Quirks

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.

• Your character gets one free positive quirk at character creation.
• You can then take up to two more positive quirks.
• For each additional positive you must take a negative (a flaw) to balance it out.
• You may take up to two flaws total even if you do not choose to take additional positive Quirks.
• Quirks marked as (+ AND -) count as both a positive and a negative quirk, so it counts as two Quirks total.

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 a word of ash on the tip of your tongue, a sinister prophecy croaked out by a prophet on your homeworld, or a recipe you printed off from someone’s blog, you have a few inklings of how to create a tool capable of destroying another entity’s physical form. Contact your GM to set out on this path. Doing so isn’t necessary to engage in this sort of high-stakes PvP, but it can provide some guidance and starting advantages in doing so.

In your homeworld, 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; while you can’t control them, they will often reveal character-relevant information, hitherto-unknown advantages, or the plots of your rivals.

Maybe it’s because they remind you of creatures on your homeworld - 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. In place of up to two of your Secondary Attributes, you may take an Attribute from another Entity’s Secondary Attribute list. For example, a Glory could swap their Wings for a Chimera's Grasp and their Aura for an Implement's Paraphernalia.

With someone’s IC consent, you are able to place a psychic anchor in them that allows you to share their senses and communicate telepathically with them. This is simulated by a separate Discord channel for the two of you, as well as having uses during turnsheet actions and Excursions. Note: you can only have one psychic anchor active at a time.

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. Note: to be a ritualist doesn’t confer additional abilities in itself, or allow you to replicate any other ability - rather, it provides a mechanical basis for using more unusual forms of action - your plans can include strange incantations learned from old technical manuals, your items and quirks can include ritual ingredients, and your sacrifices can be more literal. You still need to describe your action, though!

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 homeworld. 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 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.

Your manifestation in Emporium isn’t perfect, and glitches in reality occur around you, sometimes ambiently, sometimes violently. Sometimes, these will be helpful, sometimes, these will work against you - but they’ll never function entirely predictably. Describe the particular nature of your distortions to us and any associated triggers (there don’t need to be any specific ones). For example, screens glitch out around you and technological operations may become acutely disrupted if you are upset; alternatively, when you are in pain, inanimate matter might melt and distort in sympathetic agony.

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. (Pleasant dreams cost extra. Terms and Conditions apply.)

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 homeworld; if you don’t, you lose access to your homeworld credit for the next turn. Your report doesn’t have to be accurate - your homeworld won’t find out until the end of the game - and can take any format you like.

The essence that runs through your veins - whether that’s regular blood, crude oil, star-matter, or something stranger - is inexplicably delicious to many of the entities that populate the store. If word gets round that this is the case, expect them to make their presence known - perhaps violently [note: this may involve minor gore-related content, best taken with the Horror playstyle quirk].

When you took on a corporeal form, 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 avatar in Emporium is ghostly, in all the wrong ways. You can’t carry more than one physical object at any given time (and even that takes a lot of concentration); but your body is still sufficiently material that you can’t phase through walls.

Your ability to draw on your Homeworld’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 death is more likely!

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 and why they hate you.

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, its effectiveness determined by the GMs (the more specific, the more effective).

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 absolutely loyal - they’re you, after all - 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 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; a by-product of this, of course, is that you will seldom be in extreme danger.

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, unless you are specifically restraining your power, you will often wreck your surroundings.

Chimerae contain multitudes, the infinite potential of living things. Regardless of whether or not you suffer an injury in your turn, you may (as a minor action) opt to change your Attributes as if you had been hurt. The options you you receive will be themed after the actions you take that turn. 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 (whether in uptime or downtime), you will receive gradually accumulating penalties when performing actions.

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).

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. On Excursions or during Turnsheets, joint actions you are involved in are likely to be much more successful.

The bodies of Implements are artificial things, not the starlight stuff of Glories or the majestic flesh of Chimerae. As such, Implements with this quirk can break down, requiring repair or maintenance. Your object head can break if over-used or damaged; if this happens, it will need to be repaired, usually as a major turnsheet action, to regain its previous function.

Made for purpose, many Implements are specialised to a single task, and have trouble with tasks that their heads weren’t built for. If an action can’t be justified as related to the your specific head choice, you will be less effective at it.

Only PCs who start the game as customers can take quirks from this list.

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 spending souls on minor purchases (food, basic craft supplies, anything below the abstraction layer), you receive a lot more goods. Buy one, get twelve free, get a hundred free. It’s up to you what you do with the rest.

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; you’re subject to the same rules as anyone else, but are regularly offered canapés and flutes of exotic beverages. Cannot be taken with Problem Customer (-).

You have brought a squishy mortal friend with you from your homeworld as a dependent. While Emporium offers a warded recreation area where dependents can be stored and entertained, your friend is likely to wander off at some point, perhaps discovering something interesting that you overlooked, or getting 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.

Only PCs who start the game as employees can take quirks from this list.

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 when you’re in peril. They expect the favour repaid, though - at the start of one session, they’ll approach you and give you a task they expect you to complete by the end of that uptime.

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.

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), 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, in the form of temporary removal of psychological or bodily agency of sapient characters (including all PCs). Additionally, owing to the supernatural nature of many characters and objects, it is possible that characters will encounter beings or forces that can implant longer-term incentives or disincentives in the minds of other characters. This 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 do not take this quirk, then you may still receive optional roleplaying effects based on external influences, psychic 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.