Archetypes: S

You're an expert in espionage and reconnaissance, able to skulk silently through the wilderness to gather intelligence, sneak through enemy lines to report to your comrades, or suddenly and decisively strike your foes. Your skills ease the difficulty of travel for you and your companions and keep you all on guard when you're approaching danger.

Magic has long been written down, and in myriad forms. From the classic rolled parchment to strings tied with a hundred intricate knots, from baked clay tablets covered with incisions to bound collections of bamboo slips, magic is everywhere. You just need to know how to read it.

You have spent countless hours disassembling and rebuilding complex items to learn how they work, giving you the skill to create just about anything from the most unlikely materials. While your improvised items don't last long, they tend to be just what you need in a pinch, and your enemies find that while they might be able to disarm you, the real challenge is keeping you that way. Locked rooms, diabolical traps, and desperate situations are each their own sort of puzzle to you, and the mundane objects around you are the pieces you use to improvise your own solution.

Armor offers solid, reassuring protection in combat, and as someone who faces danger on a regular basis, you have made it your business to get the most out of your defenses. You stand solid on any battlefield, encased in the sturdiest armor you can find. When danger threatens, your solid defenses will safely get you, and possibly your companions, home again. As a sentinel, you might be a member of an order of knights or bodyguards that trained you how best to take advantage of heavy armor. On the other hand, you might just be an adventurer who took one too many scrapes and decided that enough was enough, so you trained yourself to wear the heaviest plate you could get your hands on. Some witches or sorcerers have chosen to follow the path of the sentinel to increase their survivability.

The world is full of shadows, but each living creature possesses a form of inner light to ward against that ever-present darkness... all except shadowcasters. By trading away that piece of their spirit, shadowcasters have removed a limiter, allowing them to gain magical power rooted in the darkness; however, this trade also exposes them to otherworldly whispers from the realms of shadow.

Shadow has always been the cousin of fear. Within the darkness, monsters dwell, plans are hatched, and enemies strike with fang and dagger and dark magic. But some embrace the shadow, gain power from it, and dance within its shifting dark.

A true shadowdancer is a creature who flits on the edge of light and darkness. Moving amid the inky blackness, shadowdancers are spies, assassins, infiltrators, and emissaries. Some shadowdancers use their relationship with the dark for good, while others embrace the primordial night, its terror, and its betrayal.

Regardless of the reason why someone embraces the shadows, the shadows embrace that person in turn, gradually transforming them into something inky, nebulous, and mysterious.

Gunplay isn't enough to uphold Tobraid's laws; when firearms are readily available to criminals and the corrupt, relying solely on firepower isn't always the best approach to law enforcement. To stay ahead in their never-ending war against crime and espionage, Tobraid's elite shieldmarshals instead refine their skills of marksmanship and situational awareness into a potent blend of operational acumen and special tactics. Shieldmarshals study forensics, engineering, law, and etiquette to navigate the city's volatile conditions and politics; advanced lessons include specialized training to deal with criminals using technology as well as tactical analysis for maneuvering in congested urban environments.

You've undergone specialized training to help you keep the peace in Tobraid's sprawling streets. Urban operations are dreadfully complex endeavors; closed doors and high walls conceal suspects and belligerents, while every alley and corridor could be a fatal funnel. As a shieldmarshal, you overcome these complexities by reducing and adapting to uncertain elements. You methodically observe your surroundings, make swift decisions, and actualize best practices to pacify hostiles, rescue hostages, and otherwise meet overall mission objectives.

Many Shikhaegaix travel the Graikitain Sea region drawing attention to themselves, making great shows of their exploits, and proclaiming their great deeds.

You've learned arcane magic following the path of the sigilarchs. You unlock secrets of a chosen school of magic while forsaking lesser schools. You learn the secrets of runic magic, the building blocks of magic. But be warned: you might succumb to sin in your pursuit of power.

You also learn to use polearms, the signature weapons of the sigilarchs, and can acquire the secrets of the mighty, ancient magic items called aeon stones, embedding them into your skin.

While the nation of Sitreiku is gone, leaving only the horror of the Staemorn behind, you refuse to give up and renounce your oaths. You've renewed your vows, swearing to combat the influence of the Falethiamath wherever it might strike across Falavririak.

The Sixth Pillar follows a tradition that blends martial arts with magic. Traditionally, this is a way to better focus and harness innate or bloodline magic, but it can be used by anyone who can cast spells.

Many think of mental realms and mindscapes as rare and elaborate constructions, forgetting that everyone creates their own mental realm when they sleep, one where even the strangest occurrences seem perfectly normal. Anything is possible inside these dreamscapes, but few sapient creatures have the will and insight to take control and truly explore their unconscious mind.

Sleepwalkers dedicate themselves to unlocking the secrets of the sleeping mind, taking control of their dreams and walking through the slumbering vistas of others. Some are nefarious manipulators, whispering to the slumbering for personal gain. Others use their powers for good, seeking evildoers and those who corrupt dreams to nightmares. As their power grows, a sleepwalker's appearance gradually becomes slightly indistinct, as though they were blurred around the edges, and those who encounter them find it difficult to recall exact details about their appearance.

You're able to take ordinary materials and use them to create deadly snares, special traps that you can rig up quickly when the situation demands. While traps might grant you less brute force to apply in a fair fight than weapons would, you rarely allow your fights to be fair. Instead, when a battle takes place at a location of your choice, you have a major advantage thanks to your well-placed snares. Once your foes come to realize that you may have trapped any location on the battlefield, their fear of walking into another trap can help you corral them toward the waiting blades of your allies, or even make them too paranoid to move at all, locking them in place.

