• Welcome to The Campaign Builder's Guild.
 

Penumbra: A Rules System for the Cadaverous Earth

Started by Rose-of-Vellum, January 09, 2014, 10:28:29 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Rose-of-Vellum

P E N U M B R A

[ooc="Synopsis"]In preparation to hosting a Cadaverous Earth (CE) campaign, I have attempted to create a rules system. This system, which I am referring to as Penumbra, is heavily based on Monte Cook's Numenara system, and of course, Steerpike's grotesquely beautiful setting. I am interested in critiques on how the rules seem in general (i.e., readability, playability, balance, etc.) and how they specifically capture or facilitate CE's flavor.[/ooc]

RULES OVERVIEW
Penumbra uses a six-sided die (1d6) to determine the results of most actions. Whenever a roll of any kind is called for, roll a d6.

The gamemaster (GM) sets a difficulty class (DC) for any given task. There are 10 degrees of difficulty. Thus, the DC of a task can be rated on a scale of 1 to 10. To succeed at the task, you must roll the DC or higher. Character skills, favorable circumstances, or excellent equipment can decrease the difficulty of a task. For example, if a character has expertise in climbing, she turns a DC 6 climb into a DC 5 climb. This is called decreasing the difficulty by one step. If she has mastery in climbing, she turns a difficulty 6 climb into a difficulty 4 climb. This is called decreasing the difficulty by two steps.

A skill is a category of knowledge, ability, or activity relating to a task, such as climbing, metallurgy, or persuasion. A character who has a skill is better at completing related tasks than a character who lacks the skill. A character's level of skill is either expertise (reasonably skilled) or mastery (very skilled). If you have expertise in a skill relating to a task, you decrease the difficulty of that task by one step. If you have mastery, you decrease the DC by two steps. A skill can never decrease a task's DC by more than two steps.

Anything else that reduces difficulty (aid from an ally, a particular piece of equipment, or some other advantage) is referred to as a benefaction. Benefactions can never decrease a task's DC by more than two steps.

You can also decrease the difficulty of a given task by applying Grit. (Grit is described in more detail below).

TABLE 1: TASK DIFFICULTY


   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
DCDESCRIPTIONGUIDANCE
0RoutineAlmost anyone can do this basically every time.
1SimpleMost people can do this most of the time.
2StandardTypical task requiring focus, but most people can usually do this.
3DemandingRequires full attention; most people have an equal chance of success or failure.
4DifficultSkilled people have an equal chance of success and failure.
5ChallengingEven skilled people often fail.
6IntimidatingNormal people almost never succeed.
7OverwhelmingImpossible without skills or great Grit.
8HeroicA task worthy of tales told for years afterward.
9LegendaryA task worthy of legends that last lifetimes.
10ImpossibleA task that normal beings couldn't fathom.

Certain factors, however, can increase the difficulty of a task. These include flaws, hindrances, and damage.

In contrast to skill expertise and mastery, some characters have innate flaws, be they cultural, physical, or mental, that limit their ability to perform specific tasks. Flaws come in two forms based on the severity of the limitation. A moderate flaw is called a defect. A character with a defect has the DC increased by one step for a specific category of tasks. A debility is similar to a defect, but more severe. A character with a debility has the DC increased by two steps for a specific category of tasks. In some cases, defects and debilities can be removed through eldritch means (e.g., a hagman could have optical grafts to remove his defect in sight-based perception tasks); otherwise, characters cannot gain expertise or mastery in a skill in which they already have a defect or debility.

Unlike the internal limitations of flaws, hindrances are external factors that inhibit a character's ability to perform a task. Examples of hindrances include rough terrain, poor visibility, subpar equipment, and distracting surroundings, and so forth. Hindrances usually increase the difficulty of a task by one step, although more severe hindrances can increase a task's difficulty by two steps. There is no limit to the number of hindrances that can affect a task, and DC increases from multiple hindrances are cumulative. For example, climbing up a ship's rigging is a DC 2 task. However, the same climb increases to DC 5 during a tempest, as the storm creates three hindrances: slippery rigging, diminished visibility, and vigorous buffeting.

Additionally, characters who suffer from certain types or amounts of damage can have the difficulty of future tasks increased (see section on Damage).  

Certain tasks, due to either severely disadvantageous circumstances or extreme character disability, might have their difficulty raised by multiple steps or be deemed outright impossible. For example, humans -barring witchcraft, technology, or similar intervention- cannot attempt tasks that involve flying. Alternatively, a clumsy person who has his hands horribly broken might have the DC of a simple task like tying a knot increased by more than 2 steps. In some cases, circumstances might be so severe that a GM rules that the task has become an altogether different activity. For example, the DC of running through ankle-deep water is one step higher than running on dry ground. Yet, running through neck-deep water is no longer a task that requires running; it requires swimming.

To sum up, three things can decrease a task's difficulty: skills, benefactions, and grit. Conversely, three things can increase the difficulty of a task: flaws, hindrances, and damage. If you can decrease a task's difficulty to 0, you automatically succeed and don't need to make a roll.

WHEN DO YOU ROLL?
Any time your character attempts a task, the GM assigns a difficulty to that task, and you roll a d6 against the associated DC. Unraveling a thaumaturgic cypher, leaping from a burning dirigible unto a gorgefly's back, pilfering apotropaic relics from Strigan templars, gutting a sandray with an ur-bone cestus, ensorcelling a flesh-scribed glyph, and all other notable actions are resolved with a roll of a d6.

However, if you attempt something that has a DC of 0, no roll is needed—you automatically succeed. Many actions have a difficulty of 0. Examples include opening an unbarred door, loading a wheellock pistol, retrieving a glow-globe from your pack, or purchasing skewered skink-meat from a willing costermonger. These are all routine actions and don't require rolls. Using skill, benefaction, and strain, you can decrease the DC of potentially any task to 0 and thus negate the need for a roll. Walking across a narrow, brine-slick gangplank is tricky for most people, but for an experienced corsair, it's routine. You can even decrease the DC of an attack on a foe to 0 and succeed without rolling. If there's no roll, there's no chance for failure. However, there's also no chance for remarkable success (in Penumbra, that usually means rolling a 5 or 6; see Special Rolls).


Rose-of-Vellum

#1
COMBAT
Making an attack in combat, whether it be mundane or magical, works the same way as any other roll: the GM assigns a difficulty to the task, and you roll a d6 against the associated DC. The difficulty of your attack roll depends on how powerful your opponent is. Just as tasks have a difficulty from 1 to 10, creatures have a level from 1 to 10. Most of the time, the difficulty of your attack roll is the same as the creature's level. For example, if you attack a level 2 bandit from the Slouching Devil Mountains, it's a level 2 task, so the DC to successfully attack the bandit is 2.

It's worth noting that players make all die rolls. If a character attacks a creature, the player makes an attack roll. If a creature attacks a character, the player makes a defense roll. The damage dealt by an attack is not determined by a roll—it's a flat number based on the weapon or attack used. For example, a cutlass always does 4 points of damage, and a musket always deals 6 damage.

ARMOR
Your armor class (AC) reduces the damage you take from attacks directed at you. You gain AC from wearing physical armor, invoking defensive hexes, obtaining protective grafts or glyphs, or from other special abilities. Like weapon damage, AC is a flat number, not a roll. If you're attacked, subtract your AC from the damage you take. For example, a ghul-hide jerkin gives you 1 point of AC, meaning that you take 1 less point of damage from attacks. If a mantid assassin shoots you with a derringer pistol for 2 points of damage while you're wearing the jerkin, you take only 1 point of damage. If your AC reduces the damage from an attack to 0, you take no damage from that attack.

Anyone can wear armor, but doing so can be taxing. Wearing armor costs you Might points and reduces your Agility Pool (see below). You can rest to recover these lost Might points in the standard manner, even if you're still wearing armor. The Agility Pool reduction remains as long as you wear the armor, but the Pool returns to normal as soon as you remove it. Certain characters (i.e., warrior, rogue) have abilities that reduce these drawbacks.

TABLE 2: ARMOR COSTS & PENALTIES


   
   
   
   
ARMORMIGHT COST/HOURAGILITY POOL REDUCTION
Light12
Medium23
Heavy35

WEAPONS
Typical physical weapons come in three categories: light, medium, and heavy.

LIGHT WEAPONS inflict only 2 points of damage, but they reduce the difficulty of the attack roll by one step because they are fast and easy to use. Light weapons are punches, kicks, clubs, knives, handaxes, rapiers, and so on. Weapons that are particularly small are light weapons.

MEDIUM WEAPONS inflict 4 points of damage. Medium weapons include swords, revolvers, battleaxes, maces, crossbows, spears, and so on. Most weapons are medium. Anything that could be used in one hand (even if it's often used in two hands, such as a quarterstaff or spear) is a medium weapon.

HEAVY WEAPONS inflict 6 points of damage, and you must use two hands to attack with them. Heavy weapons are huge swords, muskets, great hammers, massive axes, halberds, heavy crossbows, and so on. Anything that must be used in two hands is a heavy weapon.

Certain archetypes, races, and foci grant proficiency in specific types of weapons. Weapon proficiency allows a character to use any item of that type without penalty. Weapon proficiency also grants a character expertise in all tasks to appraise, maintain, or repair weapons of the specified category.

SURPISE
When a target isn't aware of an incoming attack, the attacker has an advantage. A ranged sniper in a hidden position, an invisible assailant, or the first salvo in a successful ambush are all modified by two steps in the attacker's favor. For the attacker to gain this advantage, however, the defender truly must have no idea that the attack is coming. If the defender isn't sure of the attacker's location but is still on guard, the attacker's modifier is one one step in his favor.  

SPECIAL ROLLS
When you roll a natural 5 (the d6 shows "6") and the roll is a success, you also have a minor effect. In combat, a minor effect inflicts 2 additional points of damage with your attack, or, if you'd prefer a special result, you could decide instead that you knock the foe back, distract him, or something similar. When not in combat, a minor effect could mean that you perform the action with particular grace. For example, when leaping from a train hurtling down the Clockwork Rail, you land not only unharmed but smoothly on your feet. Alternatively, when haggling with a tissue-shop owner over the price of a desired graft, you convince the proprietor to sell you the graft for a reduced cost.  

In combat, the easiest and most straightforward minor effect is dealing 2 additional points of damage with an attack. The following are other common minor effects for combat:
▪   Strike a specific body part: The attacker strikes a specific spot on the defender's body. The GM rules what special effect, if any, results. For example, hitting a creature's tentacle that is wrapped around an ally might make it easier for the ally to escape. Hitting a foe in the eye might blind it for one round. Hitting a creature in its one vulnerable spot might ignore AC.
▪   Knock back: The foe is knocked or forced back a few feet. Most of the time, this doesn't matter much, but if the fight takes place on a ledge or next to a vat of acid, the effect can be significant.
▪   Move past: The character can move a short distance (see next section) at the end of the attack. This effect is useful to get past a foe guarding a door, for example.
▪   Distract: For one round, the difficulty of all tasks the foe attempts is modified by one step to its detriment.

When you roll a natural 6 (the d6 shows "6") and the roll is a success, you also have a major effect. This is similar to a minor effect, but the results are more remarkable. In combat, a major effect inflicts 4 additional points of damage with your attack, but again, you can choose instead to introduce a dramatic event such as knocking down your foe, stunning him, or taking an extra action (if a roll grants you a major effect, you can choose to use a minor effect instead if you prefer). Outside of combat, a major effect means that something beneficial happens based on the circumstance. For example, when climbing up a cliff wall, you make the ascent twice as fast.

In combat, the easiest and most straightforward major effect is dealing 4 additional points to damage with an attack. The following are other common major effects for combat.
▪   Knock down: The foe is knocked prone. It can get up on its turn if it wishes.
▪   Disarm: The foe drops one object that it is holding.
▪   Stun: The foe loses its next action.
▪   Impair: For the rest of the combat, the difficulty of all tasks the foe attempts is modified by one step to its detriment.

Rolling a natural 1 is always bad. It means that the GM introduces a new complication into the encounter.

RANGE & MOVEMENT
Distance is simplified into three categories: immediate, short, and long. A few special cases –point-blank range and extreme range- modify an attack's chance to successfully hit.

IMMEDIATE DISTANCE from a character is within reach or within a few steps. If a character stands in a small room, everything in the room is within immediate distance. At most, immediate distance is 10 feet (3 m).

SHORT DISTANCE is anything greater than immediate distance but less than 50 feet (15 m) or so.

LONG DISTANCE is anything greater than short distance but less than 100 feet (30 m) or so. (Beyond that range, distances are always specified—500 feet [152 m], a mile [1.6km], and so on.)

POINT-BLANK RANGE: If a character uses a ranged weapon against a target within immediate range, the attacker gets a one-step modifier in her favor.

EXTREME RANGE: Targets just at the limit of a weapon's range are at extreme range. Attacks against such targets are modified by one step in the defender's favor.

The idea is that it's not necessary to measure precise distances. Immediate distance is right there, practically next to the character. Short distance is nearby. Long distance is farther off.

All weapons and special abilities use these terms for ranges. For example, all melee weapons have immediate range—they are close-combat weapons, and you can use them to attack anyone within immediate distance of you. A thrown knife (and most other thrown weapons) has short range. A revolver has long range. A theurge's eldritch strike ability (which, in game, might resemble battle-hexes such as Tarim's Caustic Mancation, Nine-Hells Harrowsmite, Pellucid's Tenebrous Laceration, etc.) also has short range.

A character can move an immediate distance as part of another action. In other words, he can take a few steps over to the control panel and activate a switch. He can lunge across a small room to attack a foe. He can open a door and step through. A character can move a short distance as his entire action for a turn. He can also try to move a long distance as his entire action, but the player might have to roll to see if the character slips, trips, or stumbles as the result of moving so far so quickly.

For example, if the PCs are fighting a swarm of fetch inside one of the Shatters' derelect warworm, any character can likely attack any fetch in the general melee—they're all within immediate range. Exact positions aren't important. Creatures in a fight are always moving, shifting, and jostling, anyway. However, if the one of murderfolk stayed back to fire a blunderbuss, a character might have to use her entire action to move the short distance required to attack that foe. It doesn't matter if the fetch is 20 feet (6 m) or 40 feet (12 m) away—it's simply considered short distance. It does matter if he's more than 50 feet (15 m) away because that distance would require a long move.


Rose-of-Vellum

CHARACTER STATS
Every player character has three defining characteristics, which are typically called "statistics" or "stats." These stats are Might, Agility, and Intellect. They are broad categories that cover many different but related aspects of a character.
   
MIGHT
Might defines how strong and durable your character is. The concepts of strength, endurance, constitution, hardiness, and physical prowess are all folded into this one stat. Might isn't relative to size; instead, it's an absolute measurement. An sandray has more Might than the mightiest ostrich, which has more Might than the mightiest piranha rat, which has more Might than the mightiest gorefly. Might governs actions from forcing doors open to walking for days without food to resisting disease. It's also the primary means of determining how much damage your character can sustain in a dangerous situation. Physical characters, tough characters, and characters interested in fighting should focus on Might.   
   
AGILITY
Agility describes how fast and physically coordinated your character is. The stat embodies quickness, movement, dexterity, and reflexes. Agility governs such divergent actions as dodging attacks, sneaking around quietly, and shooting firearms accurately. It helps determine whether you can move farther on your turn. Nimble, fast, or sneaky characters will want good Agility stats, as will those interested in ranged combat.
   
INTELLECT
This stat determines how smart, knowledgeable, and likable your character is. It includes intelligence, wisdom, charisma, education, reasoning, wit, willpower, and charm. Intellect governs solving puzzles, remembering facts, telling convincing lies, and using mental powers. Characters interested in communicating effectively, being learned scholars, and mastering occult mysteries should stress their Intellect stat.

POOL, EDGE, & GRIT
Each of these stats has two components: your Pool and your Edge. Your Pool represents your raw, innate ability, and your Edge represents knowing how to use what you have. A third element ties into this concept: Grit. When your character really needs to accomplish a task, you apply Grit.

POOL
Your Pool is the most basic measurement of a stat. Comparing the Pools of two creatures will give you a general sense of which creature is superior in that stat. For example, a character who has a Might Pool of 16 is stronger (in a basic sense) than a character who has a Might Pool of 12. Most characters start with a Pool of 9 to 12 in most stats—that's the average range.
   
When your character is injured, sickened, or attacked, you temporarily lose points from one of your stat Pools. The nature of the attack determines which Pool loses points. For example, physical damage from a sword reduces your Might Pool, a poison that makes you clumsy reduces your Agility Pool, and a psionic blast reduces your Intellect Pool. You can also spend points from one of your stat Pools to decrease a task's difficulty (see Grit). You can rest to regain lost points from a stat Pool, and some special abilities, witchcraft, and technology might allow you to recover lost points quickly.

EDGE   
Although your Pool is the basic measurement of a stat, your Edge is also important. When something requires you to spend points from a stat Pool, your Edge for that stat reduces the cost. It also reduces the cost of applying Grit to a roll.
   
For example, let's say you have a battle-hex, and activating it costs 1 point from your Intellect Pool. Subtract your Intellect Edge from the activation cost, and the result is how many points you must spend to use the hex. If using your Edge reduces the cost to 0, you can use the ability for free.
   
Your Edge can be different for each stat. For example, you could have a Might Edge of 1, an Agility Edge of 1, and an Intellect Edge of 0. You'll always have an Edge of at least 1 in one stat. Your Edge for a stat reduces the cost of spending points from that stat Pool, but not from other Pools. Your Might Edge reduces the cost of spending points from your Might Pool, but it doesn't affect your Agility Pool or Intellect Pool. Once a stat's Edge reaches 3, you can apply one level of Grit for free.
   
A character who has a low Might Pool but a high Might Edge has the potential to perform Might actions consistently better than a character who has a Might Edge of 0. The high Edge will let her reduce the cost of spending points from the Pool, which means she'll have more points available to spend on applying Grit.

GRIT
When your character really needs to accomplish a task, you can apply Grit. For a beginning character, applying Grit requires spending 2 points from the stat Pool appropriate to the action. Thus, if your character tries to dodge an attack (a Agility roll) and wants to increase the chance for success, you can apply Grit by spending 2 points from your Agility Pool. Grit lowers the difficulty of the task by one step. This is called applying one level of Grit.
   
You don't have to apply Grit if you don't want to. If you choose to apply Grit to a task, you must do it before you attempt the roll—you can't roll first and then decide to apply Grit if you rolled poorly.
   
Applying more Grit can lower a task's difficulty further: each additional level of Grit reduces the difficulty by another step. Applying one level of Grit lowers the difficulty by one step, applying two levels lowers the difficulty by two steps, and so on. Each level of Grit costs 2 points from the stat Pool. So applying two levels of Grit costs 4 points (2 for the first level plus 2 for the second level), applying three levels costs 6 points (2 plus 2 plus 2), and so on.
   
Every character has a Grit score, which indicates the maximum number of levels of Grit that can be applied to a roll. A beginning (first-tier) character has a Grit score of 1, meaning you can apply only one level of Grit to a roll. A more experienced character has a higher Grit score and can apply more levels of Grit to a roll. For example, a character who has a Grit of 3 can apply up to three levels of Grit to reduce a task's difficulty.
   
When you apply Grit, subtract your relevant Edge from the total cost of applying Grit. For example, let's say you need to make an Agility roll. To increase your chance for success, you decide to apply one level of Grit, which will reduce the difficulty of the task by one step. Normally, that would cost 2 points from your Agility Pool. However, you have an Agility Edge of 1, so you subtract that from the cost. Thus, applying Grit to the roll costs only 1 point from your Agility Pool.
   
What if you applied two levels of Grit to the Agility roll instead of just one? That would reduce the difficulty of the task by two steps. Normally, it would cost 4 points from your Agility Pool, but after subtracting your Agility Edge of 1, it costs only 3 points.
   
Once a stat's Edge reaches 2, you can apply one level of Grit for free. For example, if you have an Agility Edge of 2 and you apply one level of Grit to an Agility roll, it costs you 0 points from your Agility Pool. (Normally, applying one level of Grit would cost 2 points, but you subtract your Agility Edge from that cost, reducing it to 0.)
   
Skills and other advantages (i.e., benefactions) also decrease a task's difficulty, and you can use them in conjunction with Grit. In addition, your character might have special abilities or equipment that allow you to apply Grit to accomplish a special effect, such as knocking down a foe with an attack or affecting multiple targets with a power that normally affects only one.

GRIT & DAMAGE
Instead of applying Grit to reduce the difficulty of your attack, you can apply Grit to increase the amount of damage you inflict with an attack. For each level of Grit you apply in this way, you inflict 3 additional points of damage. This works for any kind of attack that inflicts damage, whether a sword, a musket, a hex, or something else.
   
When using Grit to increase the damage of an area attack, such as a theurge's Blast ability, you inflict 2 additional points of damage instead of 3 points. However, the additional damage is dealt to all targets in the area. Further, even if one or more of the targets in the area resist the attack, you still inflict 1 damage to them.

MULTIPLE USES OF GRIT & EDGE
If your Grit is 2 or higher, you can apply Grit to multiple aspects of a single action. For example, if you make an attack, you can apply Grit to your attack roll and apply Grit to increase the damage. The total amount of Grit you apply can't be higher than your Grit score. For example, if your Grit is 2, you can apply up to two levels of Grit. You could apply one level to an attack roll and one level to its damage, two levels to the attack and no levels to the damage, or no levels to the attack and two levels to the damage.

You can use Edge for a particular stat only once per action. For example, if you apply Grit to a Might attack roll and to your damage, you can use your Might Edge to reduce the cost of one of those uses of Grit, not both. If you spend 1 Intellect point to activate your battle-hex and one level of Grit to decrease the difficulty of the attack roll, you can use your Intellect Edge to reduce the cost of one of those things, not both.

STAT EXAMPLES
Belphora Needletongue, a beginning character, is fighting a pox-dog in the Blistermaze. She stabs her glyph-scribed pike at the pox-dog, which is a level 3 creature and thus has a DC 3 to successfully strike. Belphora leaps atop a half-melted carriage and strikes downward at the beast, and the GM rules that this helpful tactic is a benefaction that decreases the difficulty by one step (to DC 2). Additionally, her pike is currently enchanted by a puissant glyph courtesy of her Resin Guild patrons; this glyph counts an another benefaction, reducing the DC to 1. Attacking with a pike is a Might action; the character has a Might Pool of 11 and a Might Edge of 0. Before making the roll, she decides to apply a level of Grit to decrease the difficulty of the attack. That costs 2 points from her Might Pool, reducing the Pool to 9. But they appear to be points well spent. Applying the Grit lowers the difficulty from 1 to 0, so no roll is needed—the attack automatically succeeds.

Another character, Shai-Qor, is attempting to convince a guard to let him into a private salon to speak to an influential magistra. The GM rules that this is an Intellect action. The character is third tier and has a Grit of 3, an Intellect Pool of 13, and an Intellect Edge of 1. Before making the roll, he must decide whether to apply Grit. He can choose to apply one, two, or three levels of Grit, or apply none at all. This action is important to him, so he decides to apply two levels of Grit, decreasing the difficulty by two steps. Thanks to his Intellect Edge, applying the Grit costs only 3 points from his Intellect Pool (2 points for the first level of Grit plus 2 points for the second level minus 1 point for his Edge). Spending those points reduces his Intellect Pool to 10. The GM decides that convincing the guard is a difficulty 5 (challenging); applying two levels of Grit reduces the difficulty to 3 (demanding). The player rolls a d6 and gets a 4. Because this result is at least equal to the task's DC, he succeeds. However, if he had not applied some Grit, he would have failed because his roll (4) would have been less than the task's original DC (5).

Rose-of-Vellum

#3
DAMAGE
If damage reduces a character's stat Pool to 0, any further damage to that stat (including excess damage from the attack that reduced said stat to 0) is applied to another stat Pool. Damage is applied to Pools in this order:

1. MIGHT (unless the Pool is 0)
2. AGILITY (unless the Pool is 0)
3. INTELLECT

Even if the damage is applied to another stat Pool, it still counts as its original type for the purpose of AC and special abilities that affect damage. For example, if a Pusletown gladiator with AC 2 from skin-grafts is reduced to 0 Might and then is hit by a bricoleur's bony claw for 4 points of damage, it still counts as Might damage, so his AC 2 reduces the damage to 2 points, which is then applied to his Agility Pool. In other words, even though the gladiator takes damage from his Agility Pool, it doesn't ignore AC like Agility damage normally would.

