Jump to:
Arrogate — priest with a difficult duty
Bluemason — defector mercenary with a locked contract
Emberwright — magnetic blacksmith of a secret order
Foist — deeply indebted thief student
Geistlock — mutated monster hunter
Haexate — nature witch with a troubled past
Knight of the Green — outcast forest protector
Raven Knight — AWOL foreign knight with a giant raven
Thaumaturge — dark mage with an unhealthy obsession

(Don't feel limited by the evocative images or by the kind of person you first envision when reading callings summaries. Each calling can fit a wide range of people, and peculiar or conflicting character aspects make for an interesting story!)

Callings

Your calling is your profession, vocation, obsession, or way of life.
Your calling (alongside your upbringing) determines which Expertise you can choose from.

A common living turned rare

Late in your upbringing, you were called to a different life.

How & when did you first hear about your calling?
Why did you get involved?
How long have you been doing it?
What do you wear while working?

Callings Summaries

Arrogate

“A man is better than the worst thing he's ever done.”

An Arrogate is a Priest with an unusual sacred duty.
As an Arrogate, you are charged by your patron to absolve others of guilt by taking it directly from them.
You do this by performing necessary but abhorrent acts so that others do not need to live with the guilt of those acts.

Your patron gives you the ability to channel powerful divine magic, but it comes to you unreliably.

To renew your spiritual connection, you have to visit a nearby church regularly. However, because of your duty, the clergy have an active interest in keeping you away.

Creating an Arrogate

Who is your patron?

• Kheric, the god of virtue, earthly forces, songs, and craft
• Isobel the Whore of Alder, Saint of Kheric

Were you a priest before you were an Arrogate?
What did you do to be chosen by your patron?
Create two relationships, one with a mentor who follows Kheric, and another with your patron (but your patron doesn't get an Expertise).

Expertise
Medicine, Monsters, Religion, Appeal, Augury

Bluemason

The roads are paved so the Blues can march.
—Rhonic saying

A Bluemason is an elite mercenary from the continent's largest mercenary company.

Founded by stonemasons who discovered "dry", an addictive blue magical rock powder consumed by mixing it with animal blood, members are "blue bloods" in both status and biology. They treat each other as royalty when in each other's company, and their blood turns shimmery blue upon contact with the air.

The mercenary company binds their service contracts to the drug via enchantment, extending the half-life of the blood color change from a few weeks to the full duration of service, regardless of consumption.

Recruits conform to strict internal hierarchies and codes of conduct, sometimes disregarding a country's laws and cultural expectations in favor of their own.

From your time spent as a Bluemason you have extensive skills in a wide variety of combat tactics and military strategy. You also have contacts amongst Bluemasons, various military groups, and nobility.

Now you are a defector who left an active contract.

Creating a Bluemason

What permanent injury or scar have you obtained from fighting?
Why did you defect and abandon your contract?
Does anyone in the company know you left?
What rank are you?

• Dragoon: Low-ranking captain. You have a small troop that is loyal to you.
• Cobalt Earl: Mid-ranking specialist. You know other specialists who have Expertise in one of: Subterfuge, Laws & Traditions, Coerce, or Foreign Customs. (You don't have to choose until it becomes relevant during play.)
• Blue Prince: High-ranking officer. You are well-known and have significant sway over other Bluemasons.

How did you prove your dedication to the Bluemasons and move up in rank?
Create a relationship with your direct superior.

Expertise
Militia, History, Consort, Politics

Emberwright

“A pound of community is worth 100 tons of steel.”

An Emberwright is a blacksmith with magnetic power in a secret and heavily hunted fraternity called Wyrhtan.

You are committed to upholding the fraternity's code & laws, which are summarized by the phrase "Connection, Capability, Concordance."
You are an important community member in the town where you work as blacksmith.

As part of your deepening bonds to Wyrhtan and as part of ranking up in its hierarchy, you were subjected to the mystic rites of the fraternity, resulting in the magnetizing of the iron in your blood.

