#Rescue Worker Set (救難職)

Contents

Authority. This document is a variant rule (Variant). As with every variant rule of this volume, it is premised on GM permission, and fc cannot override co Canon. The values of the drifted-goods data cards are narrow Canon — canon only within this volume. The skeleton of the set does not stray a single inch from the 5 components and common format fixed by the Identity Sets — Overview.

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#Scent — Who They Were

#Opening Vignette — Count the Heads First

The fire was faster than the wind.

The place where the man opened his eyes was the middle of an unfamiliar village, and the village was burning. Two thatched roofs spewed fire as one mass, and the people shoved one another over a single water bucket at the well. Asking where this was, and why here, was the head's work — and before the head, the training moved.

"How many are there!" The man seized an old man at the well. "The people of this village, how many all told. Anyone who hasn't gotten out!"

"Wh-what was that?"

"The headcount! Tell them to gather by family. Now!"

The old man looked the man over from top to bottom — a black upper garment no one had seen, a yellowed sash, a slab of iron borne on his back. Yet his was a face that had understood that one question alone. The words of crisis cross the eras.

"You there! Don't throw water on the house that's caught fire!" The man was already shouting as he walked toward the fire. "The next house! Wet the roof of the next house that hasn't caught yet! The wind is going that way!"

A strange thing happened. The people obeyed. The command of one no one knew, of no known house, the village that night obeyed.

"We give up the two houses to the east," the man said. "Then tear down the house after that. This fire can't be put out — we cut the road. Fire-hooks! Axes! Everything you've got!"

With the sound of one house collapsing, sparks shot up into the night sky, and just as those sparks began to lose where to go — a woman counting the heads cried out like a scream.

"Okiku is gone! Okiku of the weaving house!"

The man pulled the facepiece down from the slab of iron on his back and set it over his face. Hiss — a breathing sound no bellows of this era had ever made leaked out. The old man seized his arm. "That is no fire for a person to enter!"

"I know," the man answered from beyond the facepiece, in an oddly calm voice. "Entering was the work."

Later that village handed down that night thus — that the divine spirits had returned, from within the fire, one they had hidden away. That the black-clad Kamikakushi went into the smoke twice, and both times came out holding a person.

And that the slab of iron he had borne on his back never, after that night, made that breathing sound again.

#Scent — One Whose Calling Is to Protect

You need not ask through which door the man of this vignette crossed over. It need not be the same night as the night-bus people of the appendix — the door of the Kamikakushi did not open only once. What matters is the first thing he did the moment he fell. He counted the heads first.

A police officer, a firefighter, an EMS responder. The three are different professions but share one training — what to do in the first minute of a crisis, which the body, not the head, knows first. In this age too there are those who protect. There are the warriors of a lord, the self-defense bands of a village, the warrior monks of a temple. But one whose very calling is to protect (職分) — who is no one's retainer, who, with neither stipend (禄) nor liege, makes it his work to enter the fire and blood of strangers — is a kind of human this age has not yet invented.

So this set has almost no weapons. One pistol, five rounds — that is all of it, and even that is not the engine of this set. What the rescue worker brings is not firepower but procedure. The hand that counts the heads, the eye that picks the house to cut the blaze, the order that stems bleeding first. And here too the spine of this volume does not bend. This book is not a book that makes the modern person strong. It is a book that gives the drama of a future being consumed. What the rescue worker loses is the breath of the bottle, the uses in the bag — and at the end of it, the belief that "everyone can be saved."

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#Set Data

The rescue worker is one set yet three branches. At character creation, choose one of police, fire, EMS. A branch is a part of the set, so, like the set, mid-course change or holding both is impossible. What a branch divides is three things — starting-ability adjustment, set technique, starting drifted goods; the conflict hook and Adaptation variation are shared among the three branches. The 5 components of Overview Law 1 are first written in a single table.

#Component 1 — Starting-Ability Adjustment

As the rule of Overview is — grade preserved, ability points unchanged, an ability gained by replacement capped at Licensed (3), the canon master-eligible list unchanged. The five abilities that come in by replacement (Unarmed Combat, Intimidation, Geography, Disable, Herbalism) are all of the canon skill list, and none of them newly opens the door of mastery.

#Component 2 — Set Technique

The rescue worker's set technique is 1 kind per branch, all tier 1. Each is a choice instead of the canon tier 1 Foresight, and whichever is chosen, Energy Transfer and the ability-score special are kept as the skeleton of the occupation (Overview Law 2 — the canon-protection principle).