In addition to taking damage from their Might, Agility, or Intellect Pool, PCs also have a damage track. The damage track has four states (from best to worst): hale, impaired, debilitated, and dead. When one of the PC's stat Pools reaches 0, she moves one step down the damage track. Thus, if she is hale, she becomes impaired. If she is already impaired, she becomes debilitated. If she is already debilitated, she becomes dead. Some effects can immediately shift a PC one or more steps down the damage track. These include rare poisons, diseases, witchcraft, and massive traumas (as determined by the GM).

DAMAGE TRACK
HALE: Hale is the normal state for a character: all three stat Pools are at 1 or higher, and the PC has no penalties from harmful conditions. When a hale PC takes enough damage to reduce one of his stat Pools to 0, he becomes impaired. Note that a character whose stat Pools are much lower than normal can still be hale.

IMPAIRED: Impaired is a wounded or injured state. When an impaired character applies Grit, it costs 1 extra point per level applied. For example, applying one level of Grit costs 3 points instead of 2, and applying two levels of Grit cost 6 points instead of 4. An impaired character ignores minor and major effect results on his rolls. When an impaired PC takes enough damage to reduce one of his stat Pools to 0, he becomes debilitated.

DEBILITATED: Debilitated is a critically injured state. A debilitated character may not take any actions other than to move (probably crawl) no more than an immediate distance. If a debilitated character's Agility Pool is 0, he can't move at all. When a debilitated PC takes enough damage to reduce a stat Pool to 0, he is dead.

DEAD: Dead is dead.

SPECIAL DAMAGE
Characters face all manner of threats and dangers that can harm them in a variety of ways, only some of which are easily represented by points of damage.

DAZED & STUNNED: Characters can be dazed when struck hard on the head, exposed to extremely loud sounds, or affected by a mental attack. When this happens, for the duration of the daze effect (usually one round), the DC of all tasks attempted by the character increases by one step. Similar but more severe attacks can stun characters. Stunned characters lose their turn (but can still defend against attacks normally).  

POISON & DISEASE: When characters encounter poison, they make a Might defense roll to resist it. Failure to resist can result in points of damage, moving down the damage track, or a specific effect such as paralysis, unconsciousness, or something stranger. For example, some eldritch poisons affect the brain, making it impossible to say certain words, take certain actions, resist certain effects, or recover points to a stat Pool. Diseases work like poisons, but their effect occurs every day, so the victim must make a Might defense roll each day or suffer the effects. Disease effects are as varied as poisons: points of damage, moving down the damage track, disability, etc. Many diseases inflict damage that cannot be restored through conventional means.

PARALYSIS: Paralytic effects cause a character to drop to the ground, unable to move. Unless otherwise specified, the character can still take actions that require no physical movement.

SICKENED & NAUSEATED: Noxious fumes, revolting sights, certain diseases, and similar effects can cause a character to become temporarily sickened. When this happens, for the duration of the sickening effect (usually a round or two), the DC of all tasks attempted by the character increases by one step. Similar but more severe effects can render a character nauseated. Nauseated characters may not take any actions other than to move (probably crawl) no more than an immediate distance. The DC of defense rolls is increased by two steps for nauseated characters.  

OTHER EFFECTS: Other special effects can render a character blind or deaf, unable to stand without falling over, or unable to breathe. Stranger effects might transport her to another place, mutate her physical form, implant false memories or senses, inflame her body so she is in constant, excruciating pain, and so forth. Each special effect must be handled on a case-by-case basis. The GM adjudicates how the condition can be alleviated (if possible).

RECOVERY
After losing or spending points in a Pool, you recover those points by resting. You can't increase a Pool past its maximum by resting –just back to its normal level. Any extra points gained go away with no effect. The amount of points you recover from a rest, and how long each rest takes, depends on how many times you have rested so far that day. When you rest, make a recovery roll. To do this, roll 1d6 and add your tier. You recover that many points, and you can divide them among your stat Pools however you wish. For example, if you recovery roll is 4 and you've lost 4 points of Might and 2 points of Agility, you can recover 4 points of Might, or 2 points of Might and 2 points of Agility, or any other combination adding up to 4 points.

The first time you rest each day, it takes only a few seconds to catch your breath. If you rest this way in the middle of an encounter, it takes one action on your turn. The second time you rest each day, you must rest 10 minutes to make a recovery roll. The third time you rest each day, you must rest 1 hour to make a recovery roll. The fourth time you rest each day, you must rest for eight hours to make a recovery roll (usually, this occurs when you sleep). After that much rest, it's assumed to be a new day, so the next time you rest, it takes only a few seconds. The next rest takes ten minutes, then one hour, and so on, in a cycle.

If you haven't rested yet that day and you take a lot of damage in an encounter, you could rest a few seconds (regaining 1d6+1 point per tier) and then immediately rest for ten minutes (regaining another 1d6+1 point per tier). Thus, in one full day or doing nothing but resting, you could recover 4d6+4 points per tier. Each character chooses when to make recovery rolls. If a party of five tomb-raiders rests for ten minutes because two members want to make recovery rolls, the other three characters don't have to make rolls at that time. Later in the day, those three can decide to rest for ten minutes and make recovery rolls.

TABLE 3: RECOVERY ROLLS


   
   
   
   
   
   
RECOVERY ROLL      

REST TIME NEEDEDAMOUNT
1st recovery roll1 action1d6+tier
2nd recovery roll10 minutes1d6+tier
3rd recovery roll1 hour1d6+tier
4th recovery roll8 hours1d6+tier
Full rest recoveryAll day4d6+(4 per tier)

RESTORING THE DAMAGE TRACK
Using points from a recovery roll to raise a stat Pool from 0 to 1 or higher also automatically moves the character up one step on the damage track. If all of a PC's stat Pools are above 0 and the character has taken special damage that moved her down the damage track, she can use a recovery roll to move up one step on the damage track instead of recovering points. For example, a rogue who is debilitated from exposure to a Banehulk's ichor can rest and move up to impaired rather than recover points in a Pool.

Rose-of-Vellum

#4
EXPERIENCE POINTS
Rather than earning XP for killing foes or overcoming standard challenges, players gain experience points (XP) as a reward for completing character goals, performing significant feats, and attaining notable achievements. For example, if the characters need a rare codex from the legendary library of Gloam-Tor, the players do not receive XP for defeating the library's clockwork golems or overcoming a band of rival, hellmold-infested tomb-raiders. Instead, they would gain XP if they successfully obtained the desired codex (which likely, but not definitively, requires the characters to defeat said golems and rival tomb-raiders).

Experience points are used primarily for character advancement (see below), but a player can also spend 1 XP to reroll any die roll and take the better of the two rolls.

CHARACTER TIERS & BENEFITS
Every character starts the game at the first tier. Tier is a measurement of power, toughness, and ability. Characters can advance up to the sixth tier. As your character advances to higher tiers, you gain more abilities, increase your Grit, and can improve a stat's Edge or increase a stat. Generally speaking, even first tier characters are already quite capable. It's safe to assume that they've already got some experience under their belt. This is not a "zero to hero" progression, but rather an instance of competent people refining and honing their capabilities and knowledge. Advancing to higher tiers is not really the "goal" of characters, but rather a representation of how characters progress in a story.

To progress to the next tier, characters earn experience points (XP) by going on adventures, achieving notable deeds, attaining significant goals, and so forth. Experience points have many uses, and one use is to purchase character benefits. After your character purchases four character benefits, he or she goes up to the next tier. Each benefit costs 4 XP, and you can purchase them in any order, but you must purchase one of each kind of benefit (after which you advance to the next tier) before you can purchase the same benefit again. The four character benefits are as follows.

INCREASING CAPABILITIES: You gain 4 points to add to your stat Pools. You can allocate the points among the Pools however you wish.

IMPROVED EDGE: You add 1 to your Might Edge, your Agility Edge, or your Intellect Edge (your choice).

EXTRA GRIT: Your Grit score increases by 1.

SKILLS: You gain expertise in one skill of your choice, other than attacks or defense. As described above, a character with expertise in a skill treats the difficulty of a related task as one step lower than normal. The skill you choose for this benefit can be anything you wish, such as climbing, jumping, persuading, or sneaking. You can also choose to be knowledgeable in a certain area of lore, such as history or geology. You can even choose a skill based on your character's special abilities. For example, if your character can make an Intellect roll to blast a foe with conjured hellfire, you can gain expertise in using that ability, treating its difficulty as one step lower than normal. If you choose a skill that you are already have expertise in, you gain mastery in that skill, reducing the difficulty of related tasks by two steps instead of one.

Players can also spend 4 XP to purchase other special options in lieu of gaining a new skill. Selecting any of these options counts as the skill benefit necessary to advance to the next tier. The special options are as follows:

•   Reduce the cost for wearing armor. This option lowers the Might cost by 1 and lowers the Agility reduction by 1.
•   Add 2 to your recovery rolls.
•   If you're a warrior, select a new combat maneuver. The maneuver must be from your tier or a lower tier.
•   If you're a theurge, select a new esotery. The esotery must be from your tier or a lower tier.
•   If you're a rogue, select a new trick. The trick must be from your tier or a lower tier.

SKILLS
Sometimes your character gains expertise in a specific skill or task. For example, your focus might mean that you're an expert in sneaking, in climbing and jumping, or in social interactions. Other times, your character can choose a skill to gain expertise in, and you can pick a skill that relates to any task you think you might face.

The game has no definitive list of skills. However, the following list offers ideas:

TABLE 4: SAMPLE SKILLS


   
   
   
   
   
   
   
AeitologyClimbingHagglingMetallurgyPisteologyStorytelling
AlchemyDeceptionHistoryMiningPickpocketingSurgery
ArchaeologyForgeryIntimidationNerterologyRidingSwimming
AstrologyGamblingJumpingNigromancySailingToxicology
BalancingGeographyLeatherworkingPerceptionSneakingToymaking
BioengineeringGeologyLinguisticsPersuasionSortilegeWoodworking
BotanyGunsmithingLockpickingPhilosophySoul-TinkeringXenobiology
   
You could also make up more general, professional skills, such as playwright, graft-peddler, lapidary, or miasma-harvester. If you want to choose a skill that's not on this list, run it past the GM first, but in general, the most important aspect is to choose skills that are appropriate to your character.

Remember that if you gain a skill that you're already have expertise in, you gain mastery in that skill. Because skill descriptions can be nebulous, determining whether you have expertise or mastery might take some thinking. For example, if you have expertise in lying and later gain an ability that grants you skill with all social interactions, you gain mastery in lying and expertise in all other types of interactions. Being trained three times in a skill is no better than being trained twice (in other words, mastery is as good as it gets).

Only skills gained through character archetype abilities, such as the warrior's combat maneuvers focus abilities, or other rare instances allow you to become skilled with attack or defense tasks.

If you gain a special ability through your type, your focus, or some other aspect of your character, you can choose it in place of a skill and gain expertise or mastery in that ability. For example, if you have the ability to conjure tenebrals, when it's time to choose a skill to gain expertise in, you can select tenebral conjuration as your skill. That would reduce the difficulty every time you used it. Each ability you have counts as a separate skill for this purpose. You can't select "all witchcraft" or "all technology" as one skill and gain expertise or mastery in such a broad category.

Rose-of-Vellum

ARCHETYPE, RACE, DISPOSITION, & FOCUS
To create your character, you select four attributes that largely determine your character's personality, abilities, and aspirations. These four attributes, or cornerstones, of character creation are: archetype, race, disposition, and focus.

ARCHETYPE is the core of your character. In some roleplaying games, it might be called your character class. Your type helps determine your character's place in the world and relationship with other people in the setting. You can choose from three character archetypes: warrior, theurge, and rogue.

RACE defines your racial identity, grants various inherent strengths and weaknesses, and influences how other cultures and races will regard you. Typically, you can choose from the following races: anthropophagoi, cestoid, ghul, hagman, human, jatayi, leechkin, lilix, mantid, mindgrub, shade, shreeva, and zerda

DISPOSITION defines your character's personality and temperament—it flavors everything you do. Your disposition places your character in the situation and helps provide motivation. There are many character dispositions from which to choose, including: Alluring, Brutish, Erudite, Frenetic, Furtive, Graceful, Occult, Savage, Sensate, Shrewd, Stoic, and Tenacious.

FOCUS is what your character does best. Focus gives your character specificity and provides interesting powers and unique abilities. There are many character foci from which to choose.
   
In effect, these four attributes build a simple statement that describes your character. The statement takes this form: "I am a [insert adjective that describes your disposition] [insert adjective that lists your race] [insert noun that states your archetype] who [fill in a verb here]." For example, you might say, "I am a savage human warrior who practices Barrow-Scrub skinchanging " or "I am an erudite mantid theurge who crafts automata and clockwork devices."

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Character types and foci grant PCs special abilities at each new tier. Using these abilities usually costs points from your stat Pools; the cost is listed in parentheses after the ability name. Your Edge in the appropriate stat can reduce the cost of the ability, but remember that you can apply Edge only once per action. For example, let's say a theurge with an Intellect Edge of 2 wants to use his eldritch strike ability to create a voltaic bolt, which costs 1 Intellect point. He also wants to increase the damage from the attack by using a level of Grit, which costs 2 Intellect points. The total cost for his action is 1 point from his Intellect Pool (1 point for the bolt of force plus 2 points for using Grit minus 2 points from his Edge).

Sometimes the point cost for an ability has a + sign after the number. For example, the cost might be given as "2+ Intellect points." That means you can spend more points or more levels of Grit to improve the ability further.

Many special abilities grant a character the option to perform an action that she couldn't normally do, such as binding a demon or attacking multiple foes at once. Using one of these abilities is an action unto itself, and the end of the ability's description says "Action" to remind you. It also might provide more information about when or how you perform the action.

Some special abilities allow you to perform a familiar action—one that you can already do—in a different way. For example, an ability might let you wear heavy armor, reduce the difficulty of Agility defense rolls, or add 2 points of fire damage to your weapon damage. These abilities are called enablers. Using one of these abilities is not considered an action. Enablers either function constantly (such as being able to wear heavy armor, which isn't an action) or happen as part of another action (such as adding fire damage to your weapon damage, which happens as part of your attack action). If a special ability is an enabler, the end of the ability's description says "Enabler" to remind you.

Rose-of-Vellum

CHARACTER ARCHETYPES

WARRIOR
Characters with the warrior archetype are no mere bandits or mundane guards. They stand head and shoulders above ordinary soldiers and brawlers. Something in your background—whether intensive training, inborn traits, or biothaumaturgic modification—has made you more than the others around you. Choose one of those three options (described below) as the source of your skills, strength, reflexes, and stamina. It will provide the foundation of your background and give you an idea of how you can improve. The GM can use this information to develop adventures and quests that are specific to your character and play a role in your advancement.

INTENSIVE TRAINING
You are strong, fast, or both, but what really separates you from the crowd is your training. Perhaps you survived the oft-lethal grooming to become an armiger of the Lords-Revenant, scoured the Firesong Marches to learn from the deadliest mantid duelists, or attended the martial academies of Chaulaxna to study the exotic ways of the blade and pistol from six-armed tutors. Whatever the specific nature of your training, it taught you how to move, fight, and endure beyond normal human limits. You know a thousand ways to kill a foe, most of them secret to all but a chosen few. You're privy to techniques and fighting styles that most people in the Cadaverous Earth have never seen –or at least lived to tell. You have learned that the impossible is possible—as long as you know the secret. Your body is a weapon, and your weapon is part of your body. You have studied with the masters, and now you carry that regimen as you venture into the world.

ADVANCEMENT: You need to train and practice constantly to hone your skills and develop new techniques, building on what you've been taught. Perhaps at some point you will return to your masters for further initiation or find new teachers or lessons that can take you to the next step.

When you gain additional points for your stat Pools, an increase to a stat's Edge, or an increase in the level of Effort you can apply, the benefit comes as the result of rigorous exercise and personal development. When you gain a new skill or warrior ability, it's the result of the combative arts you have studied.

INHERENT TRAITS
You may have trained under skilled warriors and experienced many dangerous situations, but what makes you different –dangerous- is something more intrinsic, visceral, and inherent. Maybe you were born under auspicious stars, endowed with a fragment of the Bloodletter's power. Maybe you're a hulking brute—a mountainous figure who commands attention when you enter a room. Or maybe your strength is more subtle; you might be the descendant of a bioengineered race bred -or designed- for militant perfection. Perhaps the blood of Tyton the Revenger, or another legendary warrior, flows through your veins, endowing you with martial prowess, iron sinews, and an unquenchable lust for battle. Perhaps the Strigan Templars raised you, nursing you on the blood of sacrificed gladiators, imbuing you with preternatural strength and vigor.

ADVANCEMENT: You have talents of which you are only dimly aware. You must practice and experiment to find your limitations, if any. At some point in the future, you may have to seek out someone, be it ally or foe, who can help you master your inherent abilities. You were born with great power—now you need to learn how to use that power, even if the education takes a lifetime.

When your stats improve, it's because you're tapping deeper into the unknown reserves within you. When you gain a new warrior ability, it's the result of your preternatural or inhuman traits as much as it is about your study, practice, or knowledge. You can do things that other people simply cannot, no matter how hard they train.

BIOTHAUMATURGIC MODIFICATION 
Although you have trained and gained your share of practical experience, your martial abilities are heightened by something else. Perhaps you are a graftpunk whose body is a jigsaw menagerie of extra libs, inhuman talons, venomous glands, hypertrophic implants, and so forth. Alternatively, your flesh might be riddled with puissant glyphs, apotropaic sigils, and occult runes that grant you otherworldly strength, speed, and resilience. Or maybe your body is a bizarre blend of steel and skin, a deadly pastiche of clockwork sinews, pneumatic joints, alchemical tubing, and metallic prosthetics. Whatever the case and regardless of whether your willingly sought these modifications or not, you are an amalgamation built for bloodshed. Your modifications, whether obvious or subtle, allow you to transcend the limits of your birth and make you a master of death. 

ADVANCEMENT: Your body is an ongoing project. In a way, it's a work of art, although its beauty comes not from its appearance but from what it can do. As you go forward, you should keep an eye out at all times for new grafts or glyphs that can be incorporated into your body, or new doses of drugs, ichor, or alchemical substances to maintain your abilities. You might need to seek out tissue-shops, chirurgeons, mechanics, or soul-tinkerers to take you to the next level. Perhaps the parts you need can be found only in the ruins of the past or the dangerous graft-peddlers and splicers of a faraway city.

When your stats improve, it's because you literally have added something new to your body. When you gain a new ability, it's the direct result of a tangible change in your own physical being.

TABLE 5: WARRIOR STAT POOL


   
   
   
   
STATPOOL STARTING VALUE
Might11
Agility10
Intellect7
You get 4 additional points to divide among your stat Pools however you wish.

Rose-of-Vellum

#7
WARRIOR TIERS

FIRST-TIER WARRIOR
First-tier warriors have the following abilities:
   GRIT: Your Grit is 1.
   FIGHTER: You have a Might Edge of 1, an Agility Edge of 1, and an Intellect Edge of 0.
   ARMOR PROFICIENCIES: Warriors can wear armor for long periods of time without tiring and can compensate for slowed reactions from wearing armor. You can wear any kind of armor. You reduce the Might cost per hour for wearing armor and the Agility Pool reduction for wearing armor by 2. Enabler.
   WEAPON PROFICIENCES: You can use any weapon. Enabler.
   PHYSICAL SKILLS: You have expertise in your choice of one of the following: balancing, climbing, jumping, or swimming. Enabler.
   STARTING EQUIPMENT: You start with clothing, two weapons (or one weapon and a shield), light or medium armor, two single-use ensorcelled glyphs, relics, or devices (approved by the GM), one eldritch oddity (approved by the GM), and 50 coins of local currency or equivalent trade goods. If you start with a ranged weapon that requires ammunition (bullets, for example), you start with 12 of that type of ammunition.
   COMBAT MANEUVERS: You have a special talent for combat and can perform feats that others can barely imagine. These feats are called combat maneuvers. Some combat maneuvers are constant, ongoing effects, and others are specific actions that usually cost points from one of your stat Pools. Choose two of the combat maneuvers described below. You can't choose the same combat maneuvers more than once unless its description says otherwise.
•   Bash (1 Might point): This is a pummeling melee attack. Your attack inflicts 1 less point of damage than normal, but dazes your target for one round, during which time the difficulty of all tasks it performs is modified by one step to its detriment.
•   No Need for Weapons: Whenever you make an unarmed attack (such as a punch or kick), you can choose for it to count as a medium weapon instead of a light weapon. Enabler.
•   Pierce (1 Agility point): This is a well-aimed, penetrating ranged attack. You make an attack and inflict 1 additional point of damage if your weapon has a sharp point. Action.
•   Thrust (1 Might point): This is a powerful melee stab. You make an attack and inflict 1 additional point of damage if your weapon has a sharp edge or point. Action.
•   Trained Without Armor: You have expertise in Agility defense actions when not wearing armor. Enabler.

SECOND-TIER WARRIOR
Second-tier warriors have the following abilities:
   ATTACK EXPERTISE: Choose one type of attack in which you do not already have expertise: light bashing, light bladed, light natural, light ranged, medium bashing, medium bladed, medium natural, medium ranged, heavy bashing, heavy bladed, heavy natural, or heavy ranged. You gain expertise in attacks using that type of weapon. You also gain expertise in tasks to appraise, maintain, or repair that type of weapon. Enabler.
   COMBAT MANEUVERS: Choose one of the following combat maneuvers (or a maneuver from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your first-tier combat maneuvers with a different first-tier maneuver.
•   Chop (2 Might points): This is a heavy, powerful slice with a bladed weapon, probably overhand. You must grip your weapon with two hands to chop. When making this attack, you take a –1 penalty to the attack roll, and you inflict 3 additional points of damage. Action.
•   Crush (2 Might points): This is a powerful pummeling attack with a bashing weapon, probably overhand. You must grip your weapon with two hands to crush. (If fighting unarmed, this attack is made with both fists or both feet together.) When making this attack, you take a –1 penalty to the attack roll, and you inflict 3 additional points of damage. Action.
•   Endurance (2 Might points): You can temporarily ignore the penalties of being dazed, impaired, or sickened. Each use of this maneuver allows you to ignore said penalties for one action. Enabler.
•   Reload (1 Agility point): When using a weapon that normally requires an action to reload, such as a heavy crossbow, you can reload and fire (or fire and reload) in the same action. Enabler.
•   Defense Expertise: Choose one type of defense task in which you do not already have expertise: Might, Agility, or Intellect. You gain expertise in defense tasks of that type. Unlike most fighting moves, you can select this move up to three times. Each time you select it, you must choose a different type of defense task. Enabler.
•   Successive Attack (2 Agility points): If you take down a foe, you can immediately make another attack on that same turn against a new foe within your reach. The second attack is part of the same action. You can use this fighting move with melee attacks and ranged attacks. Enabler.

THIRD-TIER WARRIOR
Third-tier warriors have the following abilities:
   ATTACK EXPERTISE: Choose one type of attack in which you do not already have expertise: light bashing, light bladed, light natural, light ranged, medium bashing, medium bladed, medium natural, medium ranged, heavy bashing, heavy bladed, heavy natural, or heavy ranged. You gain expertise in attacks using that type of weapon. You also gain expertise in tasks to appraise, maintain, or repair that type of weapon. Enabler.
   PHYSICAL SKILLS: You gain expertise in your choice of one of the following: balancing, climbing, jumping, or swimming. Enabler.
   COMBAT MANEUVERS: Choose one of the following combat maneuvers (or a maneuver from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier combat maneuvers with a different maneuver from the same lower tier.
•   Improved Armor Proficiency: The cost reduction from your Armor Proficiency ability improves. You now reduce the Might cost per hour and the Agility Pool reduction by 3. Enabler.
•   Lunge (2 Might points): This move requires you to extend yourself for a powerful stab or smash. The awkward lunge increases the difficulty of the attack roll by one step. If your attack is successful, it inflicts 4 additional points of damage. Action.
•   Slice (2 Agility points): This is a quick attack with a bladed or pointed weapon that is hard to defend against. The difficulty of the attack roll is decreased by one step. If the attack is successful, it deals 1 less point of damage than normal. Action.
•   Spray (2 Agility points): If a weapon has the ability to fire rapid shots without reloading (usually called a rapid fire weapon, such as the crank crossbow), you can spray multiple shots around your target to increase the chance of hitting. This move uses 1d6 + 1 rounds of ammo (or all the ammo in the weapon, if it has less than the number rolled). The difficulty of the attack roll is decreased by one step. If the attack is successful, it deals 1 less point of damage than normal. Action.
•   Trick Shot (2 Agility points): As part of the same action, you make a ranged attack against two targets that are within immediate range of each other. Make a separate attack roll against each target. The difficulty of each attack roll is increased by one step. Action.

