A class for FIRMAMENT.
It is a harsh world, Above and Below. The fear of the strange and the unknown is common, and, alas, that same fear makes the world even harsher.
There have been Outcasts in every age. Some traditions or orders have faded to this state, but for most, they are alone. There are no glorious names of Outcasts past.
Sometimes, all one can do is survive.
THE OUTCAST
+1 SNEK and +1 Inventory Slot per Template.
Starting Items: per your History, along with 3 Rations (1 Slot) and a knife (light).
Skill: 1) Card Games 2) Brawling 3) Herbalism 4) Folktales 5) Pagan Rites 6) Animal Taming
A - History, Hard Lessons, Dirty Fighting
B - Insight
C - Further Lessons
D - Sixth Sense
History
Circumstance, of birth, of thought, of the world, makes one an outcast.
Histories give starting items, a benefit, and a drawback.
Choose your History from the list at the end of the post, or roll 1d30.
You only get a History if Outcast A is your first template. If multiclassing into Outcast, the other A template you’ve got is your History.
Hard Lessons
It’s been a hell of a time, but it’s taught you a few things.
Choose three of the following Lessons:
Fasting - You can go five days without food before you even begin to feel negative effects. You will suffer no long-term ill-effects from even the poorest diet - months on naught but water and broth of bean will see you hale and hearty.
Self-Sufficient - You have two more Skills of your choice. These don’t have to be from the Starting Skills list, you can pick any that you like.
Nose For It - In any wilderness, you can automatically find 1 Ration per day, no matter how implausible it might be. You simply have a nose for it. This doesn’t function in dungeons or otherworldly locations.
Wood Walker - You can become nigh-invisible when in foliage, and can choose whether you leave footsteps.
Trusty Weapon - You can choose to mark a light weapon as your trusty weapon. When searched, your trusty weapon can’t be found, and you can’t be disarmed of it unless you want to be.
Tracker - You can track a physical creature without error, so long as you’re not trying to track them across truly impossible terrain, like a flat sheet of stone or an otherworldly location.
Sharp - You gain a +1 to Hit for each Outcast template you have.
Courtly Manners - Spirits are, inexplicably, well-disposed to you. Any and all Reaction Rolls involving Spirits have a +1 Bonus for each Outcast template you have, if you are present. Spirits, in general, will treat you with respect, so long as you return the sentiment.
Iron Gut - You can treat anything organic as a ration - Straw! Rats! Boot leather! - and gain +1 HRTS for each Outcast template you have.
Tunnel Crawler - You can crawl at full movement speed, fight normally in enclosed spaces, and can contort yourself such that you never get trapped in tight spots.
Reprimand - If an enemy attacks you in melee and rolls a 1, you may attack them immediately with a melee weapon.
Catlike - You have a habit of landing on your feet - and a habit of not breaking your ankles. You can ignore the first d6 of any fall damage, allowing you to safely fall up to 20 feet if you ready yourself for it.
Good Footing - You have a habit of staying on your feet. You’ve got an incredible sense of balance, able to run along anything that’ll take your weight, and you can’t be knocked over by anything smaller than a horse.
Sprezzatura - Everything you do seems effortless, relaxed, intentional and calm to onlookers, even if you’re panicking, recently shot, on fire, cursed, all of the above, whatever. This does wonders for your reputation.
Roadside Manners - You can choose to appear as perfectly harmless, or obviously dangerous, to casual observers.
Lockpicks - You always seem to have a set of lockpicks handy, taking up no slots, and you know well how to use them. If you succeed on a roll to pick locks, it happens instantly. If you fail, it only takes a round.
Black Market - In any decently sized town, with an hour of searching, listening, scrounging and sensing, you can find someone selling either Illegal or Weird things, depending on the character of the settlement.
Now or Never - When at or below 0 HP, you deal +1d10 damage with all attacks.
Looker - You have something about you - be it fairy-tale beauty, memorable distinctiveness, or just raw charisma. You have +1 to all Reaction Rolls, and interested parties will have a tendency to treat you better.
Spiteful - If a creature has damaged you, you have +[templates] to damage rolls made against them.
Assess - By examining the aftermath of a scene for a minute - combat, ritual, etc. - you can reconstruct a pretty good idea of what happened - although, if there was a participant that somehow left no physical evidence, they can’t be detected.
Mediator - If a fight with intelligent enemies would break out and you don’t want it to, you talk and make a SAVE or SKLL check to prevent it from doing so.
Hypnotic Eyes - Most people will not willingly break eye-contact with you. You have a +1 bonus to Reaction Rolls.
Front Line Leader - You have +[templates + 1]HP, and Injury rolls are 1 less severe. Monsters and animals will attack you before your companions.
Cool Headed - Roll Initiative twice and take the better result.
Wind Whistle - You can change the direction of the wind in the locality, by whistling. You choose the new direction. You can do this without needing to take an action. It blows as strong as it was blowing before.
