Under the Forever Night, death is a business transaction, and the Ebon Court keeps the ledgers. When you make an enemy worth keeping — an enforcer who took your face, a Duster captain who burned your crew's hideout, a vampire who turned someone you loved — you do not cross them off a list. You write them into your Grudge Ledger, because under this city's sky they will be back. Changed. Angrier. Promoted.
This is the Vendetta System: the art of making an enemy for life.
Your Grudge Ledger
Each vendetta lives on one card — on paper at the table, or in the Vendetta Profile on your character sheet. The card holds everything you know about the person trying to end you:
- Name & Title — Valerius the Red. Captain Drago. The Nightingale of the Ninth Ledger.
- Current Rank — where they stand in the Court's order, from Grunt to Boss.
- Intensity — the Vendetta Clock, from 1 to 6. How hot this grudge burns right now.
- Defeats — how many times you have dropped them to 0 HP. Remember: dropping is not killing.
- Returns — how many times they have come back from the brink. Each return usually adds an adaptation.
- The Grudge — one line of why this is personal. "He gutted my mentor at the Iron Ossuary. I put a crossbow bolt through his throat."
- The Grudge Moment — the instant it became personal. The scene you can still feel. "The Ossuary, Third Bell, his knife already wet."
- Strengths — what to plan around: Explodes when killed. Immune to poison. Frenzies when bloodied.
- Weaknesses — the cracks you can still exploit: Paralyzed by silver. Weeps at holy names. Fears the light of the sun he has never seen.
- Adaptations — how the city has rebuilt them between returns: Lower jaw replaced with Inferno-forged steel. Burns across the chest from the night we escaped.
- Status — Active while the grudge lives, Closed when it is truly settled.
The Court ranks its hunters like debts owed:
| Rank | What it means |
|---|
| Tier 1 — Grunt | Disposable. One of a dozen with a ledger and a blade. |
| Tier 2 — Enforcer | Known. Has a name the streets whisper and a squad to back it. |
| Tier 3 — Favored | Funded. The Court spends blood and coin keeping them alive and angry. |
| Tier 4 — Boss | Personal. A rival Dracula himself has noticed — the most dangerous thing in the city you can call yours. |
Grudge Moment
A vendetta does not begin when you decide to be angry. It begins when you can name the moment it became personal — the second the grudge stopped being a dislike and became a debt. That moment is the spine of the card. Write it down: the place, the bell, the thing that happened. Every later beat — every return, every promotion, every adaption — is measured against it.
The Grudge Moment is also a reward. The night the card is opened, name the moment aloud at the table and choose one of these boons, granted by the GM:
- A lead: a contact who knows something real about the rival — a haunt, a weakness, a habit, a debt they owe. The contact does not have to be friendly; they just have to know.
- A rumor of weakness: one concrete weakness added to the card before you have earned it through play.
- A first strike: advantage on your first confrontation with the rival — the first fight, the first pursuit, the first social roll where your history gives you force.
These boons are one-time and per-vendetta. They exist so that starting a vendetta feels like taking up a tool, not like signing a tax bill. The Court already profits from your grudges. At least the first one is yours.
The Three Rules
Before the first hunt, agree with your GM on these three rules. They are the whole engine of the system.
Rule One: The Night Collects Its Debts
Dropping your rival to 0 HP is not a kill. Unless you finish the job — a beheading, a stake through the heart, or the touch of a silver soul-weapon — dark ritual, infernal surgery, or plain vampiric spite will drag them back from the brink for the rematch. The Forever Night does not let go of its servants easily. Plan your executions accordingly, and expect to see them again regardless.
Rule Two: The Debt Is Paid in Kind
When your rival returns, they are shaped by the specific way you beat them last time. The Court and the Gutter Forges rebuild them to make sure it does not happen again:
| How you beat them | How they come back |
|---|
| Silver or holy magic | Weeping scars, but a grudging tolerance — they gain resistance to that damage type. |
| Fire or explosives | Heavy Inferno-forged cooling armor — immunity to fire, and a higher Armor Class. |
| Stealth or invisibility | Paranoia given eyes — alchemical or mechanical goggles that pierce invisibility. |
| Melee weapons | Brutal Gutter Forge prosthetics — a piston-driven arm, a blade for a hand, and hits that land much harder. |
Pick one primary adaptation per return. The GM may layer a minor second change for drama, but the pattern should stay readable — you are meant to learn your enemy, not guess them.
Rule Three: The Court Rewards Persistence
If your rival beats you — forces the party to flee, drops you to 0 HP, or captures you — the Ebon Court rewards them. Promotion is not mercy; it is investment. They climb a rank, receive a squad of minions, or are given experimental potions that swell their maximum health. Every loss writes a thicker line in their ledger. Your rival is a problem that grows precisely when you fail to make it stay dead.