FOURTH-TIER WARRIOR
Fourth-tier warriors have the following abilities:
   ATTACK EXPERTISE: Choose one type of attack in which you do not already have expertise: light bashing, light bladed, light natural, light ranged, medium bashing, medium bladed, medium natural, medium ranged, heavy bashing, heavy bladed, heavy natural, or heavy ranged. You gain expertise in attacks using that type of weapon. You also gain expertise in tasks to appraise, maintain, or repair that type of weapon. Enabler.
   COMBAT MANEUVERS: Choose one of the following combat maneuvers (or a maneuver from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier combat maneuvers with a different maneuver from the same lower tier.
•   Capable Combatant: Your attacks deal 1 additional point of damage. Enabler.
•   Experienced Defender: When wearing armor, you gain +1 to Armor. Enabler.
•   Feint (2 Agility points): If you spend one action creating a misdirection or diversion, in the next round you can take advantage of your opponent's lowered defenses. Make a melee attack roll against that opponent. The difficulty of the roll is decreased by one step. If your attack is successful, it inflicts 4 additional points of damage. Action.
•   Greater Endurance (2+ Might points): You can temporarily ignore the penalties of being dazed, impaired, or sickened. By spending 3 points, you can temporarily ignore the penalties of being blinded, debilitated, nauseated, or paralyzed. Each use of this maneuver allows you to ignore said penalties for one action. If you select this combat maneuver and you already have the Endurance maneuver, you may replace it with a different second-tier maneuver. Enabler.
•   Minor to Major: You treat rolls of natural 5 as rolls of natural 6 for Might attack rolls or Agility attack rolls (your choice when you gain this ability). This allows you to gain a major effect on a natural 5 or 6. Enabler.
•   Snipe (2 Agility points): If you spend one action aiming, in the next round you can make a precise ranged attack. The difficulty of the attack roll is decreased by one step. If your attack is successful, it inflicts 4 additional points of damage. Action.

FIFTH-TIER WARRIOR
Fifth-tier warriors have the following abilities:
   ATTACK EXPERTISE: Choose one type of attack, even one in which you already have expertise: light bashing, light bladed, light natural, light ranged, medium bashing, medium bladed, medium natural, medium ranged, heavy bashing, heavy bladed, heavy natural, or heavy ranged. You gain expertise in attacks using that type of weapon. You also gain expertise in tasks to appraise, maintain, or repair that type of weapon.  If you already have expertise with that type of weapon, you instead gain mastery in that type of attack and related tasks. Enabler.
   COMBAT MANEUVERS: Choose one of the following combat maneuvers (or a maneuver from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier combat maneuvers with a different maneuver from the same lower tier.
•   Armor Mastery: When you wear any armor, you reduce the armor's penalties (Might cost and Agility reduction) to 0. If you select this combat maneuver and you already have the Improved Armor Proficiency maneuver, you should replace it with a different third-tier maneuver because Armor Mastery is better. Enabler.
•   Defense Mastery: Choose one type of defense task in which you already have expertise: Might, Agility, or Intellect. You gain mastery in defense tasks of that type. Unlike most combat maneuvers, you can select this move up to three times. Each time you select it, you must choose a different type of defense task. Enabler.
•   Barrage (3 Agility points): If a weapon has the ability to fire rapid shots without reloading (e.g., pepperbox pistol, revolver, clockwork repeating crossbow), you can fire your weapon at up to three targets (all next to one another) at once. Make a separate attack roll against each target. The difficulty of each attack is increased by one step. Action.
•   Leaping Strike (5 Might points): You attempt a difficulty 4 Might action to jump high into the air as part of your melee attack. If you succeed, your attack inflicts 3 additional points of damage and knocks the foe down. If you fail, you still make your normal attack roll, but you don't inflict the extra damage or knock down the opponent if you hit. Action.
•   Parry (5 Agility points): You can deflect incoming attacks quickly. When you activate this move, for the next 10 rounds you reduce the difficulty for all Agility defense rolls by one step. Enabler.

SIXTH-TIER WARRIOR
Sixth-tier warriors have the following abilities:
   ATTACK EXPERTISE: Choose one type of attack, even one in which you already have expertise: light bashing, light bladed, light natural, light ranged, medium bashing, medium bladed, medium natural, medium ranged, heavy bashing, heavy bladed, heavy natural, or heavy ranged. You gain expertise in attacks using that type of weapon. You also gain expertise in tasks to appraise, maintain, or repair that type of weapon.  If you already have expertise with that type of weapon, you instead gain mastery in that type of attack and related tasks. Enabler.
   PHYSICAL SKILLS: You gain expertise in your choice of one of the following: balancing, climbing, jumping, or swimming. Enabler.
   COMBAT MANEUVERS: Choose one of the following combat maneuvers (or a maneuver from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier combat maneuvers with a different maneuver from the same lower tier.
•   Finishing Blow (5 Might points): If your foe is prone, stunned, or somehow helpless or incapacitated when you strike, you inflict 6 additional points of damage on a successful hit. Enabler.
•   Slayer (3 Might points): When you successfully strike an NPC or creature of level 5 or lower, make another roll (using whichever stat you used to attack). If you succeed on the second roll, you kill the target outright. If you use this fighting move against a PC of any tier and you succeed on the second roll, the character moves down one step on the damage track. Enabler.
•   Weapon & Body (5 Agility points): After making a melee weapon or ranged weapon attack, you follow up with a punch or kick as an additional attack, all as part of the same action in one round. The two attacks can be directed at different foes. Make a separate attack roll for each attack. You remain limited by the amount of Grit you can apply on one action. Anything that modifies your attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it is tied specifically to your weapon. Action.
•   Whirlwind Attack (5 Agility points): You make melee attacks against up to five foes within reach, all as part of the same action in one round. Make a separate attack roll for each foe. You remain limited by the amount of Grit you can apply on one action. Anything that modifies your attack or damage applies to all of these attacks. Action.

Rose-of-Vellum

THEURGE
Theurges seek to discover and master esoteric secrets. Such lore grants theurges miraculous power. For most theurges, the source of this power is the sanity-straining art of invocation, more commonly known as witchcraft. Other theurges, however, study and manipulate the lost artifices of past aeons, performing preternatural feats with the aid of bizarre technology rather than semiotic shadows. Most rare of all, however, are those who practice the allegedly lost art of psychotheurgy. Choose one of these options* as the source of your abilities. It will provide the foundation of your background and give you an idea of how you can improve. The GM can use this information to develop adventures and quests that are specific to your character and play a role in your advancement.

*Some GMs may decide that psychotheurges are not available for play as characters.

WITCHCRAFT
You are a practitioner of the dangerous art of invocation. Perhaps you are a graduate of the esteemed University of Moroi or the Academy of Witchcraft. Perhaps you are an infanta-archoness of Dolmen or an alchemist from Erebh, blending eldritch theory and exoteric knowledge to create toxins, volatile reagents, life-extending elixirs, and fleshwarping mutagens. Or maybe you are a warlock-priest of Marainen who reverently drinks Yzch's relentless ichor. You may be a leechkin shaman or hagmen ritualist, performing primitive, yet potent, sorcery, or you might specialize in nigromancy, diabolism, shadowmancy, or transubstantiation. Regardless of the occult traditions you follow, your invocations compel you to master, or at least survive, the whirling entropy of the Aether.

ADVANCEMENT: Although your talents set you above the masses, your knowledge and mastery of witchcraft is far from complete. You art still needs practice, study, and experimentation. You may seek out reluctant tutors, ancient tomes, eldritch artifacts, and more to advance your skills. Access to such rare resources will help you learn more deadly and wondrous hexes and further harness the raw numina of the collective unconscious.

When you gain additional points for your stat Pools, an increase to a stat's Edge, or an increase in the level of Effort you can apply, the benefit comes as the result of rigorous study and prolonged exposure to eldritch forces. When you gain a new esotery, it's because you have learned or created a new hex, glyph, or method of invocation.

TECHNOTHAUMATURGY
The detritus of past ages and countless civilizations litters the Cadaverous Earth. Amongst the panoply of dross, however, devices and artefacts of terrifying, alluring power remain, offering their gifts to those ingenious and ambitious enough to claim them. You are one of those rare individuals. Perhaps you are a professor of bioengineering and xenotechnology at the renown Collegia Arcana et Mechanica or a dirigible mechanic and creator of voltaic engines, gyrocopters, and aerostats. Alternatively, you may be a mantid tinkerer, devising complex instruments under a mechanoape's tutelage. Or perhaps you belong to a Robber Guild, scavenging the Shatters to decipher the mysteries of its slumbering Behemoths and the broken machine-gods of Cullys and Suchol. Irrespective of your specific background, your technical acumen and experimentation have given you rare insight into these enigmatic instruments, and with that insight, you have harnessed, modified, or created devices of strange puissance.   

ADVANCEMENT: Your technical expertise allows you to perform seemingly miraculous deeds, but manifold discoveries await. Your art requires further practice, exploration, and experimentation. You may need to travel to far-flung, dangerous destinations to obtain precious instruments or technical codices of long-dead civilizations. The artefacts of past ages do not lightly yield their secrets.

When your stats improve, it's the result of you utilizing some apparatus or machine to enhance your body or mind. When you gain a new ability, it's because you have repaired, altered, or invented a technotheurgic device.

PSIONICS
Bereft of witchcraft, cestoids conquered and ruled the Cadaverous Earth for over a millennium with the aid of their mighty psychotheurges. An alien art of telepathy, mind-control, and psychic manipulation, psychotheurgy largely died with the collapse of the Imperium. However, vestiges remain, and you are one of them. Is this gift the natural result of exposure to Imperium relics or the result of mindgrub parasitism? Perhaps it is the design of a genius architect, generations earlier, who manipulated the genetics of your family? Or perhaps it is a random mutation. In any case, you have inherited the otherwise lost, and oft-misunderstood, art of psychotheurgy. 

ADVANCEMENT: Understanding this talent likely took time and training, and more of both is needed to expand and refine your powers. In addition to seeking help with your instruction, you might need to find drugs, devices, or other external stimulation to unlock your full potential. Such resources may require tracking down the few remaining psychotheurges or exploring the subterranean ruins of Riquis-Erebu.

When aspects of your character improve or you learn new abilities, it's because you have discovered or mastered a new facet of your psychic abilities.

TABLE 7: THEURGE STAT POOL


   
   
   
   
STATPOOL STARTING VALUE
Might7
Agility9
Intellect12
You get 4 additional points to divide among your stat Pools however you wish.

Rose-of-Vellum

#9
THEURGE TIERS

FIRST-TIER THEURGE
First-tier theurges have the following abilities:
   GRIT: Your Grit is 1.
   GENIUS: You have an Intellect Edge of 1, an Agility Edge of 1, and a Might Edge of 0.
   LIGHT WEAPON PROFICIENCES: You can use light weapons without penalty. If you wield a medium weapon, increase the difficulty of the attack by one step. If you wield a heavy weapon, increase it by two steps.   
  THEURGIC EXPERTISE: You have expertise in one of the three main categories of theurgy (i.e., witchcraft, technothaumaturgy, and psionics) can attempt to understand and identify its properties.
   STARTING EQUIPMENT: You start with clothing; one weapon; light or medium armor; a hex-tome, religious talisman and scripture, technical manual, or similar item, three single-use ensorcelled glyphs, relics, or devices (approved by the GM); one eldritch oddity (approved by the GM); and 40 coins of local currency or equivalent trade goods.
   ESOTERIES: Your study or rituals allow you to perform miraculous deeds, otherwise known as esoteries, or hexes among practitioners of witchcraft. Most esoteries must be activated, which requires that you have a free hand and spend 1 or more Intellect points. If no Intellect point cost is given for an esotery, it functions continuously without needing to be activated. Some esoteries specify a duration, but you can always end one of your own esoteries anytime you wish. The form and flavor of esoteries are dependent upon the nature of a theurge's power. For example, a witch's eldritch assault could be a battle-hex that causes the target's skin to blister and bubble or an ephemeral summoning of a minor demon that attempts to bite the target. Alternatively, a technotheurge's eldritch strike might be a jolt from a voltaic emitter or a hurled vial of volatile reagents. The esoteries' names and descriptions are purposefully kept general to allow flexible, flavorful interpretation. Choose two of the esoteries described below. You can't choose the same esotery more than once unless its description says otherwise.
•   Dowse (2 Intellect points): You scan an area equal in size to a 10-foot (1-meter) cube, including all objects or creatures within that area. The area must be within short range. Successfully dowsing a creature or object reveals its level (a measure of how powerful, dangerous, or difficult it is). You also learn whatever facts the GM feels are pertinent about the matter and energy in that area. For example, you might learn that the wooden box contains a device of orpiment and ivory. You might learn that a glyph-scribed glass cylinder is full of poisonous gas, and that its copper stand has a voltaic field running through it that connects to a clockwork apparatus in the floor. You might learn that the creature standing before you is a grave-spawn. However, this esotery doesn't tell you what the information means. Thus, in the first example, you don't know what the orpiment and ivory device does. In the second, you don't know if stepping on the floor causes the cylinder to release the gas. Many materials and eldritch fields prevent or resist dowsing. Action.
•   Eldritch Assault (1 Intellect point): You attack a foe using energies that assail her physical form. To use this esotery, you must be able to see your target. With a successful attack roll, the effect inflicts 4 points of damage.
•   Gutter-Witchcraft (1 Intellect point): You can perform small invocations: temporarily change the color or basic appearance of a small object, cause small objects to float through the air, clean a small area, mend a broken object, prepare (but not create) food, and so on. You can't use gutter-witchcraft to harm another creature or object. Action.
•   Mind Strike (1 Intellect point): You attack a foe using energies that assail his mind. To use this esotery, you must be able to see your target. This mental attack inflicts 2 points of Intellect damage (and thus ignores Armor). Some creatures without minds (such as automatons) might be immune to this variant. Action.
•   Push (2 Intellect points): You push a creature or object an immediate distance in any direction you wish. You must be able to see the target, which must be your size or smaller, must not be affixed to anything, and must be within short range. The push is quick, and the force is too crude to be manipulated. For example, you can't use this esotery to pull a lever or even close a door. Action..
•   Ward: You have a field of eldritch energy around you at all times that helps deflect attacks. You gain +1 to AC. Enabler.

SECOND-TIER THEURGE
Second-tier theurges have the following abilities:
   ESOTERIES: Choose one of the following esoteries (or an esotery from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your first-tier esoteries with a different first-tier esotery.
•   Adaptation (2+ Intellect points): You adapt to a hostile environment for 24 hours. As a result, you can breathe safely, the temperature doesn't kill you (though it might be extremely uncomfortable or debilitating), crushing gravity doesn't incapacitate or harm you (though, again, you might be seriously hindered), and so on. In extreme environments, the GM might increase the cost of activating this esotery to a maximum cost of 10 Intellect points. Roughly speaking, the cost should equal the amount of damage you would sustain in a given round. For example, if you enter a hostile environment that would normally deal 6 points of damage per round, using Adaptation to avoid that damage costs 6 points. You can protect other creatures in addition to yourself, but each additional creature costs you the same number of Intellect points as it costs to protect you. Thus, if it costs 6 points to protect yourself, it costs 12 more to protect two other people. This esotery never protects against quick, instantaneous threats, like an attack with a weapon or a sudden explosion of fire. Action to initiate.
•   Blast (4 Intellect points): You create an explosion of energy at a point within close range, affecting an area up to immediate range from that point. You must be able to see the location where you intend to center the explosion. The blast inflicts 2 points of damage to all creatures or objects within the area. Because this is an area attack, adding Grit to increase your damage works differently than it does for single-target attacks: if you apply a level of Grit to increase the damage, add 2 points of damage for each target, and even if you fail your attack roll, all targets in the area still take 1 point of damage. Action.
•   Hover (2 Intellect points): You float slowly into the air. As your action, you can concentrate to remain motionless in the air, or float up to a short distance, but no more; otherwise, you drift with the wind or with any momentum you have gained. This effect lasts for up to ten minutes. Action to initiate.
•   Mind-Glean (4 Intellect points): You can gain a peripheral understanding of a creature's desires, increasing your ability to gauge and manipulate it. You must be able to see the target, and it must be within short range. Once you have established contact, the difficulty of tasks to discern intent, sense deception, or persuade your target is reduced by one step. If you or the target move out of range, the connection is broken. Action to initiate.
•   Stasis (3 Intellect points): With a successful roll, you surround a foe of your size or smaller with arcane energy, keeping it from moving or acting for one minute. You must be able to see the target, and it must be within short range. While in stasis, the target is impervious to harm, cannot be moved, and is immune to all effects. Action.

THIRD-TIER THEURGE
Third-tier theurges have the following abilities:
   ESOTERIES: Choose one of the following esoteries (or an esotery from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier esoteries with a different esotery from the same lower tier.
•   Barrier (3+ Intellect points): You create an opaque, stationary barrier of solid energy within immediate range. The barrier is 10 feet by 10 feet (3 m by 3 m) and of negligible thickness. It is a level 2 barrier and lasts for ten minutes. It can be placed anywhere it fits, whether against a solid object (including the ground) or floating in the air. Each level of Effort you apply strengthens the barrier by one level. For example, applying two levels of Effort creates a level 4 barrier. Action.
•   Countermeasure (4 Intellect points): You immediately end one ongoing theurgic effect (such as an effect created by an esotery) within immediate range. Alternatively, you can use this as a defense action to cancel any incoming esotery targeted at you, or you can cancel any theurgic device (e.g., glyph) or the effect of any theurgic device for 1d6 rounds. You must touch the effect or device to cancel it. Action.
•   Energy Protection (3+ Intellect points): Choose a discrete type of energy that you have experience with (such as heat, sonic, electricity, and so on). You gain +10 to Armor against damage from that type of energy for ten minutes. Alternatively, you gain +1 to AC against damage from that energy for 28 hours. You must be familiar with the type of energy; for example, if you have no experience with a certain kind of extradimensional energy, you can't protect against it. Instead of applying Grit to decrease the difficulty of this esotery, you can apply Grit to protect more targets, with each level of Grit affecting up to two additional targets. You must touch additional targets to protect them. Action to initiate.
•   Scry (4 Intellect points): You create an immobile, invisible sensor within immediate range that lasts for 24 hours. At any time during that duration, you can concentrate to see, hear, and smell through the sensor, no matter how far you move from it. The sensor doesn't grant you sensory capabilities beyond the norm. Action to create; action to check.
•   Targeting Eye: You gain expertise in any physical ranged attack that is an esotery or comes from a theurgic device. For example, you have expertise when using an Eldritch Assault that targets a creature's Might Pool (e.g., a nigromantic invocation that turns a creature's hair on fire, or a hexed flute that conjures a ray of flesh-corrosive imps), but not when using a mental strike because it's a mental, rather than physical, attack. Enabler.

FOURTH-TIER THEURGE
Fourth-tier theurges have the following abilities:
   ESOTERIES: Choose one of the following esoteries (or an esotery from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier esoteries with a different esotery from the same lower tier.
•   Invisibility (4 Intellect points): You become invisible for ten minutes. While invisible, you gain mastery in stealth and Agility defense tasks. This effect ends if you do something to reveal your presence or position—attacking, performing an esotery, using an ability, moving a large object, and so on. If this occurs, you can regain the remaining invisibility effect by taking an action to focus on hiding your position. Action to initiate or reinitiate.
•   Regenerate (6 Intellect points): You restore points to a target's Might or Agility Pool in one of two ways: either the chosen Pool regains up to 6 points, or it is restored to a total value of 12. You make this decision when you initiate this esotery. Points are regenerated at a rate of 1 point each round. You must maintain contact with the target the whole time. In no case can this raise a Pool higher than its maximum. Action.
•   Slay (6 Intellect points): With a successful attack roll, you gather disrupting energy and touch a creature. If the target is an NPC or a creature of level 3 or lower, it dies. If the target is a PC of any tier, he moves down one step on the damage track. Action.
•   Somatic Control (6+ Intellect points): You control the actions, but not thoughts, of another creature within immediate range. This effect lasts for ten minutes. The target must be level 2 or lower. Once you have established control, you can sense what it senses. You can allow it to act freely or override its control on a case-by-case basis. Instead of applying Grit to decrease the difficulty, you can apply Grit to increase the maximum level of the target. Thus, to control the body of a level 5 target (three levels above the normal limit), you must apply three levels of Grit. Astute theurges use the Dowse esotery on a creature to learn its level before trying to control its body. When the Somatic Control esotery ends, the creature remembers being controlled or anything it did while under your command. Action to initiate.
•   Transmute (5 Intellect points): You reshape matter within short range in an area no larger than a 5-foot (.5 m) cube. If you spend only one action on this esotery, the changes you make are crude at best. If you spend at least ten minutes and succeed at an appropriate crafting task (with a difficulty at least one step higher than normal, due to the circumstances), you can make complex changes to the material. You can't change the nature of the material, only its shape. Thus, you can make a hole in a wall or floor, or you can seal one up. You can fashion a rudimentary sword from a large piece of iron. You can break or repair a chain. With multiple uses of this esotery, you could bring about large changes, making a bridge, a wall, or a similar structure. Action.

FIFTH-TIER THEURGE
Fifth-tier theurges have the following abilities:
   ESOTERIES: Choose one of the following esoteries (or an esotery from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier esoteries with a different esotery from the same lower tier.
•   Absorb Energy (7 Intellect points): You touch an object and absorb its energy. If you touch a theurgic item, you render it useless. If you touch an artifact, roll on the artifact's depletion. If you touch another kind of powered machine or device, the GM determines whether its power is fully drained. In any case, you absorb energy from the object touched and regain 1d10 Intellect points. If this would give you more Intellect than your Pool's maximum, the extra points are lost, and you must make a Might defense roll. The difficulty of the roll is equal to the number of points over your maximum you absorbed. If you fail the roll, you take 5 points of damage and are unable to act for one round. You can use this esotery as a defense action when you're the target of an incoming esotery. A successful roll cancels the incoming esotery, and you absorb the energy as if it were a device. Action.
•   Disintegrate (7 Intellect points): You disintegrate one nonliving object that is smaller than you and whose level is less than or equal to your tier. You must touch the object to affect it. If the GM feels it appropriate to the circumstances, you can disintegrate a portion of an object (the total volume of which is smaller than you) rather than the entire thing. Action.
•   Divine (6 Intellect points): Through occult means, you can ask the GM one question and get a general answer. The GM assigns a level to the question, so the more obscure the answer, the more difficult the task. Generally, knowledge that you could find by looking somewhere other than your current location is level 1, and obscure knowledge of the past is level 7. Gaining knowledge of the future is impossible (i.e., a level 10 task). Action.
•   Translocate (6+ Intellect points): You instantaneously transmit yourself to any location that you have seen or been to, no matter the distance, as long as it is on the Cadaverous Earth (or whatever world you're currently on). Instead of applying Grit to decrease the difficulty, you can apply Grit to bring other people with you, with each level of Grit affecting up to three additional targets. You must touch any additional targets. Action.
•   True Senses: You can see in complete darkness up to 50 feet (15 m) as if it were dim light. With a successful roll, you recognize phantasms, disguises, illusions, sound mimicry, and other such tricks (for all senses) for what they are. Enabler.

SIXTH-TIER THEURGE
Sixth-tier theurges have the following abilities:
   ESOTERIES: Choose one of the following esoteries (or an esotery from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier esoteries with a different esotery from the same lower tier.
•   Control Weather (10 Intellect points): You change the weather in your general region. If performed indoors, this esotery creates only minor weather effects, such as mist, mild temperature changes, and so on. If performed outside, you can create rain, fog, snow, wind, or any other kind of normal weather (i.e., not supernatural storms like Red Rains). The change lasts for a natural length of time, so a storm might last for an hour, fog for two or three hours, and snow for a few hours (or for ten minutes if it's out of season). For the first ten minutes after activating this esotery, you can create more dramatic and specific effects, such as lightning strikes, giant hailstones, twisters, hurricane force winds, and so on. These effects must occur within 1,000 feet (305 m) of your location. You must spend your turn concentrating to create one of these effects or to maintain it in a new round. These effects inflict 6 points of damage each round. Action.
•   Move Mountains (9 Intellect points): You exert a tremendous amount of physical force within 250 feet (76 m) of you. You can push up to 10 tons (9.1 t) of material up to 50 feet (15 m). This force can collapse buildings, redirect small rivers, or perform other dramatic effects. Action.
•   Traverse Dimensions (8+ Intellect points): You instantaneously transmit yourself to another planet, dimension, plane, or level of reality. You must know that the destination exists; the GM will decide if you have enough information to confirm its existence and what the level of difficulty might be to reach the destination. Instead of applying Grit to decrease the difficulty, you can apply Grit to bring other people with you, with each level of Grit affecting up to three additional targets. You must touch any additional targets. Action.
•   Usurp Numina: Choose one theurgic item (e.g., a glyph-scribed stave, a biomechanical brain, a psychic-amplifying crystal) that you carry. The item must have an effect that is not instantaneous. You destroy the item and gain its power, which functions for you continuously. You can choose an item when you gain this ability, or you can wait and make the choice later. However, once you usurp a cypher's power, you cannot later switch to a different item—the esotery works only once. Action to initiate.

