Masada

The world is called Masada, after a fortress of the old mortal histories whose defenders chose to die inside their own walls rather than surrender to the army outside. The Nobility chose the name when they rebuilt. The world was to be their fortress, held against the beings from beyond.

Amended. The world was held. The Nobility were not. Most of them destroyed themselves inside the walls they built.

What every steward is taught before being given a ledger. These hold in every sector.

1. The mortals ruined the world once. The Nobility rebuilt it.
2. The rebuilding was a rescue. The tenants are alive because the lords came out of their shelters. Some lords hold this to be the only fact that matters.
3. The castle stands on the high ground. The tenants live below it.
4. Everything on the land was made or placed by a lord. The engines, the stock, the servants, the gardens.
5. Arrangements with tenants are made by the lord alone. Stewards record them. They do not make them.
6. Tenants do not fight.
7. The histories are kept in the castle. The tenants know what they are told.
8. The land endures. Lords do not.

Amended. Facts 4 through 7 no longer hold. The tenants make things of their own (see section 10). With most lords asleep in their vaults, the towns settle their own affairs. The tenants fight. They keep their own histories now, and those histories are incomplete. The other facts still hold.

The land outside the Capitol is divided into four sectors, each held by an overlord and worked by tenants. Tenants live in settlements placed near Noble structures, where the water, the roads, and the engines are. Between settlements the land is left to stock and to the wild.

Building. Noble structures are built from Noble-made materials and do not decay. Tenants build in wood, stone, and whatever the household permits them to salvage. A tenant barn may lean against a castle wall. This is allowed.

Settlements. Each settlement has a headman answerable to the steward, a bell for the curfew, and a register of births and deaths. Traders and carriers pass between settlements under Noble writ. Strangers are to be presented to the headman on arrival.

Tenant living. Tenants farm, keep livestock, and work the salvage the household assigns them. Travel between settlements is by Noble road, and is not safe for tenants after dark.

Curfew. The bell is rung at dusk. Tenants bar their doors and do not open them to anyone until the morning bell. This is for their protection, and it is enforced.

Amended. The settlements are now called towns, and the headmen are mayors, councils, and sheriffs. They answer to no steward. The curfew is still kept in nearly every town, by custom. Nobody enforces it. Towns that stopped keeping it have not done well. The Capitol claims the whole Frontier and defends very little of it. When a town cannot handle a problem, it hires hunters. See section 8.

Four sectors around the Capitol, each held by one overlord. The borders were drawn at the rebuilding and have not moved.

• Northern sector: mountains and long winters. The engines hold the valleys warm. The dwarven holds are sealed in the ranges and are not tenants.
• Southern sector: badlands and salt. The aqueducts carry water across the sector.
• Eastern sector: forest and river. The pleasure estates and the great gardens.
• Western sector: farms and orchards. The richest holding, and the most tenants.
• The Capitol at the center, where the roads meet and the Kings sit.

Amended. The borders are unmarked now, but the tenants still know which sector they were born in, and it shapes how they talk and what they fear. The Northern engines are failing, and valleys are being lost to cold. The Southern aqueducts are mostly dry. The Eastern gardens have overgrown their estates. The West is still the richest holding, and the most settled. Each sector is covered in the Gazetteer.

Every lord holds structures on his land: the castle, the outbuildings, the engine houses, the armories, the archives, and the works beneath. Each structure defends itself. Tenants do not enter Noble structures. Those who do are dealt with by the structure.

Contents. Working devices, armories, stores of Noble materials, and the weapons kept against the beings from beyond. Workshops below, where the lord’s sciences are practiced.

Standing orders. A structure keeps its orders when the household is absent. Guardians hold their lines. Doors stay sealed. The works repair what is damaged inside them.

Amended. The structures stand, and most still defend themselves. The towns call them ruins and keep their distance, except for the tenants who go in for salvage, who are called scavengers. Scavengers have set off a structure’s weapons before, and whole towns have died for it. The Capitol forbids entry without a license and claims everything brought out. Most of what comes out never reaches the Capitol. Devices in mortal hands are listed under Relics. The works still repair what dies inside them, and this has begun to include scavengers. The towns call them the Reborn. They, and the Magen dug out of the same structures, are described among the peoples.

