How to Start Play

Read this before your first session. It covers squad creation, faction allegiance, what the Bastion Inn looks like on day one, and how the first session runs.

What You Need

• The Operator Tactics Core Rulebook (resolution, wounds, turn sequence, squad building, solo tools, advancement)
• The Eternal Court -- OT Engine Port (setting layer: attributes, classes, factions, equipment, Blighted Ground)
• The Eternal Court -- Enemy Roster (enemy stat blocks)
• The Eternal Court -- GM Quick Reference (one-page table aid)
• An Operator Roster sheet per player
• A d6 per player and one for the GM

Step 1: Build Your Squad

Use the standard OT squad building rules. The Eternal Court setting uses the Squad format: 250 points, 4-5 operators.

Each operator costs:

• 30 points base
• +5 points for a Specialization
• +15 points to be The Turned (opt-in; select one Augment Tag)

Attribute starting values: All operators begin with the stat block listed for their class in the OT Engine Port (section 3). These are starting values -- attributes improve with XP.

Recommended first-session squad: One Ironclad, one Shadow, one Physick, and one Artificer or Sharpshooter. The Ironclad and Shadow handle most mission scenarios; the Physick keeps everyone alive; the Artificer or Sharpshooter covers the specific threats of this setting (clockwork constructs or long-range targets).

Gear: Each operator selects from the equipment list in the OT Engine Port (section 6). At Squad Supply State (Restricted, first mission default), each operator gets their primary weapon, one secondary, armor up to AR 2, and up to 2 field gear items.

One Turned operator is recommended for a first session. PREDATOR'S EYE is the most useful for a new group -- never being surprised is a significant advantage when learning the setting's Alert Level dynamics.

Step 2: Choose Faction Allegiance

Each operator declares a faction allegiance before play begins. This is not a loyalty oath -- it's a starting relationship. Allegiances can shift.

Why it matters:

• Your allegiance faction's Pressure Track starts at 0 (Cold). Other factions start at 1.
• Your allegiance faction's contacts are your first reliable resources.
• Certain doors, invitations, and information sources open or close based on allegiance.

Choosing allegiance:

Mixed squads (different allegiances) are playable and create good table tension. Resolve conflicts with roleplay, not dice -- allegiance should drive character choices, not paralyze them.

Step 3: The Bastion Inn -- Day One

The squad's safe house is the Bastion Inn, in the old quarter near the southern gate. Run by Hepsabeth Dour, a woman of indeterminate age and absolute discretion.

First session, before the brief:

Hepsabeth shows the team to the back room she keeps for "people who require privacy." It smells like old wood and lamp oil. There are four beds, a locked cabinet (she has a key; they don't yet), and a table with a city map that someone has left strategic marks on -- a previous occupant, she says. She does not know who.

She offers three things immediately:

1. A meal and a private dining room where they can talk.
2. Introductions to the bar's "regulars" -- a rotating cast of merchants, minor officials, and people with too much to drink and just enough to say.
3. One contact name, relevant to whatever allegiance they've declared, who "sometimes comes in on Thursdays."

This is the foundation of the operation. The Bastion is neutral ground and Hepsabeth enforces that -- no weapons drawn inside, no faction business conducted loudly. She's been doing this long enough to have opinions about how things go wrong and the small grace to not say them out loud.

Step 4: The First Brief

The GM presents the first mission. Use the Starter Scenario (Operation: THE GALA ACCORD) for the opening operation, or build from the Mission Types table (section 8 of the OT Engine Port).

Brief structure:

1. The Intel Report -- What the team knows going in (GM presents, 5-10 minutes)
2. The Contact -- Who gave them this job and why
3. The Objectives -- Primary + one Secondary
4. The Operational Liability -- Roll d12 or pre-select; reveal immediately (it's part of what they know going in)
5. Questions -- Team asks, GM answers within the limits of what they'd realistically know

After the brief: Team declares their loadout (what they're bringing from Supply State), selects who holds what gear, and any Downtime activities from the previous cycle (on the first mission, this step is skipped -- they're going in fresh).

Step 5: First Session Structure

A standard first session runs like this:

Part 1 -- Insertion (15-20 minutes): Zone 1. Atmosphere, first contact with the setting's texture. Low stakes, high flavor. Let the players feel Kormor Kirak before they're fighting in it.

Part 2 -- The Approach (20-30 minutes): Zone 2 + first alert decisions. This is where the players learn what the Alert Level system costs. Don't protect them from it -- let a bad choice raise the Alert and feel it.

Part 3 -- The Objective (30-45 minutes): Zone 3. The meat of the mission. Multiple threats, multiple approaches, time pressure. This is where the classes show their value -- let the Artificer try something, let the Physick have a moment, let the Shadow do something the others couldn't.

Part 4 -- Extraction (15-20 minutes): Zones 4+5. Short, fast, decisive. The Alert Level they've accumulated determines how hard this is. The mission doesn't end when the objective is complete -- it ends when they're clear.

Part 5 -- Between-Mission (15 minutes): The seven-step sequence. Wound recovery, Downtime choices, Supply State, Faction Pressure advancement. This is fast at a first session -- the players don't have much to spend yet. It gets richer over the campaign.

Part 6 -- The Next Brief (10 minutes, optional): If time allows, give the opening line of the next mission before you stop. "Hepsabeth has a message from your contact. It says: come alone, don't be followed, and bring someone who can open a locked door." Let it sit until next session.

What Players Should Know Going In

The setting is not heroic. Neither side in the Albion-Terrassia war is right. The vampires who run this city are ancient and opaque. Your operators are competent professionals working in a city full of competent professionals trying to do incompatible things.

The mission is almost never the whole story. Every objective connects to the faction pressure tracks. When you pull someone out of a building, you're moving a piece on a board you can't fully see yet.

Alert Level is real. Blowing your cover early doesn't just make the current mission harder -- it changes the Pressure Tracks, affects your contacts' reliability, and makes the next operation briefer in a bad way. Play the stealth honestly.

The Bastion Inn is your anchor. Hepsabeth asks no questions and takes no sides. It's the one place in Kormor Kirak where the team can breathe. Don't burn it.

Whitehallow is dying. He has weeks. The ritual is advancing. Every mission that ends without directly disrupting it moves his clock one step forward. You don't have to sprint, but you can't stop either.

The Campaign Clock

The Lich Cult Pressure Track is the game's central clock. When it reaches 5, Whitehallow completes his transformation. The campaign doesn't end -- but it changes shape dramatically. Plan for it. Disrupt it. Build toward stopping it.

Everything else -- the Red Court's surveillance, the Albion Assassins, the Terrassian surveillance constructs, Rozito's loyalty auctions -- is pressure that makes stopping it harder. Manage it well enough that when the moment comes, you have the position and the resources to act.

Good luck. Hepsabeth says to be back by curfew.