CHAPTER 19: HIRELINGS & HENCHMEN
Adventuring parties are rarely alone.
They hire laborers to carry supplies, torchbearers to hold the light, and guards to watch the camp. They bring soldiers on dangerous contracts. They consult sages when the runes stop making sense. When a party makes a name for itself, people with their own ambitions attach themselves to it — henchmen who want to learn, advance, and eventually become something in their own right.
Understanding how these relationships work — what people cost, what they'll tolerate, when they leave — is part of running the game honestly. A party that treats its hired people as disposable tools discovers fairly quickly that the Known World talks, and that the next round of hiring is harder.
0-LEVEL CHARACTERS
Most people in the Known World are 0-level characters. They have professions, competencies, and practical skills that player characters often lack, but they don't accumulate class abilities through experience. A carpenter who has worked for twenty years is a very good carpenter, not a 6th-level fighter.
Their statistics when needed:
Ability scores range from 3–18, generated normally. Ancestry modifiers to ability scores don't apply, but ancestry modifiers to combat and AC do.
Skills are professional. A 0-level character is skilled in one weapon — usually the tool of their trade — and whatever their occupation requires. A smith knows metalwork. A soldier knows formations, maintenance, and how to obey orders under pressure. A farmer knows animals, land, and weather. These are practical competencies, not game mechanics, and the GM adjudicates them through the fiction rather than through dice except when genuine uncertainty exists.
Hit points vary by occupation:
| Profession | Hit Points |
|---|---|
| Manual labourer | 1d8 |
| Soldier | 1d8 + 1 |
| Craftsperson | 1d6 |
| Scholar | 1d3 |
| Invalid | 1d4 |
| Child | 1d2 |
| Teenager | 1d6 |
Attack Bonus for all 0-level characters: +0.
Saving throws use the base values for a 0-level character: Fortitude 16, Reflex 17, Will 19. These represent ordinary human resilience with no class training behind them.
EXPERT HIRELINGS
Expert hirelings are specialists — people whose particular skill is unusual enough that finding them requires work, and hiring them requires money proportionate to that rarity. They fall into four categories: assassins, spies, sages, and soldiers.
Assassins
An assassin is anyone willing to kill for payment. The term describes a willingness, not a formal guild membership.
In lawful settlements, hired killers are nearly impossible to find openly. In port cities, border towns, and places where the Cadman administration has generated enough resentment to sustain grey markets, they are available to those who know where to ask. No reputable one advertises.
Assassins target people, not creatures, and will not go on expeditions into dangerous territory. The cost is whatever the GM determines reflects the target's power, visibility, and the assassin's personal risk — modest for a minor functionary, considerable for anyone with bodyguards, exceptional for anyone the Church or Cadman are also trying to protect. Providing the assassin with useful intelligence, access tools, or equipment they would otherwise need to acquire themselves reduces cost. The negotiation is part of the transaction.
Success is a GM decision shaped by two considerations: whether success would shortcut something the adventure needs to deliver, and whether success without complications is honest. An assassination that goes exactly as planned is rarer than one that creates new problems. The city guard takes an interest. Someone connected to the target noticed the timing. The assassin gets nervous and talks to the wrong person. The party should account for these possibilities, and the GM should make them real.
The practical problem with hired assassins is that they have no loyalty beyond the contract, and often not even that far. A better offer, a threatening interrogation, a Cadman checkpoint with pointed questions — any of these can turn a hireling into a liability. The party bears responsibility for the outcomes of the people they hire.
Hired assassination is not a lawful act and generally not a good one. The Orchestra notices when companies become known for it.
Spies
A spy gathers information from within — by infiltrating an organisation, befriending its members, or maintaining a position inside it that provides access. Less morally absolute than assassination and considerably more common in a world with three major factions and constant political maneuvering.
Finding a reliable spy is harder than finding a useful one. In trade cities, in the Cadman-occupied regions of Norderenn, and in port towns where multiple factions intersect, people willing to sell information are plentiful. People who will stay bought, maintain a cover reliably, and not immediately sell the party's own plans to whoever seems stronger this week are much rarer.
A spy's fee reflects the task's duration, risk, and difficulty. Ongoing positions within dangerous organisations cost more than a single-incident intelligence gathering. The party is expected to cover the necessary expenses the spy incurs, and the spy will not use their own resources beyond what they quoted.
Even successful spying produces information that may be incomplete, filtered through the spy's understanding, or selectively true. A spy who doesn't know what they don't know gives the party what they have, not what they don't have. The GM should present intelligence gathered through spies as a perspective, not a briefing.
Captured spies talk. This is not cowardice, but the rational response to whoever is doing the capturing. The party should assume that anyone they hire for this work is a potential vector for exposure and plan accordingly.