No tier 3 set technique is placed. It is not laziness but design — because the canon modern person's tier 3 choice already wears the faces of the three branches. Squad Command is the voice of the firefighter who commanded the scene, Energy Infusion is the hand of the EMS responder, and Field Search is the eye of the police officer. The rescue worker's tier 3 may be chosen from the canon.

#Police — Subdual (制壓術)

[Kata] Subdual (制壓術)
Cost: Energy 2 / Limit: 1 per round
Target: 1 corporeal target of human size or less in the same zone.
   It does not work on spirit-bodies or yoma larger than human size.
Check: 2d10+Finesse+Unarmed Combat >= target's Defense
Effect: There is no Wounds damage — in any case. Non-lethality is the identity of this technique.
   On success the target is restrained — cannot move or attack, escapes
   with Physique >= 13 at the start of each of its own actions. If a restraint such as
   handcuffs or cord is applied, 15.

Because it is a technique of joints, not of force, it is rolled with Finesse, not Courage — a road within reach even of a modern person's thin arms. This is the one melee check a modern person can have, yet it adds no bonus whatsoever to attack checks and can never deal Wounds damage. The line of the Overview, that the only set granting direct combat power is the Self-Defense Officer, holds here too. Subdual is not a technique to win but a technique to stop without killing, and what kinds of scenes that difference makes in this age is handled by §Friction with the Era.

#Fire — Fire Response (火災對應)

[aptitude] Fire Response (火災對應)
Effect: Constant.
 - Ignore the check penalty called for by flame and smoke (one's own zone only).
 - No extra Energy is spent on entering, passing through, or rescue actions within a flame zone.
  Even carrying or dragging 1 person on the move, the movement cost does not rise.
 - The road of fire: 1 time per scene, ask the GM — "where does this fire spread next."
  The GM answers truthfully.

The damage of the fire itself cannot be ignored — that is the work not of technique but of gear, and gear wears down (the turnout-coat card). The values of the flame zone are as the canon has them. What this technique changes is not the values of the fire but what a person can do within the fire.

#EMS — First Aid (應急處置)

[Kata] First Aid (應急處置)
Cost: Energy 2 / Limit: 1 per Lull
Target: 1 ally in the same zone.
Check: 2d10+Wisdom+Medicine >= 11
Effect: On success, recover Wounds 1. Additionally one of the following —
   remove the target's bleeding, or stop the next 1 advance of poison.
   (The canon values of bleeding and poison are those of the non-combat rules, as is.)
Empowered: Spend 1 use of the medical bag's [Depletion] to count it as a success without a check,
   and the recovery becomes 2.

The values of status ailments all use, as is, the canon of the non-combat rules — this technique makes neither a new disease nor a new poison, and is merely the hand that prevents a deep wound from festering into disease.

The distance from Field Medicine. The canon modern person's Field Medicine is a tier 5 technique — the hand that turns back Wounds 3, or 5 if a Medicine check accompanies it, in the very midst of combat. First Aid is the tier 1 childhood of that hand. On a Lull only, on one person only, only 1 to 2. The tiers differ by four, and that difference does not close — First Aid is neither a precondition nor a discount for Field Medicine. If an EMS responder who has reached tier 5 learns Field Medicine, the two techniques coexist in separate slots, and from that day that hand is twice as busy.

One more thing, written honestly. First Aid is a choice instead of Foresight, and Foresight contains a Medicine check +3. An EMS responder who wishes to keep the height of the check, keep Foresight — that too is a legitimate EMS responder. To choose First Aid is to choose not the check but the procedure. The hand that, even with an empty bag, even on a low roll, turns back something without fail on every Lull.

#Component 3 — Starting Drifted Goods

The one-backpack principle. Every card follows the seven-field format of Depletion System Law 4, and the PL records the remaining count on the remaining-count sheet. The cardless leftovers — handcuffs, baton, whistle, hatchet, rope, medical instruments — do not wear down. They only get lost.

#The Police Belt

• Revolver — the card below.
• Handcuffs (手匣) — a restraint. Raises Subdual's escape Target Number to 15. Applied without a check to a sleeping or subdued opponent. An object even the lock artisans of this era have never seen — to open it without the key requires Disable >= 15. There is only one key.
• Baton (警棒) — exactly the grammar of the canon makeshift weapon "wooden stick" (a swing — non-lethal). It is, however, a fine thing that does not break.
• Whistle (號角) — a sharp single cry that carries past one cho (町) (measures). There is no rule — to fix one signal in advance is not a rule but wisdom.
• Flashlight (懷中電燈) — [Depletion 4·Clock]. The card cites, as is, the one in Electronics.