Rose-of-Vellum

ROGUE
Rogues are intrepid, audacious, and resourceful. They are jacks-of-all-trades, surviving through ingenuity, luck, and skill. Rogues don't use one skill or tactic exclusively; they use whatever weapons, armor, esoteries, or devices that might help them. They are hunters (particularly treasure hunters), con artists, knaves, sages, scoundrels, scouts, and experts in a variety of fields. When you choose rogue as your character type, come up with an explanation for how you learned your wide variety of talents. Choose one of the three options described below. It will provide the foundation of your background and give you an idea of how you can improve. The GM can use this information to develop adventures and quests that are specific to your character and play a role in your advancement.

PRETERNATURAL TALENT
You seem to be better than most people because you are. Perhaps you are the product of eugenics, bred and trained by the Revenants to serve as one of their elite Whisperers. Or maybe you are the progeny of ancient bioengineering by the Cultivar Technocracy. Or, you may be the result of some eldritch mutation, like one of the shadow-furred zerda said to have had marked in the Dreaming Dark of the Unborn. You may be the crucible-spawned child of an alchemist, the cast-off creation of a sorcerer-king, or the bastard scion of an arch-demon. Regardless of your origin, you're stronger, swifter, able to learn mental and physical skills more quickly, and potentially endowed with esoteric powers. Others might call you blessed, cursed, divinely gifted, or just plain lucky. They may have said similar things about your parents, their parents, and so on. Either way, your powers are preternatural.

ADVANCEMENT: You may have phenomenal talents, but you're still limited by what you learn and experience. Therefore, you must continue to train and study. Practice is the key—it just comes easier for you than it does for others.

When you improve, it's because you have honed your natural abilities or unlocked previously unknown traits.

DOGGED ADAPTATION
You learned things the hard way—on your own. Canny and quick, you manifest life's grim persistence. You adjust quickly to circumstances, pick up new tricks to succeed, and ultimately survive when you probably should be dead. Most likely, you grew up on your own, or amongst cruel, unforgiving circumstances. Perhaps you were raised among the fur-clad cannibals of the Aurelian Tundra, or maybe you grew up in Macellaria's Catacombs, a tosher who made a living plundering the sewers of lost valuables and accretions of coin, bones, and metal. You may be one of Melmoth's vagrant-sacredos, traveling the Slaughter-Lands and Twilight Cities in an endless sojourn, a grim veteran of the Northern Uprising and clandestine member of the Awakeners, or a piratical guttersnipe from Lophius' mildewed, gang-torn alleys. The details don't really matter. What's important is that you taught yourself how to overcome whatever challenges came along.

ADVANCEMENT: Just keep on keeping on. You got to where you are by observing, learning, adapting, and adopting. To advance, you need to do more of the same. Constant wariness coupled -somewhat paradoxically- with constant curiosity allows you to hone your skills and develop new capabilities.

When your stats improve, it's because you have survived another brush with death and have grown stronger and wiser from it. When you gain a new ability, it is the result of recent experience and your willingness to change.

ECLECTICISM
You're the amalgamation of alchemical experimentation, an array of minor grafts, a few flesh-hexes, obscure lore, and a smattering of eldritch devices. In other words, you don't have one source of power or one explanation for your abilities—you have many, and as far as you're concerned, that's the best formula for success. You don't put all your eggs in a single proverbial basket. To really get ahead, you must rely on multiple strengths. You've always got an unexpected trick up your sleeve or a fallback contingency. For example, you might have bestial xenografts from Macellaria, a nectar-infused bricolage of hexes from Moroi, the training of a clockwork-masked tregetour from Skein, a homuncular guardian from Erebh, a pair of wrist-sprung derringers from the Shatters, and hagmen gris-gris from the Gland. In the end, you're not only hard to hurt, but armed with a veritable arsenal of abilities.

ADVANCEMENT: You have chosen every path, so you must travel each of them. Training, drugs, and eldritch fluids fuel your body and mind. Grafts and strange artifice grant you additional skills. Advancement means new teachers and technicians, strange substances and radiations, and an ever-increasing need to discover the secrets of the past that will prove essential for your future.

When you improve, it is because you have added some new technology, witchcraft, training, or technique in your ever-increasing collection of tricks and talents.

TABLE 8: ROGUE STAT POOL


   
   
   
   
STATPOOL STARTING VALUE
Might10
Agility10
Intellect10
You get 4 additional points to divide among your stat Pools however you wish.

Rose-of-Vellum

#11
ROGUE TIERS

FIRST-TIER ROGUE
First-tier rogues have the following abilities:
   GRIT: Your Grit is 1.
   JACK OF ALL TRADES: You have an Edge of 1 for one stat of your choice: Might, Agility, or Intellect. You have an Edge of 0 for the other two stats.
   LIGHT & MEDIUM WEAPON PROFICIENCES: You can use light and medium weapons without penalty. If you wield a heavy weapon, increase the difficulty of the attack by one step.
   SKILLS: You have expertise in one task of your choosing (other than attacks or defense).  
   FLEX SKILL: At the beginning of each day, choose one task (other than attacks or defense) on which you will concentrate. For the rest of that day, you have expertise in that task. You can't use this ability with a skill you already have expertise in to gain mastery.
   STARTING EQUIPMENT: You start with clothing, two weapons, light armor, two single-use ensorcelled glyphs, relics, or devices (approved by the GM), one eldritch oddity (approved by the GM), and 80 coins of local currency or equivalent trade goods. If you start with a ranged weapon that requires ammunition (bullets, for example), you start with 12 of that type of ammunition.
   TRICKS: You have a wide range of abilities that keep people guessing. Some of these tricks of the trade are technically esoteries while others are more mundane. Some tricks are constant, ongoing effects; others are specific actions that usually cost points from one of your stat Pools. Choose two of the tricks described below. You can't choose the same trick more than once unless its description says otherwise.
•   Armor Proficiency: You can wear armor for reasonable periods of time without tiring and can compensate for slowed reactions from wearing armor. You can wear any kind of armor. You reduce the Might cost per hour for wearing armor and the Agility Pool reduction for wearing armor by 2. Enabler.
•   Bash (1 Might point): This is a pummeling melee attack. Your attack inflicts 1 less point of damage than normal, but dazes your target for one round, during which time the difficulty of all tasks it performs is modified by one step to its detriment.
•   Defense Expertise: Choose one type of defense task in which you do not already have expertise: Might, Agility, or Intellect. You gain expertise in defense tasks of that type. Unlike most tricks of the trade, you can select this trick up to three times. Each time you select it, you must choose a different type of defense task. Enabler.
•   Gutter-Witchcraft (1 Intellect point): You can perform small invocations: temporarily change the color or basic appearance of a small object, cause small objects to float through the air, clean a small area, mend a broken object, prepare (but not create) food, and so on. You can't use gutter-witchcraft to harm another creature or object. Action.
•   Pierce (1 Agility point): This is a well-aimed, penetrating ranged attack. You make an attack and inflict 1 additional point of damage if your weapon has a sharp point. Action.
•   Thrust (1 Might point): This is a powerful melee stab. You make an attack and inflict 1 additional point of damage if your weapon has a sharp edge or point. Action.
•   Trained Without Armor: You have expertise in Agility defense actions when not wearing armor. Enabler.

SECOND-TIER ROGUE
Second-tier rogues have the following abilities:
   SKILLS: You gain expertise in another in task of your choosing (other than attacks or defense). If you choose a task you have expertise in, you gain mastery in that task. You can't choose a task in which you already have mastery.
   TRICKS: Choose one of the following tricks (or a trick from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your first-tier tricks with a different first-tier trick.
•   Brute Finesse: Sometimes a swift kick is just the trick to popping open a lock or starting a reluctant piece of machinery. When you apply Grit to a noncombat Agility task, you can spend points from your Might Pool as if they came from your Agility Pool. For example, you could spend 3 Might points and 1 Agility points to apply two levels of Grit to picking a lock. Enabler.
•   Experienced Adventurer: When you use a noncombat skill successfully, if you didn't roll a natural 5 or 6, you can apply a level of Grit (after the roll) to get a minor special effect. The stat points spent for this level of Grit must come from the same stat as the one used for the skill. Thus, if you made an Agility roll, the cost of the Grit comes from your Agility Pool. Applying the Grit doesn't modify the difficulty of the task—it only creates the minor effect. Enabler.
•   No Need for Weapons: When you make an unarmed attack (such as a punch or kick), you can choose for it to count as a medium weapon instead of a light weapon. Enabler.
•   Push (2 Intellect points): You push a creature or object an immediate distance in any direction you wish. You must be able to see the target, which must be your size or smaller, must not be affixed to anything, and must be within short range. The push is quick, and the force is too crude to be manipulated. For example, you can't use this esotery to pull a lever or even close a door. Action.
•   Reload (1 Agility point): When using a weapon that normally requires an action to reload, such as a heavy crossbow, you can reload and fire (or fire and reload) in the same action. Enabler.
•   Ward: You have a graft, implant, or flesh-hex that helps deflect attacks. You gain +1 to Armor. Enabler.

THIRD-TIER ROGUE
Third-tier rogues have the following abilities:
   SKILLS: You gain expertise in another in task of your choosing (other than attacks or defense). If you choose a task you have expertise in, you gain mastery in that task. You can't choose a task in which you already have mastery.
   TRICKS: Choose one of the following tricks (or a trick from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier tricks with a different trick from the same lower tier.
•   Attack Expertise: Choose one type of attack in which you are do not already have expertise: light bashing, light bladed, light ranged, medium bashing, medium bladed, medium ranged, heavy bashing, heavy bladed, or heavy ranged. You gain expertise in attacks using that type of weapon. You also gain expertise in tasks to appraise, maintain, or repair that type of weapon. Enabler.
•   Eldritch Assault (2 Intellect points): You attack a foe using energies that assail her physical form. To use this esotery, you must be able to see your target. With a successful attack roll, the effect inflicts 4 points of damage.
•   Enhancement (4 Intellect points): You gain a +1 bonus to the Edge for one stat of your choice (Might, Agility, or Intellect) for ten minutes. You can have only one version of this trick in effect at a time. Action to initiate.
•   Hover (3 Intellect points): You float slowly into the air. As your action, you can concentrate to remain motionless in the air, or float up to a short distance, but no more; otherwise, you drift with the wind or with any momentum you have gained. This effect lasts for up to ten minutes. Action to initiate.
•   Speed Surge (4 Agility points): For one round, your speed increases. You can move up to a short distance as part of any other action. Enabler.
•   Sure-footed: Choose one type of environment (e.g., desert, swamp, tundra, urban). Within this environment, you ignore the penalties for moving through rough terrain, and your round-by-round movement is not halved in difficult terrain. Each time you pick this trick, you select another environment. Enabler.

FOURTH-TIER ROGUE
Fourth-tier rogues have the following abilities:
   SKILLS: You gain expertise in another in task of your choosing (other than attacks or defense). If you choose a task you have expertise in, you gain mastery in that task. You can't choose a task in which you already have mastery.
   TRICKS: Choose one of the following tricks (or a trick from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier tricks with a different trick from the same lower tier.
•   Analytical Combat: Sometimes the most important muscle in a fight is your brain. If you can predict where an opponent will move next or see her weak spot, you can be a more successful combatant. When you apply Grit to a combat Might task or Agility task, you can also spend points from your Intellect Pool as if they came from your Might Pool or Agility Pool. For example, you could spend 3 Intellect points and 1 Might points to apply two levels of Grit to attacking with a cutlass. Enabler.
•   Lunge (2 Might points): This move requires you to extend yourself for a powerful stab or smash. The awkward lunge increases the difficulty of the attack roll by one step. If your attack is successful, it inflicts 4 additional points of damage. Action.
•   Slice (2 Agility points): This is a quick attack with a bladed or pointed weapon that is hard to defend against. The difficulty of the attack roll is decreased by one step. If the attack is successful, it deals 1 less point of damage than normal. Action.
•   Spray (2 Agility points): If a weapon has the ability to fire rapid shots without reloading (usually called a rapid fire weapon, such as the crank crossbow), you can spray multiple shots around your target to increase the chance of hitting. This move uses 1d6 + 1 rounds of ammo (or all the ammo in the weapon, if it has less than the number rolled). The difficulty of the attack roll is decreased by one step. If the attack is successful, it deals 1 less point of damage than normal. Action.
•   Weapon Imbuement (3 Intellect points): You can perform a theurgic imbuement on a melee weapon that lasts for one hour. During this time, it inflicts 1 additional point of damage on a successful hit and affects targets that can only be affected by special effects, such as transdimensional forces. Action to initiate.

FIFTH-TIER ROGUE
Fifth-tier rogues have the following abilities:
   SKILLS: You gain expertise in another in task of your choosing (other than attacks or defense). If you choose a task you have expertise in, you gain mastery in that task. You can't choose a task in which you already have mastery.
   TRICKS: Choose one of the following tricks (or a trick from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier tricks with a different trick from the same lower tier.
•   Defense Mastery: Choose one type of defense task in which you have expertise: Might, Agility, or Intellect. You gain mastery in defense tasks of that type. Unlike most tricks, you can select this move up to three times. Each time you select it, you must choose a different type of defense task. Enabler.
•   Feint (3 Agility points): If you spend one action creating a misdirection or diversion, in the next round you can take advantage of your opponent's lowered defenses. Make a melee attack roll against that opponent. The difficulty of the roll is decreased by one step. If your attack is successful, it inflicts 4 additional points of damage. Action.
•   Snipe (3 Agility points): If you spend one action aiming, in the next round you can make a precise ranged attack. The difficulty of the attack roll is decreased by one step. If your attack is successful, it inflicts 4 additional points of damage. Action.
•   Successive Attack (2 Agility points): If you take down a foe, you can immediately make another attack on that same turn against a new foe within your reach. The second attack is part of the same action. You can use this trick with melee attacks and ranged attacks. Enabler.
•   Targeting Eye: You gain expertise in any physical ranged attack that is an esotery or comes from a theurgic device. For example, you have expertise when using an Eldritch Assault that targets a creature's Might Pool (e.g., a nigromantic invocation that turns a creature's hair on fire, or a hexed flute that conjures a ray of flesh-corrosive imps), but not when using a mental strike because it's a mental, rather than physical, attack. Enabler.

SIXTH-TIER ROGUE
Sixth-tier rogues have the following abilities:
   SKILLS: You gain expertise in another in task of your choosing (other than attacks or defense). If you choose a task you have expertise in, you gain mastery in that task. You can't choose a task in which you already have mastery.
   TRICKS: Choose one of the following tricks (or a trick from a lower tier) to add to your repertoire. In addition, you can replace one of your lower-tier tricks with a different trick from the same lower tier.
•   Energy Protection (4+ Intellect points): Choose a discrete type of energy that you have experience with (such as heat, sonic, electricity, and so on). You gain +10 to Armor against damage from that type of energy for ten minutes. Alternatively, you gain +1 to Armor against damage from that energy for 28 hours. You must be familiar with the type of energy; for example, if you have no experience with a certain kind of extradimensional energy, you can't protect against it. Instead of applying Grit to decrease the difficulty of this esotery, you can apply Grit to protect more targets, with each level of Grit affecting up to two additional targets. You must touch additional targets to protect them. Action to initiate.
•   Invisibility (5 Intellect points): You become invisible for ten minutes. While invisible, you gain mastery in stealth and Agility defense tasks. This effect ends if you do something to reveal your presence or position—attacking, performing an esotery, using an ability, moving a large object, and so on. If this occurs, you can regain the remaining invisibility effect by taking an action to focus on hiding your position. Action to initiate or reinitiate.
•   Parry (6 Agility points): You can deflect incoming attacks quickly. When you activate this move, for the next 10 rounds you reduce the difficulty for all Agility defense rolls by one step. Enabler.
•   True Senses: You can see in complete darkness as if it were dim light. With a successful roll, you recognize phantasms, disguises, illusions, sound mimicry, and other such tricks (for all senses) for what they are. Enabler.
•   Whirlwind Attack (5 Agility points): You make melee attacks against up to five foes within reach, all as part of the same action in one round. Make a separate attack roll for each foe. You remain limited by the amount of Grit you can apply on one action. Anything that modifies your attack or damage applies to all of these attacks. Action.

Rose-of-Vellum

CHARACTER DISPOSITIONS
Dispositions offer a one-time package of extra abilities, skills, or modifications to your stat Pools. Not all of a disposition's offerings are positive character modifications. For example, some dispositions have flaws. Remember that characters are defined as much by what they're not good at as what they are good at.

This section details the following descriptors: Alluring, Brutish, Erudite, Frenetic, Furtive, Graceful, Intuitive, Occult, Savage, Shrewd, Stoic, Tenacious, and Zealous. Choose one of them for your character. You can pick any descriptor you wish regardless of whether you're a warrior, theurge, or rogue; however, some races (see below) have certain restrictions for selecting a disposition.

ALLURING
You're a smooth talker and a charmer. Whether through seemingly supernatural means or just a way with words, you can convince others to do as you wish. Most likely, you're physically attractive or at least highly charismatic, and others enjoy listening to your voice. You probably pay attention to your appearance, keeping yourself well groomed. You make friends easily. You play up the personality facet of your Intellect stat. You're personable, not necessarily studious or strong-willed.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Personable: +2 to your Intellect Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks involving positive or pleasant social interaction.
•   Skill: You have expertise when using esoteries or special abilities that influence the minds of others.
•   Contact: You have an important contact who is in an influential position, such as a merchant princeling, a gang-boss, magistra, corsair-captain, bandit-lord, or one of their trusted advisors. You and the GM should work out the details together.
•   Flaw: You were never good at, or all that interested in, studying or retaining facts. The difficulty of any task involving lore, knowledge, or understanding is increased by one step.
•   Flaw: Your willpower is not one of your strong points. Whenever you try to resist a mental attack, the difficulty is increased by one step.
•   Additional Equipment: You've managed to talk your way into some decent discounts and profit in recent weeks. As a result, you have 10 extra coins jangling in your pocket.

BRUTISH
You're extremely strong and physically powerful, and you use these qualities well, whether through violence or feats of prowess. You likely have a brawny build and impressive muscles, and it is with those muscles that you usually solve life's problems.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Visceral: +4 to your Might Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all actions involving breaking inanimate objects.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all jumping actions.
•   Skill: You have expertise in tasks involving intimidation.
•   Flaw: Sweet, subtle words are not your forte. The difficulty of any task involving diplomacy, etiquette, seduction, or deception is increased by one step.
•   Additional Equipment: You have an extra medium weapon or heavy weapon.

ERUDITE
You have studied, either on your own or with an instructor. You know many things and are an expert on a few topics, such as alchemy, xenobiology, bioengineering, witchcraft, metallurgy, or any other area of study. Regardless of whether you prefer the company of books to people, you are most adept with the former.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Astute: +2 to your Intellect Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in three areas of knowledge of your choice.
•   Library: You have access to a library, technical workshop, laboratory, archive, museum, or similar institution of learning and record. The extent of such access and exact nature of the site is up to you and the GM, but your access to said materials generally counts as a benefaction for lore-related tasks.
•   Flaw: You have few social graces. The difficulty of any task involving charm, persuasion, or etiquette is increased by one step.

FRENETIC
You brim with boundless energy, allowing you to move quickly, sprint in short bursts, and work with spastic celerity and passion. You're swift, but might be considered jittery, even manic. You are enthusiastic, but impatient. You are likely slim and muscular. Your feet and thoughts are fleet, but your hands and attention are far from steady.  
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Fleet: +4 to your Agility Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in initiative actions (to determine who goes first in combat).
•   Skill: You have expertise in running, and other swift forms of movement-related, actions.
•   Flaw: You're fast, but not quite graceful. The difficulty of any task involving balance or steady movements is increased by one step.
•   Flaw: The difficulty of any task that requires staying still or quiet for extended time is increased by one step.
•   Additional Equipment: You have another eldritch oddity, something that you exuberantly picked up after it captured your ephemeral attention.

FURTIVE
You're sneaky, slippery, and secretive. These traits help you hide, move quietly, and pull off tricks that require sleight of hand. Most likely, you're wiry and small. You're cautious and careful, leading you to proverbially and literally look before you leap.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Nimble: +2 to your Agility Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all stealthy tasks.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all interactions involving lies or trickery.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all esoteries or special abilities involving illusions or trickery.
•   Flaw: The difficulty of all tasks that require swift movement, such as running, is one step higher for you.
•   Additional Equipment: One of your items, such as a ring, hat, boot, or scabbard, has a false bottom or similar apparatus that lets you skillfully conceal a small item.

GRACEFUL
You have a perfect sense of balance, moving and speaking with elegance and beauty. You have an eye for the aesthetic, but prefer to marry form with function. Your have the lissome grace of a dancer, and you use that advantage in combat to dodge blows. You likely wear garments that enhance your agile movement and sense of style.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Lithe: +2 to your Agility Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks involving balance and careful movement.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks involving physical performing arts.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all Agility defense tasks.
•   Flaw: You take pride in your skill and style. Should you roll a 1 on any Agility task, you are dazed for one round due to shock and shame.
•   Additional Equipment: Your armor has been custom-made to fit you, which reduces its Agility reduction by one point.

INTUITIVE
You are endowed with keen discernment. Your insight is often profound, and you easily understand things that others might struggle with. This astute perception and grasp on matters does not come from formal education, for you prefer experiential learning to didactic instruction. Ultimately, you have learned to trust your instincts, for they rarely lead you astray.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Perceptive: +2 to your Intellect Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in a skill of your choice.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all actions that involve remembering or memorizing things you experience directly. For example, instead of being good at recalling details of geography that you read about in a book, you can remember a path through a set of tunnels that you've explored before.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks that involve identifying clues or patterns.
•   Flaw: Because you value intuition over knowledge, you generally avoid laborious studying. The difficulty of tasks that involve academic discussion, didactic instruction, or rote memorization are one step higher for you.
•   Additional Equipment: You have one additional mundane item that is neither armor nor weaponry. You do not have to declare what this item is until you need to use it –essentially, you bought it on a hunch that proves sagacious.  

OCCULT
   You are strange and mysterious. Whether touched by the gods, demons, or other spirits, you have an otherworldly quality. You may be a priest or a witch, savage or civilized, but you are far from mundane. You see things others do not, things that perhaps others should not. You likely adorn yourself with talismans, tattoos, gris-gris, and eldritch vestments that mark you as a medium or disciple of the supernatural.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Gifted: +2 to your Intellect Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all actions involving identifying or understanding the Aether.
•   Aetheric Eye: You can sense whether the aether is active in situations where its presence is not obvious. You must study an object or location closely for a minute to get a feel for whether witchcraft is at work.
•   Esotery: You can perform the esotery known as Gutter-Witchcraft (as per the theurge's esotery) when you have a free hand and can pay the 1 point  Intellect point cost.
•   Flaw: You have a manner or an aura that others find a bit unnerving. The difficulty of any task involving charm, persuasion, or deception is increased by one step.
•   Additional Equipment: You have an extra oddity that marks you as a disciple of the occult.

SAVAGE
There is a wildness about you, something untamed. Your upbringing may have been amongst barbaric, nomadic communities, or you may have willingly shunned the shelter of civilization, To you, the cities are cages that chafe your soul with fettering rules, false pretenses, and the press of the masses. Instead, you prefer the hinterlands, pitting your wits against the elements. Most likely, you're a skilled hunter, gatherer, or naturalist. Years of living in the wastelands have left their mark with a worn countenance, tangled hair, and a litany of scars. Your clothing and manners are probably much less refined than those of more urbane peers. And you don't care.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Rugged: +2 to your Might Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks involving climbing, jumping, running, and swimming.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks involving training, riding, or placating natural animals.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks involving identifying or using natural plants.
•   Flaw: You have no social graces and prefer animals or solitude to people. The difficulty of any task involving charm, persuasion, etiquette, or deception is increased by one step.
•   Additional Equipment: You carry a pair of items useful for whatever environment you hail from (e.g., flint and furs for the tundra, rope and lantern for caves, etc.), a week's worth of food, and an extra ranged weapon.

