Hi,

We're about to play the At The Edge campaign and I was hoping people could suggest some good ideas for the Delight of Avidity challenge. I don't want to just pick regular items from the books but I'm not crazy about their their suggestions either. Like "the colour colour their eyes", what do I do with that? I like the fact that what is being wagered are things valued in Infamy rather than valued in terms of rarity, so that is interesting.

All suggestions welcome! Thanks.

The sort of things 'sold' or 'wagered' in a chaos setting can be quite...err...obscure. And usually painful to acquire/lose.

For example - the colour of your eyes, at that exact moment, is unique. A rival heretic might take a liking to it. Alright, it might be next to identical to the guy next to you in terms of a 256 colour chart, but we're dealing with followers of the Prince of Excess here; the tiniest drop of grey in an ocean of blue creates something easily distinguished and preciously 'new'.

Of course, if you 'lose', then the winner is going to want that colour. Which would most easily be achieved by flensing off the top few layers of your cornea and iris, so he has that colour to recreate later. Of course, it will be agonising to remove and leave you blind in that eye for the rest of the adventure (at least!), but you didn't have to wager it.

"Infamy items" are essentially things that make you you; losing them essentially diminishes you in terms of either your reputation or literally your identity. For example, one might wager the memory of a killing strike in a particularly infamous duel. Which, whilst the heretic might then remember the duel, and know he won it, he won't actually ever remember the moment of victory again. Which is quite harsh, when you think about it.

Trophies are a good one, if the heretic is someone in the habit of taking them.

Alternatively, an owed debt is an easy one. But - this being chaos - don't make it that simple. The next time they see the person whose debt has been 'sold on' - they don't even recognise the heretics; neither they nor anyone in the vicinity believes they have ever met. Which could cause all sorts of problems.

For that matter, given the function of Infamy points (or at least one of them), you might even wager "a piece of your luck" - if losing will cost you enough infamy to lose a re-roll...What physical form this takes - a drop of blood, or a shard of armour, or whatever - is of course up to you.

Thanks for the feedback. Gives me some good perspective on the challenge.

The key thing for describing items used for barter in the vortex is that they fall into two categories.

One is the mundane - food, ammunition, raw materials, slaves, etc.

The other is the 'interesting' - and, since the laws of physics and sanity can go hang, feel free to make sure they're really, really out there.

Souls of someone never born, or daemon's blood, or the captured last breath of a blind priest, or...or...oh, I dunno. Either drink about a tin and a half of paint thinners or start reading through Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series. Both are about equivalent, and are usually good for inspiration for a chaos setting.