Quirks represent things about your character which are unusual or unique and are not covered by your Attributes. A positive Quirk represents something that will benefit you, while a negative Quirk (a flaw) represents a hindrance and may strike without warning.
Playstyle Quirks listed at the bottom of the page are completely free (they are marked as 0) and do not count towards your total number of Quirks. They are there for you to indicate to the GM team what kind of gaming experience you prefer. They can also inform the GM team a bit about how we should handle your character and interpret their actions in case of ambiguity. You can take as many of these as you like, and can freely add or remove them at any point over the course of the game (contact the GMs via email to do this).
You are a harbinger of the end - someone’s end, anyway. Whether it's through sinister prophecies from your homeplane, ashen words on the tip of your tongue or recipes printed off someone's blog, the destruction of other Entity's physical forms comes easily to you.
If you set out to create such a weapon, or seek out such a fate, you searches will be easier, and more successful. NPCs with an appreciation for all things end-of-the-world related will be more sympathetic when helping you on your quest, and may approach you, offering aid.
Your home plane is metaphysically rich. Whether they are easier to extract or farm, or whether your home plane is simply burgeoning with proto-soul matter, you have access to considerable liquid assets. You start the game with a single SoulCoin.
Cannot be taken with In Debt (-).
In your homeplane, there was nothing that could escape your understanding; even though Emporium limits your abilities, you still receive clairvoyant flashes and glimpses of unknowable truths. In game terms, at the start of each session, you will receive a short vision of something going on elsewhere in the Store (either written by GMs, or sometimes excerpts from others' turnsheet responses). You can't control the subject of your visions, but they will always be at least indirectly useful - character-relevant information, hitherto-unknown advantages or opportunities, or the plots of your rivals.
Maybe it’s because they remind you of creatures on your homeplane - maybe you’re something of a cryptid yourself. Whatever it is, the creatures and denizens that lurk in the darker corners of the Store and its Warehouses are often more willing to trust you, and you’ll receive greater insights interacting with them.
Glories, Chimerae, and Implements are the most common categories of Entities that visit the store, but some blend the elements of the three. You may pick Secondary Attributes, or Entity-specific Quirks from any list, not just your own. For example, a Glory could swap their Wings for a Chimera's Grasp and their Aura for an Implement's Paraphernalia, or an Implement could take the Last Words Quirk.
With someone’s IC consent, you are able to place a psychic anchor in them that allows you to send and receive telepathic messages with them, wherever they are. This is simulated by a separate Discord channel for the two of you, that allows you to communicate without delay, and that is impossible to eavesdrop on. Let a GM know if you are establishing or severing a Psychic Anchor. Additionally, if you are present with your Anchored buddy in a Turnsheet action or an Excursion, you are both less likely to come to harm, as you subconsciously have each other's backs.
Note: you can only have one psychic anchor active at a time, and Psychic Anchors with NPCs may be slower, as GMs may be busy elsewhere!
Many Entities aren’t just powerful beings in their own right, but are masters of arcane arts: magic, science, philosophy, counter-reality sophistry. You can use these in turnsheets or linears, just as with any other PvE or PvP action.
To be a ritualist doesn’t confer additional abilities in itself - rather, it allows you to be much more flexible with how you narrate your actions. Your plans might include information gathered from scrying and fortune-telling rather than relying on a CCTV system; you might use a handful of ritual ingredients to substitute for tools or other items gathered by players; your sacrifices might be more literal, and might be drawn from other people. In each case, these still need to be described, in line with your character's style and approach, and can't exceed what a relatively well-prepared character without this Quirk could accomplish; what this Quirk confers is the ability to carry out stylish magic without worrying too much about taking advantage of the environment or context.
Wires! Fuseboxes! Mysterious plastic components emitting an unsettling wisp of blue smoke! These, and so much more, are familiar to you, o paramount artisan of your homeplane. You may not be as skilled as an Implement with the necessary object head - although if that’s what you are, this just means you’re even more qualified - but you’ll be more likely to be successful when tinkering with Emporium’s various security and mechanical systems.
Whether a homebody or a stellar wanderer, you always know where you are, and how to get back to where you started. This Quirk greatly increases your ability to navigate the store and its warehouses, circumventing traps, throwing off pursuit, and locating shortcuts while on Excursions.
Unlike many of the entities here, you require sleep. Fortunately, Emporium caters to all their visitors’ needs and has provided on-site rest areas for both employees and customers in order for you to catch forty winks. Entities sleeping in the Store often report strange ghostly entities making contact with them in dreams and other visions, as well as other psychic phenomena.
If you take this Quirk, it will be assumed that you take time to sleep each downtime unless you specifically mention otherwise. This will not automatically impact the effectiveness of your major actions, but may be an inconvenience in certain situations, and there will be consequences if you do not sleep for any reason.
