Quarter

**Quarters**
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Quarters are areas that can be bought by players who want a place for their characters to call home, a place for privacy, or just a place to store extra stuff. Characters can customize own quarter by placing fixtures in it.

Quarter Rules

Please review the Rules of owning quarters.

Quarter Signs

Each quarter and guild house has a sign (normally out in front, but some are more secretive) which displays the name of the owner (if there is one) and its name. Displayed owner names are considered IC information.[1] If the quarter is available then it shows the price of the quarter and an option to buy it or the cost of the bid to acquire it.

Quarters with a flat purchase amount can be acquired instantly, meanwhile many quarters will require a bid process, where the player when interacting with the sign can pay, usually the 10% of the total value of the quarter to have a chance to acquire it.

The down payment will NOT be returned if the bid was not successful and the bidding process will fail if there is not enough money in the character bank account.

If the character acquires the property, all other bids on the same type of property will be automatically removed and not refunded.

When a character buys a quarter from another character the money spent goes straight into bank account of previous owner. All options regarding an owned quarter are accessed through this sign.

Quarter and house doors can be bashed or opened by lock-picking. The owner can pay money to increase the strength of the door or the lock, but it also increases their rent/taxes. All items inside a quarter still fall under rule against excessive theft. A group of thieves working together may only take one item/stack, regardless number of thieves involved.

Different quarters and houses will have different prices for purchasing them, keeping them (taxes) and upgrading their security. This is dependent for example on their size, location, layout and accessories. Taxes are influenced also by politics in the settlement where the property is located.

When owner uses the sign, additional options and information are displayed. They will see the current tax bill in gold coins that is payed from their bank account once per game month and possibilities for managing the property.

Release Property

After a confirmation, this option will cease your character's ownership of the property. Note that if you do this, then anyone will be able to buy it and your character will not receive any money which the next owner pays to purchase the quarter. Your character will immediately stop paying taxes.

Manage Security

Replace Locks

This costs quite a lot of money, and will invalidate all keys (see below) which your character may have given to other PCs. This allows your character to re-decide from scratch to whom they wish to give access to their quarter.

Manage locks

Increase/decrease DC

Increase/decrease strength

Both of these options will increase/decrease the monthly tax your character pays to keep the quarter, but will make it easier/harder for other characters to pick your character's lock or break down your character's door, respectively.

Manage traps

Increase/decrease DC

Increase/decrease strength

These will also affect your character's monthly tax (far more significantly than Lock DC and Strength), but will add/remove an increased level of security to the quarter.

Create key

When a character wishes to share property with someone, they can create a key for them. This is free, can be done as many times as you wish, and the key can be passed around freely between other characters. Having the appropriate key in their inventory will allow a PC entry to a quarter (as if they owned it) until the owner Replaces the Locks (see above), or the quarter changes ownership. Note that possessing a key does not allow a character to create more keys, change the locks and so on - only the owner can do that.

Toggle public

When character wishes to make property available for everyone to enter.

The strength of the lock, trap and door itself to resist bashing caps at 127.

The moment quarters are bought by a new owner, the old owner and all those with old keys lose access to them (unless they lock pick their way in).

Manage Property

Rename

The name you give to your character's quarter will appear both in "dialogue" with the door(s), and when mousing over or in "dialogue" with the quarter sign.

Put Property Up For Sale

This is similar to "Release Property", but there are a couple of differences. Most notably, your character will remain owner of the property (thus paying taxes) until somebody else purchases it, and they receive the gold paid by the new owner into their bank account when it is bought. It is not possible to set the price you put a quarter up for sale for with this option - this is predetermined.

Storage Chests

Many quarters (but not all) contain a storage chest in which to permanently store items. Storage chests can store up to 20 items and will inform the user of how many items are in the chest when they are closed. Any excess items will be lost when the server resets.

Losing Ownership

There are 5 ways in which character can lose ownership of property:

Characters may choose to abandon or sell a quarter by using sign to "Release Property" or "Put Property Up For Sale".
All quarters have a (Real Life) time limit, within which the owner must visit the quarter (interact with one of the doors) at least once. If they do not, the quarter is considered abandoned and is "Put Up For Sale" (per the option on the sign) automatically.
If the owner doesn't have enough money in their bank account to pay the monthly rent, the quarter will go up for sale.
Settlement leaders can evict owners from real estate in their city (for IC reasons). Note that interactive roleplay is required by the Settlement Leader before this is done, per the Roleplay Rule.
DM can remove ownership from those breaking the quarter rules (for OOC reasons).

