If your campaign decides to, your GM is able to register their campaign on Discord and use the bot there to keep track of PCs and Retainers, Skills, and Investments. Hopefully, this adds a little bit of fun to the traditional downtime between game sessions - Investments from cursed.bot also get synced on the interactive map at [map.cursed.land]. This means you can gather, craft, and sell goods to other campaigns than your own!
There are a handful of gathering professions in the first iteration of Cursed Land, each of which plays a fundamental role in the game's ecosystem. They provide a way for PCs to gain notoriety, participate in the economy and supply their comrades with powerful resources to aid adventuring.
All of the materials that are gathered by the professions below are used in a number of different ways - and each has its own link to the practice of the many schools of sorcery. Whether consumed directly by the sorceror or used as a ritual component, each object carries with it a level of risk and PCs found guilty of supplying goods for sorceromantic purposes will be punished harshly. Because each profession has a level of ambiguity and cultural significance in Carcosa however, each has been allowed to continue 'in the open'. Guild control over the trade and knowledge of their processing varies according to the origins and suspicion of the school practised - and some Districts take a more hardline approach to policing them.
Herbalist
Herbalists are able to identify and gather flora, using them to create tinctures, potions, and elixirs that have potent effects. There are different paths one can take for formal knowledge, which will yield different recipes; self-directed herbalists are known as hedge-doctors; and some herbalists choose instead to trade the plants they gather for easy money.
Metallurgist & Delver
Carcosa stands above rich veins of metal and stone, and for individuals brave enough to descend below the surface there are many powerful ingredients in both mineral, gem, and metal form. Delvers focus on gemstones and valuable stone, while Metallurgists specialise in metallic ores and vials created from them.
Scribe
Scribes are the least understood of the gatherers in Carcosa, and also the ones who put themselves in the most direct of dangers by venturing deep into the many forests around Wyrd. Harvesting special types of lumber and materials to make parchment, as well as mastering techniques to make pigments and inks.
Sometimes directly related to a gathering profession, crafters have a privileged place within Carcosan society. Each type of crafter typically studies for months or years to advance in their field, and the most skilled of them can live very comfortably, as well as reaching the heights of Influence.
Most forms of crafting have a Guild who oversees the dissemination of its 'mysteries', and some guard these secrets and techniques as a matter of life and death.
Tailor
Arnoursmith
Weaponsmith
Tinker
Whether its a lowly storefront sharpening blades or a top-of-the-line weaponsmith in The Aggreond, Investments are the brick and mortar locations that gatherers and crafters base their work out of. They represent a way to showcase wares, maintain contacts, hire and train apprentices and keep their stocks secure.
If a PC decides to undertake one of the professions detailled above, they will more than likely have to associate with an Investment by using Influence or invest in setting up and maintaining one of their own.
The types of Investments available to campaigns are as follows:
Laboratory
Artificer
Library
Provisioner
Brewery
Smithery
General Store
Apothecary
Mercenary Guild
Thieves' Guild
Market Stall
Research can either be undertaken by engaging an NPC with the specific knowledge and Lore you are looking to unlock, or by building a Library or Laboratory and hiring scholars and labourers there. Research can vary widely, but usually entails either the training of Retainers who will feed the campaign information and investigate mysterious relics they have uncovered, or a way to commit the Lore the campaign has found safely.
Different kinds of Lore are effectively 'stored' here, and over time the NPCs within will find uses for the knowledge gleaned, providing the campaign with items, information, or sorceries.
It is important to remember that different kinds of research will attract unwanted attention, and Laboratories and Libraries are also restricted to certain districts unless they are carfefully concealed from local powers.
Here follows a list of examples for the uses of Labs and Libraries by a PC-run campaign:
translating and decoding ancient documents
researching the function and capability of magical or enchanted items, enabling their safe use
recording current events in order to slowly influence the district's populace about an issue
combing through historical documents to discover secrets about the district
serving as public notaries, to collect information and cement the power of a trading cartel
researching and experimenting with technology to develop novel weapons or medicines
and finally, uncovering hitherto forgotten effects of natural substances