Your presence (and lines of credit) in Emporium is conditional on you reporting back home; whether that’s in the form of intelligence briefings, shareholder reports, or letters to your divine parents explaining what you’ve been up to. At the end of each session of uptime, your character needs to submit an IC report (no more than 100 words) in your personal Discord channel explaining what you have been up to, and how it has benefited your homeplane; if you don’t, you lose access to your homeplane credit for the next turn. You will be visited by a representative of your homeplane in Turn 5, who will assess you on the accuracy of your reports, and grade you on how effective you have been as a representative of your Homeplane.
Since the representative doesn't actually know whether or not your reports are accurate until the end of the game, you don't have to be entirely truthful, so long as your accounts are settled by the end …
There is something about you that is inexplicably delicious to many of the Entities that populate the store. Maybe it's the sweet-smelling blood, crude oil, or star matter that runs through your veins; maybe it's an ancient curse that draws monsters to you; maybe you just have terrible luck! In any case, you are more likely to be pursued or stalked by some of the more feral creatures of the Store, and are a magnet for all kinds of monstrous attention.
When you manifested in Emporium, something about the process didn’t quite stick. You move through space awkwardly, clipping through the floor and not quite knowing your own strength when you pick up small, delicate objects. You’ve got a bad case of the incarnation blues. You are much more likely to break small, delicate objects, knock over stacks of cans, and other acts of poor coordination.
Your ability to draw on your homeplane’s credit is limited. Maybe you’ve been set a strict budget by the powers you serve, maybe there are powerful metaphysical export controls in place, maybe you just don’t have much to give. You can only liquidate parts of your world to complete a purchase twice over the course of the game.
Almost all entities within Emporium are functionally immortal, requiring great and legendary tools, weapons, and prophecies to banish. This isn’t the case for you, however. Your vessel is mortal, and although you are hardly fragile, enough injury, deprivation, or damage may lead to your character’s death, in the same manner as ordinary sapients.
NOTE: This Quirk means that character is more likely to become unplayable - combine with the Death is Real playstyle Quirk if you want your character to face mortal peril!
You aren’t liked. It’s not a specific ‘someone’ who dislikes you, but some quirk of store bureaucracy has decided that you are An Issue, to whom only a minimum of service is to be extended. If you are a customer, NPCs employees might give you worse service or not go to particularly great lengths to help you; if you are an employee, guess who’s getting all the worst assignments.
Cannot be taken with VIP Customer (+).
Someone dislikes you, and they are here with you in Emporium to make your life - or at least shopping experience - miserable. Perhaps you have a longstanding rival who has warred with you since the dawn of time. Perhaps you accidentally burned someone’s feathers when you were queueing together. Give a less than 100 words description of your rival - who must be an NPC - and why they hate you.
Chimerae contain multitudes, the infinite potential of living things. Each turn, you may, as a minor action, choose to change one of your Secondary Attributes (say which). You will receive two largely beneficial options themed after the major action that you have taken during during that turn; between receiving your turnsheet and the beginning of the next session, you may pick one of them to replace the Secondary Attribute in question. This takes effect after your major actions (that is, you cannot change your Attributes and use these new Attributes on the same turn).
Whether it's a set of gnashing jaws, an ever-burning flame that can be used to cremate specially prepared objects, or just a tendency to consume energy fields larger than their heads, some Chimerae are expert at consuming things and gaining power from them. This can be used to slowly (but effectively) destroy objects (or scenery) made from non-living matter, and gain power from it. Most objects will just offer a sense of satiation, but more exotic material may have … unusual results.
Chimerae are often hunters, of a sort, but for some, this is literal. Characters with this Quirk need an unusual non-biological material (precious metals, fire, books; let us know what your character consumes) to sustain their existence in the store. If you don’t consume a source of this material each turn, you will receive gradually accumulating penalties when performing actions. This doesn't have to be the sole focus of your major action - you'll be able to achieve other goals while doing this - but you'll need to work your hunger into your other plans somehow, and identify sources of nutrition on major Excursions.
Many Chimerae are bound by the symbolic laws of nature. Acid weathers stone, predator hunts prey, night follows day. This manifests as a weakness or vulnerability in the presence of a symbolically appropriate material or substance; tell us what it is (ideally something relatively common; you will encounter it in play).
Glories are beings of living purpose, and don’t let anything so much as death or banishment stop them. If you are destroyed or banished during play, you can post a message of up to 50 words, visible to whomever you want, and pronounce a curse fuelled by your character’s fading life essence. The effectiveness of this curse is likely to be more effective the narrower it is (a curse on everyone in Emporium might be a minor inconvenience; a curse directed at your killer alone, lasting for a single session, would be devastating for them. The GMs will adjudicate the precise impact of this.
