Heist¶

"Get in. Find what's worth taking. Get out before the patrol comes back."

The Ashworth villa heist is the flagship scene - a four-phase noir caper you run end-to-end in text mode. It's the first major SFW /scene and the paradigm the rest of the scene catalog will inherit. Future targets (a temple vault, a shop's back room, a rival's manse) will reuse the same verb set, the same dual risk dials, and the same rails. Learn it once. Apply it everywhere.

At a glance¶


Start verb	`/heist start <target_id>` (e.g. `/heist start ashworth_villa`)
Recon verb	`/heist case <target_id>` - wayfinder intel before you go in
List verb	`/heist` - show known targets + casing status
Abort verb	`/heist abort` - leave mid-scene; you lose casing intel
Prereqs	None hard-gated. Some intel facts need skill checks (perception, streetwise, wayfinder).
Best stats	Dexterity (lockpicking, stealth, sleight), Intelligence (perception, magic), Strength (force, climb)
Composes with	BG33 leverage · BG41 wayfinder · BG63 NPC suspicion · BG64 interactive objects
Flagship target	Lord Ashworth's villa, Coin Street - Thursdays after 22:00

The four-phase loop¶

A heist is a self-contained scene that walks through four phases. The engine tracks where you are; you choose how to push through.

1. Cast - learn the place¶

/heist case <target> consumes one intel turn and surfaces one intel fact - the layout, an occupant's habits, a weak point, the patrol cadence. Each fact is gated on a skill check (perception, streetwise, wayfinder). Fail and you get a consolation line; succeed and the fact gets stamped on the target.

Casing isn't free. Each turn costs an in-game hour and a small Trust hit on whichever NPC you're pumping for info. You can't grind a single source - diversify your asks.

2. Plan - pick your rail¶

Before you /heist start, decide your approach:

Silent. Skill-heavy. Lockpick, sneak, hide, peek, listen.
Magic. Mana-heavy. magic_open for doors, knock for jammed locks. Zero noise.
Loud. Force, bash, pry. Fast. Wakes everyone. Best when nobody's home or you don't plan to come back.

You don't pick once. You can switch rails room-by-room.

3. Execute - work the rooms¶

You're inside. The scene engine takes over: a verb dispatcher routes your free-typed commands (lockpick desk_drawer, take ledger, peek bedroom) through game/scenes/heist/verbs.py. Each verb contributes to two running totals - noise and turns - and rolls against the relevant skill.

4. Escape - get out clean¶

The patrol returns on a turn counter. The household wakes if noise crosses a threshold. Leave the way you came (or by a route you scouted in casing) before either fires. Get caught carrying evidence and you're holding the receipts in front of a witness.

The verbs¶

Each verb has a skill axis (which skill it rolls against), a noise cost (added to the room's running noise total), and a rail (silent / magic / loud).

Verb	Skill	Noise	Rail	What it does
`examine`	Perception	0	silent	Inspect an interactive object - surface hidden contents, hints.
`sneak`	Stealth	0	silent	Move quietly between rooms. Avoids witness wake.
`hide`	Stealth	0	silent	Duck out of sight; resets recent-witness flags.
`peek`	Perception	0	silent	Look through a door/keyhole before entering.
`listen`	Perception	0	silent	Check what's behind a door - sleeping butler, awake guard, empty.
`magic_open`	Arcane	0	magic	Spell-open a locked door. Costs mana.
`knock`	Arcane	0	magic	Magic-knock a stuck lock. Costs mana.
`slip_through`	Athletics	2	silent	Squeeze through a narrow gap (window, vent).
`take`	-	3	silent	Pocket an item. Stamps it "stolen."
`lockpick`	Lockpicking	5	silent	Pick a lock. Higher tier locks need higher rank.
`search`	Perception	5	silent	Toss a container/desk for hidden items.
`climb`	Athletics	8	silent	Scale a wall, balcony, drainpipe.
`pry`	Strength	15	loud	Pry open a stubborn lid or panel.
`distract`	Charisma	20	mixed	Throw a stone, knock something over - pulls a guard out of position.
`force`	Strength	30	loud	Force a lock or door. Loud and fast.
`stomp`	Strength	35	loud	Break floor planks / panels.
`bash`	Strength	40	loud	Smash through. Everyone hears.

