So the idea of this is that we get a new faction who are a group of treasure hunters who buy and sell treasure charts, their ship’s will commonly drop treasure charts and even partially completed treasure charts after sinking them and killing their crew, the faction has shop npcs who appear in spots where deckhands would normally spawn.
The shop part
As explained above they spawn in place of deckhands and upon interacting with them a menu is pulled up allowing players to buy common maps and sell any tier of map to the shopkeeper, however the shopkeeper will only accept uncompleted maps.
Player’s relations with the faction
As you sell treasure charts to them and buy from them, you’d gain reputation with them that never decreases, and the higher your reputation, the better maps they offer, with the highest buyable tier being rare maps.
The two sides of the same coin
Now the faction would have two versions, the position rep one that you can find in normal town, and the criminal/pirate side that you can find in criminal inhabited areas, however the two different sides don’t associate with each other.
Lore
Originally the faction had only a small group of members from different backgrounds who all shared the same interest in finding buried treasure, but as time went on, the members with criminal backgrounds eventually began to destroy the faction from the inside, with the original leader dying to an “unfortunate climbing accident” on the step stones, said leader’s body can be found at the step stones with climbing equipment still on them.
Over time the good members of the original group began to realise the truth behind the other member’s deaths and eventually this lead to a battle with the original members and their followers which concluded with the faction splitting in two.
While some members of the lawful faction are shady and may have ties to other factions such as the assassin syndicate, the majority of them are good people.
The unlawful faction was originally formed by the same person who murdered the original group’s leader, and said leader was the sibling of this ruthless killer, but after a year of the unlawful portion being formed, their leader at the time mysteriously disappeared, and is speculated to have been murdered by someone from the original group.
