Bribing the Press

While the paper publicly prides itself on journalistic integrity, its silence (or lack of) can absolutely be bought. In-game this is an open secret, but Poppy will never advertise or officially acknowledge that extortion is on the menu. If accused publicly, she will deny it entirely and the accusing character may find themselves with some unwanted press attention.

The Kill Fee

If a scandalous submission comes across the editorial desk about a specific character, Poppy or a representative of hers might approach the subject of the article before it goes to print. The offer is simple: the paper has a story about you, and for the right price, it will conveniently get lost in the mail.

Most gossip or articles just run; the paper does not offer to kill everything that comes across its desk. If Poppy is at your elbow before print, it means the story is bad enough to be worth more unpublished than published, and she decided you’re worth the conversation instead of the column inches.

Writers still get paid when a piece gets pulled; see Spike Pay.

What to Do if You are Approached

Being approached is not a formality—whatever the paper has is real, sourced, and will go to print if nothing changes. If you are offered the chance to pay a Kill Fee, you have a few options on how to respond:

• Pay Up: You can negotiate with Poppy. The kill fee isn’t limited to coin; you can offer resources, influence, or a favor to be named later. If you pay the fee, the article is killed and will not be printed.
• Call the Bluff: You can refuse to pay. Tell the editor to do her worst, take the heat, and let the town read all about it in the next issue.
• Handle It Some Other Way: You lean on someone who has leverage over the editor, discredit the source, offer to pay to have a rebuttal printed, or make the story stop being true before it prints. Just a warning that Poppy has been threatened before; it has never gone the way the threatening party hoped.

If Shauna approaches you about a potential kill fee she is offering a fun roleplay hook, but she is also checking in on your boundaries. If the proposed article crosses an out-of-game line or touches on a subject you as a player are genuinely uncomfortable with, you do not have to pay in-game coin to stop it. Simply tell her that it violates your consent preferences and the article will be scrapped entirely, free of charge.

Initiating a Kill Fee

You do not have to wait to be approached. If your character hears a rumor that a story about them has been submitted to the paper, you can proactively seek out Poppy to negotiate a kill fee before the ink dries.

Buying Silence Outright

Rather than paying story by story, a character can negotiate to stay out of the papers entirely. This is renegotiated yearly. Poppy has never refused one outright, but her price is often the answer on if she wants to make a deal or not—in other words, the more valuable your name is in the paper, the higher the price will be.

Understand that this is a business deal, which means it exists in the world. Other characters can suspect it, uncover it, or ask why your name never appears in a paper that prints everyone else’s. A rival who works out that you’re paying for silence has learned something worth more than whatever you were hiding.

This is not the consent form, and it is not a substitute for it. If you as a player would rather not appear in the paper, that costs nothing and is handled out of game. Nobody has to spend in-game coin to set an out-of-game boundary.

Buying Good Ink

Silence is not the only thing for sale. A character can also pay to be seen well: a flattering feature, a favorable review of their business, a duel recounted with the emphasis on their footwork rather than the part where they fell down.

The one caveat is that the piece has to survive contact with the truth. Poppy will not invent a victory that didn’t happen or an heir who doesn’t exist, because a paper caught lying outright stops being worth bribing. What she sells is emphasis, framing, and column inches, which is a lot more valuable than it sounds.

The paper covers interesting people for free, and always will; you don’t have to pay just to appear in the paper.