The Gist - You get it. You can understand the basic intent of a given sentence - compliment, advice, threat, question - even if you don’t speak the language the sentence is in. This also works very well for detecting veiled threats, too.
Tenacious - If you’d be reduced to 0HP by an attack, and not outright killed, you are reduced to 1HP instead. This recharges with a solid meal and a good night’s rest.
Attuned to Oth - You can never have MD, but gain an extra save against all spells and magical effects.
Well-Thewed - You are intimidatingly muscular (regardless of your actual Strength score) and gain +1 MOVE per Outcast template.
Card Shark - You choose the outcome of any card game you play, and how much you win or lose by, unless someone else playing is also a Card Shark.
Stout - While at Max HP, you have 4DR.
Festival Manners - You instantly befriend drunks, actors, mountebanks, jugglers, revellers, hedonists, clowns and thieves.
Lungful - You can hold your breath for up to ten minutes before you begin to experience difficulties.
Desperate Fighting - You can take 1d6 damage to make an extra attack in a round.
Spring-Heeled - With a few seconds to wind up, you can jump your own height without a run-up, and can long-jump thrice your own height with a run up. You gain +1 INIT per Outcast template.
Crazed Bravery - You are immune to fear, charm and mind-control while in combat or a similarly dangerous situation. When a fight begins, previously active fear, charm and mind-control effects will fail.
Wilderness Manners - You can choose for your presence to scare away, subdue or soothe ordinary animals.
Lucid Dreamer - You can interact with your own dreams while asleep. Oneiroi, and other natives of dream, are entirely physical to you.
Appraisal - At a glance, you can tell the value, rough historical period, and rough geographical provenance of an item.
Coxcomb - Fancy or expensive clothing is light armour for you, thanks to your proud and noble bearing.
Brutal - Your critical hits roll three dice instead of two.
Mad Bastard - Add +[templates] to hit and damage if fighting unarmoured.
Keen Wit - If you insult someone, make a quip, or do some kind of witty comeback, it always lands, and has the effect you intended it to. Furthermore, you gain +1 SKLL per Outcast Template.
Odd Soul - Start with 5 Ascension from an Astrologer’s Ascension track, and gain +1 SAVE per Outcast template.
Sharpshooter - Damage dice of guns wielded by you explode both on maximum and one below maximum - i.e., d6s explode on a 5-6, d8s explode on a 7-8, and so on.
Already Ash - You reduce damage from heat and fire by [templates + 3].
Judge of Character - With a minute of study, you can get a three-word summation of a person’s character.
Opportunist - When attacking an enemy from an advantageous position - they don’t know you’re there, they’re knocked over, they think you’re not going to attack them, etc. - you deal an extra +1d6 Damage.
Beloved by Providence - Re-roll all results of 1 on a d20.
Dirty Fighting
When you deal damage with a weapon of any kind, even improvised ones, you can’t deal less than 1d8 Damage.
Your unarmed attacks deal 1d4 damage instead of 1.
Whenever you hit someone with an attack, you can inflict an additional effect against them for free as long as you can narrate how that'd work - in effect, your attacks are also manoeuvres. Ex. Whereas another class shoots a bow and deals damage, you shoot a bow, deal damage and pin the target’s coat to a wall.
Insights
You’ve got a new stat, called Insight. It starts at 0.
You can increase it by 1 whenever you:
Witness something strange or eerie.
See nature behaving oddly.
Encounter a kind of creature you’ve never encountered before.
Uncover a secret.
You can’t get multiple instances of Insight from the same thing.
You may choose to search for an Insight about something - pondering it for 10 minutes, then rolling 1d6. If you roll equal to or under your Insight stat, you gain some useful observation, fact or information about the thing you are pondering, then reduce your Insight by one.
Further Lessons
You’ve learned a little more.
Choose two more Lessons from the list above, specifically the ones that are most appropriate for what you’ve gone through on the way to Template C.
Alternatively, choose one and make a custom one with the DM, based on your adventures thus far.
Sixth Sense
Through all the harsh lessons, the difficulties, and the terrible weather, you’ve come to a strange understanding of the world:
You can smell magic and always act first in initiative.
If you feed an animal, and focus on it for a minute, you can speak with it. You can expend a point of Insight to ask a favour of the animal.
You can sense major environmental changes - like volcanic eruptions, major storms, tidal waves, locust swarms, etc. ~3 days in advance.
Additionally, you now roll 1d4 for Insights.
HISTORIES (1d30)
Silk Knight
A gang based in the Dradian city of Vel Iris. They have, for a while, pretended to be a sixth order of Hedge-Knights, in order to con people out of food and money in the country surrounding the city. They spin fanciful tales of Vulpes the Mad, the Sixth Knight, who supposedly founded the seven walls of the city.