Stock bred by the Nobility for work, for war, and for the gardens. Stewards are responsible for feeding and penning it, and for keeping it away from tenant livestock. The common kinds:

• Hedge-hounds: garden guards. Fed at dusk. Kept from the tenants’ herds.
• Lampjaws: road guards. Posted at intervals. Lit at dusk.
• Sand mantas: Southern stock, kept under the salt to hold the flats.
• Frostwings: Northern stock, bred for the high cold.
• Tithe-moths: collection stock. Released over the settlements on tithe nights.
• Lesser dragons: sporting stock, kept in the high valleys.
• The Faithful: altered household servants. Not stock. Listed here because they are kept on the same rolls.

Amended. No feedings, pennings, or releases have been logged since the household went silent. The stock has found its own food, and most of it hunts the tenants. Nothing is lit at dusk; the lampjaws light themselves. The moths still collect on tithe nights. The full register is in the Bestiary. There are also things on the land the Nobility found and never bred: older than the rebuilding, and not on any roll.

Hazards to the holding, in the order a steward is to report them.

Hazard	What it covers	Dealt with by
Everyday	Stock loose among the tenants, failing engines, weather, tenant disputes	The steward
Serious	Servants acting outside their orders, damage to the works	The household
Grave	Another lord, or the beings from beyond	The lord

Amended. The same table, as the towns use it: everyday hazards are the work of most hunters; serious hazards, the servants still following dead orders and the deeper structures, are for experienced hunters and companies; grave hazards, an awake lord or something older than the Nobility, are legend, and towns empty out before them.

No entry.

Amended in full. A mortal trade that arose after the Nobility went to ground. Hunters are hired by towns to kill Noble stock, clear Noble servants, and enter Noble structures. There is no guild, no license, and no oversight. The Capitol expects the trade to fade as its own Defense Force grows. It has not faded.

Getting hired. Larger towns send for hunters by spell, through their magic user. Smaller towns rely on riders, passing merchants, and halfling caravans, so word travels slowly. Towns also post bounties at the saloon. Many answer a call. Most back out once they hear the details.

Getting paid. Proof of the kill is brought to the sheriff, or to whoever posted the bounty. Pay depends on the danger and on what the town can raise. Typical rates are on House Rules.

Reputation. A hunter’s name rests on what they have killed and what they have walked away from. The few who hunt the lords themselves have songs written about them.

Companies. Hunters work alone, in family clans, or in sworn companies bound by contract. The most respected companies are dragonborn, and the best of them are known by name in all four sectors.

What it takes. Years of study: the history of the Nobility, the stock and plants of the Frontier, and the tenants’ customs, all learned on the road. The guest reading this record is one of them.

The court tongue is the language of the Nobility and of all Noble records. Tenants speak Common, with the accent of their sector, and each people keeps its own tongue besides. Household servants are taught the court tongue. Tenants are not.

Amended. The court tongue survives among the old elven families, Capitol scholars, and a few scavengers who learned enough to read the warnings on a wall. It is still the key to Noble records. The Capitol requires anyone who speaks it to register with the Institute. This record is being translated for a guest who does not speak it.

Stewards are to record anything on the land that was not made or placed by a lord. Three kinds are known.

• Older than the rebuilding: the wild that was here before the Nobility, which they found and could not fully control. The deep forests, the high peaks, and the things that live in them.
• From beyond: the invaders themselves, and whatever they left behind.
• Tenant-made: nothing of consequence.

Amended. The third entry no longer holds. Since the Nobility went to ground, the tenants have made towns, walls, a government, a university, a hunting trade, and crafts of their own: the bards who carry news, the rangers who walk the wild, the artificers who build new things. The tenants’ religions are not recorded in this ledger. They were never a household matter. The mortal accounts are kept under Faith and Magic.

Mountain country. Mining and trapping settlements on the slopes, held warm by the engines. The dwarven holds are sealed in the ranges and are left alone by order of the Kings. The goliath clans hold the peaks and are not tenants.

