Chapter 35 — Contacts

No one reaches the Shore alone. A Contact is a named person your character knows — someone the career and Life Events tables hand you across creation (Chapters 21–22), and someone you keep meeting and making in play. Contacts are mostly a roleplaying resource: faces, histories, and obligations that give the GM hooks and give you somewhere to turn when a problem is bigger than your own skills. They carry only the lightest mechanical weight, and they plug into systems already in place — Momentum (Chapter 7) and the Network skill (Chapter 23) — rather than adding new numbers.

Contacts vs. patrons. This chapter is the relationship system — who your character knows and how they feel about you. A patron (someone who hires the crew) is a job-role, not a disposition: generate patrons and the work they offer in Jobs & Salvage (Chapter 38). Most patrons are also Contacts you can call on, so the two feed each other — but the person and the job are tracked in different places.

Index§

• The disposition spectrum
• Calling on a Contact
• Favors run both ways
• Dispositions shift
• Gaining Contacts
• Contacts are mortal
• Putting a Contact on the sheet
• Generating a Contact
  • Who they are (D66)
  • How you know them (1D6)
  • What they want from you (1D6)

The disposition spectrum§

Every Contact sits somewhere on a spectrum of how they feel about you. There are four named bands; a relationship can move between them over a campaign.

Reading the tables. The career and Life Events tables use the word "contact" loosely, as the umbrella term for any named relationship. Unless an entry says otherwise, a granted "contact" enters play at the Contact band. Where an entry names a different band — "gain an enemy as a contact," "a former rival as a complicated contact," "a patron" (a warm Contact, often an Ally) — take it at that band instead.

Calling on a Contact§

When you reach out to an Ally or a Contact for help, and what you're asking plausibly falls within their reach — their job, their turf, their web of who-they-know — one of two things happens, at the GM's call:

• It just works. If they can simply hand over what you need — a name, a door code, a quiet word, a place to sleep — there's no roll. The Contact is the answer. This is the most common and most valuable use.
• It tilts the odds. If you still have to do the thing yourself but their help genuinely eases it, you gain a situational Advantage on the roll. As a GM-granted edge it costs 1 Momentum to activate, exactly like a Boon (Chapter 9) — and like all Advantage it doesn't stack, so a Contact won't pile on top of a Boon or characteristic Advantage you're already paying for.

An Ally does this readily and for things that cost them dearly; a Contact does it within limits, and the well runs dry if you ask too often or ask too much (see Favors, below).

A Rival or Enemy sits on the other side of the same coin. When one of them actively moves against you — leveraging their own reach to make your task harder — the GM may impose a situational Disadvantage on the affected roll. (Per the Momentum rules you still gain 1 Momentum for the harder roll; being opposed is its own small fuel.) An Enemy does this as a matter of course and brings trouble you didn't go looking for; a Rival does it when your paths cross and your aims collide.

Favors run both ways§

A Contact is not a vending machine. Help given is help that may be called back. When you lean on a Contact — especially for something that costs them risk or reputation — the GM is encouraged to let that obligation surface later: the fence who moved your goods needs a debt collected; the envoy who opened a channel wants a quiet favor in return; the medic who patched your crew asks you to look in on someone.

This reciprocity is the point. It is where Contacts stop being a list on your sheet and start generating adventures. A player who spends their relationships freely will find those relationships spending them right back — and that traffic of owed and repaid favors is some of the best story the system produces.

Dispositions shift§

Relationships are not fixed at the band where you found them.

• Do right by a Contact — repay a favor, save their skin, make them look good — and they may warm toward Ally.
• Lean too hard, burn them, or get them hurt, and an Ally cools to a Contact, a Contact sours to a Rival, and a Rival can harden into an Enemy.
• Movement runs the other way too: a Rival shown unexpected respect, or an Enemy offered a way out, can be talked back along the spectrum. Turning an Enemy is hard, slow, and never owed — but it is possible, and it makes for a better story than killing them.

The GM tracks these shifts as fiction, not arithmetic. There is no loyalty score — only a relationship that is honestly better or worse than it was last session.

Gaining Contacts§

• At creation. Career terms and Life Events grant Contacts (and the occasional Rival or Enemy). The character-creation guarantee (Chapter 19) ensures no Wanderer leaves creation with none — finish with an empty list and you gain one Contact tied to your most recent career.
• In play. New relationships form naturally: people you help, work alongside, or impress. The Network skill (Chapter 23) is the deliberate path — a successful Network test is often best resolved not as raw information but as "you know someone who…," turning a roll into a Contact the GM and player flesh out together.

Contacts are earned, never bought. Unlike a Boon (Chapter 9), you cannot spend XP to acquire one — they come from the life you live, at and after the table. This keeps the line clean: Boons are honed aptitudes you purchase; Contacts are people you owe and who owe you.

Contacts are mortal§

A Contact is an NPC in a dangerous galaxy. They can move away, lose the position that made them useful, get cold feet, sell you out, or die. That fragility is a feature: it raises the stakes of relying on them and gives the GM a lever to twist. Protect the ones who matter.

Putting a Contact on the sheet§

Record each Contact with just enough to play them: a name, what they are (their role and world — usually echoing the career or event that granted them), their disposition, and a line on their reach — what they can plausibly do for (or to) you, and where that ends. A sentence on how you know them and what they want from you turns a line item into a hook.

Generating a Contact§

When a table grants a Contact without spelling them out — or when the GM needs one on the spot — roll them up. Roll D66 for who they are, then 1D6 each for how you know them and what they want. Take the disposition from the granting entry (default Contact), or roll it on the optional table. Read the results together and make a person of them; the best Contacts, like the best trinkets (Chapter 24), are a thread someone can pull later.

Who they are (D66)§

How you know them (1D6)§

What they want from you (1D6)§