08/27/2026
Another sneak preview from our upcoming product Quad World™: one of the secret societies, known as "The Sucessionists":
SUCCESSIONISTS
One of the oldest secret societies in Quad World, the Successionists seek out and recruit anyone who has the moral flexibility and wetwork skills to carry out succession plans—a euphemism for assassination. While forcible retirement is most often imposed on political figures, the Successionists have been hired to deal with estranged spouses, impatient heirs, and vengeful merchants who feel they were wronged in a trade deal.
The Successionsts do not make their business offices public, but often set up an offertory (small curtained booths) near a central monument of some kind; these booths never have any writing or signage on them and could be mistaken for a public lavatory; in fact, some of them are (where civilization has perfected plumbing). Those wishing their services will enter the booth and drop a note stating the name of their target and what they are willing to pay for the service in a locked box. At various unpredictable times, a messenger will enter the offertory and pick up the requests.
If the Successionists decline the offer, they will drop a white pebble at the doorway of the person making the request. It is acceptable for such a person to return to the offertory and make a higher offer, which again may or may not be accepted.
Once the Successionists have accepted an offer, a black pebble is dropped in front of the offerant's doorway. The offerant will then pick up the pebble and place it with the payment in a bag or sack under their bed or other place of repose and leave it there. Every night the offerant will look under their bed, and when the bag is gone, they know the job is complete.
No outsider knows how the Successionists decide which jobs to take, or why. Certainly the society members are aware that some offerants will attempt to game the system in various ways, such as leaving counterfeit coins or nothing at all in the payment bags, or trying to hurriedly remove the bag once news of an assassination is bruited about town. Such offerants are always killed or worse if they attempt such tactics.
Other people may promise payments they know they cannot make, out of a sense of vengeance, on the theory that if they take down their mortal enemy, it’s worth giving up their own life in exchange. The Successionists tamp down this tactic by making it known that there are worse fates than death that await those who fail to keep their end of the bargain, and that research into the financial resources of the offerant is part of their methodology before delivering a black pebble. Some of these worse fates include slavery to the demons of The Underworld or “life” as curios in the museum of the sacculi or other maleveolent entities in The Unknown.
It is possible to avoid the Successionists, but not simple. Leaving town, changing one’s name or appearance, and hiring guards have all been attempted with very limited success. If a victim knows who may have put the hit out on them, they can attempt to pre-empt it by hiring the Successionists themselves; it is often thought that the Successionists will only honor the last and highest bid in a bidding war like this. The Successionists do not share their decision making processes and so this is only a theory, albeit a popular one.
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