Items: Cheap Heater Shield (daubed with any old symbol), Linen Cloak (Dyed crimson or periwinkle, poorly), Neat Clothing & Breastplate (as medium armour), medium schiavona, light pistol (with 10 shot and powder), one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefit: People who don’t know any better will assume you’re a Hedge-Knight, and treat you with Knightly respect. They might even offer hospitality.
Drawback: The Solar Army will gladly hunt a fake Knight - to say nothing of the reaction of the real Hedge-Knights.
Minstrel
Travelling troubadours receive little respect, in the World Above. Some scrap of a dead tradition, perhaps. There’s just enough of them to pass down the old songs, and too few to muster crowds to listen.
Items: Musical Instrument of your choice, Fine Clothing, Bottle of Wine (1 Slot), two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: Moon Spirits have a fondness for you, for reasons unknown, and you’re passingly competent with any instrument. You know how to play the Old Songs, music with a strange quality, soothing savage beasts and catching the ear even through a din.
You also have another Skill: History in Song.
Drawback: Some entities find Minstrels worthy of contempt, hatred, or even violence. Why? Surely your meagre profession cannot inspire such baseless hatred?
Visionary
Consider long enough the All-Beholding Sun, and you too will begin to behold that beyond your ken. Hardly a tradition, and hard to forbid, but they recur in places that once worshipped the Sun, like outer Saral Sar, and Draad.
Items: Plain Robes (Ragged, if you like), Icon of the Sun (Wooden), Blindfold, 30ft of Rope, Frankincense (3 Doses, 1 Slot), two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: You have 1MD, although you don’t have the acquaintance of any spells. You can seek Auspices like an Astrologer by staring into the Sun, although your answers often come in the form of eerie and surreal hallucinations.
Drawback: Your eyesight is awful. Sun damage.
Woodhound
An Arumite unit of skilled guerilla fighters under the direct command of the Nova Senate, who range deep into Irgavio and Saral Sar to strike at key targets. Beginning as a rag-tag resistance group, they have developed into a feared and often brutal force. Still, even Woodhounds get captured (or desert).
Items: Dark Cloak, Padded Armour (1 Slot, +1 AC), Arquebus (heavy), long knife (light), three snares, a smoke bomb, one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefit: When you are missing HP, you roll damage twice and take the higher result.
Drawback: Most people can tell you’re a killer. This may alter their opinion of you.
Coldsmith
They say the tradition was originated by a woman called Eurwen, somewhen in the early days of the Sun King’s reign. He banned it, of course. It is very unwholesome, say the Chantry - to remove fire’s place, in a rite that is fire’s own.
Items: Hammer (light), Hammer (medium), Sturdy Clothing, Black Raincloak, Mule (Has 12 Slots), Two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: You can, with an hour’s work, forge a piece of iron no bigger than 5 slots, as if it were hot, while it’s still stone cold. You also have another Skill: Smithing.
Drawback: Fire hates you. When you take damage from fire, you take 2 more.
Veteran
The Solar Army loves to talk about glory, you know? There’s always witches to hunt, little rebellions to suppress, bandits to manage, Kelkoran vales to get lost in, but… after all that, when you’ve a bad leg and grizzled grey hair… what was it for?
Items: A Weapon of Your Choice, A Gun of Your Choice, Sturdy Clothing, Breastplate (as medium armour), Saffron Coat (Carries a Royalist reputation), Two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: You have a flat extra +2 to Hit, and +2HP at Level 1. You also have another skill: Soldiery.
Drawback: You have an old injury from your days in the army - a lost eye, a mangled hand, a bad leg - which still bedevils you.
Swordseeker
It’s not an art. More of a collection of knacks. And it’s not a quest. Just avarice with edges. Swordseekers aren’t banned, because there aren’t enough of them to be worth banning. And yet, all can understand the draw of a sword of legend. With that, you might cleave the world into shape.
Items: Heavy Cloak (No Slots), Empty Scabbard (light), Humble Clothing 50ft of Rope (1 Slot), Whetstone, Lantern (1 Slot), 3 Pints of Oil (1 Slot), one Outcast’s Thing.
No Swords :(.
Benefits: You know a strange method of sheathing swords, allowing you to store [templates * 3] swords inside the space of the largest sword you own, taking up no extra slots. You always draw the correct sword. You can instantly identify the properties of magic swords, and can, with focus and perfect silence, hear the faint voices of the spirits trapped inside them.
Drawback: When using a weapon that isn’t a sword, you have a penalty to Hit equal to [templates].
Apothecary
Not everyone trusts the Needle Charter. There’s many a story, of people going to the Chirurgeons for healing, and never coming back. As such, there’s always a place for unsanctioned healers to practise their trade - even if it’s difficult to compare with the miracles of the Signatories.
Items: Plain Clothing, Painkiller (1 Dose, short chalky stick you chew) (⅓ Slot), Needle and Catgut, Salve, Medicinal Ingredients (6 Doses, 1 Slot), one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefits: You know how to make the following medicines - Painkiller, Sleeping Draught, Emetics, Contraceptives, Stimulants and Mild Hallucinogens - you can produce one dose with access to medicinal ingredients (which are consumed) and a day’s work. With supplies and 30 minutes, you can restore 1d4HP.
