Backgrounds

Everyone in Meridia is a descendant of ancient humans… probably. Some, called “true” kin, look much the same as their human ancestors. Others may take on characteristics of other animals or otherwise differ from the ‘default’ body-plan.

Cadet Noble

You weren’t in line to inherit your family’s grim holdings in the Underworld. Unlike your older siblings, you made your way to the surface, pocketing a treasure no one would miss on your way out.

• Choose a Starting Relic.
• Start with a set of luxurious clothing, worth 100 Siglos. When you are seen in it, all know that you come from means.
• Create a Tie with another one of your siblings and what unforgivable slight they have made against you.
• Write an Ideal of freedom, exploration, or a subject of your choice.
• You are fluent in Tiber, which precious few people are on the surface.

Most Underworld Nobles are true kin, though some may take other forms like rat-kin or snake-kin.

Lakian

The United Lake Federation is prosperous and vast, every year absorbing more of Meridia’s interior. That wealth pays for excellent schooling, which is mandatory for all young people.

• Choose a Skill or language to start with.
• Start with all the tools of a trade:
  • Mechanic: A heavy wrench (1-harm), a set of screwdrivers, and a head-mounted electric light
  • TODO
• Create a Tie with a more-successful classmate who now operates a business in or near Twill.
• Write an Ideal of industry, discipline, or a subject of your choice.
• You are fluent in Quent.

The Federation is vast and cosmopolitan. Deer-kin, turtle-kin, meerkat-kin, truekin with crimson skin and vestigial tail, etc.

Failed Apprentice

Your instruction at Strata may have begun with promise, but it ended poorly. Either you couldn’t hack the coursework, you received one too many disciplinary reports, or you yourself chose to leave the Universities to see the world.

• Power: You have rudimentary command of a Basic Element (fire, earth, metal, water, or wood). You cannot summon your element from nothing, but you can manipulate and to some extent enhance its presence. Take 1 Harm whenever you use more than 3 Aether on this power (including Bonus Aether); you weren’t prepared for great feats before your expulsion. Dedicated tutelage under a capable teacher may be enough to lift this limitation.
• Start with an amulet with a milky-white pendant. It provides one Bonus Aether when you draw on it, after which point it must be recharged for a night under a full moon.
• Create a Tie for the most intense relationship you had with a professor, good or ill.
• Write an Ideal of study, mastery, or a subject of your choice.
• You are passable in Analia.

All inducted students at Strata go through a (painful) process that renders them true kin. There are rumors of ways to undo it.

Thalassal

Your people make their home in domed cities at the bottom of the sea, after long-ago schisms drove them from Atlantis. Their pursuit of extreme mutation can be off-putting to outsiders (or maybe it’s the rampant piracy).

• Choose any mutation.
• Start with a trident (2-harm) or a auto-harpoon (1-harm, can be reeled back in after being thrown).
• Atlanteans abjure you and will not allow you in their settlements or borders, but will tolerate you otherwise.
• Write an Ideal of individuality, change, or a subject of your choice.
• You speak heavily accented Atlantean. You’d never pass for someone from the homeland, but you can certainly communicate with them.

Go wild: a goose with two heads, a bipedal collection of seaweed and driftwood, a slime with hands. Thalassals make a game of their individuality, and may go far beyond the traditional limit of “humanity.”

Highland Farmer

The mountains south of Twill are rugged back-country dotted with hamlets. Sometimes a villager raises their eyes from the field and leaves northward, to the strange and beautiful world of the sea.

• After assigning your ability ratings, raise one more (up to a maximum of 3).
• Start with an enchanted sword (2-harm) and choose one: it is tied to your destiny, it speaks inside your mind, or it glows in the presence of danger.
• Create a Tie with a hermit or mysterious wanderer near your hometown who pointed you towards adventure and now accompanies you.
• Write an Ideal of resilience, understanding, or a subject of your choice.
• Before you arrived at the Drowned Isles, you’d probably never met someone who didn’t speak Kernish.

If you aren’t true kin you’re probably rugged, like goat-kin or lizard-kin.

Atlantean Exile

As punishment for law-breaking, you were cast from your homeland never to return. Dissidents and agitators are the most common exiles.

• Take the Gills mutation, a starting relic, and little else.
• Create a Tie with a former friend who turned away from you in your exile.
• Write an Ideal of principles, anti-authority, or a subject of your choice.
• You are fluent in Atlantean.

All Atlanteans are true kin, except for their distinctive gills and a light smattering of scales. Modifying oneself would be a crime worthy of exile.

