Source as Architecture

AX.GHW.14.03.06

Contract Source as Campaign Architecture. Here are three modes, in order of involvement:

Mode 1 - Background Element

The contract source exists. The mechanics function. The source never appears in the fiction in any active way. The contract is flavor.

Use this when: The campaign already has enough threads. The player wants the lineage's mechanical identity without the relationship complexity. The game's tone doesn't support an active cosmic relationship as a character thread.

How to run it: The Strained state's texture is as far as source presence goes. Minor obligations surface in background flavor (the Shadow-Bound Marked's dreams have a quality of cold attention; the Light-Bound Marked has instincts in certain situations that feel like more than their own) but don't generate mechanical events or required actions. The source is as present as gravity — real, functioning, not a character.

Mode 2 - Recurring Pressure

The contract source surfaces periodically. Obligations come due. The Marked's tradition use occasionally generates visible responses.

Use this when: The Marked player wants their lineage to have ongoing narrative weight without the source dominating their story. The game benefits from the Marked having a relationship they didn't ask for that makes demands at inopportune moments.

How to run it: Treat the source like a recurring presence with its own agenda and its own calendar. Every 3–5 sessions, one obligation surfaces: an intermediary appears, a coincidence arrives with timing that can't be ignored, a backlash effect delivers direct communication. The obligation is always achievable, often inconvenient, and frequently connected to what the party is already doing. The source doesn't interrupt the campaign; it inflects it.

The Marked player should feel like they have a second set of demands that they are constantly balancing against the party's priorities. Not overwhelmingly, but consistently. It should occasionally create a decision where what the source wants and what the party needs are not fully compatible.

Mode 3 - Active Participant

The contract source is a faction. They have agendas, issue demands, send representatives, respond to the Marked's choices. Their involvement escalates and recedes based on what's happening in the campaign.

Use this when: The Marked player wants the contract to be a core character thread. The campaign's arc has room for the source as a player in its political landscape. You are running a Conspiracy Arc or Apocalypse Now and want the Marked's lineage to be load-bearing to the arc's structure.

How to run it: Treat the source the same way you treat a major NPC faction with standing in the hidden world. They have limited information, real objectives, resources they can deploy, and constraints on what they can and cannot do. They are not omnipotent. They are not always watching. They respond to what happens, not just to what the Marked does directly.

The source as Active Participant plugs into the Conspiracy Arc structure as the origin of a significant piece of information the characters are trying to find, or as the party that has been concealing something with real reasons for concealment, or as an unexpected ally whose interests align with uncovering the arc's underlying truth. In an Apocalypse Now arc, the source's involvement in the crisis — whether they caused it, know more about it than anyone else, or are among the things the crisis threatens — gives the Marked a personal stake the other characters don't share.

Source endgame: For Mode 3 campaigns, decide before Session One what the source's endgame is. Not the full terms — those can emerge through play — but what the source ultimately wants from this bloodline in this campaign. It can be simple: returns on a specific investment, fulfillment of the original compact's purpose, the covenant's purpose finally arriving. It should be specific enough that when the campaign reaches its final arc, the source's endgame is something the characters can confront, negotiate with, or redirect — not just a vast abstraction to be escaped.