You also have the following skills: Diagnosis, Surgery and Medicine-making.
Drawback: Your profession is illegal, so you can’t exactly openly charge for your skills.
Grey Nomad (Seryy)
There are two nomadic peoples in Zzargod, the Grey Nomads, and the Dusk Nomads.
The Grey Nomads are isolationists. They reside in the region of steppe beyond the stony wastes, many in sight of the False Tower. Their traditions are stoicism, secret languages, sacred hospitality and divining their fates from the Stars.
Items: Furred Hat, Thick Grey Clothing (as light armour), Wooden Mask of a Stoic Face, Horse (carries 10 Slots), Square-Tipped Sword (medium), Two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: You speak a fading language, called Auveki. Furthermore, ancient magical rituals practised by the Grey Clans have destroyed your sense of fear - you are completely unable to be frightened. Your calm gives you [+templates] SKLL.
Drawback: Your lack of fear dulls your awareness in crucial situations - you suffer a [-templates] penalty to INIT.
Dusk Nomad (Sumerki)
There are two nomadic peoples in Zzargod, the Dusk Nomads, and the Grey Nomads.
The Dusk Nomads are traders, who move across the heaths between the great cities of Zzargod. Their traditions are offering friendship to all, Sun worship, midnight duels, and weeping in moments of great significance.
Items: Feathered Hat, Thick Patterned Clothing (as light armour), Horse (carries 10 Slots), 30 Gold Talents, Curved Dagger (light), Two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: Horses trust you automatically, and you can perform feats of equitation which would make veteran cavalry stand upright in their stirrups. While you are astride a horse, they will attempt long jumps and nigh-acrobatic feats they never would otherwise, are twice as fast as normal, and are immune to broken bones.
Drawback: All snakes and snakelike beings show no fear of you, and treat you like a cowering and edible mouse, as some kind of counter-balancing factor to your kinship with horses.
Scar-Neck
A series of linked clans who live across the wilderlands of Defiance and Saral Sar. They scar their necks, and swear to live in eternal opposition to the Sun King’s law - indeed, to all laws but their own. They’re usually Exiled without even the pretence of a trial.
Items: Tough Clothing (as light armour), a medium weapon of your choice, two light knives, sacred amulets, sandalwood incense, a big box of tobacco, one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefits: You can speak a secret language called Scarn, and can identify most plants and animals by sight. Other Scar-Necks will treat you like a close relative.
Drawback: Your uniquely scarred neck marks you to all non-Scar-Neck onlookers as a troublesome criminal. This reputation may be difficult to overcome.
Viper
An outlaw clan in Saral Sar who tame snakes, and claim descent from the people of an older kingdom within what is now Saral Sar. They live in and around the Cold Desert and the ruins of Kapalkula, an ancient oasis city of towering ruins.
Items: Coat Covered in Embroidered Snakes, Uninsulated Spyglass (2 Slot), Dagger (light), Venomous Viper (loyal), 1 Dose of Deadly Poison (2d6) (⅓), 1 Dose of Knockout Poison (1d8, Nonlethal) (⅓), one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefit: Your clan practises the ancient tradition of Kapalkula, taking small doses of poison to protect themselves against greater doses.
Successfully saving against a poison or other chemical designed to harm or kill you turns the effect into a thematically positive one. You also get an extra save against all poisons and harmful chemicals, even if you otherwise wouldn’t.
You also have another Skill: Poisons.
Drawback: Your exposure to various poisons that has given you a constant hacking cough, a pale drawn look, and darkened sclerae. You are quite obviously a Viper to anyone that knows what that is.
Serial Duellist
Wounded honour brings a deep pain, as does the bite of a blade. You’ve tested both, of course, and settled on preferring the latter.
Items: Well-maintained Clothing, two Pistols (light), 15 pieces of shot and a Powderhorn (15 doses), Rapier (medium), Solid Boots, Wound Treatment Kit, Painkiller (1 Dose, short chalky stick you chew), Scars.
Benefits: Your reflexes are razored. +2 INIT and +2 to Hit. You deal +2 damage to targets who you beat in initiative.
Drawback: You have, shall we say, a developed and sensitive sense of your own honour, and when it is wounded. You also have a tried and true reaction to such woundings.
Will-o-Wisp
In the swamps of interior Magnos, by the broken coast of the Sea of Vir, thief-villages use lanterns and trickery to draw unwary travellers astray in the dark. These folk have always been accused of dark scripture and mysterious witchery by the Heptarchs, and have been persecuted mercilessly.
Items: Domed Leather Hat, Heavy Rain Cloak, Hooded Lantern and 3 Doses of Oil (1 Slot), medium longknife, Marsh Shoes (akin to Snowshoes), Net.
