Cover Identities (Guide)

Late Railroad Content and Onwards

Cover Identities Summary
Variable-Length Activity
Setup				Progress				End
1 A				0+ A				1 A
Progress Details			Build out your cover identity. Max 10: , Max 6: , Unlimited:
Items Inputs/Outputs Start-up Free (No Ties) Favours: The Great Game A Palatial Holiday Home in the Arctic Circle Society of the Three-Fingered Hand 250 x Cryptic Clue Canny Cuttlefish Favours: Society 250 x Cryptic Clue Surveilling Spindlewolf Favours: Urchins The Marvellous Inputs Well-Placed Pawn Final Breath Moves in the Great Game Unusual Love Story Mortification of a Great Power Outputs Railway Steel Favours: Revolutionaries Favours: Urchins Favours: Constables Hinterland Scrip Favours: Hell Reported Location of a One-Time Prince of Hell Rumourmonger's Network Edicts of the First City Dreadful Surmise Memory of a Much Lesser Self Magnificent Diamond Bottle of Broken Giant 1844 Thirsty Bombazine Scrap Touching Love Story Sworn Statement Nodule of Fecund Amber Fabulous Diamond Scrap of Ivory Organza Prismatic Frame Legenda Cosmogone
Raw EPA			3.60			Raw SPA			5.68

Mechanics

Cabinet Noir

In order to construct a Cover Identity, you need at least 2 Cabinet Noir. Higher values of Cabinet Noir enable more advanced Identities with more available Cover Identity Qualities. The Cabinet Noir can be built and upgraded in Offices of the Tracklayer's Union: Balmoral Branch for the usual scaling cost of (50 x ( Balmoral Development + 1)) x Hinterland Scrip in addition to the other listed requirements.

Constructing an Identity

Starting a New Identity

A new Cover Identity always starts with Cover Identity: Elaboration 1. With Cabinet Noir 4 and either Favours to spend, Ambition items to show, or Whitsun beasties to enclue, it is possible to also set Cover Identity: Ties when creating a new Cover Identity. It is not possible to later add or change Cover Identity: Ties until you lose your current Cover Identity and start a new one.

Building Up an Identity

Cover Identity: Ties cannot be changed after the Cover Identity is started.

Quality	Limit	Challenge	Gain
Cover Identity: Elaboration	10	A Player of Chess (3) Shadowy (150 + 10 x )	1 x
Cover Identity: Nuance	6	A Player of Chess (3 + ) Bizarre (5 + )	1 x
Cover Identity: Witnesses	6	A Player of Chess (3 + ) Dreaded (5 + )	1 x
Cover Identity: Credentials	6	A Player of Chess (3 + ) Respectable (5 + )	1 x
Quality		Cost	Gain
Cover Identity: Backstory		25 x Well-Placed Pawn	2 x
		250 x Well-Placed Pawn (2 actions)	12 x
		5 x Vienna Opening	6 x
		50 x Final Breath	11 x
		50 x Moves in the Great Game	11 x
		100 x Unusual Love Story	22 x
		1 x Mortification of a Great Power	26 x

Selling an Identity

Repeatable Sales

Action	Storylet/Card (Location)	Cover Identity Qualities	Reward
Clay Highwayman's gang (Non-Marauder)	The Next Stretch of Track ( Moloch Street)	Disposs.  10  4  4  4  10	10 x Railway Steel
Clay Highwayman's gang (Marauder)	The Next Stretch of Track ( Moloch Street)	Bazaar  10  4  4  4  10	11 x Railway Steel
A Veteran Revolutionary	Which meeting? Upper River	Surface  4	2 x Favours: Revolutionaries
An Urchin	Engage in Unobserved Charity ( Ealing Gardens)	Bazaar  4	2 x Favours: Urchins
A constable	The Constabulary of the Evenlode ( The Magistracy of the Evenlode)	Disposs.  4	2 x Favours: Constables 1-4 x Hinterland Scrip
A Devil	Halfway to Hell ( Upper River)	Bazaar  4	2 x Favours: Hell
Devils	Halfway to Hell ( Upper River)	10  6  6  6  500	21  (leads to 1 x Reported Location of a One-Time Prince of Hell)
Spies	The Railway and the Great Game ( Upper River)	Surface  10  6  6  6  500	22  (leads to 1 x Rumourmonger's Network)
A Legal Scholar	Respectable Passengers ( Upper River)	10  6  100	1 x Edicts of the First City
Academic	The Nonspecific Academic ( The University)	10  4  6  100	1 x Dreadful Surmise
The person you were	Your Cabinet Noir: The Back Room ( Balmoral)	1+  0+  0+  0+  0+	( + + + + ) x Memory of a Much Lesser Self
Fence this identity	Your Cabinet Noir: The Back Room ( Balmoral)	0+  5+  0+  0+  0+  0+	( / 5) x  (N = + + + ) (No ) N x  ( Surface ) N x  ( Bazaar ) N x  ( Disposs. ) N x

Clay Highwayman Grand Larcenies

When you are part of the Clay Highwayman's gang, you have the opportunity to perform larcenies across the Hinterlands. The highest level larcenies require Casing 10 and moderately advanced Cover Identities and reward you with 312.50 Echo items.

