A heist where the plan is allowed to fail
You retired for good reasons and you are back for worse ones. The vault has never been taken, the crew have all worked with you before, and at least one of them is going to be a problem.
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No account, no card, nothing to install. The world's lore is already built, so it starts in seconds.
A heist is only fun if the plan can come apart
A plain chatbot lets every step of the plan work, because agreeing is the obliging thing to do. Here each attempt is judged on what your character can actually do and on what the vault actually is, so the good half of a heist — improvising after something breaks — can happen at all.
The world
The Vermillion Vault has never been breached in two hundred years. A dying patron offers a master thief a fortune to be the first—and a reason that has nothing to do with the money.
The city of Marranza runs on old money and older secrets, its fortunes locked behind the legendary Vermillion Vault. The underworld is a guild of specialists, the aristocracy is rotten to its gilt core, and the perfect score is as much art as crime.
Who is in it
- The Thieves' Consortium
- the guild that licenses and limits every major job in the city.
- House Vermillion
- the ancient banking dynasty that owns the impregnable vault.
- The Iron Watch
- Marranza's incorruptible (and well-armed) private security force.
Where you go
- The Vermillion Vault
- a fortress-bank that has never once been successfully robbed.
- The Underguild
- the hidden warren where the city's thieves plan and trade.
- The Gilt Quarter
- the aristocratic district where the marks throw their parties.
What already happened
- The Tarnov Job
- the legendary heist that first made the master thief's name.
- The Vault's Last Breach Attempt
- a famous failure that killed an entire crew.
Who you can play
-
Lena 'Quiethands' Marek Master thief
A precise, retired legend who knows that the perfect score is the one you don't take.
At the start: out of the game, in debt, and out of excuses.
-
Dex The inside man
A glib, nervy insider gambling everything on a crew he just met.
At the start: the crew's eyes inside the unrobbable vault.
Or write your own character — the setup form takes a name, a background and what you are good at, and the game master works from that instead.
How a turn works
- You say what your character does, in your own words.
- What you attempted is weighed against your character sheet and the state of the scene — and the outcome is settled before the scene is written, so the part telling the story does not get to decide that you succeeded.
- The game master narrates what happened, grounded in the world's own characters, factions and places, and remembers it for the rest of the run.
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