Intensity and the Vendetta Clock
Every vendetta has an Intensity score from 1 to 6 — how hot the grudge burns right now. It is not a power level. It is a clock. When the clock hits 6, the vendetta climaxes: the rival commits to a decisive move against you, and the grudge gets settled one way or another.
Intensity rises by 1 when:
- The rival beats you, forces you to flee, or captures you (Rule Three).
- The rival hurts someone or something you protect — an ally, a contact, a safe-house, a relic in your care.
- You humiliate them publicly and they hear about it.
- The Morning Paper prints something about your history together.
Intensity falls by 1 when:
- You defeat them in a fight they had built to win.
- You destroy or steal one of their assets — a squad, a workshop, a mask, a ledger.
- You learn one of their adaptations and plan around it (see Learning the Enemy).
- You go a full night without crossing them and do not appear in the paper.
At Intensity 6, the climactic move happens. The rival does not wait for you. They act: a raid on your base, a public accusation, a hostage taken, a trap laid on your only exit. The GM should set the scene so this feels like the grudge coming due. When the climactic move is resolved — either side winning — Intensity resets to 3 and the loop tightens: the rival returns with a higher rank, a new adaptation, or a squad (if Rule Three has already promoted them).
Intensity should move slowly — one tick per significant beat, never more than twice a session. It exists to make the vendetta feel like a duel with visible progress, not a random repeat offender.
Learning the Enemy
Rule Two makes your rival adapt to you. This is the counter-move: you get to adapt to them.
When you spend downtime studying a rival (see Downtime, Contacts, and Debts), you may attempt to learn one of their known adaptations — how they were rebuilt, how they were beaten, what their new trick costs them. The check is Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Insight), at the GM's discretion, against a DC of 12 + rival's tier (Tier 1 → 13, Tier 4 → 16). You can also learn an adaptation from witnessing it in person during a fight, no downtime required.
On a success, write the adaptation as known. While it is known, you gain one concrete edge of your choice:
- Advantage on saving throws against the adaptation's signature tactic (the fire-armor's heat, the goggles' glare).
- A called strike: once, you can negate the adaptation for one scene — slash the coolant lines, shatter the goggles, crack the piston arm.
- A new weakness added to their card: the rebuilt part is also their liability.
You can only know an adaptation you have studied or seen. The GM should reveal one adaptation's cost or tell for free whenever the rival uses it — the whole point is that you are meant to learn them, not guess them.
A known adaptation can also be permanently destroyed — but only with a deliberate act during a fight (a called shot, a ritual, a sabotage scene), not as a byproduct of dealing damage. Destroying an adaptation permanently lowers the rival's Intensity by 1 and removes it from future returns.
Finality
A rival at 0 HP is down, not dead. Returning is the default; true destruction is a deliberate act, and it has a price.
True destruction requires one of the three methods — beheading, a stake through the heart, or a silver soul-weapon — and a moment of explicit intent. You have to mean it, say it, and do it. A rival that dies without such a moment will be back, and they will have learned.
When you truly destroy a rival:
- The vendetta card is marked Closed — the grudge is settled.
- The Court notices. Gain +1 Notice (see Notice and the Registry): a public execution of one of their servants is not a secret.
- The rival's faction, family, or successor may take up the grudge. The GM may open a new card in their name — the feud continues, but the old enemy does not.
Some rivals choose not to return. A rival who has been beaten so completely, so publicly, or so pointlessly that the Court withdraws its investment stays down — mark them Closed without the cost. The Court only pays for grudges it believes are entertaining.
Playing the Enemy
Vampire enemies treat you with arrogant theatricality. You are not a real threat; you are entertainment, a diversion in an immortal's long evening. When they return from the brink, they are not angry — they applaud. You made their endless life briefly interesting, and they will keep you alive a little longer just to see what you do next.
Mortal and guard enemies are the opposite: desperate. Surviving a fight with you means they failed their vampire masters, and failure in this city is measured in flesh. Every time they return, they are more machine than human — riveted, stitched, rebuilt by the Forges out of spite. They hate you with a purity the immortals cannot manage, because you are not their entertainment. You are the ruin of their life.
The Morning Paper
Your grudge is never private. The airship drops the paper at dawn, and the social columns cover vendettas the way other cities cover theater — returns announced like premieres, promotions printed like appointments, new scars described in admiring detail. Read the news. Your enemy's biography is published every morning, free of charge, at your door. If your rival has been rebuilt, promoted, or given a squad, the paper usually knows before you do.
The paper can also be pointed. When a vendetta's Intensity rises, the paper often prints the reason — a theft, a humiliation, a death — which means the whole city now knows who is hunting you, and so do the people you were trying to hide it from.