One-Time Uses

There are also a few one-off opportunities to use Cover Identities, such as erecting statues or advancing storylines.

One-Time Uses

Action	Storylet/Card (Location)	Cover Identity Qualities	Reward
Put up a statue (Balmoral)	Offices of the Tracklayer's Union: Balmoral Branch ( Balmoral)	Bazaar  5  1  1  1  5	20
Put up a statue (Moulin)	Offices of the Tracklayer's Union: Moulin Branch ( Moulin)	5  50	21
Identify yourself...	A Conversation with Mr Fires ( Station VIII)	Dispossessed  2	Hillchanger Tower, Changed
Join the gang	The Clay Highwayman's Camp ( Balmoral)	Surface  7  3  3	1

Strategy

Assuming all checks are 100%, the baseline cost of a constructing a Cover Identity is ( Cover Identity: Elaboration + Cover Identity: Credentials + Cover Identity: Nuance + Cover Identity: Witnesses) actions. You may also have a cost of 1 Favour for adding Cover Identity: Ties. The cost in both items and actions of Cover Identity: Backstory depends on the options used to raise it, but can also be fairly approximated as 1 action per Backstory with some exceptions.

From this, we can determine that Provide an Urchin with evidence that she's a long lost heir, Sell an undercover identity to a constable, Sell a socially plausible cover identity to a Devil each cost 5 actions (not including travel) + 1 Favour to receive 2 Favours. We can also approximate that Put up a statue in honour of your Cover Identity (which is to say, yourself) costs 14 actions + 1 Favour.

Involve the Clay Highwayman's gang in industrial steel robbery (Non-Marauder) costs 32 actions + 1 Favour to receive 10-11 Railway Steel. In order to get 10 railway steel from other sources, it takes 2 actions, 230 BSI and 2 Justificande coins. Assuming 2 actions for the coins, and 1 action for the favour, one would have to get more than roughly 7.9 or 8.7 BSI/action to make it more efficiently through other sources. This is in line with the best sources of Steel.

Selling a very advanced identity to Devils or to to Spies costs around 530 actions to receive an Intercepted Document that results in a Reported Location of a One-Time Prince of Hell or Rumourmonger's Network, respectively.

We can also approximate that Fence this identity is upper-bounded at 2.50 EPA. Each point of Cover Identity: Elaboration, Cover Identity: Credentials, Cover Identity: Nuance, or Cover Identity: Witnesses adds one 2.50 E item to the reward and each 5 points of Cover Identity: Backstory adds one 12.50 E item. Spending a Favour to add Cover Identity: Ties when starting the identity does not increase the reward at all, but merely changes which 2.50 E items you receive. That said, while it does not compare favourably to other options as an Echo grind, this is a good source for some of the possible rewards. If you do grand larcenies, you can push this up to a 3.60 echo grind, if you get ivory organzas and use the rat market.

Elaboration

The scaling difficulty check for increasing Elaboration means even top-level characters will not be able to guarantee success when building an Identity that require high level of Elaboration. The challenge to add a 10th point of Elaboration has a difficulty of 240, which would take Shadowy 400 to guarantee success. A realistic value of Shadowy 300 gives only a 75% chance of success. On average it will take $1/0.75=1.33$ attempts to achieve success.

The table below summarizes the scaling challenge, success chance, and cumulative action cost for a character with Shadowy 300. The scaling is not exactly proportional, but is somewhat close. A character with 280 Shadowy would take 11.78 actions on average to reach Elaboration 10, while a character with 320 Shadowy would need 10.74 actions on average.

Elaboration	Challenge	Success %	Attempts Needed	Cumulative Actions
1	150	100%	1	1
2	160	100%	1	2
3	170	100%	1	3
4	180	100%	1	4
5	190	95%	1.05	5.05
6	200	90%	1.11	6.16
7	210	86%	1.16	7.32
8	220	82%	1.22	8.54
9	230	78%	1.28	9.82
10	250	75%	1.33	11.16

Backstory

There are several items which can be spent to gain backstory.

Well-Placed Pawn: It's hard to get these reliably. For 10 backstory, it is always more efficient to Make your Pawns follow your cover identity unless you can get 45 pawns/action. Relative efficiency for larger quantities of backstory varies.