Benefit: You additionally speak Dramythan, an otherwise archaic language, and have 1MD. You know the inscription Illusion. You scribe it on any lit surface with your finger. Your people say they once knew more of these arts, but they are lost to you.
Drawback: You are apparently cursed, suffering migraines and partial blindness in direct sunlight. Your people blame the Sun King for this curse - which is a reasonable assumption.
Blessed
On the slopes of Irgavio Sol, in the gleaming, golden shadow of the glittering city-palace, there stands a chain of eleven small villages, down the face that faces Zzargod. These people, for reasons unknown, hold the fickle favour of the Sun King, and upon them he lavishes gifts and securities - so long as they swear to never leave the holy heights.
Of course, you did.
Items: Light Clothing (White Silk), Gold Amulets (worth 100 Talents, but very distinctive), Artglass Knife (light, said to be able to wound a spirit once, then break), one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefits: You suffer no ill effects from cold or cold weather - go roll in the snow shirtless. Your back is covered in intricate tattoos marking out your homeland. Servants of the Sun King will never harm you if they know who you are. You speak a very old language called Irgau, which is spoken by nearly nobody else.
Drawback: While servants of the Sun King will never harm you, they are also bound to apprehend you and return you to the holy heights, where you’re ‘meant’ to be.
Cat Burglar
In major cities, master thieves pass down old tricks of the hand and the foot, which allow them access to any place, and afford them the silence they need to carry out their work undisturbed. The lure of wealth brings a steady supply of short-lived ‘apprentices’ to these old masters. You were one of the sharp ones.
Items: Dark Clothing, Gauze Face-Mask, 50ft of Silk Rope, Hand Drill (⅓), Lockpicks (⅓), two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: Anything it is possible for a human to climb, you can do so without a roll and without a harness. You make no sounds you don’t mean to make, and don’t trigger pressure plates or similar traps.
You additionally have a Locksmith skill.
Drawback: You can’t use your climbing or silent-stepping skills unless both of your hands and both of your feet are undamaged and unobstructed (including any footwear thicker than a sock).
Conjurer
All across the World Above, people seek out the Art Without Error, Astrology. Ironically - they often commit error. Many have, in this era when the proper methods are suppressed by the King, stumbled on half-correct processes, which change the terms and rules of their contacts with the Courts. Still, in this age, perhaps broken Astrology is better than none?
Items: Unsuspicious Clothing, Playing Cards, Club (light), Insulated Telescope, 3 Cups and a Ball, 3 Candles, 3 doses of the relevant Incense, one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefits: You have 1MD, which acts as normal. You have the acquaintance of a single spirit from one of the Astrologer lists (roll 1d10 on a list of your choice, or randomly determine which list by rolling 1d4).
Drawback: Normal Astrologers are friends with their Spirits. You have a much less cordial relation, perhaps best equated to debtor and lender. Your spirit acts like you owe them money.
Tauromachist
A now-banned tradition popular among the Hanchen people, thought to represent vitality, freedom and power. The tauromachs were an honoured class of warrior-athletes, however, their popularity and bloodsoaked practice was deemed threatening and immoral by the Grand Duke Albertano III, and banned in 1234.
Items: 3 Darts (1 slot), Padded Jacket (light armour), Cinquedea (light), Rapier (medium), Red Silk Cloak, one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefits: If your STR score is less than 15, it is now 15. You convert fear into rage. +2 to Hit.
Drawback: Going berserk when you ought to be afraid.
Red Feather
In the highlands of outer Arumell, villagers practise a kind of archery which relies on letting ‘strings’ of air flow between the fingers and the arrow itself. The missile can be guided by twitches of the hand, and sent careening on impossible paths. They are called Red Feathers, for the cardinal feathers with which they fletch their arrows.
Items: Sturdy Clothing (as light armour) Longbow (heavy), 30 Arrows (Red Fletching), Obsidian Knife (light) and two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: You have an extra [+templates] to hit when using bows, and can attempt ballistically improbable shots by curving your arrows. You know exactly where any arrow you fire is, until up to an hour afterwards.
Drawback: If you roll a 1 when firing a bow, you immediately break a finger. Breaking two fingers leaves you unable to fire a bow. Healing your broken fingers requires Downtime, like any injury.
Insubordinate Captain
Promotion in the Solar Army is a cutthroat business, especially in this era of civil war. Seeking and securing promotion and status requires a delicate balance. Sometimes, one can be too insubordinate, or perhaps, one's superiors can act with swift and surprising influence to maintain their position. So it is.
Items: Buff Coat and Lobstertail Pot Helmet (medium armour), schiavona (medium), high jack-boots (1 Slot, +1 AC), pistol (light), 15 pieces of shot and a Powderhorn (15 doses).
