The Mercenary Compass

The Mercenary Compass describes and visualizes the eternal struggle that all mercenaries must contend with when selecting their next job. On the horizontal axis, a mercenary must make ethical considerations and see how flexible their morals are. On the vertical axis, a mercenary must determine how many risks they are willing to take. The Axis of Money shows that with greater risk and greater moral flexibility come also greater rewards.

Examples of how a mercenary can position themselves on the Mercenary Compass:


 * Mirana is positioned at the lower left, meaning that she prefer little risk and has very little moral flexibility. Therefore she is most likely doomed to be eternally poor and not very successful as a mercenary.
 * Edward is positioned at the top center-left, meaning that he prefer a great deal of risk but has relatively little moral flexibility. This promises middling rewards, but means that Edward is unlikely to ever become a true villain.
 * Gastone is positioned at the top along the entire horizontal axis, meaning that he does not care about the morals of the job, as long as he puts himself at maximum risk. This is generally known as being "insane" but Gastone might describe it more as "based" and/or "epic".
 * Sigurd is positioned at the right along the entire vertical axis, meaning that he does not care about the risk of the job, as long as it is as amoral as possible. This is generally known as being a "piece of shit" but Sigurd might describe it as "give me my fucking money, bitch".

During character creation, players that choose the Mercenary Lifepath are initially asked a range of questions to determing their initial alignment within the Mercenary Compass. This is more than just decorative; a mercenary's position within the compass influences the jobs that become available to them, and forms the basis from which their reputation is built. A Low-Left Mercenary receives different jobs from a High-Right Mercenary, and likewise, different factions react differently to a mercenary's moral alignment.