Unknown verbs default to noise 10. Drawing your weapon mid-scene adds passive noise per turn - sheathe before you go in.

The two risk dials¶

Noise¶

Noise accumulates per verb. Each room tracks its own running total.

Wake same-room sleeper at noise > 40. Butler in the foyer wakes; he raises an alarm.
Wake adjacent-room sleeper at noise > 70. The bedroom upstairs hears the foyer crash.
Alarm threshold at noise > 100. Patrol gets called in. Town watch spawns at turn 30 (or whichever turn matches the patrol cadence you cased).

How to lower noise:

Pick silent verbs (sneak/peek/listen are zero).
Magic rail (knock / magic_open) is zero noise but costs mana.
Drug a sleeper (sleeping draught from the herbalist) - their wake threshold rises from 40 to "essentially unwakable."
Distract a guard out of the room before you start working.

Suspicion (BG63)¶

Suspicion is separate from noise. Witnesses build it. Every time an NPC sees you doing something they wouldn't expect (lockpicking a drawer, holding a weapon in a parlor, standing in a private room), their suspicion tier climbs:

clear → wary → alarmed → hostile

Decay is slow. Alarmed means they'll call the guard if they see you again. Hostile means they call the guard now. Evidence on your person (BG68 evidence registry) feeds the same ladder once you're searched - if a guard tier-3s you and finds the stolen ledger, the suspicion converts into a bounty.

Three rails¶

You don't have to pick once. You can - and should - switch.

Silent (skill). The clean run. Stealth + lockpicking + perception. Lowest noise, highest payoff, hardest skill floor. The Rogue's default. Demands rank 5+ in two or three relevant skills before you attempt a tier-2 target.
Magic (mana). The Mage's parallel rail. Same outcomes as silent, paid in mana instead of skill checks. Cheap if you have the spells prepared; brittle if you run dry mid-scene. Save knock / magic_open for the locks you can't pick.
Loud (force). The smash-and-grab. Strength + speed. Good when the building is empty (Lady Ashworth's villa on Thursday night - patrol cadence 30 turns, butler asleep, household out). Bad if anyone is awake. The Warrior's option when no Rogue is on hand.

The verbs aren't locked to a rail. You can lockpick the front door silent, then bash a stuck floorboard once you're past the sleeper. The dispatcher doesn't care about your build - only about the noise total and the witness state.

Casing the target (BG41)¶

/heist case consumes intel turns and surfaces IntelFacts - the layout of the building, who lives there, when they're out, where the floorboard cache is hidden. Each fact gates on a skill check (so a ranger with high perception cases differently from a bard with high streetwise).

Why this matters:

Hidden objects don't surface without casing. The bedroom floorboard at the Ashworth villa won't appear in the room's interactive objects list until you've pulled the "she hides things in floorboards" intel from Beggar Tom.
Patrol timing is intel. Without casing the watch schedule, you don't know when turn 30 fires. Going in blind is doable; going in blind on a Thursday at the wrong hour is a fight.
Casing is the heist's RPG layer. It's the social/exploration half of the scene. The execute phase is action - the cast phase is the conversation.

Heist targets have an intel_required count and an intel_facts list. /heist shows your progress (casing 2/4 vs ready 4/4).

Leverage payoff (BG33)¶

Not every loot is gold. Some loot is leverage.

Letters, ledgers, correspondence, officer pins - items with sensitivity scores 3+ get stamped into the evidence registry on take. Carrying them unlocks new conversation options:

lean on lady_ashworth
lean on editor_smudge

The blackmail wiring (Phase A/B/C/D, shipped 2026-05-16) reads straight off whatever you stole. You don't author the leverage - the target NPC already has secrets defined in ALL_AUTHORED_SECRETS (162 entries and counting). The heist is just how you find them.