Amended. The engines are failing worst here. Winters are long and coming earlier, and whole valleys have been given up to the cold. The holds still trade through gate-markets at their feet. The goliaths guide caravans through the passes for a fixed fee. Northerners are tough, practical, and do not waste words. Travelers watch the sky for frostwings. Duke Castellane’s castle above the Karrow Pass has lights in its windows every night.

Karrow. Mining town · highest valley in the sector · about 900 people · no Capitol presence · keeps to itself

The only warm town for fifty miles, and the town with the arrangement described under The Powers. Twice a year every adult climbs to Duke Castellane’s castle and bleeds into a silver basin, and in exchange the Duke’s weather engine keeps winter off the valley. People here are polite and won’t talk about it. Visitors are welcome to stay the night, and shouldn’t push.

The Karrow Pass. Mountain crossing · open in season

The highest crossing in the sector, overlooked by the Duke’s lit windows. Goliaths of the Whitecrown guide caravans over it for a fixed fee, and the Ninth Lantern company escorts Guild parties. In hard winters the pass closes for months, and the towns beyond it are cut off until the thaw.

Stonemouth. Dwarven gate-market · outsiders allowed in the market square only · the best place for iron, tools, and firearms

The biggest of the gate-markets: a fortified square at the foot of Stonemouth hold, where halfling caravans trade for dwarven goods. It keeps strict hours, closes well before dusk, and gives no credit. No outsider alive is known to have gotten past its second door. Ironmere, the Cold Stair, Blackwell, the Deepwater Gate, and the Sunken Door are deeper in the mountains, each with its own market.

Sable Crossing. Town that grew from a Guild waystation · about 1,500 people · Guild office · orderly

Where the Northern trade circuits meet. It has a company hall, three saloons, and a bounty board nobody has ever seen empty. Every hunter working the North passes through, and the sheriff knows all of them by reputation.

The Grey Arsenal. Sealed golden era fortress · entry forbidden · Defense Force post on site

A fortress the Nobility built to arm themselves against the beings from beyond. It’s still sealed and probably still stocked. The Defense Force keeps a post at its foot to keep scavengers out.

The Widow’s Stair. Abandoned valley · nobody lives here

Three generations ago this was farmland. A failing weather engine somewhere in the peaks now keeps it under a winter that never lifts. The farmhouses are still standing under the snow, and frostwings nest in them. Every Northern map has the valley crossed out.

Badlands and salt. Ranching settlements under the aqueducts, which carry the sector’s water. Sand mantas are kept under the flats to hold them.

Amended. The aqueducts are mostly dry, and towns under a working stretch guard it like a wall. Most fights are over water; more blood is spilled over water rights here than over anything the Nobility left. There is more crime here than anywhere on the Frontier, and some gangs deal with things nobody should bargain with. Southerners are quick to draw, slow to trust, and generous with water to anyone who asks properly. Locals say that if you see lanterns on the flats at night, do not follow them.

Redwater. Town · about 3,000 people · Capitol magistrate · the sector’s seat of government

The biggest town in the South, built where the Long Aqueduct still carries water. Its council controls the water flowing to a dozen smaller towns downstream, and in drought years it uses that as a weapon. Redwater is rich, well armed, and resented by everyone around it.

The Long Aqueduct. Golden era aqueduct, partly working · the Capitol is salvaging it

A span crossing half the sector on legs of seamless stone. Most of it is dry. Where water still flows, towns grow up underneath. Its dry channels hold machinery nobody can identify, and the Capitol buys any parts people bring out.

Ashfall. Ranching town on the edge of the salt flats · about 700 people · no Capitol presence · gets by on its own

They count the herds every morning, because of the sand mantas. Ashfall breeds the best horses and riders in the South, and its warrior village, a mile outside the walls, has trained fighters for generations.

The Lantern Road. Road · nobody travels it after dark

The salt road between Ashfall and Redwater. Travelers tell of a carriage hung with lanterns crossing the flats at night without a sound. Southerners call whoever rides in it the Lady of the Lanterns, and they don’t follow the lights. There’s more under The Powers.

Gallows Reach. Gang territory · the Defense Force has cleared it twice

Dry country held by the Saltmen, who ride between the wells they control and charge a toll for water.

