Charlatan

The Charlatans are live on their modern command path. Their many-pocketed cloak keeps their road training and Rank notes, while their tricks cover control, volatile ash brews, poison leverage, and temporary loaded weapons.

Charlatans are Wayfarian tricksters who make lies useful. They win by creating the wrong certainty at the right moment, carrying a pocket for every bad idea, and ensuring that even their successes have suspicious fine print.

Progression

Charlatans earn guild XP from level-appropriate combat and bosses. GXP raises Charlatan Rank; ranks fund road selections rather than a second copy of classic guild level. gscore charlatan shows current rank, XP, roads, profession gates, and unspent points. Each rank after the first grants one road point through a total of thirty; use croads train <road>. Roads cap at ten, so Rank 31 provides enough points to complete all three. Later Ranks open horizontal schemes rather than additional road points. Every new Charlatan begins with confuse and suckerpunch; Misdirection improves both rather than gating the guild's first direct attack.

Advanced Schemes

Beginning at Rank 35, every fifth Rank through 105 opens one scheme in Drina's ledger. Learning permanently records the scheme in the Charlatan cloak and costs 1,000 gold per required Rank. A learned scheme can fill an empty active slot for free; replacing an occupied slot costs half the incoming scheme's Rank in thousands of gold, with a 25,000 minimum. Drina must be present for learning and loadout changes.

Charlatans have one active scheme slot initially, two at Rank 50, three at Rank 100, and another every fifty Ranks thereafter. All fifteen schemes can be learned by Rank 105, but only three can be active then. schemes shows the catalogue, permanent cloak notes, active loadout, effects, and prices.

Learned schemes and the active loadout remain scribbled in the cloak. Older cloaks begin with blank scheme pages, while their existing roads and road points remain intact.

Profession Gates

Road investment determines which kind of Charlatan the character is; profession skill determines whether they can execute the technical parts. The cloak soul's extra_gscore() output shows the three relevant profession values through gscore charlatan.

Guild actions do not award profession skill directly. Players advance the professions through their owning systems, preserving profession rooms, materials, recipes, and advancement loops.

Potions Without Replacing Professions

Alchemy owns dependable recipes, healing, stat support, work orders, and a repeatable market. Charlatan mixtures are encounter tools:

• narrow and short-lived;
• frequently thrown, smeared, or planted rather than consumed;
• made from stolen, substituted, or profession-sourced ingredients;
• guaranteed to carry a side effect, tell, delayed crash, or backfire chance;
• poor merchandise unless the buyer enjoys waivers.

Elemental bottles return as volatile surprises. Healing and clean stat potions do not return as core Charlatan products. A Charlatan may adulterate a profession potion later, but does not replace the profession recipe.

brewacid requires guild rank 2, Volatility 1, and Alchemy 25. It makes one owner-bound base flask, which may be thrown as a modest acid surprise or used by cookash <grey|red|blue|mixed> (legacy alias ccook). Cook Ash uses every available ash of the selected colour; mixed uses every colour. A single batch needs at least 10 relevant ash, while mixed needs at least 10 of each. Grey requires Alchemy 25, red/blue 75, and mixed 150.

brewelement <fire|ice|lightning> (alias elementpotion) requires guild rank 3, Volatility 2, and Alchemy 75. It creates one owner-bound, two-hour elemental flask. throw <element> flask at <target> deals the corresponding elemental harm, consumes the flask, starts combat, and kicks some of the blast back onto the thrower. In combat the explicit target may be omitted. The usual rules for reaching, seeing, and attacking a target still apply.

Quaffing the result creates a buff-visible Cookash Rush: grey favors accuracy and defense, red favors damage, blue favors accuracy and an extra swing, and mixed blends the offensive benefits at lower strength. Aim for 100 ash for a proper batch. More still stretches the rush, but the difference soon becomes difficult to notice; no rush lasts longer than thirty minutes. Only one rush may run at once. The vial belongs to its maker, cannot be sold, and goes flat after two hours. Throwing it deals elemental harm and always splashes the thrower. The cloak needs only a few seconds before it can cook another.

Food And Drink Additives

concoct <red salt|blue mixer|cutting bitters> (alias cmix) requires guild rank 2 and Volatility 2. It creates a transferable, no-save additive that expires after thirty minutes. mix <additive> into <carried food or drink> uses one packet on the entire carried serving; each item accepts only one. An additive cannot improve fare meant for someone more experienced than its maker, and even the finest packet tops out at Epic fare.

The additives work on profession fish, wildcrafted meals, pub food, and ordinary drinks. One packet treats every use of a meal, snack, keg, or jug; refillable containers lose the treatment when emptied. A fresh helping of the same seasoning refreshes its aftertaste rather than stacking it. Inspection and consumption messages reveal the strength and duration of the lingering recovery.

Poisons And Modifications

Charlatans should consume existing poison items or profession reagents and improve delivery: conceal a dose, stretch its duration at reduced strength, mix two weak toxins, or trigger a secondary distraction. They do not need a parallel poison catalog.

The caravan shops still sell ordinary throwing darts, whose item-owned throw <target> action remains live. cdip consumes a fresh Charlatan acid or elemental flask, or an existing prepared poison, to coat up to ten clean darts. The Rank 105 Liquid Assets scheme removes that limit. Acid darts can Sunder; fire, ice, lightning, and poison retain their own delivery effects. The pegasus-wing recipe, smoke packets, and special potion bottles remain retired.

Every loaded weapon has a drawback: noise, brittleness, self-exposure, a delayed crash, or a chance to mark the user. Unique gear remains off limits. The cloak is good at temporary, questionable improvements—not reputable craftsmanship.

loadweapon gives a carried, unwielded, non-unique weapon a temporary corrosive, razzled, oiled, silvered, flaming, frozen, poisoned, or shocking treatment. Dazzling opens at Contraband 1/Alchemy 50; corrosive, oiled, and poisoned at Contraband 2 with Alchemy 75/70/100; flaming and frozen at Contraband 3/Alchemy 100; silvered at Contraband 4, Alchemy 125, Smithing 50, and one Silver Bar; shocking at Contraband 4/Alchemy 150. Each has installer-side fine print. flash, oil, acid, and quicksilver remain parsing aliases. Corrosive consumes one fresh acid flask and lowers weapon class by one while giving strikes acid damage that can Sunder. Serration was removed.

Flaming strikes can leave a foe Burning, frozen strikes can leave one Chilled, and dazzling weapons have a very rare chance to steal a foe's train of thought. Sharpened gear can very rarely leave a foe Bleeding. Oiled weapons become markedly easier to place as soon as they are ready again.

stretchpoison opens at guild rank 3, Contraband 2, and Alchemy 100. It consumes an existing poison, smears a weaker but longer-lasting version onto a compatible weapon, preserves the poison's special nastiness, and poisons the installer. Fair is fair.

Sucker Punch

suckerpunch [foe] (alias spunch) is a baseline guild-rank-1 attack. It turns the Charlatan's weapon, physical talent, and Misdirection into one unfair melee hit. A foe already paralyzed or unable to concentrate leaves room for a much harder blow, making confuse and distract natural setup tools. At Misdirection 4, a second wielded weapon joins the pitch. This is still a close-range trick; confidence cannot punch across a room.

Distract

At guild rank 3 and Misdirection 2, distract throws the Charlatan's voice somewhere inconvenient and disrupts a foe's concentration. With deeper Misdirection, the mark may briefly forget whom they were fighting at all.

Live Commands