Lifestyle covers your housing, food and drink, and all your other necessities such as clothing and equipment repair. Lifestyle choices may have other consequences that will be revealed during play.
You sleep in an abandoned building @The Old City and pray that you don't get killed for your boots, eaten by ravenous dead, or freeze to death.
You pay a silver piece a day to sleep on the crowded floor of a nameless flophouse in @The Maze and eat a thin gruel twice a day.
You sleep in a smoky, dingy, unheated room at @The White Wake Inn eating fried fish and ale 3 times a day. @Molat The Base runs this inn with an iron fist, keeping the peace between the rowdy crowd of pirates, poor students, and laborers that reside here.
A private room at @The Leviathan, an ageing dockside inn for sailors. Meals consist of a pottage of fish, vegetables, and grain flavoured with fermented fish sauce, washed down with beer or rum. Rooms are unheated and unlit, beds are a simple wooden box filled with straw.
You sleep in a private room at the venerable but stately @The Blue Dolphin Inn where the Walk of 1000 Gods meets the docks. The blue paint is beginning to peel and chip but it is still popular with merchants, sea- captains, and tradesmen. Meals are delicious, if uninspired, and the inn is renowned for its cleanliness. Stabling for a mount and accommodations for a servant are included.
@Lady Amphisbia maintains luxury apartments, @The Amphisbian Abode, for a bohemian clientele of successful artists, performers, courtesans, assassins, and adventurers. You stay in a three-room suite with a magnificent view of the city. Extraordinary meals with fascinating company are served three times a day. A personal servant sees to most of your needs and competent on-site staff takes care of the rest. You get around the city on a rickshaw or carriage.
@The Gilded Spire A two-story, 30 room manor in the heart of the Inner City maintained by a small army of servants and skilled workers who attend to your every need. Your food is a daily 9 course banquet. Your clothing and furnishings are of the highest quality. Your neighbours are guildmasters, nobility, and wizards.
For those that prefer to do things differently there are always the options listed in the ITEMS Tab going from @Lodging, Penny Rent (1 night) to @ Rental, City, High Class (1 month).
Party hard like Conan. Carousing is a good way to develop contacts and earn favours.
Working Class: Spend 10gp for a week-long bender at cheap seaside taverns and bawdy houses, rubbing shoulders with sailors and laborers.
Middle Class: Spend 50gp for a week of fine food, strong drink, and salacious entertainment at @The Mermaid Tavern. Exotic snake dancers draw a steady clientele of gentlemen, sea-captains, and guildsmen while serving roasted meat and potent “sea foam” ale.
Upper Class: Spend 250gp for a week-long debauch at the @The Golden Pearl, a pleasure palace of exotic decadence for the city's jaded elite.
Wager from 10 to 1,000gp at games of chance at @The Gilded Gamble or any of the other many such establishments. Highly risky, but if one wagers big and wins bigger the rewards can be impressive.
Seek fortune and glory in Khromarium's private fighting pits or @The Great Arena and Hippodrome the city's ancient arena of black granite has hosted gladiator fights, boxing, wrestling, chariot racing and more for thousands of years. The strength of one's opponents can vary wildly, making this quite challenging. Pit Fighting offers income and fame(Reputation) for seasoned warriors.
A chance to make gold with obvious risks. Spend 25gp in research and choose a target:
● Struggling merchant (easy) 50gp
● Prosperous merchant (medium) 100gp
● Minor noble or master artisan (hard) 200gp
● Guild hall or major noble (very hard) 1000gp
● Grimaldi Bank (nearly impossible) special = A Quest Franz will generate.
Visit the great Library of Khromarium (@Sage's Library) at the to consult dangerous and forbidden books such as the Necronomicon or Book of Eibon. Make a "donation" of 50gp to the Sages' Guild to peruse the Library for up to a week. You can spend an additional 100gp for a sage to assist in your research, up to a maximum of 6. This is a good way for someone skilled in Arcane, History, and Investigation to learn new spells, discern the location of magic items, discover a monster's weakness, and unearth secrets about Hyperborea.
Do the Walk of 1000 Gods, which is a walking circuit through the city that will take you past every major temple and all the lesser fanes and shrines. Plead with deities, ancestor spirits, eldritch beings, daemons and more for guidance and protection on the next adventure. Someone skilled in Religion or Persuasion has the best chance of starting the next adventure with a small blessing or receiving supernatural guidance, which Franz will generate. Typically an offering of at least 25gp is required.
Seek a trainer and learn a new language etc. This takes 10 workweeks reduced by your Intelligence modifier and costs 25gp per week. For example, Ceril's Intelligence of 14 (+2) means that it only takes him 8 weeks of Downtime activity to gain the Old Norse spoken language.
● Includes such things as Healers/Herbalist/Surgeons kits; Mechanical devices; Siege weapons; and anything deemed to require training to use.
Seek mundane or Skilled employment to pay for your living expenses. This is a low risk way of paying for one's living expenses.
Just chill until the next adventure, gaining improved recovery from injury and disease at no risk. Anyone can choose to relax in their downtime but you have to maintain at least a Modest lifestyle to gain any benefit.
Selling magic items is risky and there's no guarantee that a character will receive a good offer even if a legitimate buyer is found. A character must pick one item at a time to sell, spending one workweek and 25gp (which is used to spread word of the desired sale). The character makes a Charisma (Persuasion) check to determine what kind of offer comes in. After receiving an offer, the character can opt not to sell (risking the ire of the buyer), instead forfeiting the workweek of effort and trying again later. Putting this in the hands of a Hireling or other service is easier but alas much more expensive as their commissions are high and no less than 30% to 50% of the sale price.
*See A. SYSTEM RULES LORE/ DOWNTIME for all associated tables for outcomes etc.
Anyone can learn to play one of these games in an hour or so.
The most popular game in Hyperborea, Knucklebones is similar to craps and uses two six-sided dice. Its origins are obscure but it's popular with soldiers, sailors, prisoners, and thieves.
A card game of unknown origin that is popular among the city's bourgeoisie and nouveau riche. Essentially, is it a game of Hearts, with 4 suits (lords, druids, nomads, and warriors) of 8 cards each, and a Daemon card that plays the same role as the Queen of Spades.
A strategy game whose origin dates back to the earliest days of the Hyperborean kingdoms yet remains perennially popular among the uppermost classes of Khromarium. On a board of 10×10 squares, 2 players each control 40 pieces representing personalities and archetypes of ancient Hyperborea. The objective is to find and capture the opponent's castle, or to capture so many enemy pieces one's opponent cannot make any further moves.
An intense and challenging chess-like war game played by Kimmerian barbarians. As Kimmerians are a nomadic people, there is no board or grid. The game is simply played on the ground. Playing pieces are usually carved out of bone and no larger than a chess piece. Infantry can move the width of a fist each turn, and cavalry can move the length of a dagger.
Children in Khromarium use bronze pennies to play a game called slapdragon. The kids stack the coins (a test of skill on its own, as bronze pennies vary wildly in shape and size) and then try to knock the stack over with a carefully-tossed pebble. Players then score the results according to the face-up images on the coins, and sometimes coins can be risked or won as ante. Some coins are more desirable than others. The exact rules vary slightly from one group of children to another. 2450 to go