The Second Oldest Profession

First Things First, the Assassins’ Guild is one of Ertha’s oldest and most prestigious organizations. It is a brotherhood and sisterhood of killers who swear to keep their secrets and skills within the Guild. The Guild teaches its members the arts of stealth, disguise, assassination, and subterfuge.

The Guild is a resource for players who want to understand the assassin class better and use knowledge to enhance their character. The Guild sheds some light on what the class is and how to use the Assassins’ tools of the trade with a little more clarity.

This knowledge is for players who want to understand the assassin class better and use knowledge to enhance their character. We will start with basic concepts and expand on them progressively to move through crucial areas and end up with how the Guild fits into your game and how to utilize it.

At the end of this section, you will find the post area designated for topics specific to the assassin class for further study that will update automatically. If there is a topic you would like to see covered, please get in touch with Dicesongs to make a request or suggestion.

Born To Play The Part

Characters do not generally wake up one morning and decide that becoming an assassin would be a good career path to pursue. First off, no. Secondly, assassins are more than a class; they are a highly structured society, they are very organized, and they tend to be guarded and secretive about their knowledge.

They employ vast networks of spies and agents that gather information from every corner of Ertha and have been suspected of killing at least five people from the shadows, though no one has actually seen this or lived long enough to tell tales. Assassins are closely bound together in families, clans, tribes, even whole communities.

For those players wanting to join, knocking on the door of the local assassins guild and asking to be admitted will get you a few smiles, if you are lucky. However, fear not, this subject has a special section for older entries that will be covered further down. For now, focus on the prospect.

Those initiate members tend to be born into the assassins, like a family business. Think of it like this, and it is a business; they keep tabs on everything, no one acts independently. Matters are private and stay in the house. No one talks about it; it never happened. Everything is run through a chain of command. Any questions? No, great. Moving on.

Candidates are selected and inducted into the ranks of assassins at a younger age. Existing members can have the option to allow their child to follow in their footsteps. Other families freely offer their children to the guild hoping they will have a better life.

However you spin it, it boils down to kids being the best choice because of the years of preparation needed before they begin training as students. Explaining this now shows you how involved and creative you can get with your character’s history.

The takeaway from all of this is to have a foundation for a backstory where you can build experiences upon, and it provides creative ways for the GM to have a past come back to settle unfinished business.

So What’s Your Story Anyway?

Moving forward from the previous section, you may have some ideas or material that fleshes out the who and what aspects of your backstory make a great tragic tale that you are just itching to share with the rest of the party about your character and their past. Before you launch into this in-depth expose that reveals all, let us go over a few easy-to-remember rules that every assassin should know, like Gospel, and follow like the words were handed to them by their deity.

The first rule of playing an assassin is not to talk about it. EVER. Even if you are with a group of players in a dungeon and they just saved your life. Never admit who you are because one day, one of those characters who saved your life may have their name on a scroll handed to you. For GMs, if an assassin in your game has a loose tongue, and word gets back to the guild, this could lead to expulsion, stripping of rank, possible silencing of the entire party if that sect of assassins treats the crime as Gospel too.

The second rule of being an assassin is not to talk about it. Do not confuse this with the first rule. Spelled the same, but the emphasis is different. This means an assassin never shares anything about their past. No, wait, it is the same thing. Now some of you may be wondering, “Hey, what about that back story I worked so hard on?” Do not worry, and we got this. The reason for no talking is that anything personal about the assassin, no matter how insignificant it may seem, could be used to discover information about other members of the guild or even put the guild at risk. This is why every assassin learns to create a persona during training. This is the person the outside world knows, not the assassin. Having a well-crafted cover allows freedom of movement and the ability to blend in a while to operate. More on this for players and GMs further down.