Sages
Sages are professional scholars with deep expertise in a specific field. They are found in large settlements with institutional access — universities, monastery libraries, major temples, and administrative archives. Whether a sage with the needed expertise is available in any given location is uncertain; the GM may roll or determine by context.
Base availability chances by field, with notes on specific limitations:
| Field | Availability | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Alchemy | 10% | Can brew poisons and acids |
| Architecture | 5% | Usually specific race or culture |
| Art | 20% | Usually specific race or culture |
| Astrology | 10% | Navigation knowledge |
| Astronomy | 20% | Navigation knowledge |
| Botany | 25% | |
| Cartography | 10% | |
| Chemistry | 5% | Can brew poisons and acids |
| Cryptography | 5% | |
| Engineering | 30% | |
| Folklore | 25% | Specific race or region |
| Genealogy | 25% | Specific race or region |
| Geography | 10% | |
| Geology | 15% | Mining knowledge |
| Heraldry | 30% | |
| History | 30% | Specific race or region |
| Languages | 40% | Specific language |
| Law | 35% | |
| Mathematics | 20% | |
| Medicine | 10% | |
| Metaphysics | 5% | Specific plane |
| Meteorology | 20% | |
| Music | 30% | Specific race or culture |
| Myconology | 20% | Fungi |
| Oceanography | 15% | |
| Philosophy | 25% | Specific race or culture |
| Sociology | 40% | Specific race or region |
| Theology | 25% | Specific region |
| Zoology | 20% |
Consulting a sage. A sage's competency in their field is 14 + 1d6. The GM rolls 1d20; if the result equals or falls below the sage's competency, they know or can find the answer. A roll of 20 always produces false or misleading information delivered with complete confidence. The type of question affects this check:
| Question Type | Modifier |
|---|---|
| General ("what creatures live in this forest?") | None |
| Specific ("do Aelár live in this forest?") | −2 |
| Exact ("who leads the Aelár settlement here?") | −4 |
| Resource Availability | Modifier |
|---|---|
| Complete library access | None |
| Partial library access | −2 |
| No research materials | −6 |
| Sage is rushed | −4 |
Research takes time:
| Question Type | Time |
|---|---|
| General | 1d6 hours |
| Specific | 1d6 days |
| Exact | 3d10 days |
A sage requires access to an institutional library, university, or personal collection of at least 200 square metres with rare manuscripts worth at least 1,000 gp per volume. The party is expected to cover research costs — institutional access typically runs 100 gp per day. Rushing the sage shifts the time to the next lower category but applies the −4 rushed modifier.
The GM should use sage knowledge to serve the adventure, not to bypass it. A sage who knows the complete answer to a question that would skip three sessions of play is a sage who can provide useful partial answers while indicating that the definitive information requires a source they don't have access to here.
Soldiers
Soldiers are 0-level characters who will enter dangerous situations and fight. Unlike most other hirelings, soldiers participate in adventures rather than waiting at camp. They provide their own equipment and expect room, board, and prompt payment.
The Known World has no shortage of soldiers without employers. Fifteen years of Cadman occupation created veterans on multiple sides. The mercenary guild system trains new soldiers in its houses and serves as an intermediary — parties hiring through a guild house get vetted professionals, but pay the guild's premium and accept the guild's code of conduct.
Military types and monthly wages:
| Type | Monthly Wage | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Archer | 4 gp | Short bow, short sword, leather |
| Bowman, mounted | 4 gp | Light warhorse, short bow, leather |
| Cavalry, light | 4 gp | Light warhorse, javelins, padded |
| Crossbowman, light | 2 gp | Unarmoured, light crossbow |
| Footman, militia | 5 sp | Conscript quality, minimal equipment |
| Footman, light | 1 gp | Trained but inexperienced |
| Footman, heavy | 2 gp | Chain mail or better |
| Sapper | 1 gp | Siege support, field labour |
| Shield bearer | 5 sp | Cover for archers |
| Crossbowman, heavy | 3 gp | Chain mail, siege use |
| Crossbowman, mounted | 4 gp | Light warhorse, light crossbow |
| Cavalry, medium | 6 gp | Light warhorse, lance, scale or banded |
| Marine | 3 gp | Shipboard heavy infantry |
| Cavalry, heavy | 10 gp | Heavy warhorse, full barding, plate |
| Artillerist | 4 gp | Siege weapon specialists, rarely armed |
| Engineer | 150 gp | Supervises sieges, construction; does not fight |
Soldiers will not work for employers with reputations for getting their hired people killed through recklessness. Word travels through the guild houses and veteran communities. A party that returns from three consecutive contracts, having lost two-thirds of their soldiers, will find that the next round of hiring is considerably more expensive, or not available at those guilds at all.