SHREWD
You're quick-witted, thinking well on your feet. You understand people, so you can fool them but are rarely fooled. Because you easily see things for what they are, you get the lay of the land swiftly, size up threats and allies, and assess situations with accuracy. Perhaps you're physically attractive, or maybe you use your wit to overcome any physical or mental imperfections.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Cunning: +2 to your Intellect Pool.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all interactions involving lies or trickery.
•   Skill: You have expertise in defense rolls to resist mental effects.
•   Skill: You have expertise in all tasks involving, identifying or assessing danger, lies, quality, importance, function, or power.
•   Flaw: You were never good at studying or retaining trivial knowledge. The difficulty of any task involving lore, knowledge, or understanding is increased by one step.
•   Additional Equipment: You see through the schemes of others and occasionally convince them to believe you— even when, perhaps, they should not. Thanks to your clever behavior, you have 10 extra coins.

STOIC
   The world is filled with misery, pain, and suffering. You have long accepted this truth, and in doing so, you have learned to endure, to continue when others cry out, falter, or fall away. You may have a strong frame, sinews of iron, or scar-knotted skin. Either way, weakness is a sin you do not tolerate. You do not ask for pity or comfort. Both are fleeting.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Resilient: +1 to AC.
•   Endurance: Add 1 to the points you regain when you make a recovery roll.
•   Defense: You have expertise in Might defense actions.
•   Skill: You have expertise in Intellect defense actions against effects that would alter or control your emotions.  
•   Flaw: Your stoicism has numbed your spirit as well as your body. The difficulty of tasks that require emotional displays, reciprocity, or empathy increase one step for you.
•   Additional Equipment: You have an extra light weapon.

TENACIOUS
You're tough-minded, willful, and independent. No one can talk you into anything or change your mind when you don't want it changed. This quality doesn't necessarily make you smart, but it does make you a bastion of willpower and resolve. You may be a visionary or simply stubborn, but your persistence is undeniable.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Willful: +4 to your Intellect Pool.
•   Defense: You have expertise in resisting mental effects.
•   Skill: You have expertise in tasks requiring sustained focus or concentration.
•   Flaw: Willful doesn't mean brilliant. Indeed, your mental focus can make somewhat rigid in your thinking. The difficulty of any task that involves figuring out puzzles or problems, identifying novel patterns, or creativity are one step higher for you.
•   Additional Equipment: Whether through deliberate saving or dogged haggling, you have 10 extra coins.  

ZEALOUS
You view the world through dogmatic eyes. Whether your 'faith' is pure or profane, religious or revolutionary, you are fervently committed to its creed and ardently champion its cause. You may be a priest, philosopher, politician, or merely a pious member of a church. Your fiery passion may repel or attract others, as your charisma is inseparably connected to your conviction.
   You gain the following benefits:
•   Ardent: +2 to your Intellect Pool.
•   Defense: You have expertise in resisting mental effects that would influence you to betray your core beliefs.
•   Skill: You have expertise in knowledge-based tasks that pertain to your religious, philosophical, or political ideology.
•   Skill: Choose one race, religion, or organization that your creed opposes. Against individuals belong to said group, you have expertise in attack actions.
•   Disciple: You have a close ally who shares your religious, philosophical, or political beliefs. This individuals looks up to you as an ideological figure, and is generally willing –regardless of ability- to aid you in tasks, especially those that pertain to your mutual creed. You and the GM should work out the details together.
•   Flaw: Your zeal can be overbearing. Against members of rival faiths, philosophies, or political ideologies, the difficulty of any task involving charm or persuasion is increased by one step.
•   Additional Equipment: You have some eldritch oddity that holds some symbolic significance to your ideology.  

Rose-of-Vellum

#13
CHARACTER RACES

ANTHROPOPHAGOI
Also known as the Headless, the anthropophagoi are an insular, barbarian people who dwell along the Gloom Coast and in the Mewling Moors in the far south, though small, isolated tribes have been found in Dour Erg and the Firesong Marches. Doubtless the product of eldritch mishap or twisted design rather than natural evolution, anthropophagoi have faces set in their torsos: eyes in place of nipples, huge mouths gaping on their bellies, and bony stumps where their necks and heads should be. Anthropophagoi do not possess either ears or noses, but seem to be able to smell with their tongues, and have internal auditory organs (not dissimilar to those of fish); their hearing, however, is quite poor. They communicate primarily through an elaborate sign language, though they do vocalize, notably producing extremely shrill and terrifying shrieks to dishearten their foes and signal the presence of prey to other anthropophagoi. Some slavers have learnt the anthropophagoi sign-language in order to sell the savage creatures captured slaves as food: anthropophagoi generally attack other humanoids on sight, but those scattered tribes in more northerly regions have been known to converse with outsiders.

Anthropophagoi are, of course, carnivorous beings, in particular savoring the flesh of other sapient organisms. Though not as demented as the sadistic fetch or leechkin possessed by the thirst, anthropophagoi know a near-boundless hunger, an insatiable ravenousness that drives them always to the hunt.  Some scholars have suggested that this voraciousness is the product of the anthropophagoic habitat: dwelling as they do on the Mewling Moors, anthropophagoi are constantly exposed to the sanity-eroding ghostgrass of that region, and the plant matter is even incorporated into their diet as one of the sole vegetable components, used as a herb to crust their otherwise exclusively carnivorous meals. The substance also finds a use in certain rituals performed by anthropophagoic witch -doctors, who display an exceptional command of non-sentient grave-spawn (such as geists): indeed, Headless witch-doctors frequently assemble the gnawed skeletons of anthropophagoic victims into osseous servants, reanimated (and kept together) through witchcraft. Occasionally such creatures are used as cannon fodder during tribal wars.

A few rare individuals -usually criminals or wounded warriors left for dead on the battlefield- become members of non-anthropophagoi communities. Such exiles can even learn the languages of non-anthropophagoi, albeit with some difficulty, but the bad reputation of their species generally precedes them, problematizing communication. Occasionally one finds displaced individuals amongst groups of leechkin, cestoids, or other shunned races on the fringes or in the ghettos of the Twilight Cities, predominantly Erebh, Marainein, Lophius, and Macellaria.  These solitary creatures are still very rare, however.

RACIAL TRAITS
Anthropophagoi have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES: Due to prolonged exposure to ghostgrass, anthrophagoi have expertise in Intellect defense rolls against mind-influencing effects.
   DISPOSITION: Anthropophagoi must select one of the three dispositions: Brutish, Occult, or Savage.
   FLAWS: diplomacy (defect), deception (defect)    
   LANGUAGES: Anthropophagoi (sign language)
   NATURAL WEAPON: Anthropophagoi have a bite attack that counts as a heavy weapon that does not require hands. Anhropophagoi can also wield weapons, which allows them to make multiple attacks on their turn as a single action. If an anthropophagai chooses to make multiple attacks in one round, the difficulty of all attack rolls increases by one step per additional attack for that round. If an anthropophagai chooses to make more than one attack in a round, she remains limited by the amount of Grit she can apply on one action, but because she make separate attacks, her opponent's AC applies to both. Anything that modifies her attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it's specifically tied to one of the weapons. Enabler.
   SENSES: sound-based perception (debility)
   SKILLS: stealth (expertise), wilderness survival (expertise)
   OTHER: Anthropophagoi also have the following traits:
•   Carnivorous: Anthropophagoi can only digest meat.
•   Shriek (2 Might points): Anthropophagoi can produce a hideous shriek that frightens their foes. Affected enemies within a short distance take 1 Intellect damage and are dazed for one round due to fear. Action.
•   Unusual Anatomy: Because of their strange body shapes, anthropophagoi have to wear specially made armor. If they don regular armor, they are unable to see, hear, or smell.
•   Witch-Doctor: Anthropophagoi witches have expertise in necromancy-related tasks and esoteries, but debilities with abjuration and evocation esoteries.  

CESTOID
Possibly the ugliest living creatures on the Cadaverous Earth, cestoids resemble hybrids of giant centipedes and tapeworms, with long, segmented bodies, many legs, chitin exoskeletons, and soft underbellies. Their "heads" are little more than mouths, circular and many-fanged. Ringing a cestoid's maw is a clutch of many-jointed, hairy limbs that they use to manipulate tools and shovel food (rotting flesh, preferably offal) into their mouths. Their eyes are rudimentary, their vocalizations bestial; they communicate mostly through pheromones and touch, but can understand human speech.

Despite their monstrous appearances cestoids once ruled a vicious and expansive empire established by the hideous entity called Hirud the Ravager-Worm, a dark, animalistic god and possibly sire of the entire race. For nearly a millennia after the Pallid Decimation the cestoids held power over much of the Cadaverous Earth, enslaving lesser races for their own purposes, ruling from the subterranean city of Riquis-Erebu, capitol of their Imperium. They communicated their desires through human interpreters trained in comprehending their opaque language and devoured all who resisted them. After Riquis-Erebu fell –brought down by an alliance of rebel states spearheaded by the Witch Army of Moroi during the height of that city's power– the Imperium collapsed and the cestoids were scattered. Many were killed in a genocidal scouring campaign, hunted to near extinction.

Though still distrusted today, the remaining cestoids have reintegrated somewhat over the long ages as the world died and history withered. They are a dwindling, pariah race tolerated in the Twilight Cities but pushed to the margins, usually underground. They often dwell in sewers, or the maze-like tunnel systems that riddle most of the old cities, subsisting on garbage and filth. Those few who rise above this degradation are usually merchants of some variety or mercenary warriors –cestoids are incredibly terrifying combatants, wielding numerous melee weapons at once, gnashing at enemies with their maws while blows bounce off their armored hides.

RACIAL TRAITS
Cestoids have the following racial traits:
   DISPOSITION: Cestoids can select any disposition, save the following: Alluring, Graceful, or Furtive.
   FLAWS: Agility defense (defect), diplomacy (debility), deception (defect), stealth (debility)    
   LANGUAGES: Cestoid, Shambles. Cestoids can understand spoken languages but can only speak Cestoid. The can, however, write in the languages of other species.
   MOVEMENT: Cestoids have the ability to burrow through loose material (e.g., dirt, clay, gravel, mud, sand). A cesoid can burrow an immediate distance during a round. Alternatively, it can attempt to burrow a short distance in a round, but doing so costs the cestoid 3 points from its Might Pool.
   NATURAL ARMOR: Cestoids' chitin plates provide 2 AC. Note that, unlike other armor, natural armor does not impose Might damage or reduce a character's Agility Pool.
   NATURAL WEAPON: Cesoids have a bite attack that counts as a medium weapon that does not require hands. Due to their large size, cestoid bite attacks deal 6 points of damage.
   SENSES: Cestoids can see in darkness up to long distances (100 ft.). Due to their pheromone-based language, cestoids also have expertise in scent-based perception tasks.
   SIZE: Cestoids are significantly larger than humanoids. Consequently, armor, items, and vehicles designed for normal-sized creatures usually will not fit a cestoid. Additionally, the difficulty of tasks that require squeezing through tight spaces, balancing on narrow beams, and so forth increase one step. However, tasks that require lifting, hauling, or carrying objects or creatures have their difficulty decreased one step for cestoids.
   SKILLS: stealth (expertise), wilderness survival (expertise)
   STATS: Cestoids are bulky creatures. Add 4 to their Might; subtract 4 from their Agility.
   OTHER: Cestoids also have the following traits:
•   Detritivorous: Cestoids can only digest decaying material (i.e., offal, rotting meat).
•   Eldritch Inability: The cestoid mind is too alien to grasp humanoid witchcraft.  While cestoids have expertise in Intellect defense rolls against mind-influencing effects, they cannot become Witches. Once cestoids had their own arcane art, psychotheurgy, but this practice has been seemingly long lost.
•   Many-Limbed: Cestoids have between three and seven many-jointed arms arrayed about their large maws. Once, the number of limbs indicated caste and thus social status and occupation; now, such distinctions are lost, though seven-limbed cestoids -always exceptionally rare- are still highly considered and often become chieftains of some kind. Regardless, cestoids are able to attack with multiple weapons in a round, but difficulty of all attack rolls increases by one step per additional attack for that round. A cestoid remains limited by the amount of Grit it can apply on one action, but if it makes separate attacks, its opponent's AC applies to both. Anything that modifies the cestoid's attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it's tied to a specific weapon. Since cestoid arms are not considerably larger or longer than humanoid ones, they can use normal-sized weapons.

GHUL
The origins of the ghilan (singular: ghul) are clouded in mystery, remaining a subject of major scholarly speculation. Some claim they were born during the Pallid Decimation, when -legend has it- the Ravager-Worm Hirud ruptured the world, the dead arose, and the earth was alight with funeral pyres; others claim they are the dilute offspring of some elder demon race. Whatever their genesis, ghilan have become the principle grave-spawned race on the Cadaverous Earth, and can be found in all of the Twilight Cities. They resemble the quick in most respects, but have chalky, leper-gray skin, sharp teeth, claw-like nails, and cat-slitted eyes. Their "life-spans" are theoretically unlimited, and few diseases affect them; though grave- spawn (or "undead," a term that has passed from the status of racial slur into a kind of quaint archaicism), they do not decompose, and they are far from the mindless zombies of Somnambulon or the hunger-obsessed haunts of the Slaughter-lands. Some grave-spawn live for hundreds of years, though most die of hunger, thirst, violence, or accident before they reach a hundred. They are carnivorous creatures, ingesting only raw meat, and are shamelessly cannibalistic, eating both humans and other ghilan (they tend to dislike seafood and so find the flavor of leechkin or hagmen distasteful). They can and do drink blood but do not depend on it as the leechkin do.

Ghul reproduction is surrounded by such a haze of mythology that their true method of procreation seems disappointingly mundane. Like most grave-spawn, ghilan are the hosts to parasites, in this case to a strain that survives in necrotic human flesh. Those that eat uncooked human meat infested with a ghul-worm or fluke may potentially be transformed from a normal human into a ghul. The parasite essentially kills its host, then revivifies it after making several alterations, using the brief period of clinical death as a kind of liminal space, a cocoon-state in which the host is metamorphosed into a ghul. The newly reborn ghul will be afflicted with moderate to complete amnesia but suffers no other damage apart from sterility – though rumors persist of half-ghul children, they are thought to be merely the imaginings of grotesque minds. Sexual intercourse between ghilan and the quick remains possible and is quite common despite vague taboos surrounding such couplings. Self-infection with a ghul- worm is not unheard of, but the invariable memory loss involving the change deters most who would seek to transcend death in this manner.

Ghilan culture resembles that of the quick closely. On the whole, ghilan tend to be more solemn and ritualistic in contrast with the frenetic quick, who seem to the ghilan a loud and reckless breed (though many ghilan profess a certain nostalgia, only half remembered, for the heady, frenzied days of life). They are a nocturnal race and abhor direct sunlight, though it does them no actual harm. Because of their longevity many ghilan eventually obtain enough wealth and power to live relatively luxurious lives. Some become decadent, macabre libertines who savor meals of the softest flesh, attend theaters, gambling halls, drug dens, and orgies with regularity, and spend their nights in hedonistic debauchery. Others prefer a more staid living, becoming administrators, priests, and even monks – there are more than a few ghilan in the Order of the Weeping Lady, cloistered in the monasteries of the Chelicerae Mountains. Many ghilan become converts of the Church of the Star-Gods, an institution with chapters in several of the Twilight Cities which worships the now ancient light of long-dead stars only now reaching the earth - stars that have long since expired, exploding or dwindling or merely transforming but leaving a ghost-light behind to travel across space for many years. The Church believes that the stars are the pupa-state of deities, and that in their deaths they sublime beyond the material, apotheosizing into transcendental entities.

RACIAL TRAITS
Ghilan have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES:   As grave-spawn, ghilan have mastery in defense rolls against diseases and poisons.
   DISPOSITION: Ghilan cannot have the Alluring or Frenetic disposition.
   LANGUAGES: Shambles   
   NATURAL WEAPONS: Ghilan have two claws that count as light weapons, and a bite attack that count as a medium weapon that does not require a hand. Coupled with their ability to wield weapons, this allows ghilan to make multiple attacks on their turn as a single action. If a ghul chooses to make multiple attacks in one round, the difficulty of all attack rolls increases by one step per additional attack for that round. If a ghul chooses to make more than one attack in a round, he remains limited by the amount of Grit he can apply on one action, but because he make separate attacks, his opponent's AC applies to both. Anything that modifies his attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it's specifically tied to a specific weapon. Enabler.
   SENSES: Ghilan can see in darkness up to long distances (100 ft.).
   OTHER: Ghilan also have the following traits:
•   Carnivorous: Ghilan can only digest meat.
•   Grave-Spawn: Ghilan are immune to aging and death effects. Ghilan cannot receive organic grafts, though pre-existing or mechanical grafts are permitted.
•   Light Sensitivity: Ghilan are dazed in direct sunlight.

HAGMAN
The hermaphroditic hagmen predominate in the southern regions of the Cadaverous Earth. Somewhat resembling anthropomorphic eels, hagmen are vermiform, with slimy, elongated tails, lacking legs. Their upper bodies are more humanoid, including a pair of long, bony arms and vaguely human heads, albeit with vertical mouths with many teeth, beady eyes (though not blind, hagmen have poor eyesight), and whisker-like barbs; they often sport a mane of shaggy hair that looks like swampy vegetation, especially if a hagman submerges itself in water, a common hunting tactic.

Hagmen possess both testes and ovaries and so have interchangeable sexes; they have developed complex cultural gender constructs – unfathomable to most humans – that reflect their intersexed natures. The name "hagman" was chosen for its androgynous implications, but many hagmen consider the name crude. Most "civilized" hagmen can be found in cities such as Lophius, Crepuscle, and Macellaria, where they tend to congregate in amphibious ghetto districts with communal dwelling places somewhere between bathhouses and residences. Other major structures include the hatcheries and temple-brothels, where hagmen that have chosen to become female ritualistically mate with males in honour of Myx, an aspect of the nebulous, multiply natured hagman deity representing fertility, lust, and creativity. Hagmen have integrated into urban society as fishermen, agriculturalists (farming seaweed and marine livestock), submariners, amphibious warriors, dockworkers, artisans, and even scholars.

There are many less urbanized hagman communities, most of which conform to a tribal structure; these "savage" hagmen are hunter-gatherers with some primitive farming techniques, and are known for their deep racial prejudice for the leechkin with whom they compete for territory and food. The hagmen denounce the leechkin as the unclean spawn of an amorphous devil figure, a vampiric adversary-demon representing parasitism and degradation. Vestiges of this race-hatred linger even in metropolitan centers, though many progressive hagmen and leechkin have learned to set aside their differences.

Apart from their prejudices, the hagmen of the Twilight Cities have inherited their tribal cousins' religious beliefs, albeit adapted to a less primeval cultural landscape. They worship a monotheistic deity with a myriad of different aspects, and their system of arcana or witchcraft is integrated directly into their religion. Each aspect of the Aeon-Worm (a rarely-used epithet of the gestalt of the hagman deity's personalities) is attended by a cult, with rituals and ceremonies tailored to the venerated aspect's portfolio.

RACIAL TRAITS
Hagmen have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES:   Due to dwelling in swamps, hagmen have expertise in defense rolls against diseases and poisons.
   FLAWS: diplomacy (defect), deception (defect)    
   LANGUAGES: Glatch, Shambles   
   MOVEMENT: Hagmen can move, attack, and perform esoteries in water without hindrance. They also have mastery in swimming.
   SENSES: sight-based perception (defect), other perception tasks (expertise). Hagmen can also perform scent-based perception tasks in water without hindrance.
   SKILLS: stealth-related tasks while in or nearby swampy vegetation (expertise)
   OTHER: Hagmen also have the following traits:
•   Amphibious: Hagmen can breathe both water and air. Hagmen can spend a number of days equal to their Might Pool without being immersed in water. After that, they must make a Might defense roll (DC 3+1 per previous check) or lose 3 Might points per day until they immerse themselves in water. Until they are immersed, they cannot recover points in their Might Pool and shift down one step on the damage track.
•   Hermaphrodism: Hagmen can change their sex at will. The process takes one week to complete. They can also choose to arrest their metamorphosis at any point, producing seven 'liminal' genders that have various significance in Hagman culture. Action.
•   Omnivorous: Hagmen can eat a variety of meats and plants.

HUMAN
Humans are a multifarious race. Their histories, cultures, religions, appearances, strengths, interests, and faults are mottled, dynamic, and inseparable from those of the Twilight Cities. That said, some crude generalities can be made about the most common human ethnicities:  

Inhabitants of Skein are fairer than many of the more southerly humans, with a slightly sallow cast.  They have a pronounced epicanthic fold, hair ranging from jet black to dark red, and amber, violet, green, or blue eyes.  They are a tall, lithe, generally slender folk.

Those who live in Moroi are slightly darker and stockier than those of Skein but still have fairly pale skin, typically with brown, green, or hazel eyes.  Though some have a trace of an epicathnic fold, this trait is less pronounced than in residents of the City of Silk.  Most have elaborately styled or dyed hair '" frequently quite long '" though some shave their heads entirely.

Citizens of the Corsair City, Lophius, and the surrounding swamps and islands usually have olive or tan skin and darker hair and eyes, though some with backgrounds from neighboring islands (such as the few human tribes in the Bluebottle Archipelago) have significantly darker skin.  Most are heavily tattooed, ritually scarred, multiply pierced, or all three.  Hair is often worn long in both sexes and tends to be dark brown or black in colour; dreadlocks are not uncommon.

Those who dwell in Marainein have nut-brown or darker skins and black or grey eyes, though a few have striking blue eyes as well.  Most are quite tall and rather grim looking, with high cheekbones and narrow, almond-shaped eyes.  Braided beards are common, and long hair is frequently bound in a turban.

Those who hail from the southern city of Erebh have skin and hair as black as Abysm, with complexions almost blue-black in tone, like deep ink.  They have little body hair and rarely wear their hair long.

The hardy northern folk of Somnambulon and the Northern Baronies, on the other hand, are a bone-pale people with fair hair and ice-blue, slate grey, or sea green eyes.  Most are quite hairy, and the men grow thick beards and chest hair.

The subhuman slaves of Dolmen are albinos, with translucent white skins, pink eyes, and white hair.  They tend to be quite strong of limb but short and hunched of back, and have little body hair to speak of.

Natives of Crepuscle are difficult to place.  The city is so centrally located that they have a combination of ethnic traits, varying widely from family to family.  Most have medium brown skin and darker hair, and a slight epicanthic fold round the eyes (which are of every conceivable color); however, some inhabitants of the Harlequin City have skin nearly as dark as those from Erebh, and others are as white as Somnambulites.  Hairstyles vary just as widely.

Indigenes of Macellaria are similarly blended, though they tend to be slightly darker than those of Crepuscle, with tones ranging from light yellow to deep tan.  Eye color varies widely, but many have grey, brown, and hazel eyes.  Closely cropped or wholly shaven hair is common in Macellaria, especially as a means of preventing lice.

RACIAL TRAITS
Humans have the following racial traits:   
   LANGUAGES: Shambles, plus one other language.  
   SKILLS: Humans gain expertise in one bonus skill of their choosing.
   OTHER: Humans also have the following traits:
•   Foible: Beset by grotesque terrors and the frailty of life, humans survive, but not without developing some form of physical of mental scarring. Each human has at least one flaw. True to humanity's mottled nature, these flaws come in many forms. It could be a gimp leg, missing eye, or gnarled hand, the result of some industrial accident or the reminder of one's brush with a plague. Alternatively, it could be a deeply ingrained superstition, compulsion, or prejudice against a particular race common to the Cadaverous Earth. Or, it might be a personal phobia, such as a severe fear of darkness, blood, serpents, disease, grave-spawn, etc. Regardless of its form, this flaw manifests as a debility for a specific type of tasks.
•   Omnivorous: Humans can eat a variety of meats and plants.
•   Pluck: Humans have an additional level of Grit.

