Nerve
Nerve is the Relation-faculty skill for the poker face. Staying on target when the room turns against you. Hiding what you actually feel. Not flinching when Melita tells you to go back to the Freezer, not letting the Man in the Ugly Coat see he's getting to you. It's the skill that keeps your other Relation skills from leaking. A Cold Read with a low Nerve sees everyone's tells and then telegraphs its own. A Personalism with a low Nerve understands what's hurting you and immediately shows it on your face.
Stats
| Faculty | Faculty of Relation |
| Resource | Anxiety (yellow) |
Strengths
- +Lets you carry a cover. CASCADE is officially recalled — every conversation in Quisach is, technically, a lie.
- +Buffed +1 by the held item Tyrant Wolf's Flaming Claymore (along with Statehood and Instincts).
- +Pairs with Cold Read and Personalism so the social skills don't broadcast as they read.
Costs
- −Burns Anxiety. Long high-stakes scenes (the phone call with Melita, the Bagman broadcast, anything with a Weeping Eye agent in the room) keep Nerve firing constantly.
- −Over-reliance reads as 'cold' on the wrong builds. Charismatic CASCADE benefits more from controlled vulnerability than from a stone face.
Description
Stay on target, keep calm under pressure. Hide your feelings from the world.
Nerve is one of the five Relation-faculty skills, alongside Blueprints, Cold Read, Personalism, and Statehood. It's the part that controls the signal you're sending back out.
Two halves. *Stay on target* is the focus discipline — keep the plan in your head while everything tries to knock it out. *Hide your feelings* is the cover discipline — look like the operant the cover says you are, even when you're not.
Those are operant-fundamental. CASCADE has been recalled with no live operation. Every conversation in Quisach is, institutionally, a lie. Nerve is what keeps the lie consistent across hours of dialogue.
It's the discipline voice in her head. Not loud. Not negotiable. The one that says *don't react.* Often the last skill to speak in a scene — it lets the others work, then steps in when something is about to slip.
For a 14-year veteran, Nerve doesn't really atrophy. Five years in Novessa might have rusted Cold Read or Blueprints, but the poker face is still there. The Freezer is, after all, a place that teaches you to keep your feelings off your face.
Faculty
Faculty of Relation
Mechanics
Nerve checks resolve poker-face and focus-discipline scenes — holding a cover, suppressing a reaction, keeping calm under interrogation or pressure. Burns Anxiety (yellow). Buffed +1 by Tyrant Wolf's Flaming Claymore (held item) along with Statehood and Instincts. If the Relation stress meter caps at 20, a Relation skill drops a level. Preset starts: Kinetic 2, Charismatic 4, Analytical 3.
Builds & playstyles
**Kinetic (Relation 2):** floor's fine. You'll sometimes lose a scene because your face beat your fists to the answer.
**Charismatic (Relation 4):** necessary. Without Nerve, the other Charismatic skills leak. Keep it at 4.
**Analytical (Relation 3):** good fit. Keeps the working surface uncluttered while the room presses.
**Tyrant Wolf's Flaming Claymore:** grants Statehood +1, Instincts +1, and Nerve +1 while held. The toy sword you can talk the Sword-Wielding Child out of in the Bootleg Bazaar. Three buffs from one held item.