Blood Chit

Basic Information

A blood chit is a document carried by armed forces personnel likely to be stranded away from their own lines and designed to be presented to the local population. Typically a chit is written in appropriate languages - and possibly in cartoon images as well - and indicates the carriers alliegances, requests that he be assisted to return to his own lines and offers a reward for such assistance. Such chits may also carry promises of payment for the return of corpses - or some form of identification therefrom.

Note that a chit will almost always require some presence from the soldier to whom it was issued - otherwise it might not be much use.

Sources

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• PCs who are neutral in some wider conflict may find themselves doing blood-chit work - either escorting downed airmen for hire, or stripping corpses for thier chits and dog-tags and running them in instead.
  • Less moral PCs may look at the cost-benefit (especially for particularly annoying, incompetent or badly wounded evaders) and decide to go for the lower effort option of killing them and taking the reduced payment for their dog-tags.
• Conversely, PCs on forward operations may be pestered by locals who have dog tags and blood chits for dead airmen (possibly from a previous war) and want payment now.
• Downed PCs may find themselves traded like a letter of credit between various groups on their way home - or, as above, may hand off annoying charges at a discount.
• Also, the presence of blood-chits may be good evidence against a community assisting enemy personnel.
• For humour value, an incompetently phrased blood-chit may be less than helpful.
• Also, turning up with just the chit may get you killed on the assumption that you have murdered and looted one of their people who was lost in the wilderness.
  • Cultural misunderstandings about proof of identity may also lead to hilarity - many troops may shoot first and ask questions later if presented with the shrunken head of a former comrade. Even if the person presenting it regards shrinking of heads as a perfectly normal funerary practice.