Benefit: You’re accompanied by a loyal 1HD orderly, a veteran soldier who went to Exile (or ignominy) with you. They have +1 to Hit, and two of the following skills:
1) Tracking 2) Gambling 3) Herbalism 4) Smithing 5) Intimidation 6) Creative Blasphemy
Drawback: You were a member of the Sun King’s army. This is liable to colour your reputation.
Masked Actor
Outside of gilded Chantry morality plays, the masked play is the primary theatrical tradition of the World Above - short, bawdy improvised plays, full of famous stock characters and carried out sets that can be struck and run off with in a minute flat. Troupes are not outright banned, but often experience great scrutiny from Royal officials (despite their great popularity with the Royal army).
Masked Actors usually take the Keen Wit Lesson as one of their choices at level 1.
Items: Three Theatre Masks of your Choice (1 slot), Costumes for those masks (3 slots), a knife (light), and three Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: You are a trained improviser, tragedian, orator, comedian and actor. You have a knack for throwing your voice, and making your voice sound like somebody else’s. You gain +1 Save per Template.
Drawback: Most people think of masked actors as cowardly, drunken, unserious and opportunistically criminal - even most Defiants.
Tabac
In Draad, in the time of the hero Huachia, it was known that smoke was the writing of fire, and that you could read messages from the Lightning and the Sun in the drifting shapes. Incense and woodsmoke are all well and good, but the warrior-sage Erzhie demonstrated you could feel the world’s messages by breathing them in, so the best medium is tobacco. At least, so say the old traditions of bumpkin cunning-folk, which you are one of. You are likely from the idyllic plain of Mesia on the edge of the World.
Items: Mesian Clothing, Wide-brimmed Sun-hat, Main Tobacco Pouch (20 doses), Backup Tobacco Pouch (10 doses), Good Quality Smoking Pipe, three Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: You have +1 SKLL per Template. You have a strange tobacco-knack. When you consume a dose of tobacco, you can get an Auspice, like an Astrologer might. Things considered to be “in your domain” are the land, the weather, cyclical things, animals, plants and the wilderness. While smoking, you are immune to fear, madness and possession.
Drawback: You’re a tobacco addict. Going more than two days without a dose makes you anxious, sleepless and scatterbrained – a sure sign that you are losing the wisdom of the world.
Thug
No matter how perfect the King’s law, and how far he extends his influence, lift any stone in the great cities along the Five Rivers, and you shall find legions of casually violent, self-interested men and women. You are one of them.
Items: Sturdy Clothing (as light armour), Any Light weapon, Large Pouch of 15 doses of Tobacco, Clay Pipe, Hobnailed Boots, two Outcast’s Things.
Benefits: Your unarmed attacks deal 1d6 damage. Once per any city, you have an almost instinctive ability to scrounge up 1d4 lesser footpads, minor criminals and lower-case-t thugs to assist you.
Drawback: Pick a vice. Your life is driven by it.
Agonist
Once upon a time, every Kelkoran clan had an Agonist. It was an office of vigilance, leadership, ritual, and symbolic warfare. Through words and duels, they mediated internecine conflict. As time passed, the Agonists began to interlink and form an order of duelist-judges, who exerted jurisprudence over the people of Kelkora. They were mighty, then, but in a great battle against the Sun King’s army, they suffered heavy losses - their order fractured and scattered, and, remembering the power they had taken, the clans did not elect to trust them again. Now, the cometh the hour - Kelkora will receive them again, and they finally shall destroy the Great Perfidious Foe.
Items: Humble Clothing, Mail and Plate Armour (medium), Fanged Iron War Mask, Aruval (heavy), Banner-Patterned Cloak, Animal Hide Mantle, two Outcast’s Things.
Benefit: You were trained by your Agonist master in the old formal style of fighting. You have +2 to Hit, and +1AC when holding a weapon in two hands. You deal +2 damage to targets you are facing in single combat.
You are considered to have the skills of Law and Jurisprudence, both based in Kelkoran law and jurisprudence, but able to range beyond it.
Drawback: Considering you joined the Agonists well after their power grab, and well after they became a scattered group of political revanchists, your own Kelkoran countrymen distrust your motives. And, naturally, servants of the Sun King see you as a still-burning ember from a fire best stomped out. Also, in your Agonist’s getup, you are as visibly and distinctly Kelkoran as it is about as possible to get - which is not always an advantage.
Shejing
Before the Sun King, it is said, people dealt directly with the powers of the FIRMAMENT, and from this gained great advantage, in exchange for being bound in terrible pacts. The progenitors of your noble house gained prestige and land, but when they broke their deal with a Solar Prince, a curse was laid on your bloodline.
Items: Expensive Clothing, 50g of Jewellery, Dradian Heraldic Arms, Wine bottle (1 slot, 6 doses), Jian (medium), one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefits: When Sunlight directly touches your skin, you become a gigantic snake until sunset. You have a bite that is a light weapon with 1d6 venom, and you are a powerful constrictor, but you lack limbs or an inventory in this form. You possibly have access to further supernatural powers in the form of Lessons.
