The Beggar's Ring

This is Marek’s story.

A body turns up in a town square, seemingly frozen to death. A beggar. Someone to forget. And most importantly: Someone whose body should be removed before the morning rush of merchants and important people arrive.

Marek Vale works in the city mortuary. He is 38 years old, and when he was young he stumbled into a career where he spends his days washing the dead, examining them, and writing out death certificates. All so that someone, somewhere, can lay claim to the corpse’s possessions, or deny his widow her pension, all depending on Marek’s reports.

The Mandate; the System that once each year auctions off Classes, Skills and property does not care about Marek or the beggar, but the city’s elite and noblemen care about the Mandate: It decides the worth of everything, even a man.

So when Marek is asked to quickly and discreetly process the beggar’s corpse, he is already reluctant to follow his superior’s instructions. When he begins to uncover mystery after mystery during his examination of the dead man, his journey into secrets that everyone; the rich, the powerful, the Mandate; would rather kept hidden, begins.

Hidden and sewn into the beggar’s skin, he finds a black ring that even the Mandate cannot identify. As he puts it on, his only skill is shattered. What rises up, is a Class that should not exist, showing him knowledge that nobody else has, showing him the real value of things.

And armed with his new skill, he enters the stage of political manoeuvring and legal wrangling in the city of Varenza. Families that have held power for centuries, outbidding each other in the yearly Auction year after year; grabbing every worthwhile Skill and Class, realise that the game has changed.

When Marek bids on lots that seem… worthless to them.