Because of this, you have the power to push or pull metal directly from/to your body at will. The strength of this power is determined by the strength of your physical form.

Emberwrights are mercilessly hunted by a cult called The White Dawn. Followers worship a dark god and vow to destroy Wyrhtan. The fraternity believes that The White Dawn collects Emberwright blood to use for the reincarnation of their god.

Creating an Emberwright

Why does your community matter to you?
Why were you drawn to Wyrhtan? How did you join?
What has Wyrhtan tasked you with?

• Connection: Fire to Iron to Hand to Fire.
  You are to sway your city politically, moving up the ranks in governance so you may affect change.
• Capability: Shape, sharpen, equip.
  You are to find an apprentice and bring them into the fold.
• Concordance: Symmetry and harmony.
  You are to craft perfect iron rings, as many as you are able. They are to be used as part of a ritual that will banish The White Dawn.

Create a relationship with someone you are protecting, or someone related to your task.

Expertise
Martial Arts, Consort, Politics, Sympathy

Foist

“Things don’t ‘belong’ to anyone, they are just things. And soon those things will be in my possession.”

A Foist is an apprentice of the Takers Guild, a semi-secret (depending on the social circles you frequent) thieves guild.

You are severely indebted to them as payment for your training, but as long as you pay your monthly dues it’s not much of an issue. However, if you don’t, a guild Harvester (expert foist-finder) is sent out to find you and collect the guild’s dues.

As part of guild law, Foists take an oath: “Loot-taking, not life-taking”. The guild enacts severe consequences if Foists are caught breaking this law.

You've learned various small magicks through your apprenticeship called knacks which enhance your thieving abilities. The knacks you've learned depend on the type of Foist you are.
You've also been taught enough to be a passable archer, knife-fighter, and fiddler (or flutist or lutenist).

Creating a Foist

What made the severe debt worth being admitted? (Or, why were you compelled to acquire the skills of a Foist?)
Why did you choose the Taker's Guild rather than seek a more honorable profession?
What type of Foist are you?

• Scholar: To study is to observe.
  You've learned the knacks of avoiding getting hurt when falling from any distance, hiding in the shadows, slipping out of binds, picking locks, and scaling walls.
  You must take up a thieving contract from the Guild three times per year for the rest of your life.

• Playwright: All the world's a stage.
  You've learned the knacks of impersonation, strengthening and throwing your voice, quickly creating forgeries, predicting people, and acting with grace in court and while balancing.
  You must accurately report to the Guild on local courts and politics once a month for the rest of your life.

Are you most skilled at archery, knife-fighting, or fiddling/fluting/luteneering?
Create a relationship with a fellow thief in the Taker's Guild.

Expertise
Subterfuge, History, Appeal, Coerce, Streetwise, Sympathy

Geistlock

“…Fuck.”

A Geistlock is an itinerant monster-slayer for hire who has undergone mysterious magical rituals and extensive conditioning via a geistlock school.

At the schools geistlocks learn swordplay (or mastery of other weapons), basic alchemy, and simple magicks through the manipulation of flux. Young potential geistlocks undergo mutations in their rituals to make this possible.

You were subject to training and rituals that grant you fast reflexes, miraculous strength, and enhanced senses, as well as the ability brew bespoke potions.

As a result of the unusual development and the stigma that follows them, geistlocks developed a unique culture, specialized knowledge, specific training systems, and a code of ethics.

Most folks misunderstand geistlocks and therefore will hate you on sight. However, when someone needs a monster killed, you're typically their first choice.

Creating a Geistlock

Which school did you learn at? Your school determines your fighting style, magicks, potion recipes, and geistlock culture:

• School of the Asp
• School of the Bear
• School of the Dragon
• School of the Fox
• School of the Hawk
• School of the Leviathan

What permanent injury or scar have you obtained from fighting?
What is your vice? (Seeking distraction, seeking money, seeking sex, seeking out trouble, quickness to anger, laziness, compulsive stealing, intoxication, emotionally numb.)
Create a relationship with someone you are protecting, someone you are in love with, or someone you are deeply indebted to.
Why don't they want to see you?

