Scholarship

Scholarship is a character's “book learning” knowledge that does not fall under Performance or Lore. The main use of this skill is to answer questions concerning history, language, culture, and literature. There is some overlap with other knowledge skills and when in doubt allow the character to use their highest skill.

Failing an initial scholarship roll, the character can go into a library to do further research. The most difficult question a library can answer is equal to its quality. Each margin of failure requires a step on the Time Increment Table with a starting time of half an hour to find the answer.

The Story Teller can use the character with scholarship to impart information to the group. Typically this is done with either the character with the highest skill or a character that has a supporting aspect. False or misleading information should result in a Fate Point given.

A player can use their Scholarship skill to make minor declarations to fill in story details not explicitly given. The Story Teller can veto any detail too sweeping, contradictory, silly or difficult to work into the story. If the Story Teller agrees then the player can roll to successfully make a declaration. Failure could result in a “Mistaken” temporary aspect placed upon the character allowing a future compel against this wrong information.

A character can speak one language, not counting his native tongue, for each point of Scholarship above Mediocre(+0). These languages do not need to be applied beforehand, but once declared they do not change.

To plant bad information the player decides the general question they wish to obscure and must have access to the library the target will use for their research. They set up a block on the library using Scholarship modified by Deceit against that information. If anyone using that library overcomes the block they will uncover the false information and recognizes it for what it is. The block is only removed by overcoming it.