Drawback: When Sunlight directly touches your skin, you become a gigantic snake.
Boar Head
In the black, coniferous hills of outer Defiance, old rites from ancient time continue unabated. These fools are holy, in a sense - they stumbled into the wilderness with a boar’s bleeding head affixed over their own, drunk and hallucinating on mushrooms, and experienced a vision of a god called Gouging Boar. They awoke, cradled in the topsoil and humus, as something greater.
Boar Heads usually take the Wood Walker Lesson as one of their choices at level 1.
Items: Boar’s Head (+1 AC, limits vision, 1 Slot), three Outcast’s Things, hide belt for carrying objects, no clothing.
Benefits: You have a resource called Tenacity, which you can spend to reduce incoming damage by 1d4 per Tenacity spent, or to add 1d4 to MOVE or HRTS rolls per Tenacity spent. You have [templates + 1] Tenacity. Missing Tenacity is restored when you sleep on bare earth. You speak a dialect of Seriasi called Dzika. You can gain additional Boar Head powers and Tenacity by serving Gouging Boar, and may gain access to templates of a dedicated Boar Head class.
Drawback: You are beholden to the being your folk call Gouging Boar, and you have his mottled mark, two curving black lines, on the back of your head. It is usually hidden by hair or boar-head. Gouging Boar dislikes chatter, and prefers you speak in sentences of [level] words or less (though he doesn’t force you). Sometimes, Gouging Boar will talk to you, in dreams of burial in hot and bloody earth, demanding you fulfil his tasks. Rarely, he will reward you with further gifts and uses for Tenacity.
Branch Cultist
There is a region called Ida, by its inhabitants, and called the Hinterland of Draad by the King and Grand Duke. The people who reside there, the Idami, are little-controlled by the Sun King (for a variety of reasons), and worship a pagan goddess called Hi-na. While most priests of Hi-na are sedentary, and reside in a few (secret) locations, a few of you are itinerant, and travel the stagnant lands of the Kingdom, bringing to the ill-ruled unfortunates the miracles of Hi-na.
Items: Veil decorated with Gold Pieces, Idami Clothing, Wide-Brimmed Hat, Bottle of Opiate Painkiller (⅓ Slot, 4 doses), Bottle of Sleeping Draught (⅓ Slot, 4 doses), Bottle of Hallucinogens (⅓ Slot, 4 doses), 3 Empty Bottles (1 Slot), Branch Staff (Sprouts living leaves in places sacred to Solar forces), one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefit: You have a resource called Vitality, which you can spend to restore 1d6 missing HP to yourself or someone you are touching. Restored HP returns with a surging feeling in the body, and a visible regrowth of wounded flesh, which is sensorially distinct from the gentle golden glow of Needle Charter healing. Vitality can also be used to rejuvenate and grow plants. You have [templates + 1] Vitality. Missing Vitality is restored when you witness the Sunrise. You also have the skills of Medicine, Alchemy and Gardening.
Drawback: You are beholden to your people’s goddess Hi-na, and you have her bright mark, a twist of golden lines which resembles a nine-branched, three-rooted tree. Luckily, Hi-na is a rather undemanding and generous goddess. Unluckily, her gifts can sometimes cause problems all on their own. Hi-na may appear in soft, bright dreams to give her gifts, or offer other uses for Vitality.
Gunsmith
Before the Sun King established the Furnace Charter for mass manufacture, he had trained a small group of gunsmiths, who worked in a closely controlled workshop inside Irgavio Sol itself. It’s said that a pair of sisters, the Cetzals, are the ones who snuck the secrets of the workshop out to the general populace - to their own detriment, in the end.
Items: Reinforced Clothing (as light armour), one gun of your choice, 15 Bullets and 15 Doses of Gunpowder (1 slot), Exact Measuring Cups, Flint Striker.
Benefits: You know the recipe for gunpowder, which you remember via mnemonic.
With an hour’s work, you can give various additional properties to firearms in exchange for making them more likely to explode. The properties of the modifications are negotiated - more powerful modifications give the gun a higher Misfire score. Misfire means the gun explodes when an attack roll, unmodified, is less than or equal to the Misfire score. A gun with Misfire 4 explodes on rolls 1-4. A gun can have multiple modifications.
You also have another Skill: Gunsmith.
Drawback: Test-firings and misfirings have left you with tinnitus and bad hearing.
Agreed to a Deal
He met you at a dark crossroad. You were on your way home in the dark, all alone - they’d warned you about this, of course, and of the dark powers one might encounter in such places, but until that moment, you’d never believed them. He stopped you by the roadside, eyes a’glint, and he talked for a bit, and explained to you that you could have anything you wanted, anything from your wildest dreams… in exchange for just the littlest favour.
Items: A full inventory of almost literally whatever you want, gifted by Him, plus one Outcast’s Thing.
