Happy New Year Wyrdos!  There is no better way to celebrate a new year than with a new preview!   Today we take a look at the Guild Lawyer.

The Guild Lawyer is an advanced pursuit in the upcoming Guild supplement, Above the Law. As one might expect, Guild Lawyers are, well… lawyers who are employed by the Guild. Mixed in with the standard legal questions of Malifaux’s bar exam are a number of moral and ethical questions that don’t have any sort of actual legal answer. Instead, they serve to highlight prospective lawyers whose mindset is sufficiently cruel enough to serve the Guild’s purposes. Such characters are brought to the office of Lucius Mattheson and offered a contract guaranteeing them employment in exchange for their souls. Nobody who has refused to sign the contract has ever made it out of Mattheson’s office alive.

Once a lawyer has joined the ranks of the Guild, they gradually begin to realize that their contract with Mattheson has given them some degree of control over the laws of reality. For instance, they can use their Objection! talent to force a character to redo an action they just performed or force characters they are speaking with to tell the truth, no matter their personal inclinations. Skilled lawyers can even make powerful Closing Arguments, which have a chance of Paralyzing and debuffing every enemy in a wide area around the Lawyer… at the cost of making her Slow for the rest of the scene.

By far the most interesting and powerful talent available to Guild Lawyers is Sign Your Life Away. It allows the Lawyer to draft up a contract that forces anyone who signs it (whether they do so voluntarily or not) to fulfill the terms of the contract, no matter what they might be. With a simple signature, someone might be forced to turn over their entire fortune to the lawyer, assassinate a troublesome pest, commit suicide, or even to fall in love with a specific person. Destroying the contract nullifies the agreement, so most Guild Lawyers are very particular about just where they store their paperwork.

Always read the fine print!

Head on over to the Wyrd forums to discuss this new Advanced Pursuit!