Time Limit for Abandonment

If character does not visit their quarter at least once within the real life time limit, then it will go up for sale and can be bought by anyone. The majority of quarters have a limit of 7 days (realtime), whilst most guildhouses (see below) have a longer limit. There are some with limits of 4 days, 14, 28 or 48 days. The check-in limit is listed when the quarter sign is inspected, after you own the property.

DMs will never return a lost quarter to player because the timer ran out and someone else got there first. If you don't intend to use your quarter for a lengthy period of time it is considered polite to give it up so that other players can use it. DMs generally frown heavily on those who log in once a week only to renew their hold on a quarter or shop. There is a hugely limited quantity of Shops and Quarters in Arelith, and DMs are generally inclined to remove them from the possession of Characters who only login rarely to keep them, in order to let them be used by people who wish to use them for regular roleplay.

Restrictions

Some areas may have (IC) restrictions on who can buy quarters there. These ought to be apparent IC. Check the surrounding area carefully for restrictions if you aren't sure you can buy a quarter somewhere. People buying quarters they shouldn't will usually be evicted by settlement leaders.

There are a very small number of OOC, DM-Enforced restrictions on quarter ownership in the module. These will always be very clearly denoted by OOC Signposts.

As a major, mandatory rule, you may own one quarter or guildhouse per player ( not per character) only. If you have another in your possession, you should try to sell or give away the other a soon as possible.

Slave Ownership of Quarters

Slave characters may not own any properties with the exception of shops and Slave-only quarters. Many of these slave quarters can be found in Andunor and cannot be purchased by non-Slave characters. The exception to this rule is that Slave characters may own rooms within Guildhouses belonging to their owner.

Guild house

Definition

"A guildhouse is defined as a quarter that has one or more quarters inside it, which are purchased separately and thus have different keys." -Mithreas

Any large building which has no internal quarters is just a large quarter, not a guild house. Even big house with two floors and chest is still considered to be a quarter OOC.

DM reminder

If you own a guildhouse with empty quarters, you should be actively looking to fill these and not letting them sit open, even if there's only two internal quarters and you own one of them. This also goes for properties that serve a political function, such as the district guildhouses in Andunor, barracks in various surface cities, and the large auction properties such as Darrowdeep and Gloom. If you/your faction don't have the time to fill these properties, you should let the property go so someone else can have a chance at filling it. This requires an ongoing process to keep rooms full, and if the guildhouse houses a faction, then faction members should seek residence in the guildhouse before looking for housing elsewhere.

If you have become inactive on your character and don't foresee becoming active again in the near future, you should release your property so an active character can have a chance to use these server resources.

If properties have a unique function such as ships and taverns, they should be regularly used by yourself and/or others for its intended purpose.

Mechanics

For guild houses is valid most of the information mentioned above for quarters with the difference of:

The time limit for their abandonment is usually 28 RL days.
Guild Owner receives 45% of purchase price when interior quarter bought.
Guild Owner receives 45% of purchase price when interior shops bought.
Tenants pay no maintenance/tax on their quarters. This cost is transferred to the Guild Owner.
- If a tenant feels the needs to secure their door, possibly because guild is not secure, this cost is passed on to the Guild Owner.
Maintenance/tax costs on interior quarters are TRIPLED if left empty (Guild Owner pays 3x maintenance for each interior quarter when unoccupied.
Tenants do not require a separate key to enter the main guild door.
If a Guild Owner's ownership times out, or the quarter is released, it is automatically transferred to a tenant, selected at random. If the interior quarter selected is not occupied, the guild is released. If the Guild Owner can no longer pay the tax/maintenance, the guild is also released.
Guild Owners can evict from controlled shops/quarters.

Breaking in

When interacting with the door of a quarter that you don't own, you have both the option to try and pick the lock, or try to bash the door open.

If the door is trapped, the trap will spring every time that you attempt to open the door. With enough point in Search, the option to disable the trap will appear in the prompted menu. This will require, as well, Disable Trap ranks.

The lock and strength DC can go up to 127, making a maxed lock virtually impossible to open without specialized artifact gear or using every possible bonus to raise the skill to the maximum. Thieves' Tools cannot be used with quarter doors. The traps can deal severe (200~) amounts of damage with impossible reflex saves to prevent some damage.

Bashing, instead, uses only strength to open the door.

Generally, due to the low prices, most doors bear maxed DCs. So if you are taking Open Lock ranks in hopes to open quarters... you are going to be met with disappointment most of the times.

Quarter Doors and Chests: - Will only tell if you there are new records since you last were notified to a break in attempt or taken item. - Will now not inform you of your own attempts.

Task timer bar appears and this task is interruptable (by): -: Quarter breaking [Bash/Picklock/Disable Trap] (Moving, Taking damage, Using any items, Equipping, Un-equipping and Casting any spells.)