Expertise
Martial Arts, Monsters, Coerce, Insight, Alchemy

They’ll

Haexate

(hakes-a-tee)
“Though most ignore it, we are all connected.”

A Haexate is a witch whose magic comes from aligning very closely with nature.

Your magic corresponds with the current (in-world) season.

• Winter: Manipulation of water & compelling cold
• Spring: Manipulation of plants & encouraging growth
• Summer: Manipulation of fire & inducing heat
• Autumn: Manipulation of wind & provoking decay

You also have the ability to contact and influence elemental spirits.

What makes you different from a witch is that your power stems from a past mistake that haunts your psyche, as opposed to simply attending closely to the quiet turnings of the world.

Your mistake ties you closely to some aspect of nature. This attachment grounds you, and it is emotionally painful when something gets between you and this aspect.

You are part of a coven who are recently in need of a new leader. The coven wants you to step up to lead them.

Creating a Haexate

Which aspect of nature are you intrinsically tied to? (Sky, stars, weather, bodies of water, flora, fauna.)
What was your mistake? Who did it affect?
What is your coven known for?
Why does your coven want you to lead?

• The previous leader died, and you are either related to them or are most suited to the role.
• Your nature as Haexate gives you the power to finish a spell the coven wants completed. Decide the nature of the spell and why the coven wants you to finish it.

What is your animal familiar? (Fox, cat, crow, rat, snake, weasel, will’o’wisp, small clay golem.)
Create a relationship with another coven member.
Work with your GM to decide the current season.

Expertise
Woodcraft, Insight, Alchemy, Flux

Knight of the Green

“Death, lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain.”

A Knight of the Green is a dedicated protector of a forest with unnatural abilities granted by divine power.

Your duty is to destroy undead, to banish all fiends & devils, and to protect your forest & all who dwell within or near it. This oath binds you to service and empowers you.

As long as you uphold your oath, your patron gives you the ability to traverse all terrain with relative ease, elegantly and powerfully wield your weapon and armor as though they were an extension of your body, and see ahead with unparalleled foresight.

After your knighthood and significant time spent in your forest, the forest gifted you a weapon and armor.
You have a mount who lives primarily in your forest but has the uncanny ability to be in the right place when you need them.

You know how to contact the small faefolk, ask favors of the green faefolk (when they wish to be found), and survive encounters with the dark faefolk.

Moss, ferns, or mushrooms regularly grow from your clothing and armor, and as long as you are within your forest you age slowly.

Recently you have been compelled to leave your forest home.

Creating a Knight of the Green

What is your mount? (Horse, elk, stag, moose, boar, or wolf).
What grows from your clothing and armor?
How did the forest gift you your weapon and armor?

Who is your order's patron, and what is their symbol?

• Elda, goddess of creation, movement, yearning, and sunlight
• The living spirit of the forest
• The queen of the Fae, Titania

Why have you left your forest?

• The rest of your order died fighting something monstrous. Decide how, and why you survived.
• You were exiled from your order. Decide what transgression got you cast out, and if you are truly guilty of it or not.
• You have been commanded by the divine to complete an impossible task. Decide what you've been asked, and why it's impossible.

How did the rest of your order feel about you before you left?
How are you hoping to achieve your return to the forest? Decide if a return is actually possible or not for your character, or let the GM decide.

Create two relationships, one with a family member you knew before your knighthood, and one with a small faefolk (but the small faefolk doesn't get an Expertise).

Expertise
Woodcraft, Religion, Direct, Etiquette, Augury

Raven Knight ~ Corvo Equites

Il corvo più grande si prende il verme.
(The biggest crow gets the worm.)
—Spiacian proverb

A Raven Knight is an elite knight in a covert order from the neighboring country Spiacia.

After proving loyalty to Spiacia through their service, a select few knights are asked to further show their commitment. By going through a magical ritual tattooing, The Order of the Black Rose are able to hide a stag-sized war corvid inside the tattoo, ready to be summoned when called upon.

