Burglary (sage study)

Burglary is a sage study in the field of Theft, involving the art of planning, executing and resolving a burglary, a three-step process that requires skills relating to discovery, observance, breaking and entering, appraisal and the purchase and sale of stolen property.

Burglars are those who use their intellectual understanding of architecture and people in order to enrich themselves. They are often better able to understand a person’s home than the dweller does. Burglars don’t need doors; they’ll make a hole in a wall or cut down through a ceiling. They’ll unpeel a building from the inside out to hide between walls, underneath the floorboards or up in the trusses. They'll break into one home, just so they can break through inside walls to reach their target.  Burglars are the dark wizards of building spaces.

If two rooms aren't connected now, they soon will be. If there is no route from one building to another, a burglar will find a way. Of course, they must always be careful not to get stuck in an attic, or trip and plummet through a plaster ceiling — or accidently set fire to the very place they’re trying to enter. It's happened.

Sage Abilities

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

Amateur Status

• Appraisal I: discern subjective value of gems, metal goods, artworks and other items of worth.

• Break & Enter: enables the character to break and remove doors or windows in order to pass through.

• Case Building: assess the interior layout and social strata of a building, its residents and things related.

• Detect Concealed Doors: enables the location of concealed doors.

• Lookout: acts as a front to distract attention from a burglary or other ongoing crime.

Authority Status

• Bogeyman: gives means for the character to peel or slice his or her way into a building, cutting a makeshift excavation between the floors and walls to create a nest of tunnels from which household objects can be disappeared.

• Detect Secret Door: enables the location of a mechanism or seal that permits the location of a secret door.

• Locate Fence: provides understanding of the secret signs and sigils that indicate the presence of a reliable fence, whose aid can be obtained in getting rid of stolen goods. Similar signs help burglars find locations where loot can be hidden until a better time comes for "moving" it.

• Obtain Records: the character has made relationships with individuals who are able to retrieve the architectural plans of official buildings that are kept as records in guild and town halls.

• Tradecraft: granting one trade ability to the burglar, gained from time spent studying buildings and their construction. The character chooses from carpentry, excavation, brickwork, masonry, tilework or thatching.

Expert Status

• Appraisal II: describes details of an object's liquid value, the price it's likely to obtain through different methods of sale, it's method of construction and the materials used. With some artisanal articles, the character may be able to detect it's place of origin or even it's maker; this may allow the character to detect the object's Halo effect.

• Lurk: having snaked his or her way into a building, enables the capability of dwelling there for weeks at a time without drawing attention or being discovered.

• Sketch from Memory: enables the character to reproduce from memory any drawing, plan or design, either from paper or from personal experience, of a three-dimensional structure, so that others may use that information to burgle themselves.

• Squeeze: allows movement through a hole no larger than a space of 5 inches, +1 inch for each 20 lbs. the character weighs.

Sage Status

• Evaporate: if the character has time to press his or her body against a non-stone or metal surface for 5-8 combat rounds, the character is able to simply fade from one side to the other.

• Hammerspace: a location utterly impossible to locate, hiding around the character's own body, inside coats, closets, behind corners, posts and slender trees — wherever the character needs it to be — from which the character is able to produce weapons, poles, belt pouches full of coins, a burning lantern or torch, magic items ... or any other object can be comfortably carried in one hand. This can taken from or returned to hammerspace at the cost of one action point. The character may keep up to four objects in hammerspace.

See Thief Sage Abilities