Variant — Reserve-Round Dial (GM choice). The starting reserve rounds the GM sets between 0–10 rounds. The base recommendation is 0. This is not stinginess but design — the Self-Defense Officer's lifespan was made to end together with the remaining rounds, but the rescue worker's lifespan is not bound to ammunition. The pistol is not the engine of this set but five lines of dialogue saved for the last. On the day after the pistol falls silent, the police officer does the same work as yesterday — and that is the whole of what makes this set different from the Self-Defense Officer.

#The Firefighter's Pack

• Turnout coat and air respirator — the two cards below.
• Hatchet (手斧) — borrows the grammar of the canon makeshift weapon "pickaxe" (a chop — [Pierce 1] + [Break]). Its original use is not people but walls and doors — for a Disable or destroy action that tears down a structure to make a road, the GM may grant +2 on the grounds of this axe.
• Rope — about ten ken (measures). On a cliff or vertical move, rope modifier +2 (the environment table of the non-combat rules, as is). To bind a person and lower them, haul them up, tie one to another.

#The EMS Responder's Bag

• Medical bag — the card below.
• A set of medical instruments — scissors, forceps, splints, a stethoscope. Tools that do not wear down — they only get lost, or get lent out and not returned.
• Thermal blanket — a single sheet of cloth that gleams silver. It protects one person through a night of bitter cold — Physique check +1 for an open-air camp in deep winter (for one person). To anyone of this era, this looks not like cloth but like a treasure.

#After the Bag Empties — The Bridge of Herbs

The medical bag's eight uses do not come back. That is why the EMS branch's ability adjustment is Herbalism acquisition — with hands that recognize mugwort when the sterile gauze runs out and know what to decoct when the painkiller runs out, it switches over slowly. There is no complete resupply — bit by bit, it becomes the medicine of this era. The depth of medicine itself is the domain of the medical worker set. The EMS responder is not a physician — they are the one who reaches the scene first, and that identity does not wear down even after the bag empties.

#Component 4 — Conflict Hook

A concretization of the canon Three Ways and Six Hearts conflict list — there is no new axis, only the lens is changed.

• Whose law is it (police). — The lens of "loyalty (忠) or freedom" and "the class system and equality." The law he kept was a law the same for all. The law of this age differs by domain, by rank, by inside and outside a temple's wall. In a land where a warrior cutting down an insolent commoner is no crime, is the act of arrest justice or overreach — and when, having bound a bandit and handed him to the village, the village's law says it will strike off his head on the spot, what does the hand holding the handcuff key do.
• A scale that cannot be saved (fire and EMS). — The lens of "the meaning of war." In his era a fire was an accident and an injury was an object of relief. In this age fire-attack (火攻) is tactics, and the wounded of the field being abandoned is the reckoning. The fire of one village can be cut. War cannot be cut — before a scale a profession as a whole cannot bear, the heart of the 2 switching triggers wears down fast. Even so, the one before the eyes can be saved. Is that one enough — the campaign of this set follows that question to the end.

#Component 5 — Adaptation Variation

The canon rules of the Adaptation mechanic are all as is — the set paints only two lines of color. Common to the three branches.

• Fast path — Wildman. Same-occupation exemption from the very first technique. The body's art of carrying a person, gripping, enduring, dragging them out from under what collapses — the hand of the rescue scene reads the hand of the Kamuy fastest. Both are people whose last gear is not a tool but the body.
• Blocked path — shinobi. No exemption — the Energy penalty remains to the end. The art of the shinobi is, in the end, a way of vanishing alone. The way of seeping into shadow, erasing one's traces, leaving a place that cannot be saved without lingering. The way of leaving a person behind, this hand can never, in the end, learn.

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#Friction with the Era

Friction is not a penalty but the material of a scene — the wall each of the three branches strikes differs.

#Police — The Arrest by One Without Jurisdiction

The peacekeeping of this age is not one mass. The warriors of a lord hold the order of the domain, the self-government of a village its quarrels, a temple the territory of the temple, each in their share. The Kamikakushi drifting among them has no jurisdiction — his arrest is carried out in no one's name, and by the one who sees it is a righteous meddling, or overreach, or simply an abduction. A good GM uses this not as a dead end but as a fork. When a village headman says "the one you bound, we shall judge by our law," when a lord's Magistrate (奉行) asks "that skill — will you not use it under me" — a single Subdual becomes a single scenario.