Most trained giant corvids were ordered to be slaughtered by Prince Rossoviero of Spiacia after the Blackwater wars. Owning or hiding a war corvid became strictly illegal in all the northern kingdoms and Spiacia.
But The Prince secretly called for the preservation of some of the corvids by creating the Order of the Black Rose and hiding the birds in the skin of its knights.

Joining this covert order means you get a massive magical tattoo on your torso of a black raven. Upon your will, it can leap from your body, battle ready.
Calling the bird forth or reabsorbing it is physically painful and draws a certain amount of life from you, but your war corvid heeds your command and fights for you while active. It heals when you put it back, though you suffer some of its pain when you do.

You are currently AWOL (absent without leave) from your order and your country, and can't return yet.

Most folk don't mind Spiacian knights, but will hate you and perhaps try to kill you if they find out you're a Raven Knight, due to the history of corvid war terrors.

Creating a Raven Knight

Who have you lost to war?
How did you prove your dedication to your order and your country?
What permanent injury or scar have you obtained from fighting?
Why are you absent without leave?

• You defied direct orders that you disagreed with, and abandoned your quest. Decide the orders and why you had to defy them.
• You abandoned your post in shame or fear because failed your quest. Decide how.
• You were irrevocably thrown off-course during your quest. Decide what happened & why you‘re physically unable to compete it for now, and how you hope to finish it in the future.

What was your quest?

• Reach & kill Leobrycht Kiezka II, the Duke of Rhone.
• Capture & deliver a young prophet of the god Virmes, Archdisciple Ana Savnikos.
• Protect & escort an influential Spiacian diplomat, Mella Giorensi.

Create two relationships, one with someone related to your quest (including possibly your liege lord, captain, or another knight of your order), and one with your raven (but your raven doesn't get an Expertise).

Expertise
Militia, Laws & Traditions, Direct, Foreign Customs

Thaumaturge

“The elixir of life isn’t a fantasy… it’s out there, waiting to be rediscovered.”

A Thaumaturge is a scholar and mage seeking to achieve the "Great Work" by invoking magical power through esoteric knowledge and ritual practice.
Through advanced alchemy, a Thaumaturge is able to expand the practice from merely mixing reagents to the dangerous art of Thaumic Binding.

By binding a fragment of an entity (demons, fae, or elemental) into a physical vessel, you are able to bypass normal magical restrictions and tether them to your service.
The entities you bind are not guests, but prisoners, and as long as they're trapped they are constantly looking for a crack in your resolve.

Direct contact with the vessel is necessary to wield the entity's magic, but prolonged contact causes your senses to bleed into those of the entity, leading to flashes of mania, tremors, or visions where the world appears as the entity sees it.

Because of this instability, you're only ever able to bind one entity at a time. The type of entity you have in your vessel determines the nature of your power.

• Fae: Amplify or reduce the senses and emotions of others
• Demon: Halt or destroy the movement and growth of plants & animals
• Elemental spirit: Conjure the essence of the type of elemental (fire, earth, water, air)

You cannot bind the undead, ghasts, or Anathema.

Other alchemists will be able to detect your thaumic binding on sight and may abhor you for it, and most folk will instantly reject and attempt to banish someone who has captured a spirit or otherworldly creature.

Creating a Thaumaturge

What are you obsessed with achieving?

• Formulating the elixir of life.
• Binding a very powerful being to your service, like a djinn, greater demon, or leshi.
• Flawless transmutation, like lead to gold, stone to gems or wood, or the perfection of your body.

What traumatic event happened to you to set you on the path of obsession?

What is your current vessel? (Lead box, grimoire, prosthesis, staff, weapon, gemstone orb.)
What is the currently bound entity? (Fairy, imp, or lesser elemental spirit.)

Create two relationships, one with your mentor, and one with the entity (but the entity doesn't get an Expertise).

Expertise
Esoteria, History, Laws & Traditions, Etiquette, Alchemy