FINDING AND HIRING
Common hirelings — labourers, craftspeople, servants, local guides — are the easiest to acquire and the most dependent on local conditions. In Cadman-controlled territory, common workers may effectively belong to a local administrator who levies a tax on outside employers or refuses the arrangement outright. Depopulating a district's labour pool or creating a shortage creates enemies among whoever governed those workers. Even the kindest local rulers notice when their economy is disrupted.
Skilled craftspeople and trained soldiers require more specific searching. Mercenary guild houses are the primary source for soldiers; craft guilds and professional associations for skilled workers. Both have standards, procedures, and fees beyond the soldier's or worker's own wage.
Spies, assassins, and sages require either the right connections or the willingness to ask questions in the right places — which may itself generate complications. These are not people who keep public offices.
Wages do not include room, board, or travel expenses. Hirelings expect accommodation and food equivalent to what they're accustomed to, funded by the party. They may demand higher base wages if they know or can determine that the party has a history of poor outcomes for its employees.
Common wages:
| Profession | Weekly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Labourer | 2 sp | 1 gp |
| Groom | 5 sp | 2 gp |
| Stonemason | 1 gp | 4 gp |
| Carpenter | 1 gp | 5 gp |
| Clerk | 2 gp | 8 gp |
| Huntsman | 2 gp | 10 gp |
| Architect | 50 gp | 200 gp |
| Ambassador or official | 50–150 gp | 200–600 gp |
HENCHMEN
Henchmen are levelled NPCs who have attached themselves to the party. They participate in adventures, gain experience, and develop as characters rather than remaining static. The relationship is closer to a partnership than employment, with all the complexity that implies.
Henchmen receive half the XP that player characters do for events they participate in. They advance through levels at this reduced rate. They receive an equal share of treasure, which they manage themselves — henchmen don't surrender their share to the party, don't give out their own resources except when necessary, and do not take blame for things they didn't do.
Starting level. A henchman should always be at least one level below the PC they have attached themselves to. If, through adventure and advancement, a henchman reaches the PC's level, they leave — not in anger, but because they have reached the point where they can seek their own fortune rather than travelling in someone else's wake. The GM regains control at this point. The henchman may return later as a significant NPC, become a contact, or reappear as a complication.
The relationship. A henchman has chosen to work with a specific party because of a specific reason — shared goal, respect for the company's capabilities, personal loyalty to one member, desperation or ambition or both. The GM and the party should know why this particular person is here. A henchman without a reason is just a spare character sheet.
The GM maintains the right to dictate what a henchman will and will not do when the player controlling them acts contrary to the character's established personality, alignment, or interests. A henchman is not a puppet with a character sheet — they have a mind. If a player abuses this or consistently plays the henchman out of character, the GM should step in: the henchman reacts, leaves, or does what they would actually do in that situation. A henchman whose friend is captured or killed will attempt a rescue or raise before doing anything else.
Becoming a player character. If a henchman relationship develops to the point where the henchman and the party member they're attached to regard each other as genuine allies, the GM can offer the player the option of taking over the henchman as a permanent PC. The GM hands over the character sheet and any relevant information, though some things — personal secrets, hidden loyalties, past the character hasn't disclosed — may remain in the GM's hands for future use. This should feel like a natural development from the relationship that has existed, not a mechanical option offered arbitrarily. The henchman still counts toward the PC's limit permanently, even if the henchman subsequently dies.
Limits. A PC can have a number of henchmen equal to their Charisma reaction modifier's upper bound, as determined by Chapter 1. The exact limit varies by Charisma score; consult the Charisma table. A PC who exceeds this limit will find that their henchmen become less reliable and may eventually leave or turn on each other — the party has exceeded the social infrastructure that one person can maintain.
MORALE
Henchmen and hirelings are not suicidal. They have their own interests, their own fears, and their own assessments of when a situation has turned from dangerous to untenable. Morale determines whether they hold.
Base morale: 15 for henchmen, 12 for hirelings. The GM checks morale when conditions warrant — a companion falls in combat, the party is clearly losing a fight, an order seems likely to result in the hireling's death without tactical reason, payment is overdue, or the employer has done something that significantly changes the terms the hireling signed on under.
The GM rolls 2d10. If the result equals or falls below the morale score, the NPC holds. If not, they falter — leaving, refusing orders, or breaking, depending on the situation and the NPC's character.
