Character options and mechanics.
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You are a follower of, or are in service to a powerful entity. Often, these are immortal rulers (kings, lords, and judges) of a land or territory, but can also be spirits or powerful monsters.
You gain the feature or feature type as specified for each shtick level in the leveling list.
| Level | Gained Feature(s) | Prayers | Abets |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zeal, Prayer Action, Patron | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 | ||
| 3 | 3 | 2 | |
| 4 | 4 | ||
| 5 | 5 | 3 | |
| 6 | 6 | ||
| 7 | 7 | 4 |
You gain a new stat representing your patron’s favor, and your passion for them. This stat is called “Zeal”.
If your character has been in service to their patron before the start of the game, then your favor starts equal to 10 times your shtick level. If you are newly in service to your patron, then your favor will start at zero.
You gain more zeal as you complete abets for your patron.
You gain access to the following special action, which can be used to attempt to summon the power of your patron.
Choose a patron from the options below, or work with your GM to create a new one.
Your patron will have tenets that your character is expected to follow. Failing to follow a tenet will subtract 5 from your zeal score.
Your patron will also come with an extra ability that you gain access to.
You follow Takhauat, spirit of the learned and skilled. Takhauat was once one of the immortals, but was cursed to become a spirit and wander the lands. Her people, the rook, still follow her to this day and are some of the most skilled crafters and scholars around.
You gain +1 zeal resource to all prayers whenever you are in a place with the rook’s pendant.
Your patron has the following tenets:
At the start of every scene, any teammates standing nearby to you gain +2 focus.
You serve Yud, immortal judge of Arcadia. Yud is strict and demanding, but just and fair in his execution of the laws of Arcadia. Yud rules with Ash, who plans and governs much of the artisanry and engineering of Arcadia.
You gain +1 zeal resource while in the land of Arcadia.
Your patron has the following tenets:
You have been accompanied by a taresh, the stone guardians of arcadia. Your taresh has the following mechanics:
You follow Nidintu, lord of the underbelly of Sanala. Nidintu is a sly and clever immortal, with feline features and cunning leadership. They find all trickery and challenges worthwhile, and seek to bolster those who will give them stories for ages to come.
You gain +1 zeal resource while doing anything shady.
Your patron has the following tenets:
You and any of your teammates who are standing nearby can reroll 1s when taking the helping action.
You are a notary, a messanger of the lady of the well, the wishmaker, Qaderi. She is best unknown, a huant in the night, known only to the most desperate or most dedicated. Her act is simple: Her notaries go out and find those in need of some change. Those seeking help offer, or are offered, some kind of exchange for what they seek. Qaderi will accept or deny, and the fates will shift to what they need, as long as those contracted follow their end of the bargain.
You gain +1 resource on actions that help you strike a contract.
Your patron has the following tenets:
You are equipped with the ability to make supernaturally binding contracts between two parties. These are formed onto clay tablets, which are then magically preserved while still wet and maluble. Both parties know if the other has not held up their end of the bargain, and both parties know if a course of action will result in the contract being broken.
You can make contracts between NPCs and Qaderi, but it is up to the GM’s disgression what Qaderi’s demands are and whether she accepts.
You follow Attrus, lady of the territories of Xora, and the Xoran army. She is a tall and strong immortal, with feathered wings upon her back and plates of bronze armor over her tunic. Followers of Attrus are often knights, mercenaries, guards, and hunstman.
Your patron has the following tenets:
You and any teammates standing nearby gain +1 resource on all attacks.
You will gain abets as you level, tasks or deeds from your patron that garner you favor with them.
Abets come in two varieties: Quests and Creeds. Quests are specific tasks that your patron will assign to you, given to you by your GM and replaced with a similar task once completed. Creeds are ongoing commands that you may complete as the opportunity arises.
If you bring someone under your wing, teaching them the tenets of your deity and guiding them, you gain 1 Zeal. You must follow up with them regularly to guide them on the path, and lose your zeal from them if they fall away.
If you maintain a daily ritual or prayer for at least 1 week, you will gain +5 zeal. If you fail to do this even just once, you will lose this zeal.
Your deity will give you the location of a group of heretics, divergents, or otherwise unwanted grouping of people. These are often cults to old rulers or spirits, but can be anything that goes against your patron’s teachings. You will be required to purge this within your patron’s guidelines.
Your patron is in direct competition with another faction, and you have been instructed to challenge them whenever the opportunity arises. This can take the form of a duel, sabotage, public display, etc. It must be significant and justly deserved. You will gain +5 zeal per successful challenge.
Your patron will task you with rebuilding or rehabilitating a site of sacred importance. You will gain +10 zeal for every site you successfully reestablish.
Your patron favors charity, and rewards those who help the needy. For every 10 people you feed charitably, you gain +1 zeal.