• Pit one Varchaasi against another from Varchas from Behind the Glass at x 25  an action. (Requires Shadowy Gains 18).
• Consult the Stewards of the Discordance (Adulterine Castle): x 21–27  or x ~1  per action
• At the Chessboard: Offer a draw, or fail at Choose a queen mate or Choose an epaulette mate. At most x 18  per action.
• Direct your network in the Khanate for x 10  per action.
• Buy from Nightclaw's Paw-Brokers at The Rat Market for 2 . Efficiency depends on your source of Rat-Shillings.
  • Selling Night-Whispers from Favour-based Tribute gives x ~35  per action, or x ~1.32  per action

Vienna Opening: Overall, this ends up at x ~1  per action.

• At the Chessboard: free for Midnighters or 1 x Vital Intelligence for anyone else
• Attend a Sermon at the Septemberists' Kirk in Balmoral (takes two actions and 1 x Favours: Revolutionaries for x 2 )
• Raise a glass to someone at The Fiddler's Scarlet in Jericho Locks for x 5–9; may be okay if you have good sources for Esteem of the Guild
• Manoeuvre the Counter-Church in Burrow if you have a Counter Church; needs A Player of Chess 10 to 100% the check
• Explore the walls in Marigold Station

Final Breath

• These can most efficiently be gained by:
  • Writing a monograph in Moulin for The Exiled Antiquarian: based on Cautionary
  • Selling to the Tentacled Entrepreneur: based on Amalgamy (see Assembling a Skeleton guide)
  • Holding your breath underwater in the Hurlers: x 23  at Darkness 0; a loop detailed here gives x ~7.2  per action depending on your Dangerous, which works out to x ~1.38  per action.
• Sell Surveys of the Neath's Bones to the Enthusiast of the Ancient World: x 10  for 5 Surveys. If you can efficiently publish a newspaper (see guide) or perform lab research (see guide), this works out to about ~4.2 or ~4.5 Final Breaths respectively per action.

Moves in the Great Game

• If you have access to it, the Red epilogue of the Chessboard campaign works out to x 1  per action. This option disappears when you start any new campaign (even the Chessboard).
• Take tea with the Diplomat in the Khanate: average of x 7.5 Moves in the Great Game for x 5 Incendiary Gossip. Not very good. Efficiency depends on source of :
  • From newspapers (including side conversion and up conversion of Journals): x 0.26  per action
  • From twice upconverted Inkling of Identity bought at the Rat Market for 1 , efficiency depends on the source of Rat-Shillings. At best about x 0.42  per action with Tribute-sourced Night-Whispers.
• Writing monographs in Moulin for The Disgraced Diplomat (requires Moulin Archaeological Institute 3+): based on Ironic
• Exchange some knowledge of the Eversmoulder on the card Halfway to Hell (requires Discovered: The Eversmoulder and Hellish Hymn). Difficult Watchful 210 check for x 10 Moves in the Great Game.
• For the Game, spending Corresponding. Requires The Great Game.

Unusual Love Story

• Read the graffiti on the Statue on its Station VIII opportunity card, for 5–7 stories per action, or x ~1.3  per action. Darkness increases the difficulty, so this is not very compatible with breaking into Station VIII.
• An Exemplary Work of Lapsarian Theological Art; 4 stories per action, and hence x 0.88  per action

Mortification of a Great Power

• Await a verdict on Gondoliers v Society Matron (Prosecution) in the Evenlode Courts: 6 actions each, plus the replacement cost of the x 20 Preserved Surface Blooms to start each case. Buying Surface Blooms at The Rat Market at 5.0 EPA takes 10 actions to get 20 Surface Blooms. Alongside 1 action to turn in the Mortification, this takes 17 actions in total. This gives about x 1.53  per action.
• Expanding your Network in the Khanate with the Bandaged Naval Officer, Shapeless Aristocrat, or Idle Soldier: 15 actions each, plus an expected 2.2 actions shuffling to the appropriate Airs, for an approximate x 1.43  per action. Does not include travel time
• Send an inordinately enormous stack of documents to Mount Palmerston from Spelunking in the Sunken Embassy: 18 actions per item, x 1.37  per action
• Breathe an ancient air while Diving in the Magistracy: 8 actions, plus a chance to gain 6 CP of menaces on failing a Dangerous 220 check, which is impossible to 100% pass. Costs 75 x Final Breath, which would convert to x 16.5 , so a net increase of x 9.5 . Assuming 200 Dangerous and clearing menaces at 6 CP per action, that's equivalent to x 1.12  per action (300 Dangerous is only a little better, at x 1.16  per action)
• Enforce your demands at the end of the Parabolan War campaign A Dreaming Priest of the Second City, for 3 Mortifications; no analysis has been made on the efficiency of this.
• Getting An illicit secret as a reward in Hearts' Game gives a Morfitication in 19 actions, which means x 1.3  per action.