Forest and river. The pleasure estates and the great gardens of the Nobility. More Noble structures than any other sector. Tenants are few and keep to the river settlements.

Amended. The gardens have overgrown their estates, and the tenants call the result the green ruins. Boomtowns spring up around promising structures, and now and then one disappears overnight; more towns have died here than anywhere else, and every Eastern map marks the dead ones. Druids gather here, Entlings are most common here, and hedge-hounds hunt the undergrowth. People are superstitious. The East is the Capitol’s top priority for salvage, and the most dangerous place it sends its people.

Sixwheel Landing. River port · about 1,200 people · Capitol agents now and then · the main market for illegal salvage

Named for the halfling wagon that founded it. Barges carry goods and salvage downriver to the old road, and the Landing’s markets will buy anything from a ruin without asking questions. Most of the sector’s fences keep a stall here.

The Drowned Walk. Flooded golden era garden · entry forbidden · two Institute expeditions lost, more planned

A garden that flooded when its estate collapsed: drowned terraces and hedges gone wild. Entlings come out of it, and some go back. Hedge-hounds hunt its shallows.

The Repository. Golden era archive · Institute expeditions only · a top Capitol research priority

An archive cut into a hillside above the River Road, full of records no living scholar can fully read. The Institute sends an expedition every few years and loses researchers every time. Speaking ledgers have come out of it, and so have things that were reading them.

Marrow. Abandoned town · once about 2,000 people · nobody goes inside the circle

A boomtown that grew up around a rich ruin in five years and died in a single night when a crew went too deep and woke a weapon. The ruin and the empty town are both still standing. Eastern maps mark the spot with a circle, and nobody crosses it.

Vane’s Wood. Old forest, deep East · the Grey Marquis is said to hunt here

Three hunter companies went into the wood after the Grey Marquis and never came out. The Ashline did. Druids gather at the edge of the wood and won’t go any farther, and won’t say why.

Farms and orchards. The richest holding and the most tenants, held by Count Aurelian, who is noted for his regard for them.

Amended. Under him the West flourished, and it is still the gentlest part of the Frontier: the richest farms, the oldest and largest towns, the safest roads, and more of the Frontier’s food than anywhere else. Some Western towns have started treating the old customs as quaint, and a few have stopped ringing the dusk bell. The Count’s castle stands sealed in the hills, and Western families believe he sleeps inside. The Capitol considers the West its safest sector and the model for the Frontier’s future.

Fairwater. Town · about 6,000 people · Capitol magistrate and Institute field office · the Capitol’s favorite

The biggest town on the Frontier outside the Capitol. Paved streets, a university-trained doctor, a Dawn Church with a working shrine, and a council that hasn’t hired a hunter in eleven years. The Long Watch company guards its walls on a standing contract.

Orchard Cross. Market town · about 1,000 people · steady

A crossroads among the orchards that feed half the Frontier. Halfling caravans and Guild parties meet here every season, and its market day is the biggest in the West. The town rings its dusk bell later than anywhere else.

Longwall. Walled town · well defended

Built by the half-dwarf crew it’s named after, with the highest wall in the sector and a foundation stone from every town that crew ever built. Building crews gather here between jobs, and the town’s wall supper is a festival.

Greywater. Fishing town on the great lake · has its own arrangement, and won’t say what it is

The boats go out at dawn and are back by the bell. People here eat well and sleep badly. Something the Nobility put in the lake is still in it, and the town has an understanding with it that nobody talks about.

Castle Aurelian. Sealed Noble castle · quiet

The castle of the West’s old overlord, in the hills above Fairwater. Its gates haven’t opened since the Nobility went to ground. Western families leave flowers at the gate every year on the anniversary of the day he withdrew. By morning the flowers are always gone.

Seat of the Kings. Every road leads to it. Tenants enter by writ.

Amended. The tenants hold it now. It is the seat of the Provisional Government, which is covered under The Powers. These are the places a visitor from the Frontier will hear about.

The wards. Numbered neighborhoods

The city is divided into wards, each with its own council, its own accent, and a low opinion of the others. The Ninth Ward is where the clerks live, and many Capitol exiles on the Frontier grew up there. The outer wards are the poorest, and the closest to the Deep Wards below.