Your patron despises the corrupted, such as coagulations of the mist, entities from chaos, and mutated creatures. For every corrupted entity you slay or cleanse, you gain +1 zeal.
Your patron has targets that they wish to have removed. These are often political executions, but can also be powerful warlords or religious leaders.
Your patron will instruct you to kill or retrieve specific dangerous monsters. You will gain +5 zeal per monster you successfully hunt.
Across the land are rifts, tears in reality to the world of chaos and corruption. While very few are equipped to close these, containing and quarantining them is half the battle, and you are rewarded +10 zeal for doing so.
Your patron sends you as an avatar, a messenger with news, offers, or to negotiate with another faction. You gain +10 zeal for every delivered message.
Your patron finds you an apt negotiator, and tasks you with seeking agreements with others that will benefit them. You gain +10 zeal for every deal you make in your patron’s favor.
You will gain prayers as you level, representing different calls that you can make to your patron’s aid. These are magical in nature, and the more aid your need, the harder it is to summon that power.
Choose a creature within line of sight, and roll a prayer action. They heal 10 vitality per hit. This does not affect their max vitality.
Choose a creature within line of sight, and roll a prayer action. On a success, they temporarily gain +20 maximum vitality for the day.
Choose a creature within line of sight, and roll a prayer action. On a success, they can take an additional action on their turn for the rest of the scene. This does not stack.
Touch a creature, and roll a prayer action. On a succes, 1 wound of theirs becomes less severe. This also stabalizes all of their wounds.
Choose a creature within line of sight, and roll a prayer action. On a succes, they cannot gain wounds until the end of the scene, though other harm may come to them.
Spend a scene anointing a creature and burning insense. Then, roll a prayer action. On a succes, the creature is fully restored, with all wounds gone, negative effects purged, and vitality restored to it’s max.
You may attempt to bring a body back from the dead.
First, restore the body using the restoration prayer. Then, you must attempt to call back the breath into the body before it begins to decay again. Spend a scene in remembrance of the soul, ruminating on it’s life and connections. Then, roll a prayer action. Using tokens and memories of the deceased can count as resources for this.
If you are successful, the dead will rise, albeit with 10 stress.
Whenever you attack, you may add +1 to the difficulty to deal out an additional light wound on that attack. You may also stack this, dealing another damage per difficulty added.
You may attempt to frighten your enemies. Roll a prayer action with no set difficulty. Any NPCs with a social score below the number of hits you rolled gain the stunned effect.
Roll a prayer action. On a success, you regain 5 vitality.
You may choose to make the prayer more powerful, at the cost of additional difficulty. For each additional point of difficulty on your prayer action, you heal 5 more vitality.
You spend a scene imbuing a weapon with holy energy, using up 25 pieces of oils and incense. Then, roll a prayer action. On a succes, this weapon has +1 resource for the remainder of your quest.
For clarity, you can put profficiency points into this prayer.
The dark mists exist as a force in the world, neither quite natural nor supernatural. Being the remnants of something much too old to remember itself, it has a will and an intelligence, but being spread across the land renders it broken and muted.
The mist causes much danger and destruction when left on it’s own. Bodies rise from the dead, shadow creatures form, dark notions and ideas whisper into the ears of gods and kings.
Yet some have managed to tame the mist. Listening to it, learning the forms it can take and how they can be used to influence it’s actions. These are the mistwalkers, those who entangle themselves with the mist to wield it’s power and drive it as a force in the world. They walk the line between life and death, a struggle to maintain control over themselves and the mist alike.
You are one such mistwalker, and your journey has just begun.
You gain the feature or feature type as specified for each shtick level in the leveling list.
| Level | Gained Feature(s) | Form Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magics of the Mist | 2 |
| 2 | 4 | |
| 3 | 6 | |
| 4 | 8 | |
| 5 | 10 | |
| 6 | 12 | |
| 7 | 14 |
You have learned to command the mist, as explained in the sections that follow.
You gain a special item, known as a shard, which billows mist and radiates it’s energy. Most believe that these are pieces of the mistmaker, whatever being originated the mist. Your shard is held in a censer, outfitted with shutters to contain the mist when needed. You use this as a continuous source of the mist and it’s influence.
As you level, you learn how to communicate your intentions to the mist through forms, representing conceptual ideas that the mist understands. When you gain a form point, you may choose to either level an existing form, or to learn a new one.
To command the mist, complete the following special action.
First, chose one of the mist forms that you have access to. Then, your character will take a deep breath and speak to the mist through their censer (or other source of the mist), lending some of their breath to the mist and entangling themselves with it. As your breath and words reach the shard, it will billow out mist into the form you communicate to it.
When you create a form, you lend an amount of vitality to it, as stated in the form’s description. You may regain this vitality if you spend an action (no roll) to dispell the form and draw back the mist. You must be within line of sight to do so.