#Fire — The Benefactor's Route

Timber with thatched roofs, eaves touching eaves in a dense press — the villages and castle towns of this age are a table set for the fire, and a blaze is an everyday disaster. The firefighting of this age is, more than water, dismantling: tear down the houses on the path it will spread along, cut a firebreak, gather manpower and hold. The firefighter's edge lies not in the way of throwing water but in the judgment that knows which house to tear down — that judgment reaches the same conclusion as this age's most seasoned village elder, faster and more accurately. So fire is the fastest road of non-combat Renown in this volume. Saving one village from fire is Renown +1 to 2 — the canon value as is, but this set meets that chance more often than others. The benefactor's name reaches a lord's ear, and the lord asks — "that craft, what if you used it on every village below the castle."

#EMS — The Hand That Reaches First

In this age too there are physicians. There are healer-monks, there are apothecaries, there is the deep tradition of needle and moxa and decoction. What there is not is the calling of the hand that reaches the scene first — the very notion that making a wounded person reach a physician's house alive is a profession does not exist in this age. So the EMS responder's friction is not a dispute of medicine but a fight over order. The family who says prayer comes first, the retainer who says the patient of high rank comes first, the village that says do not touch blood that bears defilement (kegare) — to win the ten seconds of tying a tourniquet, the EMS responder begins, every time, with negotiation. And a healer-monk who has seen those ten seconds save a person — becomes a good teacher and a good friend.

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#Growth Curve

Neither a change of occupation nor a dual build opens — the canon choice-instead principle, as is. The rescue worker's growth flows in three beats, meshed with the death of the gear.

1. While the gear lives (tier 1 to 3). The time of moving by the memory of the profession. The pistol is at the waist, the bottle breathes, the bag is full. The tier 1 set technique and drifted goods make scenes, and at tier 3 the canon choice — Squad Command, Energy Infusion, Field Search — seeks out the face of one's own branch.
2. Between the silences (the time of Adaptation). The five rounds run out, the bottle stops, the bag empties. The replacement abilities — Unarmed Combat, Geography, Herbalism — take over the seat of the tools, and the Wildman's art comes in by the fast path. From tier 5 the set's color ends and merges into the technique list of the canon modern person — that tier 7 Crisis Management is the emotional terminus of this set is no coincidence. The hand that responds first to a collapsing ally — that was, from the start, this person's work.
3. Disaster-Prevention Officer (防災役). The Kamikakushi who taught a village self-defense band the way of blowing a whistle and the way of counting heads has, from some year on, been charged with the disaster prevention of a domain — changing the placement of wells, emptying one house on a road in advance, sending out people with stretchers to the field after a battle. The people call it as though it were a new calling, but on the sheet there is no new occupation. That the end of accelerated Adaptation looks like "in effect a new occupation" is narrative, not data. What the data says is one thing only — the non-combat support curve of the canon modern person, over which this person merely walked with the gait of their own profession.

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#Table Hooks

Of a size the GM can pick up and use on the spot, three.

1. The Eve of the Great Fire (大火前夜). A drought-parched, wind-dried castle town. Visible only to the firefighter PC's eye — the placement of straw bundles and oil drums on the market street is no coincidence. Someone is designing the road of fire. The investigation chasing the arsonist (the police eye), the design of the firebreak to cut in advance (the fire hand), the reckoning of stretchers and water and uses for that night (the EMS bag) — it rolls with any one of the three branches present, and with all three it fills a whole session. To prevent it before the fire breaks out is Renown; to cut it after it breaks out is legend.
2. The Chain of Kamikakushi. In a village a person vanishes, one each fortnight. The village calls it the work of the divine spirits and holds a rite — to the police PC's eye there are footprints, there is a pattern, there is a common thread among the vanished. Investigation in an age with no concept of investigation. Whether what lies at the end is a yoma, or the human-trafficking of a Human Taking (Hitodori) — on the day the truth is grasped, the question returns to the first hook. By whose law is it judged.
3. Twenty-Eight and One. A field where a battle has ended, twenty-eight abandoned wounded. The bag's remaining count is three. Before the EMS responder who has begun triage, a lord's envoy reins in his horse — "the young master is hurt. Hand over all the medicine you have." The profession's law that the most critical come first, and the age's law that rank is itself the order. Do not prepare a correct answer — the reward of this hook is not gold coin but where, that night, the PC's Three Ways and Six Hearts moved.

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Fire was fire four hundred years ago too, and blood was blood four hundred years ago too — so the hand that protected, wherever it falls, counts from the same thing. The heads.