Benefit: He is very good at getting anyone exactly what they want. Negotiate a boon with the DM - treasure, power, position, a strange power - so long as it’s within the scope of Firmament’s world, you get it! Strings attached, of course.
Drawback: Negotiate the terms of your deal with the DM - He will always want something in return, which seemed so reasonable at the time. You are branded with a mark, a jagged uneven black star, by which He might track you, His friends might know you, and His foes might mock you. If you break the terms of your deal, He told you what awaited you - transformation into a Waerloga, one of his monstrous shadowy servants, for a hundred years and a day. He is always watching, waiting, nearby in the dark, to see if you slip up - waiting to come and take you away into the night sky.
Pauper
Not every foul circumstance is the result of a curse, or a spirit, or a witch. Sometimes, we are simply born into suffering, and live there, until we die.
Items: Peasant’s Clothing, Straw Hat, Walking Staff (medium), three Outcast’s Things.
Benefit: You have the amazing power of being able to appear normal, which most prospective companions will struggle with. You’re technically not in trouble with the Sun King, either. Ordinary folk are likely to speak frankly with you, and offer you hospitality.
Drawback: The great and powerful will dismiss you out of hand as a nobody, unless you disprove them, somehow.
(I am also open to you coming up with your own kind of Outcast).
Things an Outcast Carries with Them
Kettle and Box of Tea, very good for making friends. Take up 1 slot together.
Watercolour Set, and paper. A pleasant hobby.
Musket, a medium and reliable gun. Comes with enough cartridges for 15 firings, which take up a second inventory slot on top of the gun.
Bullseye Lantern, and 3 doses of Oil. The lantern takes up ⅓ of a Slot, the Oil, 1 slot.
Useful Knife, a reliable light weapon. Sharp, neat, plain, straightforward.
10 Iron Spikes, which in total take up one slot.
Deck of Cards, the normal suits are Swords, Flowers, Quills and Torches, although someone’s added a full suit of Skulls to this one.
Snares. 3 to a slot. Can be set up to hoist the unwary into the air by their ankles.
50 Feet of Rope, Hempen.
Grapnel, and 100ft of silk rope. Good for climbing things!
A Dog, who is perfectly loyal, perfectly good, and understands how long a minute is.
Hunting Bow, and 20 Arrows. Made obsolete in war by the gun, but still pretty good for hunting game. A medium ranged weapon, relatively quiet, must be used in two hands.
Compass, with a gold bar, pointing towards Irgavio Sol and the Throne Illuminate, at the world’s centre.
Hurdy-Gurdy, a famously Seriasi instrument. Unique, to say the least.
Flag, on a heavy pole. You could use it as a -1 reach weapon, in a pinch. Probably features one of the flags of the Outer Kingdoms, such as the Falchion Banner of Saral Sar, the Magnite Heptagon, or the Bow of Defiance. It’s your choice, based on where you seem to be from.
A Falcon, trained to return to you when you whistle. Good at hunting rabbits and flying quickly.
Bandoliers and 20 cartridges. Bandoliers allow up to 20 bullets to occupy no slots in your inventory.
Onyx Eyeglasses, in a case made of black-laquered oak. Onyx glass is a rare material supposedly made by a foundry in the Dradian city of Vel Index. They protect the vision of the wearer from bright flashes, or harmful effects triggered by vision.
Grenado - Has a fuse currently 6 rounds long, but which can be cut shorter. When the thing detonates, it flings deadly shrapnel for 4d6* damage, save for half, within 5ft of the blast point. For each 5ft beyond that, -1d6*.
A Curio!
Bottled Lightning, a crackling, glowing blue liquid.
Uncorking the bottle and waiting three rounds causes a bolt of lightning to fire out, dealing 4d6 damage to the nearest creature.
If, instead of waiting, you drink the Bottled Lightning, you put on a boost of incredible speed, always going first in Initiative, having an extra action each turn, and easily outrunning everything but the wind. This lasts for 5 minutes. At the end of the duration, you take 4d6 damage and pass out.LAST SCAPULA QUEST, a +1 medium messer of strange green glass. The sword has a wicked edge, but when the flat of the blade is used to strike, it inexplicably has the effect of a massage, relaxing muscles and releasing tension from joints.
Alleged Othstone, wrapped in parchment paper. Within is a green-black stone with a greasy feeling, said to dissolve in wine or water. Supposedly, this is a deadly poison to spirits.
20 Feet of Cazrin Chain. Cazrin is a blue-green metal which never tarnishes, and is - apocryphally - physical to spirits.
OUTRIGHT NEW SIGHT, a light gladius of red steel etched with a pattern of many hundreds of eyes. You can see through the eyes of any creature you wound with this sword for 1 Day. Seeing through multiple sets of eyes is disorienting.
Firebird Poison, which makes the imbiber flammable, doubling fire damage they take for a week. The corpse of a person that suffers this poison could be used as firewood, and their blood as grisly lamp oil.
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