Some Glories have such mastery of their will and identity that they subdivide themselves, creating divine servitors from their own essence. During downtime, this Quirk allows you to create a temporary construct that can carry out your wishes in another physical location. Your Servitor is an NPC that is absolutely loyal to you, is not subject to any of your Bindings or roleplaying effects, and is relatively competent with non-taxing tasks. They don’t have much personal initiative or intelligence, though, and they’re lousy when confronted with physical danger.
Try not to lose them: you can only have one Servitor active at anyone one time, can only reunite with your Servitor through physical contact, and, if they are destroyed, are likely to suffer metaphysical damage or injury yourself.
You are a survivor of aeons: ageless, immortal, invincible. And you certainly didn’t get that way by taking risks. When engaging in PvE and PvP, you gain significantly less of an advantage by declaring that you’re willing to sacrifice anything. While this does mean that you're less likely to get into serious danger yourself, it also means you are less able to go 'all out'.
Glories are meant to be beheld, to leave their mark on everything that encounters them. Even if you favour the arts of stealth, you still can’t give up who you are: terrifying, transcendent beings, with a penchant for terrifying amounts of collateral destruction. During turnsheets and Excursions, any direct physical confrontation you engage in will cause considerable damage to the location you are in; it won't directly impede you (unlike the Incarnation Blues Quirk), but neither will it help you, and you won't be popular with the janitors.
Your object-head has a secondary feature, allowing you to diversify your talents. Choose an additional advantage for your Primary Attribute (Head).
Many Implements were created to assist, support, manage, and pre-empt the needs and wishes of the people of their world. Your superhuman ability at coordination often persists into the present day. When you assist other characters on an Excursion or a Turnsheet, your assistance will be much more effective. The joint action more likely to be successful, less likely to have negative side effects, or will yield better results, than if you attempted to help without this Quirk.
Implements with this Quirk can break down, requiring repair or maintenance. While 'ordinary' use or light scuffing might be fine, using your object head ability to a considerable degree, or receiving a serious injury will mean that it will break, becoming inoperable at the end of that action or Excursion.
If this happens, it will need to be repaired, usually as a major turnsheet action, to regain its previous function.
Implements are often constructed beings, often manufactured to fulfil a particular task. Even now they have achieved deity-like power and universe-spanning capabilities, they sometimes struggle with these ingrained impulses to maximise the production of paperclips in their Homeplane, greet everyone they encounter with a smile and a 'how can I help you?', or assess the tactical vulnerabilities of a given room - even when such behaviours are no longer useful. The urge is resistible, and isn't constant, but it takes effort to ignore. In 50 words or less, how does your original programming persistently affect your behaviour?
Whether you’re a coupon fiend, a quasi-divine logistics AI, or simply an expert haggler, you know how to buy in bulk, for cheap. When determining whether or not a soul purchase is below the abstraction layer (for goods such as food, trinkets, or basic craft supplies), GMs will be much more lenient when you declare that you're purchasing large quantities of it. Without this Quirk, you might be able to acquire a couple of tins of paint or a light meal; with this Quirk, you'd be able to scrounge together enough paint to redecorate a section of the Warehouses in a lurid neon décor, or enough food to provision a small military battalion.
Some entities find themselves enjoying a privileged status. They are orichalcum-tier shoppers, bearers of ancient cards of authority, or showered with complimentary gifts according to some mysterious quality they possess. If you have this Quirk, expect store employees to offer you a whole host of minor perks, such as canapés and flutes of exotic beverages, the benefit of the doubt when an NPC finds you exploring somewhere you shouldn't be, or advance notice of upcoming deals and promotions. You're still subject to the same rules as everyone else, but things are just a little more … deluxe.
Cannot be taken with Problem Customer (-).
You have brought a squishy mortal friend with you from your homeplane as a dependent. Having a second pair of eyes can be helpful - they can wander off and find something you overlooked, help you search through some old documents more effectively, or watch your back in a fight - but they are equally likely to get into trouble because they look oh-so-delicious to the gigantic flowers in the Growth Sector.
Give a less than 100 words description of your dependent, but for CAT policy reasons, please avoid overt child-coding for your dependent (in description or in play).
It’s an infinite store. If you can imagine it, it’s there. Often, it’s hard to keep focused on what you came for. If you look for something in downtime or on an Excursion, you may find things that are almost right, but not quite what you set out to get …
Even many of the most jaded of Entities find themselves a little overwhelmed with the amount of treasures, wonders, and miracles for sale in Emporium. For some, this makes it harder to see the flaws in some of what’s on offer - you often won’t get a good idea of the downsides, imperfections, or weaknesses of the things you purchase.
