Secretarian (Rank 1)

A secretarian’s focus is on people — and all the potential value that might be wrung out of them. Every person met outside a franchise is a potential customer to a secretarian, who does whatever they can to bring that relationship to fulfillment. A secretarian seeks always to promote their franchise and gain greater value than they give. They have the skills to negotiate with subemployees, temporary hirelings, seasonal staff, and other humanoid (usually) resources. When staff members have problems, the secretarian is the one who patiently listens (or at least pretends to) until everything calms down.

As a secretarian, you are respected for having the fortitude to listen to both customers and coworkers without going insane. You help advance your franchise by keeping staff happy (enough), hiring competent (enough) workers, coming up with slogans and catchphrases, launching marketing schemes, and getting jingles and slogans stuck in customer’s heads. And while your superiors don’t officially condone undermining the branding efforts of other organizations, no one can argue with the effectiveness of that approach.

Essential Functions: Extract information; assess the strengths and weaknesses of others

Position Proficiency: In addition to the proficiencies noted below, you can add your proficiency bonus to an ability check to convince a suspicious crowd of your good (or at least non-evil) intentions, encourage franchise hirelings to work faster, or improvise a jingle extolling the virtues of your franchise.

The Secretarian

Proficiencies and Starting Equipment

As a rank 1 secretarian, you gain proficiency with one of the following of your choice: gaming set, musical instrument, or disguise kit.

Head office also grants you the use of a tool kit for your chosen proficiency, a collection of sales brochures, a set of business cards, a metal bell, and a set of fine clothes.

Sending Stone

Also at rank 1, you are given use of an Acquisitions Incorporated sending stone, an uncommon magic item that resembles a gemstone in a bold setting. It functions like a normal sending stone, except that it has no matching stone and allows communication with Head Office, specific secretarians you know, and the secretarian nearest your location. You must succeed on a DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) check to establish contact. Once the stone is successfully used, it can’t be used again until the next dawn.

Making contact with another secretarian assumes that they are in possession of their own sending stone.