Houses of Hermes: Societates Appendix: Agencies

Magi often maintain networks of mundane contacts, which they call agencies. Agents pursue the goals of the magus while ensuring that he cannot be implicated in meddling with mundane politics. The following sections describe how agents may be recruited, used, and managed.

A character controlling an agency is called its principal, in this chapter. Principals need not be magi, and the rules presented here are suitable for companion characters as well as magi; however, the focus of this book is the Houses of the Order, and so the material here is biased towards magi as principals.

An agent is a person bound to offer assistance to a principal. They may be bound by feudal ties, legal contracts, emotional debts, social obligations, or blackmail. Assistance may take many forms, including providing information, using special skills as directed, controlling other people, or completing tasks. A character paid to do his normal job, or convinced to perform a service during play, is not an agent. Much of the work of agents occurs between stories, unobserved by player characters.

Agents are Directly Controlled

Charismatic principals or those skilled at manipulating others may directly control many agents. If the principal attempts to control more agents than the maximum provided by the formula below, he is subject to problems among his agents due to his inability to manage such a large agency effectively. The result is that stories are incurred (see Maintaining Agents, below), and the principal must let some of his agents go (or recruit a factor, see below) to cope. The characters of other players may be part of an agency, but are not included in this total. A character can always control one agent, no matter how poor his social skills or what the penalty of his Gift.

Maximum Number of Agents: [2 x (Presence + Intrigue or Leadership – social penalty of The Gift)], minimum 1

Designing Agents

Recruiting Agents at Character Creation

Partial Adoption

Some troupes prefer to not define the agents that characters receive due to Virtues and Flaws, instead only accounting for those gained during play. If, in your own saga, your players feel it is more convenient for a person with the Social Contacts Virtue to be assured of knowing somewhere wherever he goes, or your storyguide likes being able to add obscure cousins with a talent for f inding trouble to the family tree of characters with Close Family Ties, then there’s no need to convert these into fully described agencies.

Recruited Agents As Story Rewards

To recruit an agent during a story, the player determines the sort of person she wishes to add to her character’s agency. The potential agent may be someone who the character has already met, or she may need to actively seek an appropriate person. The principal must make a favorable impression on the potential agent at some point during the story; note that “favorable” in this context means favorable to the principal. A character who thoroughly intimidates a target can still make a favorable impression!

Impressing a Potential Agent: Presence + Leadership – social penalty of The Gift + stress die vs. Ease Factor 6

If this roll fails, then the principal cannot try to recruit this agent; the magus repels the character with her personality, or her suggested threats hold insufficient force to be taken seriously. The magus can try again after another story involving an interaction between the two characters. Having identified and impressed the contact, the player must then initiate story events that cajole, persuade, or force her target to form a Bond with the character. At the end of each story, players are given Adventure experience. They spend this normally, but are given an equal number of agency experience points for recruiting those whom they have assisted during that story. Even if the player decides not to take experience from that adventure (in favor of other forms of advancement), these agency experience points are still available.

To begin the process of recruiting an agent, calculate the initial Resistance Strength of that character, then apply the agency experience points to this score. It takes the current value of a given Resistance Strength in agency experience points to decrease that strength by one. Thus, five points reduce a Resistance Strength statistic of +5 to +4. A particularly effective agent, with a strong Bond, may take several stories to cultivate. Once a character’s Resistance is reduced to zero, he becomes an agent, although the principal must develop a Bond Strength of at least +1 to call upon him for information or assistance. Agency experience points can also be used to strengthen the Bond of agents the magus already has, as described under Maintaining Agents, below.

An agency can also be inherited from another principal, as the result of story events. This must be done with the collaboration of the previous principal. The new principal must impress each agent in turn, as above, but the Bond Strength between the agent and the previous principal adds to the Ease Factor of this roll . If this roll fails, then the agent refuses to transfer his loyalty and leaves the agency, perhaps taking whatever resources he can lay his hands upon. If the roll succeeds, each agent’s Bond Strength is maintained at the former score by the new principal, but its description may change.

A knight who serves a widowed noblewoman because he loves her, for example, may change his bond from Love to Loyalty when the agency passes to her son. A character who Feared the old principal may feel Gratitude toward the new one. Hostile takeovers are not usually possible; instead, each agent must be recruited in the normal fashion. As soon as the agent’s Resistance reaches zero then loyalty is transferred to the new principal.

Agents can also be given by the storyguide as rewards for skilled play. Some story events offer immediate Bonds. For example, if characters save the life of a student, he might feel gratitude sufficient to form a Bond. Agents cannot be purchased with money or vis. These would be hirelings, which are detailed in Covenants.

Using Agents

A magus uses his agents by setting one or more of them a task. Agents must, at the discretion of the troupe, have the skill and opportunity required to fulfill the principal’s request, and the agent must have a Bond Strength of at least +1. The player of the principal then makes the following roll to determine if the agent agrees to perform the requested action:

Persuasion Roll: Communication + Charm, Intrigue, or Leadership + Bond Strength – social penalty of The Gift + stress die vs. Ease Factor (see table under Tasks for Agents)

Resistance of Agents

A newly contacted agent has a Resistance Strength, which represents his reluctance to serve the principal. The more powerful and skilled the agent, the greater this Resistance is, as determined by the table on the next page. The character reduces this Resistance Strength using the methods given in the Recruiting Agents sections. When the potential agent’s Resistance Strength reaches zero, he falls under the influence of the principal, who must then develop a Bond Strength of at least +1 to start using the agent. The principal may continue to improve the Bond score using the methods given under Maintaining Agents, below, to a maximum of +6, representing a fanatically dedicated agent. The examples given in this table account only for Virtues and Flaws given in Ars Magica Fifth Edition. Supplements often contain new Virtues and Flaws, which troupes cost at their discretion.

Agents created on this table do not need to balance their Virtues and Flaws. Players should only account for resources the agent will use in play. Characters with many valuable features are so rare that a player character could not realisti cally seek them out. Storyguides may introduce such characters, as targets for recruitment, as a reward for skilled play.

Hermetic magi are never agents.

Resistance of Agents Table