Permanent morale modifiers:
| Factor | Modifier |
|---|---|
| NPC is lawful | +1 |
| NPC is good | +1 |
| NPC is evil | −1 |
| NPC is chaotic | −1 |
| NPC is of a different ancestry than their employer | −1 |
| NPC has been with the party for one year or more | +2 |
Situational modifiers (applied for the duration of the situation, not permanently):
| Factor | Modifier |
|---|---|
| Party is clearly winning the engagement | +2 |
| Employer's Charisma is 16 or higher | +1 |
| Employer's Charisma is 6 or lower | −1 |
| More than half the party's allies have fallen | −2 |
| NPC's pay is overdue | −2 per overdue period |
| The party has kept promises and treated the NPC fairly | +1 to +3 |
| The party has broken promises or mistreated the NPC | −2 to −4 |
| NPC is fighting creatures they have a specific fear of | −2 |
| The NPC is facing something clearly outside what they were hired to do | −2 |
Morale failure doesn't always mean running. A henchman who fails a morale check might argue against an order, refuse a specific action, delay until reassured, or — in extreme cases — attempt to retreat. A hireling who fails might simply stop and refuse to go further, or might break entirely. The GM plays the reaction from the NPC's perspective, shaped by the character. A loyal soldier who has been with the party for two years, failing a morale check in a desperate battle, is different from a newly hired guard failing one at the first sign of trouble.
Morale scores can be rebuilt. Consistent fair treatment, keeping promises, and genuine respect from the employer all push morale back up over time. A party that understands this relationship produces hirelings who will hold when things get bad; a party that treats its people as expendable produces hirelings who are already planning their exit.
HIRING SPELLCASTERS
When the party needs a spell cast, and no one in the party can cast it, the option is to find a spellcaster willing to do it for money.
Wizards are found throughout the Known World — hedge wizards in isolated communities, court wizards in administrative centres, Magic Bloc-affiliated casters in the Inner Nations, private practitioners who work for whoever can afford their rates. Finding them requires knowing where to look; the relevant guild networks and the Merchant Council can sometimes facilitate introductions.
Priests are more constrained. Neutral-aligned priests will generally accept monetary compensation. Good or evil priests are typically selective about who they serve and may refuse outright on alignment grounds. Priests serving specific faiths often require both payment and evidence that the service aligns with their deity's interests — which, in the Known World's theological landscape, is complicated terrain before Book II establishes the full theology.
The costs below are reference prices. GMs should adjust for the caster's actual level, their disposition toward the party, and local market conditions. A healing spell in a city with three competing temples costs less than the same spell in a remote garrison with one resentful cleric.
Spell service costs (reference):
| Service | Minimum Cost |
|---|---|
| Augury | 200 gp |
| Comprehend Languages | 50 gp |
| Continual Light | 1,000 gp |
| Cure Light Wounds | 10 gp per HP |
| Cure Serious Wounds | 20 gp per HP |
| Cure Critical Wounds | 40 gp per HP |
| Cure Blindness | 500 gp |
| Cure Disease | 10 gp per HP (equivalent) |
| Detection spells (any) | 100 gp |
| Dispel Magic | 100 gp per caster level |
| Divination | 500 gp |
| ESP | 500 gp |
| Explosive Runes | 1,000 gp |
| Find the Path | 1,000 gp |
| Fire Trap | 500 gp |
| Glyph of Warding | 100 gp per caster level |
| Heal | 50 gp per HP |
| Identify (per function) | 1,000 gp |
| Invisibility | 500 gp |
| Legend Lore | 1,000 gp |
| Magic Mouth | 300 gp |
| Neutralize Poison | 100 gp |
| Protection from Evil | 20 gp per caster level |
| Read Magic | 200 gp |
| Remove Curse | 100 gp per caster level |
| Slow Poison | 50 gp |
| Speak with Dead | 100 gp per caster level |
| Suggestion | 600 gp |
| Symbol | 1,000 gp per caster level |
| Tongues | 100 gp |
| Wizard Lock | 50 gp per caster level |
| Astral Spell | 2,000 gp per person |
| Charm | 1,000 gp |
| Clairvoyance | 50 gp per caster level |
| Control Weather | 20,000 gp |
| Enchant an Item | 20,000 gp plus other spell costs |
| Invisible Stalker | 5,000 gp |
| Limited Wish | 20,000 gp + significant service |
| Mass Charm | 5,000 gp |
| Permanency | 20,000 gp + significant service |
| Regenerate | 20,000 gp |
| Teleport | 2,000 gp per person |
| Wish | 50,000 gp + significant service |
The costs marked with "significant service" reflect that no amount of gold compensates a spellcaster for aging or permanent ability score loss. The party will be expected to contribute something that matters — an artefact, a major favour, a debt of service — in addition to the listed fee. Spells that require faith-specific access or alignment compatibility (Atonement, Commune, Gate, Plane Shift, Prayer, Raise Dead, Reincarnate, Restoration) are available only to those of like faith or alignment, and payment may still be required even then.
A wizard will also, for a price, copy a spell into a party member's spellbook or explain a scroll's contents. The price for copying is approximately 50 gp per page of the spell in the spellbook, plus the caster's normal day rate for the time the work requires. A scroll that a wizard can read and explain doesn't have a standard price — negotiate.