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Furnishings & Mementos

"The ledger in the drawer is never just a ledger. Read it, and a whole life opens up."

Homes in Ghelmyon aren't empty. The wealthier the household, the more furnished it is - and the furnishings are not decoration. Examine a desk and you may find what's on it. Open a cabinet and there's what's inside. Read a ledger left on a shelf and you learn something the owner would rather you didn't. This is the guide to what's there and how to find it.

At a glance
Furniture Placed by tier - patrician homes have more, pauper homes have less
Surfaces Tables, desks, shelves, chests - items can sit on, in or under
Examine a surface examine <surface> - shows what's there
Personal mementos Character-specific items: a ledger, a keepsake, a tin
Why it matters Mementos are leverage - evidence, blackmail, insight
Perception gate Hidden caches require a Perception check to find

Furniture by tier

Each home's furnishings scale to its social tier. The better the address, the more there is to look at:

Tier Typical furnishings
Patrician Desk, wardrobe, display cabinet, bookshelf, dining table
Burgher Writing desk, wardrobe, shelves, kitchen table
Commoner Kitchen table, storage chest, wall hooks
Labourer A cot, a small chest, a hook on the wall
Pauper A cot and whatever they could carry in

Furniture acts as containers with a surface type - things placed on a desk are "on" it; things inside a cabinet are "in" it. The engine tracks both.

How to examine surfaces

Use examine followed by the surface name:

examine desk
examine bookshelf
examine cabinet
look in chest

examine shows you items placed on or in the surface, plus a description of the surface itself. look in is an alias for containers you want to search inside.

Not every surface in every home has something on it - but the surfaces do exist, and if an NPC has left something there, you'll see it.

Mementos - the personal layer

Signature NPCs have mementos placed in their homes: items that reveal something true about them. These aren't generic loot. They're authored evidence of a life:

  • A flour-dusted ledger on a baker's kitchen table - past accounts and some old correspondence.
  • A floor strongbox in a merchant's study - business records, commission pieces.
  • A locked tin on a sage's shelf - personal papers, some of which carry weight.
  • A cabinet of curiosities in an unusual collector's room - sorted, catalogued, and full of what that particular person values.
  • A locked strongbox behind a wardrobe - something the occupant has tried harder to hide.

The type of memento scales to the character. The deeper the lock (if there is one), the more significant what's inside.

Why mementos matter - the leverage angle

This is the part that connects to the larger world. Personal papers, private correspondence, and ledgers showing irregular income are evidence - the raw material of blackmail and social leverage.

Finding the right memento in the right home is how you get the information to use another way. What you do with it is up to you.

See Crime & Stealth for the crime system if you're thinking about how to get inside homes that aren't yours to browse.

Hidden caches

Some items aren't on a desk - they're behind a panel, under a loose board, inside a book that looks like any other. These hidden caches require:

  1. Exploration: explore the room (or search room) to sweep for anything that doesn't show up on a plain look.
  2. Perception check: a d100 roll over a threshold. A low roll turns up nothing; a higher roll reveals "You notice something: X. Try 'examine X'."
  3. Once revealed: the cache stays found - you won't have to roll again on a second visit.

The Perception check is roll-over - rolling a high number is what you want. Investing in the Perception stat means more hidden things become visible to you.

Quick reference

You want to... Use this
See what's on a surface examine <surface>
Look inside a container look in <container>
Search for hidden things explore (or search room)
Open a locked container pick lock (Locksmithing check)
Take something you found take <item>

See also