The Foundation - faction info

Blades in the Dark
1

I’ve just started running our first game and during crew creation they decided that the faction they had pissed off during the set up was the Foundation. Due mostly to the hidden location of their lair but we agreed that we would play to find out.

So before our next session I wanted to flesh out the foundation a little more as they don’t have their own entry.

The Foundation:
a powerful and ancient order of architects, civil engineers and builders.
Faction clock:
Recover six towers (12)
Feed the foundations (repeating - 6)
Turf:
The whole city, the deep below, the institution Hall, with their HQ being considered the City planning office and archives.
NPC: Lord T Fellford (Master architect - obsessive, moody) Lady Nina Stronhall (Crowsfoot district planning enforcement officer)
Notable assets:
Many Cohorts of master masons, architects, civil engineers, and labourers. A extensive library of old and arcane maps and records, including maps of spirit well.
Allies: City council, Ministry of preservation, Dimmer sisters, the circle of the flame.
Enemies: SparkWrights, lord Sculock, Spirit wardens.
Situation: The foundation survey the city watch for signs of subsidence these are the signs that city is being swallowed. Teams of divers must head down to the deep below and feed the very foundations and slow down the sinking. The six towers is nearly lost and a lot must be done to bring it back from the brink.
The increased influx of refugees and other is putting a strain on cities infrastructure, room must be found to accommodate and the lighting barriers mean that the city can’t expand out into the death land especially as the sparkwrights refuse to even discuss moving them.

8 Likes
2

Shudder.

Recover all of six towers or have a clock for each of the six towers they recover?

Love it. They look keen.

I have this vague idea of them having ghost keys to the ghosts of long dead buildings.

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Like the idea of ghost keys to long dead buildings, maybe with a type of ghost sight that’s attuned to the dead buildings.

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This is cool! I like what you’ve done with them.

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I’m also running a campaign where the Foundation is the main antagonist. Here’s some of the stuff I have come up with:

The Foundation is a secret society that might be pulling the strings behind almost anything that happens in Duskwall

Goals

  • To retain the status quo
  • To secure power and influence
  • To remain hidden and never get involved directly in the everyday quarrelling of the Doskvol Gangs
  • To keep foreign powers out of Doskvol (Iruvia, Tycheros), they’re very racist

There is an inner conflict in the Foundation between the disciples of the Church Of Ecstasy and those who seek power and knowledge in ancient spirits and artifacts (Path of Echoes)

Corruptions

  • Drive a news campaign to picture Tycherosi as dangerous, subversive devils.
  • Systematically hold down workers and suffocate efforts to unionize
  • Discrimination against Skovlan refugees, obscuring of precarious working situation in Lockport
  • Keep smaller noble houses from claiming influence in city council
    • Manipulate votes, Blackmailing, Push off unwanted persons to Ironhook (forge evidence, bribe magistrates)
  • Pull the strings and finance smaller criminal street gangs
    • Bluecoats, Dockers, Billhooks
  • Control some Ironhook blocks

Portents:

  1. Stir the Duskwall citizens to a witch hunt on Tycherosis / Skovlanders
  2. Gain sway over the imperial military / over the spirit wardens
  3. Gain sway over the lord governor

Organization

There is an inner circle (masters) and outer circle (journeymen)
They use secret code phrases and hand signs
Membership is secret to a certain degree. Meetings happen with masks and servants to serve as mouthpieces.
There are strict rules who gets to know whose identity. Nobody has the knowledge to rat out everyone else but nobody is untouchable, either.

Many of the first missions were about step by step uncovering identities up the chain of hierarchy. Later during the campaign came the revelation that killing individual members is like chopping off heads of a hydra, two grow back in its place. And long term will probably be about subverting the Foundation and destroying it from inside.

2 Likes
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Sounding very Masonic, nice.

I’m going for an accidental enemy, the crew don’t know why they’ve annoyed the Foundation but will start to find themselves walled in, metaphorically and possibly literally at times.

I’m thinking of consequences that mean their favoured canal or road is blocked for maintenance, places they frequent are condemned and must be demolished or are to be the sight of a new construction. Their HQ is right in the way of a new sewer.