Flare Children and other Imperial Remnants

The Empire of the White City is vast - many times larger than the territories of the Barony. What was once a complex ecosystem of states and peoples has been reduced over centuries of conflict to a vast collection of client territories, their living cultures now mostly extinguished, and perversely memorialised in the Imperial tradition of victim worship. 

Flare Children are men and women whose societies have been destroyed this way, and who now fight and kill the soldiers and citizens of the empire in brutal, sustained guerrilla warfare. They are called this because most of them were born under occupation - 'under the flares', a reference to the brightly-coloured chemical flares manufactured and used by the Imperial Army during their wars of extermination. The population of the empire is vast, and there are many, many Flare Children scattered throughout its cities and towns. Legally they are all bandits and traitors, but logistically they run the gamut: from small bands of grimly opportunistic highwaymen, to whole networks and even armies of insurgent fighters. Many have no living memory of the polities and governments they now claim to serve in the blood, dust, gore, and stench. 

The various groups and regional factions often hold little love for one another, but their leaders share intelligence, tactics, and best practices, and they often form alliances of convenience under Imperial pressure. 

Flare Children have stats as commoners, bandits, or men-at-arms, depending on how much training they have. They generally prefer to assassinate soldiers, officers, and prominent citizens with long knives or poison - if they can do this in public, so much the better - but many bands have also developed techniques for dealing with armoured White City Soldiers in the field. 

They are typically armed with light knives, medium hammers, clubs, and war picks, and a bola, net, or lasso. One in three carries a crossbow, bow, or pair of javelins. They wear light or no armour. 

One in five Flare Children will carry a crude, armour-defeating, beaked maul in place of other kit - they call it the fucker - which is swung down like a log splitter on entangled targets. It counts as a -2 heavy weapon, which has +2 damage, +2 crit range, and rolls d12s on a critical hit if the target is prone, entangled, inanimate, or unresisting. 

Half the members of a given troop will also carry a flask of oil, which they throw to douse armoured soliders, before attempting to set them alight. One in five will carry a captured chemical flare for this purpose. 

The bola, net, and lasso are all ranged weapons that entangle their target if they hit - they cannot move and rolls all checks with disadvantage until they take a turn to free themselves. This freeing is automatic if the target has a knife, and requires a STR or INT save if they do not. Each is slightly different: a bola has a range of 20ft and 3 ammunition, a net has a range of 5ft but requires a difficult save to escape from, and a lasso has a range of 20ft, and can be used to drag its victim from 20ft of rope (from a horse, for example). Being dragged like this makes escape attempts more difficult (test with disadvantage), and may deal damage at the DMs discretion. 

A Flare Child who rolls max HP is an Ultranat. Ultranats are typically older, and many have childhood memories of their now extinct kingdoms and cities. Ultranats never test morale against the military of the White City. In addition, they roll on the following two tables and combine the results. All members of a specific band take the same results.

Gear

1. Wear heavy armour and fight with heavy bronze spears. If one of them is killed, other Ultranats in the combat get a second attack on their next turn. 
2. Hold long, iron muskets that fire poisonous, shattering bullets - 2d6 damage or 2d10 if unarmoured. If you take damage you must save CON or lose d3 CON and d3 INT. 
3. Shoot white longbows, and fletch their white arrows with peacock feathers. A critical hit from one of these pierces the heart and dispels all aggression: you cannot make an attack or an aggressive action until you save CHAR (you can save each turn). 
4. Wear thickly lacquered, layered, and brightly painted paper armour, surprisingly effective and very light. As heavy armour that degrades every time its wearer takes a hit, from heavy, to medium, to light, after which it is destroyed. No matter what condition it is in, it is as light as light armour. Destroyed immediately if it ever gets wet or catches fire. 
5. Carry barbed steel darts, which they throw at +1 to hit. 
6. Wear strange ceramic armour, which rings like a bell when struck. As medium armour that shatters if crit with a bludgeoning attack. 
7. Fight with huge and terrible bone shears: vorpal heavy weapons with -2 to hit. The vorpal effect removes a random limb, not necessarily the head. 
8. Each carry a pair of bronze pistols, in lacquered holsters worn beneath the shoulder. 
9. Hold blinding powder in their cheeks, and can expel it once per encounter in melee. Save DEX to avoid, or be blinded for the rest of the day. 
10. Fight with a long medium knife, and a thin doping needle loaded with sedatives. Roll to hit with the knife at +1, and on a crit test CON in addition to the extra damage. On a failure, suffer -4 to all checks and become unable to speak for one hour. 
11. Each fight alongside an effigy double, which each has sculpted from wax. The effigies are armed with improvised prop weapons, but otherwise fight as their creators do, moving with them, attacking the same enemies, etc. They have 1HD, are unarmoured, and are made from wax - they are destroyed by any amount of fire damage. 
12. Glass armour and heavy glass swords. Glass armour counts as medium, and shatters if crit with a bludgeoning attack. It renders the wearer immune to radiant damage and gaze attacks, and refracts beams and other light-based weapons, nullifying them completely. Glass swords can be sundered to deal double damage to the target, and d3 damage to everything within 15ft, including the wielder. You may choose to sunder after rolling to hit. 

Abilities

1. Can spider climb with the aid of iron claws on their hands and feet. 
2. Can see in the dark, and sprint completely silently. 
3. Can speak with birds, and have allies among them. 
4. Have strange, nondescript faces, smiling eyes and grinning mouths. In melee, you roll to hit them with disadvantage. 
5. Can regain d6 hp by drinking a litre of blood, once a day. 
6. Can whistle loudly enough at melee range to deafen a dog or a horse for day, and a human for an hour. CON save resists. 
7. Jump three time as high and far as a normal person, and take half the usual falling damage. 
8. Can kick as a medium weapon.
9. Cover themselves in tiny silver bells. The sound is soft and pleasant, and difficult to describe - listening to it feels a bit like falling asleep. Immune to psychic damage. 
10. Have chemically treated skin, stained a red so dark it is almost black, and take half damage from fire and acid. 
11. Have been surgically altered, with redundant organs and other biological modifications. Their bodies are heavily scarred. Double HP, cannot be crit. 
12. When they are slain, it takes an extra turn for them to realise this and die. 

Red Teams

Red Teams are Imperial Army units, squads, and sometimes individual soldiers who are given orders to destroy the Empire by whatever means they can devise. Some volunteer for this duty, which is held in very high esteem, and some are ordered into it. 

There are no limits or rules for Red Teams to follow in their pursuit of the destruction of the White City. For the practice to be effective, everything must be permitted. There have been many strange, convoluted, interlocking systems of mutually antagonistic, pre-emptive manoeuvre developed between the Pragmatists and their Red Teams. 

How would you kill the city? Would you start with its people? Its institutions? Would you empower its enemies, engage in wars of attrition, advantage, positioning, endurance? Would you suppress those enemies, and wait for your true quarry to grow complacent in its assumed invulnerability?

Would you kill its myths and its identity? Subvert and undermine its civic pride? Assassinate its leaders? 

There are Red Teams all over the world - there are said to be Red Teams inside the city itself. The Pragmatists keep records of course, but they are sometimes slain by the soldiers they entrust with these duties, who consider anonymity and invisibility to be the first and most important steps towards the realisation of their sacred charge. 

They are executed where they are found and captured. It is primarily by their labour that the City remains strong, vital, vigilant, cunning, and remorseless in the prosecution of its enemies.