If the form takes damage, you will gain stress equal to the wound that would have been dealt.
If you become incapacitated while you have any forms active, those forms will lose their influence from you and become hostile to everything in the vicinity.
The mist transforms into a hand with twisting strings leading out from its fingertips.
Roll an attack against a humanoid creature. If the creature is dead, you automatically succeed. On a success, it becomes your puppet. You may only have one puppet attached to this form at a time.
If your puppet is aware, it can use it’s action to fight against your control on it’s turn. When it does this, make a defense roll to maintain control.
Damage to your puppet is separate from damage to the puppeteer form.
You can release your puppet at any time, no action required.
You may spend your action to possess the form of your puppet. While possessing it, you perceive through it’s senses and not your own. You may act as it and use any of it’s equipment.
You can leave this possessed state at any time, no action required.
Your puppet is empowered by it’s connection with the mist, and all actions while possessing it gain +1 resource.
Once attached to a puppet, your puppeteer becomes invisible.
The cost of this form is halved.
Once a creature becomes attached to your puppeteer, it’s mind is quelled and it cannot fight against it.
The mist binds itself to your mind, giving you a third eye and supernatural abilities.
For no action, you may gain a light stress to give yourself an additional resource on all checks for the current scene, as you sift through visions of potential outcomes.
The more stress you take with this ability, the more blackened and engorged the veins around your neck and head become.
For no action, you may communicate mentally to anyone within line of sight. They will hear your speech as whispers in their ear.
Whenever you speak to someone using this ability, they can reply to you mentally, no action needed.
You may spend your action to pickup and move objects, with the difficulty based on the object’s size, as described below:
Once you have picked up an object, you may attack with it on the same turn.
The cost of this form is halved.
Everyone on your team that is within line of sight gains +1 resource on all actions.
The mist takes on the form of a giant heart with tendril like veins and arteries coming off of it.
You can spend an action to have the form plumb into the lungs of up to two creatures. If either creature is unwilling, you must make an attack to plumb into it.
A plumbed in creature can use its action to attempt to rip the mist off of itself. You must make a defense roll to maintain connection to the creature.
While plumbed into another creature, you can use an action to pump vitality from one to another. You can pump up to 20 vitality per action.
When transferring vitality from one creature to another, you can overheal them beyond their maximum vitality. When you do this, they gain light stress for every 10 vitality over their maximum that they heal, but they ignore any negative effects from all stress until after their overheal is worn off.
While a creature is overhealed, their veins are darkened and bulging, and they can feel a headache from the increased blood pressure.
If you cast this form for a cost of 50, you can pump up to 40 vitality per action with your transference action.
The cost of this form is halved.
You can have up to 4 creatures plumbed into this form at once.
The mist forms into a blurred construction, an illusion of your design and memory.
You may transfer a memory, imagining, or other thought from your being to the mist, and it will do it’s best to reconstruct it, albeit silent and in black and white due to the monochrome nature of the mist. When you do this, you lend 10 additional vitality to the mist, and cannot recall the memory within your own mind. You gain the vitality back when you revoke the thought back into your own mind as an action, or when you dispell the form.
As an action, you can make an attack against another creature. If you succeed, you can remove one thought or memory and place it within the mirage. This will default to the most prominent surface level thought, but can be selectively chosen if you are aware of another thought or the creature is aware and willing.
You gain enough control over the mirage to give it color.
The cost of this form is halved.
The mirage gains sound, and can react to external stimulus according to the mist’s interpretation of your initial thoughts.
The mist transforms into a weapon of your choosing, which you or another character can wield. This weapon can be melee or ranged.
While wielding this form, your maximum focus is increased by 2.
For every wound you inflict with this form, you gain 1 focus.
You may also choose to draw your own blood as an action, draining 10 vitality and netting you 2 focus.
The more damage you deal with this form, the more blood begins to drip and ooze from it’s edge.
Before you roll, you may spend a focus (no action) to increase the damage of this form for your current attack. This causes the wound level to increase in severity on a succesful attack.
Whenever you use your action to attack, you may make a second attack on the same turn.
The cost of this form is halved.
You may shift the weapon of the form once per turn, no action required.
The mist takes the form of a shadowy, humanoid creature that acts on your behalf.
The mist form acts as it’s own creature, which you roll for. It takes it’s actions immediately after you do, and acts on behalf of whatever state of mind you were in when you imbued the mist with your energy to create it. It has access to all the normal action types, and any experiences that you do.
You can imbue your shadow with +1 resource on all rolls for an additional 10 stamina each.
Your shadow can make an attack against another creature. If it succeeds, it crawls into the other creature and possesses them. While possessing, it gains access to all of their equipment and physical abilities.
The cost of this form is halved.
Your shadow can use any abilities that you are able to. These work the same as if you had used them, but from your shadow’s location, on your shadow’s turn, and with any resources you have access to.