■ Background · No. 08Disposition · True Believer (?)Origin · Core
Surveyor Class · Personnel
Field Reference · Backgrounds · No. 08

The Smiling Functionary

Leans toward voice and mind.

Disposition
True Believer (?)
Origin
Core
Tier mod
+1 voice · −1 body

You're not really a cartographer. You're a liaison. You handle paperwork, manage relationships with frontier officials, smooth over diplomatic incidents, write the official reports. Your colleagues are field assets; you are the one who ensures their reports reach the right desks, that their incident logs are properly classified, that the locals who lost livestock to the survey team are appropriately compensated. You are cheerful. You are organized. You are professional. You are almost certainly hiding something — even from yourself.

Tier modifier

+1 Voice, −1 Body. You're a desk professional. Physical confrontation has not been part of your career path. Your shoes are not the kind made for running.

Perk · Authorized Access

You have a depth of institutional access most surveyors lack. Once per session, you may declare you have an existing Solace contact, authorization, or document that resolves an immediate logistical problem — you know the right person to call, you have the form that grants access, you can vouch for the team in this office, you've met this official before. The GM works the access into the fiction; the immediate obstacle dissolves.

Use carefully — every use deepens your entanglement with Solace.

Signature item options

3 options
  1. Opt 01An immaculately maintained Solace-issue tablet, full of forms, contacts, and authorizations
  2. Opt 02A bag of small gifts and tokens for diplomatic exchange — quality pens, branded keychains, sealed bottles, locally-appropriate offerings
  3. Opt 03A notebook of contact protocols for every faction Solace has dealt with on the Frontier, including some who don't appear in any official directory

Hooks

4 prompts
  1. H01I want to be promoted to a position where I can actually change something.
  2. H02I want to find out whose desk my reports really land on, and what they do with them.
  3. H03I want to maintain the cheerful surface no matter what the field shows me.
  4. H04I want to discover whether the procedures I've believed in are real.
End of entry · Background No. 08 · Filed by Surveyor Class Personnel