The Grind Dealer’s Bargain: Everyone Wants Something Under the Dome—but at What Cost?

August 11, 2025

In Crystalia, the Dome doesn’t just protect you—it traps you.
From the Spires’ glittering balconies to the muck-slick alleys of the Brocks, everything has a price. And nothing worth having comes clean.

Whether you’re a street racer, a gladiator, a merchant, or a schemer, sooner or later you’ll find yourself face-to-face with the real currency of this city: compromise.

🎲 The Bargain in Play

The Grind Dealers aren’t always the same person.
Sometimes it’s a smiling spireborn with a contract sealed in chaos wax. Sometimes it’s a desperate gang captain holding a trike part you need for tomorrow’s race. Sometimes it’s a voice in your dreams, offering you one favor in exchange for just one… little… betrayal.

The bargain is simple:

They give you momentum. A shortcut, a forbidden tool, a name you shouldn’t know.
You give them morality. Your silence, your cooperation, your soul’s first hairline fracture.

💡 Why the Grind Works

Under the Dome, victory is rarely about who’s strongest. It’s about who’s willing to bend first. The winners know that the right compromise at the right time can be worth more than years of playing straight.

When you take the bargain, you gain:

Speed (trike parts, intel, shortcuts past watch patrols)
Access (illegal matches, locked rooms, guarded archives)
Survival (a cure, a bribe, a safe passage through hostile turf)

⚖️ The Moral Ledger

But each deal leaves a mark. Maybe you:

Helped sabotage a rival’s bike knowing they’d crash.
Fought a match you were told to throw… and didn’t.
Smuggled something you never looked at, but still smell in your sleep.
Let someone else take the fall because you didn’t want the heat.

And the Dome remembers. Because under here, everyone’s watching for the next person to slip.

🧠 Ask Your Character This

What do you really want? Not what you tell your crew, but the thing you’d pay anything to have.
What’s your breaking point? Where’s the line you won’t cross—until you do?
Who holds your debt? Because if you’ve been here long enough, someone does.

🗝️ For the DM

Grind Dealer bargains make fantastic story engines:

Offer a deal that solves the players’ immediate problem beautifully… but spawns a bigger one later.
Tie bargains to NPCs the party trusts (or thinks they do).
Make it clear that refusing the deal has costs, too. Under the Dome, inaction is just another kind of choice.

In the end, the question isn’t whether your character will trade morality for momentum—it’s whether they’ll still recognize themselves when they finally cash in.

So… what’s your bargain worth? And who’s holding the receipt?

Thanks for reading. Until Next Time, Stay Nerdy!!