Logistics (sage study)

Logistics is a sage study in the fields of Leadership and Reality, describing the military discipline of planning and carrying out the movement, supply and maintenance of humanoids while engaged in practical work in the natural environment. Therefore, presuming no ordinary means exist for providing the necessities of food, clothing, equipment and shelter, logistics provides skills that allow for the self-sufficiency of persons who are separated from these things.

The study is intrinsically pragmatic and methodological, rather than philosophical. In application, it includes policies, such as looting and demolition, requires a considerable compromise of ethics. Through foraging for food and fodder, materials for use and the means of transporting these things, those with logistics must beg, borrow or steal, destroying what's available in order to make use of it in matters of survival and war. Houses are destroyed to build fortifications, wagons and carts are stolen to haul goods, animals are stolen for work or for food, even persons are seized and forced to serve in varying capacities as needed. In peacetime, some of these things are deserving of recompense; though often the form of pay is decided by the party in need, who may simply move on without ever facing consequences. In times of war, with hundreds or thousands of soldiers involved, there is rarely any hope of compensation.

The number of available sage abilities are numerous and practical; most are things that, in most official game systems, parties are assumed to be able to do. The codification of these skills is meant to indicate that without the ability, these things cannot be performed by just any player character.

Sage Abilities

The sage abilities below are those acquired by a character through the study, according to status.

Amateur Status

• Bargaining: provides skill at negotiating prices with the seller of goods, in order to obtain a better deal on a transaction.

• Butchering: gives skill at slaughtering, dressing and preserving meat from livestock, game and fish.

• Dowse for Water: a type of divination employed in locating ground water.

• Foraging: improved ability to find vegetables, roots, fruits and nuts in a wilderness environment.

• Herding: provides skill at gathering animals together and moving them from place to place, with skill at mustering.

• Steadfast: devotion and faithfulness to a cause, enabling the character to exceed at ordinary tasks.

• Teamstering: provides skill at the employment of common domestic farm animals as beasts of burden, plow teams or as animals to pull carts, wagons and carriages.

• Tinkering: gives skill at repairing or strengthening ordinary items.

Authority Status

• Bartering: enables an even exchange of goods within a given market archetype.

• Boathandler: allows the character to function as a river pilot, with skill derived from a familiarity with such environments.

• Construct Bivouac: gives knowledge on how to build a wooden frame shelter within hours.

• Hunting: enables tracking and killing small game in order to provide a food supply.

• Riverman: able to function as a river pilot, with skill derived from familiarity with rivers.

• Supply Raiding: helps locate and obtain bulk goods that can be carried away without cost.

• Scrounging: helps locate items and materials that cannot be ordinarily found on an equipment list.

See also,
Fighter Sage Abilities
Illusionist Sage Abilities
Paladin Sage Abilities