation ability for an hour or so. Uses the body's resources and an incredible rate - you will come out of the computation trance ravenous and exhausted. Many artists in the White City consider calculator drugs indispensable to the creation of any art that matters. 

WEAPONS AND WARGEAR

Assume that all the standard options are available.

In addition:

• Mirrored Shields and Mirrored Armour, usual cost in silver x5. Any suit of metal armour or any metal shield can have its surface alchemically mirrored. This is not simply well-burnished steel, the effect is more like an industrially manufactured mirror from our world. For reasons that are poorly understood, entities of all sorts (angels and demons included) find it difficult to focus when presented with highly reflective surfaces. Also reflects light perfectly and can be used in all the fun mythic ways (medusas etc.).
• Heated Weapons, basic cost of weapon +1500 silver. This is a finnicky addition to iron or steel weaponry, requiring the specialist skills of a chemist, a blacksmith, and a jeweller. A trigger is added to the hilt, which, when depressed, heats the blade so that it burns as well as cutting. In game terms this means that the trigger is depressed, and after a turn the weapon deals +1 fire damage. This addition comes with 30 charges, after which it must be recharged by professional artisans for 1000 silver. These weapons are notoriously impractical to use, as they make blades both more structurally brittle, and more difficult to safely handle, sheathe, etc. They are often sneered at by professionals as an affectation of the wealthy.
• Execution Needle, 50 silver. A notorious gang weapon, essentially a thin steel spike with a powerful injection mechanism that engages when it is stabbed into someone. Treat as a dagger that deals one damage and that breaks on a critical miss, and that delivers a dose of whatever it is loaded with (often poison, just as often drugs or diseases) the first time you hit someone with it. They are very easy to conceal.
• Injector Harness, 800 silver. A leather chest harness which can be loaded with up to 6 Imperial drug ampules. Any or all of these can be quickly injected into the person wearing the harness as a free action. They are associated with Imperial terror troops. There are various fashions in the Barony that mimic their form and look, but the injector tech can only be replicated by very skilled artisans. 
• Formal Wear, +200 silver to a piece of armour or clothing, or +600 silver for a full suit of plate. Formal wear in the Barony in patterned on the tuxedo, with elaborate neck and wrist ornamentation. Day to day most nobles will wear this as clothing, but various types of armour can also be commissioned that will mimic its forms; lapels, constructed shoulders, fixing points for jewels at the throat and wrists, a helmet which will include a steel faceplate painted with exquisite and often personalised makeup. This gives you +1 on your reaction rolls to people who care about such things.  

More art by the superlative Carla Antonia.

That's all for now? Probably more to come, this feels like something that can be added to as and when. 

Quick notes before I forget: 

• Holy Water is not blessed or magical, it is a chemical compound prepared by chemists. It is holy because it acts as a pleasant smelling and effective antiseptic and antibacterial solution. Angels love it, and often praise its creation as proof of the human closeness to God.
• Petroleum is widely thought of as unclean and profane. It holds and carries disease better than any other medium. It can also be prepared by chemists. There are weapons systems that make use of this, spears and arrowheads with hollow tips that can be dosed with petroleum, etc. Execution by submersion into vast underground lakes of the stuff, or by forced ingestion, were practiced in barbaric ages past.