JATAYU
The avian jatayi (singular: jatayu) are a dwindling race of fablers who roam the skies of the Cadaverous Earth. Once many tribes of this species are said to have flown the skies: now only one tribe remains, a few hundred winged humanoids passing from settlement to settlement, singing for their suppers. They shun the southern cliffs of the Serrated Coast where the sirae dwell, beings they condemn as degenerate abominations corrupted by malevolent forces - their notorious sing-song hex is seen by the jatayi as the embodiment of evil. Physically jatayi resemble humans with enormous feathered wings emerging from their shoulder blades, similar in shape and coloration to a vulture's. They also have avian eyes, allowing them to see at great distances and to detect ultraviolet light and magnetic fields ("the earthsong"), the perception of which influences the tribe's cyclic migratory patterns. They are necrophagic, eating carrion they find in the waste and what food they can buy or earn in the towns and cities of other creatures. Jatayi speak a dialect of Shambles that incorporates numerous bird-sounds such as clicks, chirps, and caws, as well as loanwords from a much older tongue, a secret, sung language known completely only by the tribe's small cadre of draconian elders. Jatayi culture is oral; the jatayi possess incredible memories, though whether this trait is biological or wholly learned is unknown. Whatever the case, all jatayi are vivid storytellers who incorporate elaborate dances, songs, and poems into complex mythological narratives that commonly take the form of plays, spoken tales, and more abstract performances. These stories are governed by highly traditional structures but do allow for and encourage a measure of creative fluidity. Transcribing a story is forbidden, however, as is learning any written language: jatayi are uniformly illiterate, save for a very few lonely outcasts found in odd corners of the world. Because of their detritovorous diet, jatayi are skilled scavengers as well as storytellers.

Jatayi lore holds that humans are the descendents of a kindred tribe who lost their wings after sacrificing themselves to preserve the greater race. As a result they regard humans with a mixture of great respect and great pity, an attitude some humans find patronizing or chauvinistic. Most human scholars hold that the jatayi may be the results of eldritch experimentation, a notion that revolts the jatayi themselves and which is considered blasphemous by the elders. It is unknown how long the jatayi have existed, but their oral history contains legends that suggest they may considerably predate the Pallid Decimation, and perhaps even the Membrane Wars.

RACIAL TRAITS
Jatayi have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES:   Due to their nomadic lifestyle, jatayi have expertise in Might defense rolls against starvation, exposure to hot climates, and other environmental hazards in desert regions.
   LANGUAGES: Jatayi, Shambles. Jatayi are illiterate in all languages they learn.    
   MOVEMENT: Jatayi can fly with the same speed and skill as humans and most other mortals can walk. However, heavy weapons, medium or heavy armor, or similarly weighty items increase the difficulty of all physical tasks by one step while a jatatu is flying.
   SENSES: sight-based perception (expertise). Neither dim nor very dim illumination is a hindrance to jatayi. Jatayi can also perceive magnetic fields; in most cases, this means that have expertise in navigation, orienteering, and similar tasks.
   SKILLS: performing arts (expertise)
   OTHER: Jatayi also have the following traits:
•   Eidetic: Whether due to innate qualities, cultural upbringing, or some combination, jatayi have memories that border, if not transcends, the eidetic. They have expertise in tasks that that involve remembering or memorizing things they experience directly.
•   Necrophagic: Jatayi only eating decomposing meat.
•   Peripatetic: Jatayi are itinerant creatures. Those jatayi who are unable or unwilling to follow their race's  migratory habits suffer mental and emotional duress. Jatayi can remain in a city, settlement, or region for a number of days equal to their Intellect Pool. After that, they must make an Intellect defense roll (DC 3+1 per previous check) or lose 2 Intellect points per day until they leave the area and travel to a new one. Until they so travel, they cannot recover Intellect damage and shift down one step on the damage track. They may return to a region without further risk, but only after spending at least a week traveling to or visiting a new area.

LEECHKIN
Often deeply disturbing to humans first encountering them, leechkin are hairless humanoids with green or black skins, bloated torsos (which shrivel if the leechkin hasn't fed), and long, spindly limbs. Their faces are rudimentary: leechkin have almost no neck, their ears are mere holes, and they have no mouths on their faces – only three pairs of small yellow eyes and a set of nostrils. Instead, they possess two individual mouths on their palms, each resembling a lamprey's maw with many serrated teeth. While hermaphroditic like the hagmen, leechkin do not possess the shifting mutability of gender of that species: instead they are essentially sexless, with individuals assuming the role of male or female in a temporary fashion during procreation (the "male" grows a sperm-sac which the "female" consumes, impregnating "herself").

Leechkin are haematophagic, consuming a diet entirely of blood. While many creatures on the Cadaverous Earth are cannibals of necessity, the leechkin dependency on blood, like that of the lilix, has led to their demonization in other cultures, and leechkin are often regarded as unclean or monstrous, especially by the hagmen. This conception is exacerbated by certain bands of tribal leechkin who after months without proper feeding succumb to a bloodthirsty psychopathy, degenerating into murderous animals. It is not uncommon to find a steamboat drifting aimlessly in the southern swamps, its bloodless crew covered in small red circles like gruesome love-bites.

While the bulk of the leechkin population dwells in the swamps by themselves, some leechkin communities can be found in the Twilight Cities, particularly in Lophius. The leechkin mindset is inherently parasitic, and leechkin cultures denigrates the very idea of "work", scorning the lofty accomplishments of men as mere frivolity; thus, the bulk of urban leechkin are simply beggars seeking enough coin to purchase their next fix of blood. As leechkin tend to be regarded as untrustworthy rogues, some find employment as enforcers, torturers, and other underworld figures, which hardly helps their species' reputation.

The leechkin religion is animistic, with shamans serving as healers and sorcerers. The leechkin have some traffic with the nameless gods of the swamp, whom they seem to regard as avatars of the natural environment.

RACIAL TRAITS
Leechkin have the following racial traits:
   DISPOSITION: Leechkin do not select a disposition -they are too apathetic.
   FLAW: Leechkin are generally sluggish, and have a defect in any task that requires swift travel. They are also stigmatized by nearly every culture and have a defect in diplomacy against non-leechkin (against hagmen, they have a debility).   
   LANGUAGES: Shambles, Leechdance   
   NATURAL WEAPONS: Leechkin have two bite attacks that count as light weapons.
   SENSES: Leechkin can smell blood. This gives leechkin mastery in perception and tracking tasks, but only in regards to creatures with warm blood (e.g., a leechkin could sense a living human but not a shade).
   SKILLS: stealth in swampy vegetation (expertise), swimming (expertise)
   STATS: Leechkin are surprisingly powerful for such spindly creatures, but they lack essential drive or ambition. Add 2 to their Might; subtract 2 from their Intellect.    
   OTHER: Leechkin also have the following traits:
•   Amphibious: Leechkin are fully amphibious and can breathe both water and air. Enabler.
•   Blood Drain: A leechkin can suck blood from a living victim with its mouths. In order for a leechkin to drain blood in this manner, its victim must be unconscious, paralyzed, willing, or pinned. Against such a target, a leechkin can drain 4 points from its victim's Might Pool for each round it feeds. For each point of Might the leechkin drains, it gains a point that it can add to any of its stat Pools.
•   Haematophagic: Leechkin only consume blood. They follow the normal rules for thirst, but in addition to taking damage to their Might Pool, they must make an Intellect defense roll (DC 3 +1 per previous check) every hour or attack the nearest non-leechkin.  Also, they do not get impaired from thirst; instead, they gain 4 temporary points to their Might Pool until they feed, and their movement-related flaw becomes an expertise.
•   Pin (2 Might points): A leechkin can attempt to pin a creature (typically to drain its blood). To pin a creature, the leechkin must make an attack roll, using both of its fanged hands (using only one hand counts as a hindrance). If the attack succeeds, the victim takes 2 points of damage from the leechkin's bite and is pinned, unable to move from its location. A pinned creature can attempt to free itself by making an attack roll against the grappling leechkin.

LILIX
Rulers of the city-state of Dolmen, the lilix are spiderfolk, a race of anthropomorphized arachnids, each possessing eight limbs and eight eyes. Other than these obvious differences, the lilix are essentially humans with grayish, sometimes hairy skins. They are further distinguished by their ruthlessly matriarchal culture, their appetite for blood, and their capacity for artistic, political, and intellectual intricacy. Those few lilix that live in cities other than Dolmen tend to be advisors, architects, artists, and spymasters.

The lilix political structure is a kind of gynocratic fascism, a caste system placing the pallid subhumans at the bottom (humans bred for centuries for slave labor), with human freedwomen and their male concubines above (a kind of lower middle class), then lilix males, the courtier caste, and finally lilix females, the queen caste. The males tend to be taut and strong, bred as they are for their sexual appeal, their obedience, and their fighting ability. Lilix females are leisured and so tend towards softness and roundness, with elder females achieving a heavily fetishized obesity. A rigidly conceived and highly ritualized state religion closer to a dogmatic bureaucracy than a living faith codifies and attempts to legitimize the stratifications of Dolmen. The holy texts of the religion are embedded in ancient tapestries reputed to be spun by the creed's central mother deity, an elder spider-goddess called Verlum. The tapestries are hung in the inner sanctums of official temples; any reproduction or facsimile would instantly be declared blasphemous. As such the all-female priesthood is able to keep the religion under firm state control, reserving the right to interpret the tapestries and so maintain power.

Like the primitive leechkin of the swamps the lilix are haematophagic, subsisting on the blood and liquefied bodies of humans and other creatures. At a lilix feast all the food is liquid: bowls and sauciers of half-coagulate blood jellies, marrow juice, and pulped, runny meat, washed down with goblets of thinned arterial blood they drink like wine or xocolatl. A carrion perfume cloys the upper levels of Dolmen, raw and coppery, mingling with the fecund pheromones of the lilix and the sour tang of the flesh-castings carpeting the black marble floors.

RACIAL TRAITS
Lilix have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES: Lilix have mastery in defense rolls against arachnoid-based poisons.
   LANGUAGES: Chattelchatter, Spiderchatter   
   SENSES: Lilix can see in darkness up to short distances (50 ft.).
   SKILLS: deception (expertise)
   STATS: Lilix are a sexually dimorphic race, whose culture reinforces phenotypic divergence among their castes. Male lilix add 2 points to their Might Pool and subtract 2 from their Intellect Pool. Female lilix add 1 point to both their Agility and Intellect Pools and subtract 2 points from their Might Pool.   
   OTHER: Lilix also have the following traits:
•   Arachnoid: Lilix have six arms (and two legs). This allows lilix to make multiple attacks on their turn as a single action. If a lilix chooses to make multiple attacks in one round, the difficulty of all attack rolls increases by one step per additional attack for that round. Additionally, the lilix remains limited by the amount of Grit she can apply on one action, but because she make separate attacks, her opponent's AC applies to both. Anything that modifies her attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it's specifically tied to a weapon. Enabler.
•   Hubris: Lilix are instilled with a sense of racial supremacy that teaches servile obedience to those of higher castes and subjugation of those from lower castes. Consequently, lilix have a debility in tasks that require attacking, coercing, or openly resisting commands from those of higher castes. Additionally, lilix have a debility in tasks that require requesting, but not commanding or receiving, aid from creatures of lower castes. Certain lilix overcome this cultural indoctrination, but they are almost invariably discovered and branded as gholmuz, losing one or several limbs, if not their life, as punishment.
•   Hygrophagic: Lilix can only ingest liquid food.

MANTID
Possibly distant relatives of the lilix, the mantids are not, as some portray them, a race of ravenous insectoid monsters. Anatomically they are more human than insect, with green flesh of varying shades and an additional pair of arms that terminate in chitinous, scissor-like claws. After entering puberty, all mantids develop large wings that extend from their backs, allowing for limited flight. Mantid faces are the most insect, with a pair of glistening mandibles -they are a carnivorous race- and bulbous compound eyes, usually a shade of vivid crimson. Mantid compound eyesight, for whatever reason, endows the species with a natural talent for mechanical construction, particularly clockwork; while not nearly as comprehensive as the intuitive skills of a mechanoape, mantids make excellent technicians and toymakers. Some speculate that mantids, along with the lilix, were bred through eldritch means by the cestoid Imperium as a slave-species of warrior-mechanists. The mantids themselves notably reject this theory as typical human-chauvinism: where humans view mantids as hybrids of human and insect, mantids view humans as hybrids of mantid and ape.

Mantids dwell now in their greatest numbers in the Firesong Marches, a region they share with the gypsy foxfolk, the zerda. Like the zerda, they are predominantly nomadic, traveling in extended family caravans. Many caravans spend long periods outside of the Marches, traveling between the Twilight Cities and selling their services as mercenaries, tinkers, and peddlers. The warrior culture within mantid caravans is duel-oriented, with a combat style focused around use of the blade-like mantid limbs in addition to daggers, hand-crossbows, wheellock pistols (mantid wheellocks are comparable in quality even to those of Skein's artificers), and throwing stars. A strict, honor-based code surrounds dueling practices, and only males become duelists; females tend to occupy the position of elder and priestess. The mantid pantheon is variegated, with some deities appearing almost entirely insect, others more "human"; serpents, foxes, and fire-spirits also figure prominently in their mythology.

Most mantids can manage at least a few phrases in Shambles, speaking with a sibilant, hissed accent. Their native tongue is nearly impossible for humans to speak and sounds similar to Spiderchatter; it is sometimes derisively referred to as Bug-talk. Though much is made of the carnivorous mantid diet, most mantid families engage in only periodic hunting, subsisting mostly through scavenging; they are also notably one of the few species of the Cadaverous Earth whose culture actively rejects cannibalism (though they have been known to consume dead zerda and other humanoids if necessary).

RACIAL TRAITS
Mantids have the following racial traits:
   LANGUAGES: Bugspeak, Shambles   
   MOVEMENT: Mantids are capably of limited flight. This gives them mastery in defense rolls to avoid falling damage. They can also fly a short distance, but doing so costs the mantid 2 Might points.
   NATURAL WEAPONS: Mantids have two scythe-like claws that function as medium weapons.
   SENSES: Mantid can see in darkness up to short distances (50 ft.).
   SKILLS: jumping (mastery), plus expertise in any one mechanical skill (e.g., dirigible piloting, automaton design, gunsmithing, toymaking, clockwork repair)   
   OTHER: Mantids also have the following traits:
•   Carnivorous: Mantids can only digest meat.
•   Four-Armed: In addition to its two scythe-like arms, mantids also have another set of more human-like arms. This allows them to use weapons and their claws at the same time. If a mantid chooses to attack with more than one weapon or claw in a round, the difficulty of all attack rolls increases by one step per additional attack for that round. Additionally, he remains limited by the amount of Grit he can apply on one action, but because he make separate attacks, his opponent's AC applies to both. Anything that modifies his attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it's specifically tied to a specific weapon. Enabler.
•   Obsession: Mantids are an obsessive race. Each mantid has its own obsession, be it tinkering, gunsmithing, practicing dueling, etc., but all mantids feel compelled to engage in their obsession. Usually, this nigh-neurotic dedication makes them highly skilled in their craft; however, mantids who are unable or unwilling to spend at least 6 hours a day on their obsession suffer mental and emotional duress. Each day a mantid does not appease its obsession, the mantid must make an Intellect defense roll (DC 3+1 per previous check) or lose 2 Intellect points. Until the mantid appeases his obsession by spending the same number of hours he missed for his obsession, the mantid cannot recover points in his Intellect Pool and shifts down one step on the damage track. For example, if a mantid was imprisoned for 3 days and was unable to appease his compulsion to create clockwork toys, he would need to spend 18 hours making toys in order to recovery his Intellect damage and restore his damage track.

MINDGRUB
A distant cousin of the ingurgitatrix, the creatures known as mindgrubs are one of the many biological weapons devised by the cestoids. Unlike their gluttony-inducing killer-tapeworm kin, mindgrubs are subtle and subversive, entering not through the mouth but through the ear. They proceed to burrow into their host's brain and erase the memories therein, sending out a mass of tendrils which colonize the creature's synapses and assert control. This process destroys one eardrum and usually damages the optic nerve of one eye as well, meaning that mindgrub hosts are always deaf in one ear and often partially or fully blind in one eye. At first, few outward signs of the mindgrub are evident; over time the cranium of the host begins to swell and expand as the mindgrub grows. This growth is lopsided, as a mindgrub takes up residence in only one lobe of the brain.

As the mindgrub matures it becomes increasingly intelligent, forming its personality from the tattered remnants of its host's mind and the world around it. Originally, cestoid psychotheurges -wielders of the mysterious mental power that is all-but vanished after the fall of the Imperium- controlled mindgrubs using some form of telepathic link; now, no such psychic network exists, and the few remaining mindgrubs who finds hosts become solitary, sinister beings, often masquerading as normal individuals. While originally intended as little more than remote receivers or psychic conduits for their cestoid controllers, present-day mindgrubs can develop their psychic abilities considerably.

RACIAL TRAITS
Mindgrubs have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES: Due to their aberrant psyches, mindgrubs have mastery on Intellect defense rolls against mind-influencing effects meant to specifically affect humanoids. However, against mind-influencing effects from other sources, they have a defect, since they were designed to be sensitive to external control.
   LANGUAGES: Cestoid, host creature languages (usually Shambles)   
   SENSES: Mindgrubs are essentially half-blind and half-deaf. They have a defect for sight- and sound-based perception tasks. However, they can sense any creature with a heartbeat within a short distance. Within this distance, and against such creatures, mindgrubs can perceive, attack, and defend without penalty. Such creatures are also unable to truly ambush a conscious mindgrub.
   STATS: Although mindgrubs develop their own genius-level intellects, they must do with whatever physical abilities their hosts give them. Consequently, mindgrub characters add 2 points to their Intellect Pool, while their stat modifiers for their Might and Agility Pools are dependent upon their host's modifiers (e.g., a mindgub whose host was a female lilix would add 1 point to her Agility Pool, add 2 points to her Intellect Pool, and subtract 2 points from her Might Pool). Mindgrub characters also gain the physical abilities, diets, and flaws of their hosts (e.g., jatayi flight, hagmen poor eyesight, lilix hygrophagy).
   OTHER: Mindgrubs also have the following traits:
•   Aetheric Screech (6 Intellect points): Mindgrubs can emit a startling "screech" through the aether, designed to disorient enemies and alert other mindgrubs or cestoid troops to their location. With a successful attack roll, a mindgrub deals 2 points of Intellect damage to everyone (including allies) within a short distance (50 ft.). Affected targets whose level is less than your tier are also stunned for one round, while those whose level is equal or higher than your tier are dazed. Creatures attuned to the aether already including witches, Revenants, and oneiroi are more easily affected by a mindgrub's Screech (reduce DC by one step). Other mindgrubs and cestoids, however, are immune, though they still hear the Screech in their minds. While the Screech only affects creatures in a short distance, it can be "heard" for a much longer range.
•   Naturally Pychotheurgic: Mindgrubs were intended to function as conduits for the power of cestoid controllers, and so they start with expertise in a psionic ability of their choosing (i.e., aetheric screech, mind strike).

SHADE
Shades are sentient parasites capable of possessing corpses to create grave-spawn. Unlike the ghul-worm, which is essentially brainless, or a zehrer, which coexists symbiotically with a still- living mind, shades completely dominate their already dead hosts' bodies, though unlike zombies they are highly intelligent.

In their raw form, shades look like pools of liquid shadow, capable of slithering and adhering to walls or ceilings; they enter a host through the mouth, then invade the creature's brain and skin. Those possessed by shades walk stiffly, like demented puppets, fleshy marionettes being jerked by unseen strings; beneath their hosts' skins shades will pulsate and quiver with unnerving subcutaneous rhythms, covering their forms with rippling gooseflesh. The eyes of a shade are clouded black.

Because shades possess only the dead, their hosts eventually decompose, requiring a shade to seek a new corpse to inhabit. It is common to see shades preserving themselves with embalming oils and bandages; some have skins that have been tanned into a kind of leather, and others remove their host's now unneeded organs. Like most grave-spawn, shades are intolerant of sunlight, which forces them from their host bodies and causes them great pain. As a result, they are entirely nocturnal and usually live underground during the day.

Despite their unwholesome nature, shades are quite civilized and coexist peacefully with other organisms in cities and settlements that tolerate grave-spawn, which includes most of the Cadaverous Earth. They are very difficult to kill; only prolonged sunlight or extreme amounts of damage can disperse a shade in its true form, and shades can always find new bodies to inhabit if their host is destroyed. As a result, they can endure for centuries, watching generations of the quick grow up and die. Because of their abilities, shades make amazing spies and assassins: after killing a target, a shade assassin can then enter the newly-dead corpse and impersonate their victim, though of course such a grisly disguise does not weather close inspection.

RACIAL TRAITS
Shades have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES:   Shades have mastery in defense rolls against mind-influencing effects and pain-based effects: Shades have alien psychologies, and do not perceive pain as their hosts do. Chop off a host's head, and the shade can continue fighting without it. In their hosts, shades have mastery in defense rolls against diseases and poisons. In their natural state, shades are immune to disease and poison.
   LANGUAGES: Shambles, Morbis   
   MOVEMENT: Outside their hosts, shades can slither on any surface (e.g., ceiling, cave walls) up to a short distance as an action.
   SENSES: Shades can see in darkness without limitation to range.
   SKILLS: In their natural form, shades have expertise in stealth.
   STATS: A shade's host retains its physical attributes. Hosts also gain the physical abilities and flaws of their hosts (e.g., jatayi flight, anthropophagoi hearing). Its mental attributes are replaced with those of the shade. Due to their effective immortality, shade characters add 2 points to their Intellect Pool. Outside of a host, a shade has an Agility and Might Pool of 10 and retains its Intellect Pool.
   OTHER: Shades also have the following traits:
•   Grave-Spawn: Shades are immune to aging, disease, poison. They and their hosts are also immune to starvation and death effects. Hosts cannot receive organic grafts, though pre-existing or mechanical grafts are permitted.
•   Host Decay: The host bodies of shades eventually begin to decompose. Unless measures are taken to avoid decay, each month imposes a cumulative 2 point reduction in the host's Might and Agility Pools.
•   Possession: Shades can possess the corpse of any corporeal creature that is small to huge in size. This process takes one round. Shades can possess the corpse indefinitely, so long as the corpse is not destroyed through decay or damage and the shade is not exposed to direct sunlight. If the Might and Agility Pools of a shade's host are both reduced to 0, the host is destroyed, and the shade is expelled. Alternatively, shades can voluntarily leave their host bodies. Outside their hosts, shades cannot speak, attack, or perform combat maneuvers, esoteries, or tricks, but are able to attempt perception and movement tasks.
•   Sunlight Vulnerability: Direct sunlight can forcibly expel a shade from its host. A shade can resist expulsion with an Intellect defense roll (DC 3+1 per round of exposure). If a shade is outside a host and exposed to direct sunlight, it becomes debilitated and takes 1 point of damage each round it remains so exposed.

SHEEVRA
The dwindling descendants of the city of Ker-Iz on the fabled Isle of Dusk off the Serrated Coast, the race known as the sheevra has become diluted from centuries of human-sheevra couplings, such that no pure-blooded sheevra remain. Those who do claim sheevra ancestry look almost entirely human, betrayed only by their luminous green-gold eyes and a faint golden shimmer and pale glow to their skin, an attribute that has earned them the name of 'Tawny Folk.' In millennia long past, the citadel-metropolis of Ker-Iz was the world's most beautiful city, though its gates were shut to all but the sheevra. An aloof and secretive people driven by wild desires and intensely sybaritic impulses, the hedonistic sheevra might have conquered the known world with their natural eldritch talents; even at its height, the cestoid Imperium never penetrated the ensorcelled walls of Ker-Iz. Some have suggested that the Sorcerer-Kings of old are the sheevra's progenitors, having joined their lineage with demons, oneiroi, or other spirits.

Disgusted with the notion of conquest, the sheevra pursued pleasure over power, indulging in every conceivable desire, and a few inconceivable to all but the sheevra themselves. Labor was unnecessary for them, for they were, and are, gifted with extraordinary arcane talent, their blood mingled with pure numina, whose glow gives them their distinctive sheen. Disinterested in the scholarly witchcraft of humans and other species, the sheevra's natural abilities allowed them to conjure the servants and resources they needed to live their luxurious, decadent lives. Yet, this all changed the Fevered Ocean suddenly swallowed Ker-Iz, pulled beneath the waves in a single cataclysmic surge that tore down the crystalline walls with their battlements of ethereal glass, flooded the winding, half-sentient streets, and toppled the iridescent towers. The exact reason for this disaster is still a mystery, but most believe the destruction of Ker-Iz to be the work of the vengeful beast-gods punishing the sheevra for some broken pact or other, ancient wrongdoing. The jatayi fablers speak of crustacean abominations stalking the mutable streets and tentacled horrors tearing down buildings, of a molluscoid warlord and his barnacle-studded retinue rampaging through the Glass Gardens and shattering the columns of the Dreaming Dome whose oneiric gems have been scattered across the Earth. The Shreeva fought back with now-forgotten Arts, their cavalry wheeling on the backs of sphinxes, mood-lances slinging bolts of sorrow, but in the end the city fell, claimed by the cold and merciless sea.