Employees on cleaning shifts have access to Emporium’s richly stocked janitorial supply closets (depots, even!), but you go further. Whether it's because you know a guy, are schooled in certain ritual incantations, or have a key, you relatively free reign to requisition as much as you want with no questions asked, when not on shift, and with no records that you did so. Wherever you are, you’ll be able to lay hands on a near-infinite supply of mops, steel wool, unfathomably powerful alkahest-based cleaning products, and step-ladders. There are almost certainly ways to misuse this; just how is left as an exercise to the reader.
You hear things in the breakroom - not just the latest gossip, but the patterns, secrets, unspoken threats and exchanges of power. Each turn, you’ll receive random and useful bits of news and gossip about the store; not just the omniscient knowledge of what is happening, but a sense of what’s about to happen.
Someone high-up in Emporium watches you from afar; they see you as a catspaw in their own unfathomable schemes and campaigns throughout the organisation. While you don’t know their exact identity, they have let you know that you can call on them for support and assistance with all things related to Emporium's running when you’re in peril. They do expect the favours repaid, though, and may contact you with various mysterious tasks.
While most other employees can expect to see a paycheck at the end of their seasonal shift, you, for some reason, already owe a debt to the store and your earnings are already earmarked for repaying it. You will not receive wages for your first successful shift, or you must find another way to pay off your debt.
Cannot be taken with Bounteous (+).
You were sent here to work for Emporium and learn the importance of responsibility and hard work by someone back home. Perhaps it was your divine mentor, superior daemonic officer, or that aunt who has the most threatening frown. Emporium has promised to send back a report by the end of your contract. If it’s less than satisfactory, your welcome party might be awkward. Give a less than 100 words description of whoever it is you respond to and how they expect you to behave.
During Emporium, GMs are keen to provide Turnsheets in a multimedia format. If you take this Quirk, then the write-up of your investigations of Management’s records might be accompanied by an audiolog you found, or a physical set of documents or letters. If you retrieve an ancient relic from the Deep Stockrooms, you may receive a small prop version of that object by mail. This is strictly optional - you won’t receive an in-game advantage if you choose, or do not choose, this Quirk - but we hope that it provides additional immersion and enjoyment for those who want it.
If you opt in to this Quirk, let us know any accessibility requirements you might have (transcripts of audio files, large print for printed documents, colour-blind-friendly physical media, etc), and whether you want to receive physically mailed objects (in which case, please provide us with a mailing address, which we will keep secure and delete after the game - see the Privacy Policy). If you are open to receiving physical content of this sort, you will receive at least one thing in the mail over the course of the game.
While Emporium is not a horror game, certain areas of the game may take on a darker tone (including body horror, violence, and psychological horror, albeit within our game’s CAT policy). If you are interested in exploring these parts of the game, or receiving these results in turnsheets, take this Quirk. Note: if you do not want to encounter these parts of the game, don’t worry; these will be siloed off from the main play experience.
Emporium may include mind control of sapient characters (including PCs) through supernatural means in the following ways:
These will not be a core theme, but may occur if you take this Quirk; GMs will contact you if this has a major impact on your character story. If you would like to take this Quirk but opt out of any of the above individually, just let us know.
If you do not take this Quirk, then you may still receive optional roleplaying effects based on external influences, supernatural or otherwise. It will always be possible for your character to reject or ignore them, and there will generally be room for you to interpret how exactly your character acts under those influences if you do choose to follow them.
Romance is not something the GMs will actively set out to explore in this game, but if you have this Quirk, NPCs may try to initiate romance with your character. Not taking the Quirk doesn't stop you from trying to initiate romance with NPCs or other players, of course, the Quirk merely indicates to the GMs that you are happy for romance between your PC and NPCs to occur.
For whatever reason, if your character is destroyed in Emporium, they die more or less permanently. No bouncing back to the end of the queue, no waking from a bad dream back in their bed - if they die, they die. Note that this Quirk does not by itself increase the likelihood of character death (for that, check the Mortal Quirk, above; taking the two together is a perilous path!). It only dictates the narrative consequence of a character's “death” once it happens. This Quirk is here for you to inform the GMs how you want to flavour your character's existence in Emporium (and the end of which).
As this is a playstyle Quirk, it does not necessitate or make redundant the mechanical Mortal Quirk. Roughly speaking, if you take the Mortal Quirk and not Death is Real, that means your character might be crushed by three hundred collapsed ceilings, but once they die in store they just appear back home. They still become unplayable for the remainder of the game as they cannot return to the store, but narratively they will live on in-universe. If you take Death is Real but not Mortal, that means your character is much harder to kill, but once someone goes to the length of completing an apocalyptic assassination ritual or summoning a cosmic horror specifically to devour your character, they die for good.