This is what separates a heist from a robbery. A robbery takes coin. A heist takes a claim on the person you robbed.

What you can lose¶

Failure	Trigger	Consequence
Wake the household	Noise > 40 in an occupied room	NPC wakes, raises alarm, you have ~3 turns to flee.
Patrol intercept	Turn counter exceeds cadence	Town watch spawns in foyer. Combat + bounty + Town Guard rep hit.
Caught in a private room	NPC sees you in their bedroom/study	Tier-3 social fallout: hostile suspicion, future encounters cold.
Evidence-on-you	Guard searches and finds stolen items	Suspicion converts to bounty proportional to total sensitivity.
Lethal incident	You kill a witness/guard	+25 notoriety, murder charge, town watch hostile for ~7 days.
Abort mid-scene	`/heist abort`	You leave clean but you lose casing intel - next attempt starts from zero.

The good news: combat is survivable, persuade-down sometimes works ("I was investigating Lady Ashworth's affairs - see, I have evidence"), and dropping the loot before being searched downgrades evidence-on-you into mere suspicion.

The bad news: the town watch remembers. Bounty doesn't decay fast.

Why bother¶

Loot tier. Rare items, coin caches, unique mementoes that don't appear in any vendor. The Ashworth villa hides an officer pin that unlocks Beggar Tom's past-class reveal - pure content unlock, no other path surfaces it.
Leverage. The blackmail wiring (BG33) reads off whatever you stole. A successful heist on a noble's correspondence cabinet can rewrite your relationship with three NPCs at once.
Faction pressure. Thieves Guild rep climbs. Town Guard rep doesn't fall unless you're caught - but if you are caught, the hit is large.
The texture. Walking into someone's house at 2am, knowing exactly when the butler turns over in his sleep, knowing the floorboard hides a secret you learned by talking to a beggar in a warren - this is the kind of moment-to-moment scene density the engine is built for. Heist is where the world's depth pays off.

Worked example - the Ashworth villa¶

The flagship target. A noir caper authored end-to-end as a reference implementation.

Cast (3-4 intel turns):

Talk to Bram the maid - layout (foyer, study, bedroom, servant entrance).
Talk to Beggar Tom - floorboard intel ("she hides things…").
Talk to Whisper - Coin Street patrol cadence (30 turns, Thursdays).

Plan: Thursday after 22:00. Lady Ashworth is out (visiting Editor Smudge in the Warren - that's the affair). Butler asleep in the foyer. Silent rail, lockpick the desk, search the painting compartment, check the floorboard.

Execute:

/heist start ashworth_villa
sneak servant_entrance
peek foyer
sneak study
lockpick desk_drawer
take ledger
take correspondence
examine painting
lockpick painting_compartment
take warren_ledger
sneak bedroom
examine floorboard
pry floorboard
take officer_pin
sneak servant_entrance

Escape: ~22 turns in, well under patrol cadence 30. Clean exit.

Outcome: ~350-500 coin in correspondence + papers + a unique officer pin. Three evidence items minted: one on Lady Ashworth, one on Editor Smudge, one on the Captain Thomas / Beggar Tom thread. Next time you talk to Lady Ashworth she'll mention "that burglary" unprompted. lean on is now unlocked on both her and Editor Smudge.

Where to go next¶

More targets coming. Ashworth villa is the MVP. Future heists scale via the BattleStation hot-spot editor (BG65) - a temple vault, a rival shop's back office, a noble's country estate.
The wider /scene paradigm. Heist is the first visual-interactive scene; the same room/hot-spot/verb framework will carry conversational scenes, dungeon delves, and infiltration set-pieces. See the scene_sim system once those articles ship.
Build for it. Lockpicking + Stealth + Perception rank 5 each before you attempt a tier-2 target. Rogue and Wanderer ramp into it naturally; Mage substitutes magic for skill; Warrior brings the loud rail (and a getaway plan).