The third rule of being an assassin is not talking about it. The last thing assassins want is reputation. The best assassins make their kill when no one is watching, and they never leave a trace. The great ones can make it look like natural causes (Iocane powder anyone?) and never raise suspicions. This should not be confused with assassinations where the kill is to make a statement. This is usually stated in the contract where the contractor wants to send a message letting others know this was no accident and has proved vital in maintaining peace negotiations. As long as the assassin’s identity is unknown, the guild will provide and extend protection from retribution. Even the other guilds know not to take action against an assassin.

Now that you have a better grasp of these rules, the next time someone asks what your story is, make sure you have your cover story ready. For GMs, pay attention; running a character with a cover is a complicated business. Reward them for creativity and mental gymnastics, but slips or lapses in character should always have repercussions.

The Age Of Apprenticeship

A character cuts his teeth and establishes his story as a young apprentice child brought into the society of assassins. It will be many years before they are ready to begin training by a master. During this early period, they are raised under the watchful eyes of various teachers who prepare for years with mental and physical training.

To give a basic idea, the apprentices are taught about indigenous plant life. This becomes the basis for learning which are herbs and their uses. Which can be made into medicines and which can produce poison.

They work with others learning how to make them and are even given small doses to build up tolerances; after that, learning to cook is an easy step. They learn about animals to study them, track them in the wild, trap them and train them. They are taught about minerals and chemical reactions, which expand into making flash and smoke bombs, explosives which leads to learning rudimentary structure for what to use, how much, and where to place it for effect.

Reading, writing, and languages lead to copying information, and when talent is shown forgery. Physical training works gymnastics, self-defense, open hand combat, climbing, rope walking, projectile hand weapons, running, swimming, controlled breathing. They are even schooled in theater arts to learn to control emotions, memorization, makeup, sewing, disguise, and much more, all to prepare the apprentices and discover natural talents.

There are many different roles and functions within the shadow society, shadow agents, spies, information brokers, sleepers, minglers, death dealers, to name a few. From early childhood to young adult, the apprentice undergoes years of physical training and education.

When the teachers decide the apprentice has learned all that they could from them, they will be admitted into the ranks as students and become answerable to one master who will complete their education. The greatest weapon every assassin wields is the strength of will.

Everything else is a skill that can be mastered if one shows determination. To embrace the assassin’s way, one must do what needs to be done without hesitation and emotion. One of the more difficult lessons for the student to master is the philosophy of death. Training that develops mindset and suppresses everything else. The actual assassin takes no pleasure from a kill and will strive to deliver a quick death.

This may seem pretty cold, but do not think assassins are heartless killing machines from that last paragraph. Assassins are good at what they do and are trained to separate the job from other areas of their life. The founding elders of the assassins were wise enough to understand that this kind of training could produce unstable results. When it comes to a job, assassins are all business and instincts. On the flip side of this coin, to compensate and provide a balance, all apprentices are taught how to craft a false persona to put their energies into.

Time and attention to detail are devoted to creating covers with appropriate trades and skills learned to make the persona believable. Students will concoct several identities replete with childhood memories that they can adopt at a moment’s notice and wear for the outside world beyond the walls of their guild. So while a young apprentice is learning to throw knives and make explosives, they spend a portion of their time creating an identity and learning trades. For example, (but not limited to) cooking, sewing, or weaving, and at times, they will be sent out to practice blending into communities, making friends, drinking at inns, and even going on adventures. When the guild calls, the assassin emerges, and the persona is dropped.

This leads to the next phase of an assassin’s education…

The Master Will See You Now

There are many types of teachers within the ranks of the assassins. Ones act as surrogate parents and raise the apprentice children in groups, teaching them skills and preparing them their impressionable little minds. There are the tradesmen that teach practical skills so the students can survive outside of the guild.

There are the healers and poisoners, weapons makers, tacticians, strategists, masters of weapons, and masters of hand combat. Living shadows mimic the darkness, and secrets traders commanding networks of spies that gather information from across the world. You get the idea.