Now, the sheevra are all but extinct. Some few survivors forged a fell contract with a demoniac prince and transformed themselves into the first eidolons, or so the fablers say. The rest chose a life of vagabondage, becoming noble exiles, mercenaries, gutter-witches, sensual flaneurs, beggars with glittering eyes. Restless and melancholy from birth for a homeland none of their remaining ilk can still remember, the sheevra are both drawn to and repelled by the society of other sentient beings. Though their bloodline has been corrupted, the descendants of the sheevra still live for several centuries, and some spend decades wandering alone or secreted in solitary hermitages. At other times, sheevra throw themselves into fresh debaucheries to fight back against their vague sorrow.

RACIAL TRAITS
Sheevra have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES: Sheevra have expertise in Intellect defense rolls against witchcraft-produced effects.
   FLAWS: hiding (debility). Sheevra have slightly luminous eyes and skin, making it hard to conceal themselves.
   LANGUAGES: Shambles, plus any two other languages.      
   SENSES: sight-based perception (expertise). Dim illumination is not a hindrance to shreeva.
   SKILLS: persuasion (expertise), tasks to sense or identify witchcraft (expertise)
   STATS: Sheevra are exquisitely beautiful, but frail. Add 2 to their Intellect; subtract 2 from their Might.
   OTHER: Sheevra also have the following traits:
•     Drowsy: Like cats, Sheevra require large amounts of sleep. Sheevra require twice as much time to rest in order to make recovery rolls (i.e., 2 rounds, 20 minutes, 2 hours, and 16 hours of rest to make their daily first, second, third, and fourth recovery roll, respectively).
•    Fey: Sheevra occupy a liminal space between mortals and oneiroi. Consequently, effects designed to specifically target mortals or oneiroi may affect sheevra, whether for good or ill.
•     Gutter-Witchcraft (1 Intellect point): As per the theurge's esotery.
•     Hexsight (2 Intellect points): This invocation causes a sheevra's eyes to glow more brightly, but allows them to percieve, and potentially identify aetheric auras. Scanning an item or creature requires concentration, and each use of this ability can last up to one minute. Scanning a target reveals whether it can perform witchcraft, and if so, its level. It also reveals whatever facts the GM feels are pertinent about the aether in that area. Many materials and eldritch fields prevent or resist this hex. Action to initiate and sustain.
•     Lugent Vessel (2 Intellect points): Although a sheevra's skin and eyes constantly produce dim illumination in the immediate distance surrounding them, they can temporarily amplify and even transfer some of this radiance to another object, person, or place. To do so, a sheevra must touch the intended target. If successful, the target sheds bright illumination up to a short distance for ten minutes. Action.
•     Omnivorous: Sheevra can digest both meat and plant matter, but also draw nourishment from emotions, dreams, and other esoteric substances.

ZERDA
Considerably less intelligent –or at least less comprehensible– than humans, though substantially more so than beasts, the miniature foxfolk called the zerda are native to the Firesong Marches, one of the many variegated desert regions of the Cadaverous Earth –a land where the jinni and the mantids roam, where witches with skin black as ink and staves of human skulls smoke their ornate hookahs and purr their strange hexes into the reddish dusk, to summon scarab-golems and bejeweled incubi and older entities that still linger in that barren, inhospitable place. Physically the zerda resemble small, anthropomorphic foxes with oversized ears (to help cool themselves) and orange-brown fur. They wear little clothing, though females occasionally garb themselves in colorful scarves, and both genders wear jewelry, particularly earrings, gleaned more often than not through commerce with the jinni. Males usually carry at least one weapon, usually a long bone knife equivalent to a longsword to the small-statured creatures.

A nocturnal species, the zerda travel at night in gaudy, ramshackle caravans considerably larger than those of the mantids. Though they use some wagons most of their homes are built atop the shells of huge desert tortoises, with which the zerda have a symbiotic relationship, being experts in their breeding and care. The tortoises –a typical adult is several times larger than a large cow– are lumbering, docile creatures who trudge uncomplainingly through the Marches by night, while the zerda swarm atop and around them, employing rope ladders and carven handholds, etched into the very shells of the tortoises, to reach their mishmash, hastily assembled palanquins.

Zerda have a taste for trade, and some venture west into the Occident into the shanty-towns and markets of the Twilight Cities, selling everything from mantid firearms to bound fire-elementals trapped in gemstones by cunning foxfolk magi. Though quick to flee if threatened, they are vicious combatants, employing teeth and claws as well as their bone blades, with which some are exceptionally skilled. They are ominvorous and are certainly not above the consumption of human flesh, though they are not generally speaking cannibals, leaving their dead as offerings to the gods of flame, sun, and sand that they revere, an elemental and ill-defined pantheon without formal priests or temples.

RACIAL TRAITS
Zerda have the following racial traits:
   DEFENSES: Due to their dexterity and diminutive size, zerda have expertise in Agility defense rolls. Zerda also have mastery on Might defense rolls against heat and other natural hazards in deserts.
   LANGUAGES: Zerda, Jangle   
   MOVEMENT: Zerda are unusually fleet. Despite their small size, they do not have a flaw for tasks that require swift movement.
   NATURAL WEAPONS: Zerda have two claws that count as light weapons, and a bite attack that counts as a medium weapon that does not require a hand. Coupled with their ability to wield weapons, this allows zerda to make multiple attacks on their turn as a single action. If a zerda chooses to make multiple attacks in one round, the difficulty of all attack rolls increases by one step per additional attack for that round. Additionally, he remains limited by the amount of Grit he can apply on one action, but because he make separate attacks, his opponent's Armor applies to both. Anything that modifies his attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it's specifically tied to a specific weapon. Note that a light weapon for a small creature does 1 point of damage, and a medium weapon for a small creature does 2 points of damage.  
   SENSES: sight-based perception (expertise), sound-based perception (mastery). Additionally, neither dim nor very dim illumination is a hindrance to zerda.
   SIZE: Zerda are significantly smaller than most humanoids. As a consequence, weapons, armor, and items designed for normal-sized creatures usually will not fit a zerda, and small-sized weapons typically do less damage than normal-sized ones (i.e., light=1, medium=2, heavy=4). Tasks that require lifting or carrying heavy items are also one step more difficult for zerda. Being smaller, however, gives zerda expertise in squeezing through tight spaces, balancing on narrow beams, and other tasks where their relative size benefits them.  
   SKILLS: hiding (mastery), sneaking (expertise), wilderness survival (expertise). Zerda also have expertise in all tasks that involve their tortoise mounts (e.g., riding, breeding, healing).
   STATS: Zerda are exceptionally fleet and lithe, but comparatively frail and simple-minded. They add 4 points to their Agility Pool and subtract 2 points from their Might and Intellect Pools.
   OTHER: Zerda also have the following trait:
•   Omnivorous: Zerda can digest both meat and plants.

Rose-of-Vellum

#14
CHARACTER FOCI
Focus helps makes your character unique. Generally, no two PCs in a group should have the same focus. Your focus gives you benefits when you create your character and each time you ascend to the next tier. When you choose a character focus, one or two first-tier abilities, and perhaps additional starting equipment. A few foci offer slight alterations of esoteries or tricks for theurges and rogues. Each focus also offers suggestions to the GM and the player for possible effects or consequences of really good or really bad die rolls.

As you progress to a new tier, your focus grants you more abilities. Each tier's benefit is usually labeled Action or Enabler. If an ability is labeled Action, you must take an action to use it. If an ability is labeled Enabler, it makes other actions better or gives some other benefit, but it's not an action. An ability that allows you to conjure a mephit is an action. An ability that grants you additional damage when you make attacks is an enabler. You can use an enabler in the same turn as you perform another action.

Each tier's benefits are independent of and cumulative with benefits from other tiers (unless indicated otherwise). So if your first-tier ability grants you +1 to AC and your fourth-tier ability also grants you +1 to AC, when you reach fourth tier, you have a total of +2 to AC.

There is no specific or exhaustive list of foci; they are as varied and numerous as the creatures, cults, and customs of the Cadaverous Earth. Sometimes, a focus might apply specifically to members of a single organization or subculture; other times, foci might equally represent several groups that share similar practices or powers. A few illustrative examples, however, are provided below.

[ooc="Future Directions"]I plan on adding many more foci to the following examples; however, I will probably wait to see what kinds of character concepts people are interested in, and then devote my attention to finalizing foci to match those concepts. For example, if people want to play a heretic-sybarite of the Blightflower Communion, a Putrefactor of Yzch, a mortificant-monk of Brotherhood of Pestiferous Contrition, and a thief-lord of the Sepulchrites I would definitively focus on developing foci for Marainein-focused characters (excuse my pun), over foci for a magistra of Skein, a Whisperer of Somnambulon, or an assassin of the Shroud.[/ooc]

FOCUS EXAMPLES

ARTIFICE
Not satisfied with merely scavenging the detritus of the past, you seek to forge a new future, fashioned and filled with wondrous machinery. You may be a mechanical resurrectionist, breathing new life into dead technologies, or you may be an innovator, birthing constructs and instruments of your own imaginings. Perhaps you are one of Skein's technocrats, programming deadly automata and performing mechanical divinations with the Sortilege Engine. You may be a mechanic, tending the Clockwork Rail or creating submersibles or dirigibles that conquer sea and sky. Maybe you hail from Erebh, where you design and test the fluttering, scuttling vessels that explore the Grand Rictus. You may be a professor of engineering, a technolatrist that reveres the broken-machine gods of elder ages. No matter your specific background, you are an artificer, renown for your ingenious devices and creative intellect.  

Technotheurges frequently become artificers. Warrior artificers generally specialize in crafting weapons and armor that increase their prowess in battle. Rogues occasionally become artificers as well, fashioning and modifying a variety of mechanical instruments that augment their already diverse talents.

Additional Equipment: You begin the game with a bag of light tools, the tools needed to make your first-tier crafts, and any normal item (of level 1 or 2) that you can make with your skills. You also have an additional oddity.
Minor Effect Suggestions: The duration of an overloaded construct is doubled.  
Major Effect Suggestions: The duration of an overloaded construct extends to 24 hours.

Tier 1
Overload Construct (3+ Intellect points): One use of any mechanical device (or one minute of its continuous function) is increased by one level if you use it within the next minute. If you spend 4 additional Intellect points, the use is increased by two levels if you use it within the next minute. After this minute passes, however, the device ceases to operate. Action.
Technician: You have expertise in identifying the origin and function of any kind of mechanical device. You also have expertise in crafting, maintaining, and repairing two kinds of mechanical items (e.g., firearms, phonographs, submersibles). Enabler.

Tier 2
Automaton: You create a level 2 automaton. This mechanical servitor accompanies you and acts as you direct. As a level 2 entity, it has a DC of 2, 6 health, and inflicts 4 points of damage. In addition, your automaton has expertise in any physical skill of your choice and has one of the following attributes: AC 1, a short-distance ranged attack that deals 2 points of damage, or flight. You can repair your automaton if it gets damaged, effectively granting it a recovery roll, using your tier. If it's destroyed, it takes you one month to create a new one. Enabler.
Tinkerer: If you spend at least one day tinkering with a mechanical device in your possession, it functions at one level higher than normal. This applies to all devices in your possession, but they retain this bonus only for you. Enabler.

Tier 3
Dismantler: Against automata, intelligent machines, or creatures heavily modified by mechanical grafts, you have expertise in attack and defense rolls. Enabler.
Master Technician: You gain expertise in the crafting, maintaining, and repairing of two more kinds of items, or you gain mastery in two kinds of items in which you already have expertise. Enabler.

Tier 4
Improved Automaton: You modify your forged servitor, making it a level 4 automaton. As a level 4 entity, it has a DC of 4, 12 health, and inflicts 8 points of damage. In addition, your automaton gains expertise in any physical skill of your choice and gains one of the following attributes: AC 1, a short-distance ranged attack that deals 6 points of damage, flight, or the ability to serve as a mechanical mount. Instead of enhancing your original automaton, you can choose to create two additional level 2 automatons, allowing you to have up to three at the same time. Enabler.
Reengineer: If given a week and the right tools, chemicals, and parts, you can experiment with one of your technotheurgic devices, transforming it into another device of the same type that you have observed, possessed, or experimented with in the past. The GM and player should collaborate to ensure that the transformation is logical—for example, you probably can't transform an electrographic monocle into a tessellating shield, but likely could reengineer it into a daguerreotype-producing spyglass. Enabler.

Tier 5
Innovator: You can modify any artifact to give it different or better abilities as if that artifact were one level lower than normal, and doing so takes half the normal time to modify a device. Enabler.
Legendary Technician: You gain expertise in crafting, maintaining, and repairing two more kinds of items, or you have mastery in two kinds of items in which you already have expertise. You also gain mastery in identifying the origin and function of any kind of mechanical device.  Enabler.

Tier 6
Grand Automaton: You further modify your forged servitor, making it a level 6 automaton. As a level 6 entity, it has a DC of 6, 18 health, and inflicts 12 points of damage. In addition, your automaton gains expertise in any physical skill of your choice and has one of the following attributes: AC 1, a long-distance ranged attack that deals 10 points of damage, flight, or the ability to serve as a mechanical mount. If you choose to create three level 2 automata rather than enhance your original automaton, you may decide whether you wish to create four additional level 2 automata (i.e., 5 total) or upgrade your three level 2 automata to level 4 servitors. Enabler.
Paramount Inventor: You can create new artifacts in half the time, as if they were two levels lower, by spending half the normal XP. Enabler.

ASSASSINATION
Murder is your specialty. Death is the commodity you deliver. You may be a daughter of Dolmen's Assassin Guild, armed with subtle mysticism and venom-kissed stilettos as you play your part in the Great Web. Perhaps you belong to one of Skein's syndicates, slaying rival crime-lords and crown-rich courtiers, or you may work for the infamous Shroud, a murderer-for-hire marked by a black heart, wreathed in green fire. You may dream of attaining the notoriety of the Scarred Gentlemen or desire naught but the Bloodletter's approval of your lethal sacraments. Yet, regardless of whether your crimes are committed with dark passion or detached professionalism, your talent for murder is as indisputable as it is terrifying.

Any archetype could be an assassin. Rogues are the most likely choice, but theurges with their esoteries or warriors with their combat abilities would make efficient killers as well.

Additional Equipment: You start with a disguise kit and three doses of a level 2 blade poison that inflicts 5 points of damage.
Minor Effect Suggestions: No one but the foe notices that you make the attack.
Major Effect Suggestions: If you have poison amid your belongings, you were able to apply it just before the strike, adding the poison's effects to the normal attack damage.

Tier 1
Surprise Strike: If attacking from a hidden vantage, with surprise, or before an opponent has acted, you reduce the difficulty of your attack by one step. On a successful hit with this surprise attack, you inflict 2 additional points of damage. Enabler.
Trained Assassin: You have expertise in stealth and disguise tasks. Enabler.

Tier 2
Swift Death (2 Agility points): You know how to kill quickly. When you hit with a melee or ranged attack, you deal 4 additional points of damage. You cannot make this attack in two consecutive rounds. Action.

Tier 3
Poisoner: You have expertise in crafting, sensing, identifying, and resisting poisons. Enabler.
Trained Infiltrator: You have expertise in all interactions involving lies or trickery. Enabler.

Tier 4
Improved Surprise Strike: If attacking from a hidden vantage, with surprise, or before an opponent has acted, you reduce the difficulty of your attack by one step. On a successful hit with this surprise attack, you inflict 2 additional points of damage. These effects add to those from Surprise Attack, giving you a total decrease of two steps and a total of 4 additional points of damage. Enabler.

Tier 5
Executioner (5 Agility points): With a swift and sudden attack, you strike a foe in a vital spot. If the target is level 3 or less, it is slain outright. Action.

Tier 6
Vanishing Killer: When you kill a foe, you can attempt a stealth action to immediately hide from anyone around, assuming that a suitable hiding place is nearby. Enabler.


BIOENGINEERING

BLOODLETTING
Bloodshed is all-too common in the Cadaverous Earth. Some, however, embrace it with a terrifying fervor. You are one of these dreaded souls. Some say you are a descendant of Kain, a scion of the infamous god-murderer. Others whisper that you are the bastard progeny of murderfolk, empowered, but tainted, by the Red Rain. Others might hail you as a gory gladiator of Pulsetown pits or curse your name as a living avatar of the Bloodletter. You may hail from savage lands or be an urban-raised brute. Either way, there is something feral about you, something untamed by the strictures of law or civility. Foes who forget this rarely live to regret their mistake.

Warriors, above all, are the most likely to embrace bloodletting.

Additional Equipment: You start with an additional light or medium weapon of your choice.
Minor Effect Suggestions: When fighting multiple foes, you knock one into another, putting both off balance. As a result, treat both foes as one level lower for one round.
Major Effect Suggestions: Your foe is terrified of your rage and uses his next two actions to flee.

Tier 1
Bloodlust: When you wish, while in combat, you can enter a state of frenzy. While in this state, you can't use Intellect points, but you gain +1 to your Might Edge and your Agility Edge. This effect lasts for as long as you wish, but it ends if no combat is taking place within range of your senses. Enabler.
Always Armed: You can turn nearly any object into a deadly weapon, from a broken bottle to a silk sash. Consequently, attacking with an improvised weapon is not a hindrance for you. Enabler.

Tier 2
Scarred: You gain +5 to your Might Pool. These additional points can be used only to absorb damage. You can't spend them to apply Grit to rolls. Enabler.
Fear-monger: You have expertise in intimidation tasks and Intellect defense rolls against fear effects. Enabler.

Tier 3
Felling Strike (3+ Might points): If you successfully attack a target, you knock it prone in addition to inflicting damage. The target must be your size or smaller. You can knock down a target larger than you if you apply a level of Grit to do so (rather than to decrease the difficulty of the attack). Enabler.
Unarmored Fighter: While unarmored, you have expertise in Agility defense tasks. Enabler.

Tier 4
Greater Bloodlust: Your thirst for slaughter is legendary. Whenever you wish, while in combat, you can enter an even more murderous state of bloodlust. While in this state, you cannot use Intellect points or perform any Intellect-based task, but you gain +2 to your Might Edge and your Agility Edge. This effect lasts for as long as you wish, but it ends if no combat is taking place within range of your senses. After this effect ends, you are temporarily fatigued, causing you to be impaired for one minute. You can use this ability or your first-tier Bloodlust ability, but you can't use both at the same time. Enabler.
Mobile Combatant: You have expertise in climbing and jumping tasks. Enabler.

Tier 5
Greater Fear-monger: You have mastery in intimidation tasks and Intellect defense rolls against fear effects. Enabler.
Murderous Barrage: Rather than granting additional damage or a minor or major effect, a natural 5 or higher on your attack roll allows you the option of immediately making another attack. Enabler.

Tier 6
Dread Slayer: You gain +6 to your Might Pool and your Agility Pool. Enabler.

DIABOLISM
You pursue the dark art of known as diabolism. You may be one of Skein's masked magisters, a dilettante of demonaltry attended by an argent-chained familiar. Perhaps you are an obsessed student or half-mad cultist of the infernal planes, pouring over grimoires and infernal seals. You may summon se'irim, consort with Marquises and Dukes of Hell, and dabble in their prolix politics. Alternatively, you may be a demon-hunter, who risks both sanity and soul to track down, imprison, or vanquish the mutilated horrors known as the mazikin. Regardless of your reasons for trafficking with fiends, you have a fell gift, and your foes are wise to fear you.

Theurges are the most likely to be diabolists, but warriors and rogues might also have this focus.

Additional Equipment: You begin with a chain and collar, shackle, harness, or fetter for your familiar.
Minor Effect Suggestions: The duration of a goetic seal is doubled.
Major Effect Suggestions: The duration of a goetic seal extends to 2 hours.

Tier 1
Familiar: A level 2 demon of your size or smaller accompanies you and follows your instructions. You and the GM must work out the details of your familiar and you'll probably make rolls for it in combat or when it takes actions. The familiar acts on your turn. As a level 2 creature, it has a DC of 2, 6 health, and inflicts 4 points of damage. In addition, your familiar has expertise in any skill of your choice and has one of the following attributes: AC 1, a short-distance ranged attack that deals 2 points of damage, a level 2 poison, or flight. Its movement is otherwise based on its anatomy (e.g., fins, legs, vermiform body, etc.). If your familiar dies, you can summon and bind a new one in 1d6 days (i.e., the time required to collect the necessary powders, unguents, and so forth for the ritual). Enabler.
Infernal Scholar: You have fluency in Hellspeak. You also have expertise in tasks to perceive, identify, and persuade demons. Enabler.

Tier 2
Goetic Seal (3 Intellect points): You can attempt to partially bind a demon that is within a short distance from you. You must speak to it (although it doesn't need to understand your words) and have at least one hand free, and it must see you. If you successfully roll against the demon's level, it remains bound to its immediate location and cannot attack for one minute –so long as you focus all your attention on it and neither you nor your allies attack or touch it. If you attempt a goetic seal and fail, the difficulty of your defense rolls against the demon is increased by one step for the next minute. Additionally, failed binding attempts typically provoke demons to attack. Action.
Forbidden Mysteries (4 Intellect points): Demons under the influence of one of your goetic seals can be forced to answer a number of questions equal to your tier. For each question, you must make an Intellect roll (DC typically equals demon's level); each success compels the demon to answer a query to the best of its ability. Action.

Tier 3
Demonic Servitor: You gain the ability to summon and bind a level 3 demon. This demon follows your instructions, and if you choose, can serve you as a mount. While you're mounted on it, the demon can move and you can attack on your turn, or it can attack foes when you do. You and the GM must work out the details of the demon, and you'll probably make rolls for it in combat or when it takes actions. The servitor acts on your turn. If your servitor dies, you can summon another in 3d6 days. As a level 3 creature, it has a DC of 3, 9 health, and inflicts 6 points of damage. In addition, your servitor has one of the following attributes: AC 2, a short-range ranged attack that deals 4 points of damage, or flight. Its movement is otherwise based on its anatomy (e.g., fins, legs, vermiform body, etc.). Enabler.

Tier 4
Bound Senses: You can sense through your familiar's senses if it is within 1 mile (1.6 km) of you. This effect lasts up to ten minutes. Action to establish.
Improved Familiar: Your familiar increases to level 4. As a level 4 creature, it has a DC of 4, 12 health, and inflicts 8 points of damage. In addition, your familiar gains expertise in any skill of your choice and also gains one of the following attributes: AC 1, a short-distance ranged attack that deals 6 points of damage, a level 4 poison, or flight. Enabler.

Tier 5
Immediate Conjuration (5 Intellect points): You summon a horde of imps or a single level 4 demon to help you temporarily. These creatures do your bidding for as long as you focus your attention, but you must use your action each turn to direct them. Action.

Tier 6
Greater Goetic Seal (6 Intellect points): You can control a demon that is within a short distance from you. You must speak to it (although it doesn't need to understand your words) and have at least one hand free, and it must see you. If you successfully roll against the demon's level, you control it, using your turn each round. If the demon's level is lower than your tier, you can control it for as long as you focus all your attention on it. If the demon's level is equal to or greater than your tier, you must make a check each round to maintain control. Action.
Grand Familiar: Your familiar increases to level 5. As a level 5 creature, it has a DC of 5, 15 health, and inflicts 10 points of damage. In addition, your familiar gains expertise in any skill of your choice and also gains one of the following attributes: AC 1, a long-distance ranged attack that deals 8 points of damage, a level 5 poison, or flight. Enabler.

DUELING
FABLES

GOVERNANCE
Whether by virtue of your birth and breeding or the consequence of ambition and experience, you command the actions of others, attracting sycophants and loyal subjects. You may be one of Macellaria's mercenary-generals, in ruling a rag-tag band of tramp warriors and sellswords. Perhaps you are a masked aristocrat of Skein or a rebel baron secretly guiding a group of Awakeners. You may be a pirate-lord, leading a crew of buccaneers or river-bandits. Or maybe you are one of Yzch's hierophants, leading a cult of Malignant ascetics. Regardless of your origins, your skills allow you to make others do what you want, but you also have the sagacity and strategic acumen to know what actions would be best for your followers and allies.

