In no-way-smooth CRIMINAL

CRIMINAL (#8/31, #189/365) [POT]

SKILL: 6

STAMINA : 5

ATTACKS: 1

WEAPON: See below

ARMOUR: None

DAMAGE MODIFIER: None

HABITAT: Towns, Towns (sewers), Dungeons, Ruins, Sea

NUMBER ENCOUNTERED: 1-2

TYPE: Humanoid

REACTION: See below

INTELLIGENCE: Average

Unless in a jail, prison, or an area of cell blocks, any CRIMINALS encountered will be escapees, currently free, desperate, and on the lam, running away from whoever imprisoned them in the first place. This means their reactions can be quite varied as the Criminal may be seeking aid to help them escape or silencing those they encounter to prevent a hue and cry being raised. Consequently, roll on the chart below for their initial reaction:

Roll Criminal Reaction

1 Friendly

2 Neutral

3 Unfriendly

4-6 Hostile

While the scores above can be used for all Criminals, at some point they did have a previous life, which will decide their background and skills. This can be determined by rolling on the appropriate terrain encounter table for their current location. However, their current circumstances will be quite different and the Criminal will usually be clad in tattered rags at best, with a weapon rolled for on the table below:

Roll Weapon Type

1 Club

2 Dagger

3 Blackjack

4 Chain

5 Needleknife

6 Ball and Chain (as per Morning Star)

In addition, a Criminal will have one item of gear, stashed or carried on their person. To determine what this is, roll three dice and consult the table below:

Roll Gear

3 a Throwing Knife

4 Lockpicks

5 Rope and grappling hook

6 half a bottle of Special Brew

7 a pouch of Smoking Weed and a Pipe

8 a Book, heavily annotated

9 Loaded Dice

10 a missing body-part (Roll: 1-2 Eye, 3-4 Hand, 5-6 Leg)

11 a Disease

12 a Skeleton Key

13 half a mouldy loaf of bread and an iron file

14 a Crowbar

15 a Pick Axe (as per War-Pick)

16 a Tunic of Holding (not worn)

17 a Treasure Map

18 a Shovel and a Sack

The general goal of any escaped Criminal is to flee the immediate area, and establish themselves somewhere else, far, far away. One of the more infamous criminals of recent times was 'Clubber' Tump, last seen working for the notorious crime lord Jay 'Fingers' Finch, head of the Surly Boys gang of Ludria (see Adventure Creation System, p. 258).

Perhaps the weirdest encountered Criminals upon the world of Titan are those found at sea, specifically in the vicinity of the Black Ocean and its associated atolls and cays; the Isles of the Dawn, Yotakami Island, the Shark Islands, the Arrowhead Archipelago, and so on. Here, particularly troublesome convicted Criminals are imprisoned within the inflated air-bladder of the noxious Shael-Beast (see Beyond the Pit, pp. 122-123, and Encyclopedia Arcana: Volume 1, p. 70), and then sent floating off across the waves, condemned for the rest of their short life to an existence within a foul-smelling spherical gaol. Such Criminals have been driven completely insane by their ordeal, and, even if freed, will react with outright hostility and attack whoever was foolish enough to release them from the air-bladder. Needless to say, unlike other encountered Criminals, they have no weapon or possessions at all, other than the stinking rotting clothes upon their backs, burnt and blistered from the sun, saltwater and stinking confines of their globular imprisonment.