Assassins are so diverse at what they do; to think they are just killers is a grave injustice. Remember how earlier I said think of this as a family business. Seriously, a little perspective on the size of their operation and range of services they provide. People hire assassins, not the other way around. They do not look for work, and it comes to them, and business is good.

There are factors at work, and chances are a master’s in one form or another. Whether they exist or propaganda to keep everyone further away from the truth is anyone’s guess. Moreover, with assassins, that uncertainty is part of the mystery.

Characters do not find a master, and the master will already be aware of them from a young age and most likely keeping a close eye on them until the time comes that the master summons them for the first time and acknowledges them as their student.

The passage from student to assassin is not always a foregone conclusion. Many do not see their training through to the end. Sometimes they cannot detach themselves from their emotions or, despite their training, develop a conscience.

Being an assassin means there are no gray areas. It is black and white. Many students could not get past the simple truth, “it is just a job.”

Training

This includes gymnastics, self-defense skills, and some hand-to-hand combat. As they progress, they are instructed in foraging, animal tracking, plant and herb lore. They are conditioned to be self-sufficient, survive in the wild, cook, make medicines from herbs, and distill poisons from plants and animals.

Hand to hand and throwing weapons, concealment, and disguise. Languages, reading, writing, and copying. Making explosives, traps, guerrilla tactics to waylay groups and how to cause confusion and create diversions. Skills are honed over decades to control body functions, detect weaknesses in opponents, and when to make an opportune strike.

Everything taught by the Guild, and the respective masters are to tap into the character’s abilities, weed out any weakness, and fine-tune them into the best they can be. During the years of training, the master will discover what flaws are possessed that are considered weaknesses and make the character unsuitable.

A master will not spend years of training or pass along secrets knowledge to the unworthy. In this regard, the student should learn this about themself and accept it. It is done before too much time has been wasted in years of study and service to a master.

For those apprentices unable to complete their training, the Guild provides alternative options and roles to serve.

Oh, You’re Playing An Assassin

Let us focus on an essential aspect in the game about assassins and set the records straight. Many players running an assassin get all excited about the perks of their class. The death strikes, use of poison, concealment in shadows, infiltration, explosives, creating diversions, all fun stuff they get to use and excel at during a game.

If you are playing an assassin, you need to find a way to work from the shadows. Even from your party dealing lethal death strikes, only assassins have the training, and doing this in front of other players blows your cover. No matter how much you think you can trust your party, this is a red flag penalty against your class and Guild you serve that the GM should hold you to account.

Some GMs might even decide, for the sake of example, that the assassin Guild you serve needs to silence your party for knowing too much about them before dealing out your punishment. You get the job perks, but you also accept your failings and know that your actions could cost others.

Using specialized assassin skills in front of other characters draws attention to the fact that you are running an assassin. This goes against everything you were trained for about working from the shadows. You do not run into a crowded inn and yell dragon fire, the same way you do not perform a lethal assassin strike in front of other characters.

To this end, assassins create and live out a dual identity. Any good assassin can maintain this false front at all times, even to other players in the game. The GM should reward these players for the continued work that goes into maintaining this cover. A private sidebar at character creation, early on between player and GM, should be discussed on how they will keep up the false identity so the GM can help move things along and reward experience to the false identity and the actual assassin class balance.

Assassin skills used in a concealed manner under the watchful eye of the GM can add elements to the game and make sure the assassin is being true to their nature while not being discovered. More bonus to the player who can manage to pull this off and keep the rest of the party…in the dark.

Becoming One With The Shadows

Assassins come from a wide range of backgrounds of close-bound families, brotherhoods, sisterhoods, clans, and networks of guilds with regional and varying styles that make them unique. These are part of a more extensive, elaborate network that makes up the Assassin’s Guild. Further information and research are laid out under the School of Shadows, the sisterhood Cult of the Veil, and the Acolytes of Xy-xo’Fi-tha. Topics like wanting to become assassins later in the game, learning from a new master, going rogue, and freelance work are covered.