Warriors, rogues, and theurges all equally likely to have governance as their focus.

Additional Equipment: You have an extra oddity that acts as a symbol of your authority.
Minor Effect Suggestions: The next time you attempt to command or otherwise influence the same foe, the difficulty of the task is decreased by one step.
Major Effect Suggestions: The NPC is influenced, captivated, or otherwise affected by your ability for twice as long as normal.

Tier 1
Natural Charisma: You have expertise in all social interactions, whether they involve charm, learning a person's secrets, or intimidating others. Enabler.
Astute Guidance (1 Intellect point): You have a clear mind for determining the best way to proceed. When you give another character a suggestion involving his next action, the character has expertise in that action for one round. Action.

Tier 2
Servant: You gain a level 2 NPC humanoid servant who is completely devoted to you. You and the GM must work out the details of the follower and you'll probably make rolls for it in combat or when it takes actions. The servant acts on your turn. As a level 2 creature, it has a DC of 2, 6 health, and inflicts 4 points of damage. If the servant dies, you gain a new one after at least two weeks and proper recruitment. Enabler.

Tier 3
Command (3 points): Through sheer force of will and charisma, you issue a simple command to a single living creature, which attempts to carry out your command as its next action if you successfully roll against its DC. The creature must be within short range and be able to understand you. The command can't inflict direct harm on the creature or its allies, so "Commit suicide" won't work, but "Flee" might. In addition, the command can require the creature to take only one action, so "Open the door" might work, but "Open the door and run through it" won't. Action.
Coterie: You gain six level 1 NPC followers who are completely devoted to you. (They are in addition to the servant you gained at second tier.) You and the GM must work out the details of these followers. If a follower dies, you gain a new one after at least two weeks and proper recruitment. Enabler.

Tier 4
Inspire (4 Intellect points): Your words inspire all NPCs (of your choosing) that hear them to function as if they were one level higher for the next hour. Action.
Improved Servant: Your servant increases to level 4. As a level 4 creature, it has a DC of 4, 12 health, and deals 8 points of damage. Enabler.

Tier 5
Greater Coterie: You gain six level 2 NPC followers who are completely devoted to you. (They are in addition to the six level 1 followers you gained at second tier) You and the GM must work out the details of these followers. If a follower dies, you gain a new one after at least two weeks and proper recruitment. Enabler.

Tier 6
Strategic Genius (6 Intellect points): When you develop a plan that involves your followers, you can ask the GM one very general question about what is likely to happen if you carry out the plan, and you will get a simple, brief answer. Action.
Grand Servant: Your servant increases to level 6. As a level 6 creature, it has a DC of 6, 18 health, and inflicts 12 points of damage. Enabler.


GUNSLINGING
The gunslinger is a skilled combatant, deadly in any fight. With a keen eye and quick reflexes, you can eliminate foes at range before they reach you. As you seek to unlock your weapon's secrets, you gain increasing expertise in the construction of firearms and their ammunition. You may be a disciple of the legendary gunfighter-monk, Lao-Urc, seeking mastery of the Thirteen Precepts, or you may have apprenticed under a master gunsmith such as Val Corvan. Perhaps you are a bastard-scion of the brigand-king Red Edward, and heir to his infamous gunslinging abilities. You may carry a cold-iron revolver, a pair of subtle derringers, or an elaborate wheellock musket. Either way, you have a gift with guns, and it is one you strive to develop –much to the chagrin of your foes.

Many warriors and rogues pursue the art of gunslinging, though some rare theurges also follow its path, firing glyph-scribed bullets or building elaborate clockwork firearms of fell power.  

Additional Equipment: You start with a well-made gun of your choice and two dozen mundane ammunition for that gun.
Minor Effect Suggestions: Hit in a tendon or muscle, the target takes 2 points of Agility damage as well as normal damage.
Major Effect Suggestions: You can choose to disarm your foe with a well-aimed shot. Alternatively, your shot renders your target unable to move for one round (e.g., a crippling shot to the leg or foot, causing something to crash down on your opponent and pin him in place).

Tier 1
Gunslinger: To be truly deadly with a gun, you must know where to aim. You can spend points from either your Agility Pool or your Intellect Pool to apply levels of Grit to increase your firearm damage. Each level of Grit adds 3 points of damage to a successful attack. Enabler.
Quick-Draw: You have expertise in initiative when attacking with a gun. Enabler.

Tier 2
Covering Fire: In a round where you attack with your gun, if you fire an additional bullet, the difficulty of attacks and special abilities used by the target is increased by one step. Enabler.
Bullet-Maker: You have expertise in making, appraising, and identifying firearm ammunition. Enabler.

Tier 3
Expert Gunslinger: You have expertise in using guns. Enabler.
Gunsmith: You have expertise in making, appraising, identifying, and repairing guns. Enabler.

Tier 4
Quick Shot: If you roll a natural 17 or higher with a gun attack, instead of adding damage or a minor or major effect, you can make another attack with your gun. This attack reuses the same Grit and bonuses (if any) from the first attack. Enabler.
Master Bullet-Maker: You have mastery in making, appraising, and identifying firearm ammunition. Enabler.

Tier 5
Master Gunslinger: You are specialized in using guns. Enabler.
Master Gunsmith: You have mastery in making, appraising, identifying, and repairing guns. Enabler.

Tier 6
Dead-Eye (2 Intellect Points): Your aim is legendary; you can ignore your target's AC and inflict 3 additional points of damage with a gun. The Intellect points spent to use this ability are in addition to any Agility points spent on the attack. Enabler.
Lightning-Draw: You have mastery in initiative when attacking with a gun. Enabler.

IATROCHEMISTRY
LORICATION

MECHANICAL AUGMENTATION
At some point in your past, some of your organic parts were replaced with artificial components. These artificial components might be subdermal, or they might resemble more overt cogwork, synthetic tubing, or sutured metal plating on your skin. You may be a gravespawn graftpunk, an amputee seeking to overcome a crippling disability, a gearborg with a fetish for clockwork, or the unwilling subject of mechanoape experimentation. Whatever their appearance or origin, these components give you special abilities.

As you advance, you can add to, modify, or discover new functions for them. Unfortunately, your artificial body also has special requirements when it takes damage. Because your components are tricky to repair, as time goes on, it might become more difficult to conceal your true nature, with exposed clockwork, metal plates, and more in a state of partial disassembly.

Anyone—warrior, rogue, or theurge, quick or gravespawn—might be a gearborg.

Additional Equipment: You have a bag of light tools and a variety of parts to repair yourself.
Minor Effect Suggestions: Your servos learn from your successful actions. You decrease the point cost of any action by 1 if you attempt to repeat an action from one round earlier (such as making attacks against the same foe or operating the same device).
Major Effect Suggestions: You discharge a voltaic jolt, gust of scalding steam, or stream of caustic reagents onto your foe. Make an immediate attack against that foe (using the same stat as the action that caused the major effect). If the attack succeeds, it deals 4 points of electrical, fire, or acid damage.

Tier 1
Enhanced Form: You gain +1 to AC, +3 to your Might Pool, and +3 to your Agility Pool. Enabler.
Special Healing: Traditional healing skills, medicines, invocations, and techniques work only half as well for you. Each time you start at full health, the first 5 points of damage you take can never be healed in these ways or recovered normally. Instead, you must use repairing skills and abilities to restore those points. For example, if you start with a full Might Pool of 10 and take 8 points of damage, you can use recovery rolls to restore 3 points, but the remaining 5 points must be restored using repairing methods.

Tier 2
Clockwork Interface: By directly connecting your mechanical grafts with a device, you can identify and learn to operate it as though the task were one level lower. Action to initiate. Enabler to continue.

Tier 3
Weaponization: One light or medium melee weapon of your choice is built into your body, and you have expertise in this weapon (even if you do not have expertise in other weapons of that type). The weapon is concealed until you wish to use it. Enabler.

Tier 4
Fusion: You can fuse four enscorcelled items and artifacts with your body. These fused devices function as if they were one level higher. Enabler.

Tier 5
Interchangeable Anatomy: Once each day, you can transfer up to 5 points between your Pools in any combination, at a rate of 1 point per round. For example, you could transfer 3 points of Might to Agility and 2 points of Intellect to Agility, which would take a total of five rounds. Action.

Tier 6
Mechanical Apotheosis: You gain +1 to AC and +5 to each of your three stat Pools. Enabler.

NECROMANCY
Numerous cultures and civilizations within the Cadaverous Earth have dabbled in the dark arts of necromancy. You, however, are no morbid dilettante, but an ardent devotee. You may be a guilder of Macellaria's Splicing Consortium, fashioning piecemeal vessels of stitched flesh and steeped formaldehyde. You may be a ghul sacredos, offering oblations to your pantheon of sparsille deities, or a cannibalistic haruspex, performing macabre divinations with carrion entrails. Or perhaps you are a headless witch-doctors from the Mewling Moors, communing with murderous wraiths as you burn ghost-grass and dance amongst mobs of gnawed skeletons. Whether quick or grave-spawn, you derive strength through death, commanding disembodied spirits and decomposing corpses to obey your will. In doing so, you seek not to merely understand death, but to master it.

Theurges are most likely to practice necromancy, but some warriors and rogues pursue the morbid discipline.  

Additional Equipment: You start with a preserved part, or memento, of someone close to you who died, like a locket, coin, mummified finger, embalmed brain, or pickled tongue, last will and testament, or something similar.
Minor Effect Suggestions: Your necrotic servitor lasts for two hours, or target is dazed for one round.
Major Effect Suggestions: Your necrotic servitor lasts for one day, or your target is stunned from terror and loses its next turn.

Tier 1
Necrotic Servitor (3 Intellect points+): You reanimate the body of a dead creature of approximately your size or smaller. It has none of the intelligence, memories, or special abilities that it had in life. The level 1 creature you create follows all of your commands and lasts for 1 hour (although certain alchemical and arcane means may extend the corpse's longevity). As a level 1 creature, it has a DC of 1, 3 health, and inflicts 2 points of damage. You create an additional servitor for each additional point you spend. Action to animate.
Netrologist: You have fluency in Morbis. You also have expertise in tasks that involve perceiving, identifying, or interacting with grave-spawn or necromantic rituals and arcana. Enabler.

Tier 2
Corpse Communion (2 Intellect points+): You can ask a question of a dead being whose corpse you are touching. Because you must get the answer through the filter of the being's understanding and personality, the being cannot answer questions it would not have understood in life, cannot provide answers to questions it would not have known in life, and in fact is not compelled to answer at all, so you may need to use standard interaction actions that would have convinced them while they were alive. You can ask an additional question for each additional point you spend (determined when you begin). Action.
Skin-Stitchery (3 Intellect points): If given a week and the right tools, chemicals, and parts to work on a corpse in your possession, you can reanimate it at one level higher than normal when creating a necrotic servitor. Additionally, servitors you prepare with this ability no longer decompose after an hour of being reanimated. Enabler.

Tier 3
Geist Resistance: You gain expertise in defense tasks to resist geist infection.
Macabre Séance (4 Intellect points): After completing a ritual that takes 10 minutes, you gain knowledge about an area by reading residual energies of the past deaths imprinted into the place. You can ask the GM a single, matter-of-fact question about the place and gain an answer if you succeed at the task. "What killed the children in this catacomb?" is a good example of a simple question. "Why were these children killed?" is not an appropriate question because it has more to do with the mindset of the child killer than the catacomb. Simple questions are usually level 2, but extremely technical questions, or those that involve facts meant to be kept secret can be much higher. Action.

Tier 4
Improved Necrotic Servitor (5 Intellect points+): You reanimate the body of a dead creature. It has none of the intelligence, memories, or special abilities that it had in life. The level 3 creature you create follows all of your commands and lasts for 1 hour. As a level 3 creature, it has a DC of 3, 9 health, and inflicts 6 points of damage. You create an additional improved servitor for each additional 3 points you spend. Action to animate.
Master Netrologist: You gain mastery in tasks that involve perceiving, identifying, or interacting with grave-spawn or necromantic rituals and arcana.

Tier 5
Death Wail (6 Intellect points): You potentially affect any and all living creatures within 30 feet who can hear you with a terrible keening. Affected creatures are paralyzed and unable to move or take actions for 1 minute or until they are attacked. Action.
Improved Skin-Stitchery (6 Intellect points): If given a day and the right tools, chemicals, and parts to work on a corpse in your possession, you can reanimate it at one level higher than normal when creating a necrotic servitor. Additionally, servitors you prepare with this ability no longer decompose after an hour of being reanimated. You can use this ability or your second-tier Skin-Stitchery ability, but you cannot use both at the same time. Enabler.

Tier 6
Grand Necrotic Servitor (8 Intellect points): You reanimate the body of a dead creature. It has none of the intelligence, memories, or special abilities that it had in life. The level 5 creature you create follows all of your commands and lasts for 1 hour. As a level 5 creature, it has a DC of 5, 15 health, and inflicts 10 points of damage.  Action to animate.
Improved Geist Resistance: You gain mastery in defense tasks to resist geist infection.

PHYTOLOGY
In a world largely bereft of verdant life, you pursue the rare discipline of phytology. You may be one of Moroi's famed horticulturists, a susurrating warden of the Glass Quarter, whispering spells amid the hex-lit greenhouses, causing plants to grow to prodigious sizes. Or perhaps you have scorned the urban decadence and decay of the Twilight Cities and live as a druidic Luddite who worships the Fecundity's wild embrace. You might be a scholar of the Screamwood and its crimson-sapped arbors, a traveling botanist who cultivates foetal fruit from deadly Cannibal-Trees, or a monastic viticulturist who harvests strangling pit-vines to produce melancholic gloomwine. In sum, plants are both your passion and your power.

Any archetype can pursue phytology, though theurges are the most common to do so.

Additional Equipment: A bag of small tools relevant to your trade, including various seeds, fertilizers, and botanical nutrients.
Minor Effect Suggestions: The duration of your plant placation or control is doubled.
Major Effect Suggestions: The duration of your plant placation or control lasts for 24 hours.

Tier 1
Botanist: You have expertise in any task that involves perceiving, identifying, or tending plant matter. Enabler.
Placate Plant (2+ Intellect points): With a successful roll, you convince a plant that is within immediate distance to refrain from attacking you for one minute. Instead of applying Grit to decrease the difficulty of this esotery, you can apply Grit to protect more targets, with each level of Grit causing the affected plant to ignore up to two additional targets. You must be able to see and speak with said targets to provide this protection. Action to initiate.

Tier 2
Plant Minion: You cultivate a level 2 plant minion. This minion accompanies you and acts as you direct. As a level 2 entity, it has a DC of 2, 6 health, and inflicts 4 points of damage. In addition, your minion has expertise in any physical skill of your choice and has one of the following attributes: AC 1, a short-distance ranged attack that deals 2 points of damage, or a level 2 poison. You can repair your minion if it gets damaged, effectively granting it a recovery roll, using your tier. If it is destroyed, it takes you one month to grow a new one. Enabler.
Plant Resistance: You have expertise in defense rolls against plant-based attacks, diseases, and poisons. Enabler.

Tier 3
Coax Vitality (2 Intellect points): If given a week and the right tools, chemicals, and conditions, you can experiment with a plant, boosting its vitality or physiology so that it operates at one level higher. Action to initiate.
Expert Pruner: When fighting a plant or plant-based creature, you have expertise in attacks. Enabler.

Tier 4
Improved Plant Minion: You modify your plant minion, making it a level 4 plant. As a level 4 entity, it has a DC of 4, 12 health, and inflicts 8 points of damage. In addition, your plant minion gains expertise in any physical skill of your choice and gains one of the following attributes: AC 1, a short-distance ranged attack that deals 6 points of damage, a level 4 poison, or the ability to serve as a mount. Instead of enhancing your original minion, you can choose to cultivate two additional level 2 plant minions, allowing you to have up to three at the same time. Enabler.
Master Botanist: You have mastery in any task that involves perceiving, identifying, or tending plant matter. Enabler.

Tier 5
Botanomancy (5 Intellect points): After performing a ritual that blends phytological science with sorcery, you commune with any or all plants within 1 mile (1.6 km). You can ask one basic question about themselves or anything happening near them and receive a simple answer. Simple questions are usually level 2, but extremely technical questions, or answers to more esoteric mysteries can be much higher. Action.
Improved Plant Resistance: You have mastery in defense rolls against plant-based attacks, diseases, and poisons. Enabler.

Tier 6
Control Plant (6 Intellect points): You can control the functions of any plant, intelligent or otherwise, within short range. This effect lasts ten minutes. Action.
Grand Plant Minion: You further modify your plant minion, making it a level 6 plant. As a level 6 entity, it has a DC of 6, 18 health, and inflicts 12 points of damage. In addition, your minion gains expertise in any physical skill of your choice and has one of the following attributes: AC 1, a short-distance ranged attack that deals 10 points of damage, a level 6 poison, or the ability to serve as a mount. If you chose to create three level 2 plant minions rather than enhance your original minion, you may decide whether you wish to create four additional level 2 plant minions (i.e., 5 total) or upgrade your three level 2 minions to level 4 minions. Enabler.


PREDATION
PSYCHOTHEURGY
PYROMANCY
SHADOWMANCY
SHAMANISM
SKINCHANGING

THIEVERY
The Twilight Cities are infested with myriad parasites, but none are perhaps so ubiquitous as the thief. You are one of these vampiric individuals, stealing, cheating, and misappropriating the possessions of others to slake your insatiable greed. You may belong to one of Macellaria's thief-clans, running a rookery of pick-pockets and petty burglars, or you might serve a crime syndicate of Skein, smuggling and selling black-market commerce to the highest bidder. You may be a Sepulchrite from Marainein, plying the Carbuncle Bazaar whilst you evade the Inquisition. Or, you may work alone, pulling heists in Moroi's gated mansions or conning gullible merchants in Crepuscle.  No matter your masters or marks, you are a bogeyman to the rich, a shadow that causes the mightiest of vaults to quiver in fear.

Most thieves are rogues, but theurges make interesting burglars as well. A warrior thief likely adds a little more physicality to his crimes.

Additional Equipment: You start with a bag of tools relevant to your illicit trade.
Minor Effect Suggestions: You can immediately attempt to hide after this action.
Major Effect Suggestions: You can immediately take a second action during this turn.

Tier 1
Thief: You have expertise in stealth, pickpocketing, and lockpicking tasks. Enabler.
Underworld Connections: You know many people in a variety of communities who engage in illegal activities. These people are not necessarily your friends and might not be trustworthy, but they recognize you as a peer. You and the GM should work out the details of your underworld contacts. Enabler.

Tier 2
Alley Rat (4 Intellect points): While in a city, you find or create a significant shortcut, secret entrance, or emergency escape route where it looked like none existed. You and the GM should work out the details. Action.
Burglar's Eye: You have expertise in tasks to appraise non-eldritch items. Enabler.

Tier 3
Pull a Fast One (3 Intellect points): When you're running a con, picking a pocket, fooling or tricking a dupe, sneaking something by a guard, and so on, you treat the task as if it were one level lower. Enabler.
Elusive: You have expertise in climbing, escaping from bonds, slipping through narrow places, and other contortionist moves. Enabler.

Tier 4
Crime Lord: Within your primary area of criminal activity (e.g., Crepuscle, Macellaria, Southern Swamps), your reputation and underworld connections have become a source of envy and respect. As long as your identity is not concealed, you treat social tasks with thieves, smugglers, and similar criminals from this area as if they were one level lower. Enabler.
One the Take: You have a developed a relationship, however, precarious with a corrupt guard, judge, or person of similar authority who will accept bribes in exchange for illegal favors. While the nature of the bribe and favor influences the difficulty of convincing a corrupt individual to accept your offer, the difficulty of interactions with this individual is reduced one step for you. You and the GM should work out the details of your corrupt contact. Enabler.

Tier 5
Dirty Fighter (2 Agility points): You distract, blind, annoy, hamper, or otherwise interfere with a foe, hindering his attack and defense rolls for one minute. As a result, the difficulty of your defense rolls and attack rolls against the foe is reduced by one step. Action.
Master Thief: You have mastery in stealth, pickpocketing, and lockpicking tasks. Enabler.

Tier 6
Underworld Legend: Your reputation amongst criminals has spread across the breadth and width of the Cadaverous Earth. As long as your identity is not concealed, you treat social tasks with thieves, smugglers, and similar criminals as if they were two levels lower. Even common guards and watchmen are cowed by your notoriety; interactions with such individuals have their difficulty reduced by one step for you. Enabler.


WAY OF THE BLADE & PISTOL
Myriad weapons fill the Cadaverous Earth, each offering unique ways to maim, subdue, and slay. Consequently, you are not content to deal death one weapon at a time. Instead, your path pursues the simultaneous use of multiple weapons. You may be a mantid duelist, simultaneously swinging scythe-arms and shooting clockwork derringers. Perhaps you are a graduate of Chaulaxna's academies, where you learned to weave serrated blades and six-shooters. You may be one of Lophius' corsairs, crossing pistol with cutlass, or you may be a seven-armed cestoid, eviscerating your gladiatorial opponents in a blur of axes, clubs, swords, and stranger weapons. Whatever the specific nature of your training, your martial discipline is incredibly difficult to master –but undeniably deadly.

Although many warriors and rogues train to simultaneously wield multiple weapons, few theurges spend the time required to learn such a purely physical art.

Additional Equipment: You start with an additional light melee or ranged weapon.
Minor Effect Suggestions: The target is intimidated and flees as its next action.
Major Effect Suggestions: You can make an immediate additional attack with one of your weapons.

Tier 1
Dual Light Wield: You can use two light weapons at the same time, making two separate attacks on your turn as a single action. You remain limited by the amount of Grit you can apply on one action, but because you make separate attacks, your opponent's AC applies to both. Anything that modifies your attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it's specifically tied to one of the weapons. Enabler.
Versatile Blade: Your experience with multiple weapons allows you to use bladed weapons in diverse, unorthodox ways. Each round, you can treat a bladed weapon as if it is a bashing weapon of one category lighter (modified light weapons do 1 point of damage). For example, you could use a broadsword like a club, using the flat of its blade, its pommel, or basket, so that it acts as a light bashing weapon that deals 2 points of damage. Enabler.

Tier 2
Double Strike: When you wield multiple weapons, you can choose to make one attack roll against a foe. If you hit, you inflict damage with two weapons plus 2 additional points of damage, and because you made a single attack, the target's AC is subtracted only once. Action.
Versatile Pistol: Your experience with multiple weapons allows you to use ranged weapons in diverse, unorthodox ways. Each round, you can treat a ranged weapon as if it is a bashing weapon of one category lighter (modified light weapons do 1 point of damage). For example, you could use a revolver to pistol-whip an opponent, treating the revolver like a light bashing weapon that deals 2 points of damage. Enabler.

Tier 3
Dual Medium Wield: You can use two light weapons or medium weapons at the same time (or one light weapon and one medium weapon), making two separate attacks on your turn as a single action. This ability otherwise works like the Dual Light Wield ability. Enabler.

Tier 4
Improved Double Strike: When you wield multiple weapons, you can choose to make one attack roll against a foe. If you hit, you inflict damage with two weapons plus 4 additional points of damage, and because you made a single attack, the target's AC is subtracted only once. Action.
Improved Versatile Blade: When you modify an attack with a bladed weapon to act like a bashing weapon, you can choose whether you wish for the weapon to retain its original category (i.e., light, medium, heavy) or be one lighter. Enabler.

Tier 5
Deadly Distraction: When you wield multiple weapons against a foe, that opponent's next attack is hindered. As a result, the difficulty of your defense roll against that attack is reduced by one step, and the difficulty of your next attack is reduced by one step. Enabler.
Improved Versatile Pistol:  When you modify an attack with a ranged weapon to act like a melee bashing weapon, you can choose whether you wish for the weapon to retain its original category (i.e., light, medium, heavy) or be one lighter. Enabler.

Tier 6
Dervish's Massacre: When you wield multiple weapons, you can attack up to six times in one round as a single action, but you must make each attack against a different foe. Make a separate attack roll for each attack. You remain limited by the amount of Grit you can apply on one action, but because you make separate attacks, AC applies to each of them. Anything that modifies your attack or damage applies to all attacks (positively or negatively), unless it's specifically tied to one of the weapons, in which case it applies to only half of the attacks. Enabler.