A character carries traits: an illness, a temperament, a mood, a wound, an office. They appear on your Account page under What you carry, and some of them appear on your public record for anybody to read. This chapter is about how they come and go, and which of them the world shows.
Every trait is either public or private, and the world decides which. There is nothing you can do about it: no setting, no action, and no way to hide a public trait or reveal a private one.
Your Account page lists what you carry under two headings, Public traits and Private traits, and leaves out either heading when there is nothing under it. Another player opening your character record sees the public list and nothing else: not the names of your private traits, not when you gained them, not that you have any at all.
| public | private |
|---|---|
| the epidemic, while you have it | immunity to it |
| pious, religious leader, archprelate | every mood: happy, sad, angry, depressed |
| optimistic, pessimistic, fiery | gay, until you are 18 |
| wounded, and every lasting injury | |
| dishonoured |
One trait crosses the line: gay is private through childhood and becomes public on the year you turn 18. That happens on its own, and it happens only once.
Some traits come at birth. Every newborn rolls for each of them, whoever their parents are:
| trait | chance at birth | passed on by a parent? |
|---|---|---|
| gay | 5 in 100 | never |
| optimistic | 10 in 100 | yes |
| pessimistic | 10 in 100 | yes |
| fiery | 10 in 100 | yes |
On top of that, each of these three temperaments a parent carries has a 1 in 4 chance of passing to each of their children, from each parent, on top of the birth roll. A child born with a trait and inheriting it too carries it once. Gay never passes from a parent: a gay parent's children have exactly the same 5-in-100 chance as anybody else's.
These are for life. Nothing removes them.
Gay and children. Fertility is rolled for each spouse every year, and a gay character's yearly chance is 20 in 100 rather than the usual 70. It lowers a family's size rather than ruling one out: over a whole married life a couple with a gay spouse has well under half the children of one without. See dynasties for how children are born.
The three temperaments do nothing themselves. What they do is produce moods. Each year, for a character who survives it:
| if you are | you may become | chance that year |
|---|---|---|
| optimistic | happy | 5 in 100 |
| pessimistic | sad | 5 in 100 |
| fiery | angry | 5 in 100 |
| already sad | depressed | 15 in 100 |
You hold one mood at a time: gaining one replaces the one you had. A sadness you gain this year cannot deepen into depression until a later year.
Losing a spouse. When your spouse dies you have a 30 in 100 chance of becoming depressed, and where that does not happen, a 70 in 100 chance of becoming sad. Either replaces whatever mood you held, and a grief gained this way holds for the rest of the year: your own temperament does not roll over it until the next.
Moods are private, and they change nothing. Not your health, not your fertility, not your strength, not a duel. They are what your character sheet says about how a life is going, and no more. They also do not pass at the moment: a mood stays until another replaces it.
Fighting on a front can wound you. When a front closes, every character who swung on it, on either side and however many times, has 1 in 101 chance of coming away wounded. A character already wounded is not wounded again. Standing in the region without fighting is not fighting. Fighting in an uprising does not wound anybody: the world keeps no record of who swung there.
A wound is public, and it lasts until it heals. Each year a wounded character has a 1 in 4 chance of healing; on average a wound lasts about four years. Healing is not always clean: 3 in 10 healed wounds leave one lasting injury, chosen by weight:
| injury | share of lasting injuries |
|---|---|
| scarred | 40 in 100 |
| one eyed | 25 in 100 |
| one handed | 15 in 100 |
| one legged | 15 in 100 |
| incapable | 5 in 100 |
An injury you already carry is never chosen again: the weights are shared out across the ones you do not have. A veteran can carry several different injuries, one of each at most, and a veteran carrying all five simply heals.
Lasting injuries are permanent and public. None of them passes to a child.
A wound and every lasting injury except a scar weaken you in a duel, and only there. Each takes a share off the prestige a duel's odds are calculated from:
| taken off | |
|---|---|
| wounded | 10% |
| scarred | nothing |
| one eyed | 10% |
| one handed | 20% |
| one legged | 20% |
| incapable | 30% |
They add up, and the result is rounded down. However badly hurt you are, the duel reads at least a tenth of your stored prestige. So a one-handed, incapable character with 100 prestige is fought as if they had 50; one carrying everything is fought as if they had 10.
The duel reads the reduced figure for everything it decides. The chance, and the prize a win pays or a loss costs, are both worked out from the reduced figures, so beating a wounded champion pays what beating somebody of their reduced figure pays. What is won is then moved between the stored figures, and your stored prestige is otherwise what it was. Your Account and every character record show the figure a duel reads beside the stored one whenever they differ, with the share responsible. See dueling.
Challenging somebody to a prestige duel while they carry heavier injuries than you do marks you dishonoured. The rule, the cost and the exemption for claims and duchies are in dueling; this is what the mark itself does.
| public? | yes, on your record for anybody to read |
| passed to a child? | never |
| changes your odds? | no: not a duel, not your health, not anything |
| lapses? | 3 player years after the last dishonourable challenge |
The whole cost is paid at the moment of the challenge. The mark afterwards changes no number: a dishonoured character is fought at exactly the odds their prestige and injuries give, and is neither easier nor harder to beat for it.
It lapses on its own. Three player years after your last dishonourable challenge, the yearly pass lifts it, with no roll and no chance involved, and your own log says so. Another dishonourable challenge before then restarts the three years from that challenge, so somebody who keeps at it is marked for as long as they keep at it.
Three more permanent marks come from the church's orphanage, and the rules are in religion; this is what the marks are.
| orphan | eunuch | terrible | |
|---|---|---|---|
| granted when | your last parent dies before you are 18 | a faith's leader acts on you as its ward | you make a ward a eunuch, 5% each time |
| public? | yes | yes | yes |
| passed to a child? | never | never (there are none) | never |
| what it does | until 18, says which faith's orphanage you are in | you can never have children | nothing at all |
None of the three is ever removed, and none is born with. A eunuch keeps every title, claim, house and inheritance right; the only thing sterility closes is the yearly fertility roll, for both spouses of any marriage the eunuch is in.
The recovered design had more, and it is recorded here so nobody reads its absence as a promise. None of the following exists in the game.