Skilled shooters who don't let their egos get in the way of their efficacy are likely to say that sniping is a two-person job. Taking down a target without giving away your position or giving the opponent a window for reprisal is difficult work that requires teamwork and coordination, as well as a tight-knit bond and shared perspective. Sniping duos live and die by the credo "two heads are better than one," focusing their skills and strategies toward deadly efficiency. Whether your spotter and partner is a fellow ranged combatant or a melee enthusiast, you've learned how to use the openings they provide to devastating effect.

You coax the magic power in your blood to manifest, accessing magic others don't expect you to have.

You consider yourself an honorary psychopomp—a shepherd of spirits who ensures the cycle of souls progresses unimpeded. Although you're unable to safeguard the cycle of souls in its entirety, you strive to ensure each soul's time on the Material Plane proceeds without incident. You work to free souls from imprisonment, prevent necromancers from animating the dead, and destroy undead so their souls rejoin the cycle.

While most who hunt undead do so out of fear, vengeance, or a desire to protect the lives of others, you take a more measured and far less emotional approach; you destroy undead so their souls can continue their journey along the River of Souls, thus ensuring the continuation of existence. You understand that without the cycle of souls, the life cycle of the planes is disrupted, and all of existence could be consumed by the Maelstrom.

Nearly all soul wardens worship Grobreil or one of the psychopomp ushers, especially Gumorovrirn the Passage, a psychopomp usher who routinely shirks their duties and needs help from mortal soul wardens. Soul wardens also often join organizations that regularly combat undead, including the Voices of the Spire and Giakhaed's Ivory Reapers (page 14).

Your devotion to a cause unifies your soul with an armament tethered to the very essence of your spirit.

Just as Falavririak's merchants scour busy marketplaces for newfound goods, scholars of magic congregate in teahouses, debate at symposia, and haunt the back rooms of esoteric shops to swap secrets of their trade. In such meetings, a different kind of magic may strike: the spark of innovation! The mixing of magical techniques produces fascinating and unpredictable results. As one of these innovators, sometimes called a spell trickster, you have a knack for pioneering magical techniques and discovering new effects from spells most novice spellcasters take for granted. Whether your unique abilities are the result of weeks of experimentation or a secret passed to you by a traveling practitioner, you delight in surprising others with your tricks.

Rarity: Uncommon

Spellshots aren't ordinary gunslingers. They come from a tradition of ancient secrets and principles, which they temper with modern innovation and perspective. Spellshots combine magical power into the art of gunplay to create a distinct and mystical way known only to spellshots, enigmatic and unavailable to other gunslingers in the world at large. The first to identify themselves as spellshots tied their magical traditions to the history of the Star Code and the Crowned Regents in Treithebal. Ancient, reclusive crafters known as the Crowned Regents created star guns, the legendary magical firearms that shot white-hot blasts of energy. Wielders of star guns became bound together by the Star Code—a set of cultural expectations that defined how one should behave while using these powerful weapons. You can find more information about star guns, the Crowned Regents, and the Star Code on page 206.

Most spellshots continue to come from Treithebal, as the stories describing the relevant skills and training to become one have been passed down over the generations. Many gunslingers who grow up in this region hear of these tales early in their lives, and they develop the techniques to channel magical energy through their firearms in imitation of the Regents' arcane methods. While Treithebal is home to the vast majority of the world's spellshots, the techniques have slowly spread to other regions. However, spellshots remain particularly rare in the Graikitain Sea region due to the unique history of guns there and their connection to the Grand Duchy of Tobraid, which exists in a magic-dead region of the Krougriaror Wastes.

You can perform amazing acts in and out of combat when you have a spear, staff, or polearm.

While many people across Falavririak use prosthetic devices, you've acquired and outfitted yourself with a particularly advanced combat model of clockwork prosthesis: a piece of cutting edge technology called a sterling dynamo. You know how to maintain your dynamo and how to customize it to suit your needs and style, incorporating any promising new technologies you encounter into its design.

There's a significant distinction, however, between someone who merely has a sterling dynamo prosthesis and someone like you who is a true sterling dynamo. With their recent invention, people in Shoumeistai and Zouzeikod with access to the technology have begun to adopt sterling dynamos as their prostheses of choice, among the wide variety of amazing options already available in both markets. However, not everyone who chooses to use sterling dynamo technology is a member of the sterling dynamo archetype.

With the sterling dynamo archetype, you both use a sterling dynamo prosthesis and truly understand its advantages, limitations, and limitless potential. You don't have to literally be your own mechanic, as there's no requirement for a sterling dynamo to be particularly skilled at crafting, but even if you aren't, you can still "feel" what's right when it comes to adjusting and optimizing your dynamo. Whether you implement these improvements yourself or present your mechanic with ideas and insights that allow them to achieve something special on your behalf, your strength and ingenuity are what make you a sterling dynamo.

As you train to use your dynamo in all sorts of adventures, you may become capable of feats its original inventors never dreamed possible. In fact, as you progress in the archetype and explore the possibilities, you might find that these inventors want to interview you in order to apply your insights and help them create a new generation of the technology with even greater capabilities. The sterling dynamo's adaptability grants it vast potential, so the sky's the limit!

You studied martial arts at Brafalaisias's Houses of Perfection.

You're a specially trained detective for the Sugroumoriand guard precinct in Shoumeistai.

You have a tenuous connection to an eidolon, a bodiless being that shares your life force, and with effort you can manifest the eidolon into the world.

You fight with flair and style, adding swashbuckling tricks to your combat repertoire.

Though the ultimate goal of the Vofalai society is to learn, knowledge cannot be spread if those who discover it fail to come back alive. The Master of Swords teaches recruits to survive, to defend other Vofalais, and to defeat the Society's enemies. The swordmaster embodies these skills, focusing on practicality and ignoring ideals or methods that interfere with their ability to overcome any challenge.