Deckhand

Time on the seas changes a person, they say. The old powers of the Earth sunk beneath the waves, and the morning mist carries their secrets…

• Take +1 Bonus Aether for your starting Power.
• Start with a battered spyglass.
• Create a Tie with your former Bosun, who by now may even captain their own vessel.
• Write an Ideal of hard work, freedom, or a subject of your choice.
• You have enough Atlantean and Quent to get by, but not enough to draw on their Domains.

Anything at home on a ship: scaled kin, squid-kin, mer-kin

Kolar

Your people need strong leaders to survive the bitter Southern winters. For six months out of the year, a leader is selected and the clan donates their blood in exchange for protection.

• Vampirism: While you subsist entirely on human blood (for at least a day or more), you enter a vampiric state. While in your vampiric state:
  • You are entirely immune to the natural elements, can smell sorcery, and have the Power “preternatural strength and speed”
  • Sunlight burns your skin like fire
  • You may not enter a dwelling without permission of its occupants
• Start with a caribou-skin tent of great craft; take +1d when rolling for recovery while camping in it. It can fit yourself comfortably or two people uncomfortably.
• Create a Tie with a merchant or traveler who gave you shelter on your journey north to Twill.
• Write an Ideal of power, teamwork, or a subject of your choice.

True kin, elk-kin, fox-kin: anything built for the cold

Islander

You’re from a Drowned Isle, steeped in Aetheric strangeness. Describe your home island to the rest of the table.

• Create a Technique for your starting Power.
• (TODO equipment)
• Create a close Tie with someone from your home island.
• Write an Ideal of balance, care, or a subject of your choice.
• You grew up speaking a little Lei Elia, but your vocabulary is frustratingly limited. When speaking Lei Elia, the GM may ask you to roll 1d6 whenever you say a noun. If the noun has more syllables than the die roll, you can only remember it in Kernish.

Deer-kin, squirrel-kin, finch-kin, or any subtle modification to a true kin

Foreigner

You are a from a far-flung land: the Burning Republics of the north, the plains of Meridia, or even from a distant world across the ocean. Nothing here is quite familiar to you.

• Start with 5 Renown and no relationships—you’re new to this place.
• Write an Ideal on a subject of your choice.

Free-form it. Probably you’re a bipedal mostly-human sort of person, everything beyond that is up to you.

Starter Relics

For Cadet Noble or Atlantean Exile.

1. Helpful Bug: A metal replica of a beetle that can perform simple tasks.
2. Hover Plate: Platter-sized tray that freezes in space if you whistle a specific tune. There’s a second tune to release it. It supports up to one person’s weight and can be forcibly released with a test of Muscle.
3. Trick Coin: Looks like a Silver Siglos but has three secret functions that you know how to use. First is a weak light. Second is a powerful magnet. Third is a bomb (2 harm, stun), destroying the coin.
4. Universal Pin: A hair-pin that sticks into any surface, no matter the material. Causes no pain if stuck into flesh.
5. Second-Chance Skull: If you die, your body disintegrates to ash and immediately regenerates from this skull in perfect health. Only works once.
6. Powder Sack: Any powder stored in this small pouch becomes essentially unlimited. Turning the pouch inside out empties the current contents, with no unusual effect. Currently contains salt.
7. Echojector: Hears up to ten seconds of sound and repeats it at vastly increased volume on command.
8. Antimatter Key: When placed in a keyhole, utterly annihilates the door. 1-in-6 chance of annihilating itself too.
9. Utility Orb: Any tool that could plausibly exist in a mundane pocket-knife has a 50% chance of existing in this orb. Keep track of what tools it does and doesn’t have.
10. Entangled Compass: A pair of glass spheres with needles that always point towards the other sphere, over any distance

Mutations

For Thalassals, mostly.

1. Double-muscled: Increase Muscle.
2. Triple-jointed: Raise Scramble.
3. Silver-tongued: Raise Command.
4. Tough Carapace: Your skin counts as 1 Armor.
5. Acid blood
6. Bloodhound nose
7. Tunneling claws
8. Underwater gills
9. Prehensile Tail
10. Chameleon skin
11. Hypermobile: You can arrange your body into almost any shape
12. Web-spinners
13. Stick to surfaces
14. Frog tongue
15. Choking spore cloud, at the cost of 1 Aether
16. Super-heat your skin, at the cost of 1 Aether
17. Spit hardening foam, as a Power
18. Conduct electricity through your body
19. Hypnotic gaze
20. Ink spray