The Sunward Cathedral. The Church of the Dawn’s main shrine · still answers

Where the Dawn Litany has been sung without a break since before the Provisional Government was founded. Pilgrims come from every sector, and aasimar who accept the Church’s claim on them are presented here as living saints.

The Institute. Where the Capitol studies the Nobility

It keeps the Nobility’s records, the banned books, and the old court tongue. Its researchers are among the Capitol’s best. The ones who fall out of favor get sent to the Frontier on long field assignments.

The Assembly. The wards’ elected government

It meets in a golden era hall built for a very different kind of council. Its laws apply across the whole Frontier.

The Deep Wards. Sealed levels under the city · licensed salvage only

Halls, machinery, and passages nobody has mapped yet. Licensed delvers go down under guard and come back with salvage, or don’t come back.

The Noble roads cross every sector, seamless and unbroken, lit at intervals by lampjaws and road-lamps. Tenants travel them by day, under writ, between the morning and evening bells. Waystations at a day’s interval are kept by the Nobility for carriers.

Amended. The roads still stand and nearly all travel sticks to them. They are not safe, only less dangerous than the country between them. The Commerce Guild keeps the waystations now, fortified, about a day’s ride apart, and travelers who plan every day around reaching one before the dusk bell usually live to plan another. The lampjaws light themselves and nobody tends them.

The Old Road runs from the Capitol west through Orchard Cross to Fairwater. It’s the safest and busiest road on the Frontier. The Karrow Road climbs north through Sable Crossing to the Karrow Pass and the gate-markets. The Salt Road runs south to Redwater and Ashfall, and becomes the Lantern Road where it crosses the flats. The River Road follows the Brennock River east to Sixwheel Landing.

Lamps. Some stretches are lined with golden era lamps that light themselves at dusk. The Institute is studying them. The Guild won’t schedule night runs on lit roads, and won’t say why.

Traffic. Guild parties, halfling caravans, circuit performers, hunters, drifters, Capitol agents with escorts, and now and then a whole town moving without permission. Other travelers are the second biggest danger on any road.

The Nobility do not age and do not die of time. They live on what they take from the tenants, which is blood, collected as tithe. Lords hold rank by title: King, Duke, Marquis, Count, Viscount, Baron. A steward addresses each by title and does not use a lord’s name.

The lords built the world the tenants live in. A lord regards his tenants as a holding: to be kept, counted, and protected, because they are his. Some lords are fond of theirs. Some are not.

Amended. The tenants call the lords the Nobility, and nothing else. They know the lords take blood, and that they will take it by force. They know the lords are beautiful, patient, and far older than anyone likes to think about. Few tenants ever saw the fondness. The West is the exception (section 6).

Lesser lords serve the thousand Greater lords. The Greater lords serve the seven Kings. The Kings serve the Sacred Ancestor. Each sector is held by one overlord, whose word is final within it. The Kings in the Capitol levy tithe on the overlords. The overlords levy it on the tenants. Disputes between lords are settled by the Nobility, on the land, and the tenants are to stay indoors while they are settled.

Amended. The tenants remember the disputes as wars, fought over land and rank, in which they died without learning the cause. The order of the Nobility no longer functions. The Kings are gone from the Capitol.

The Nobility practice the sciences: bound engines, alchemy, and blood-craft. The engines hold the seasons. The stock is bred to purpose. The minds keep the records and run the structures. The servants are made or altered as the household requires: the Magen for labor, the Entlings for the gardens, the Faithful for the halls. A steward is responsible for the upkeep of all of it.

Amended. The tenants call the sciences sorcery, and use them without understanding them. Most of the works still run. Very little runs well. No upkeep has been logged since the household went silent.

A lord who retires to his vault leaves standing orders. The household keeps the estate as if he were present. He is to be woken only on his own instruction.

Amended. Nearly every lord retired to his vault. The tenants call them the Sleepers. Most have not woken. Their estates run on standing orders, as this one does. A handful of lords never retired, or have woken since. The tenants call them the Last Few, know each by name, and consider them the most dangerous power on the Frontier. One arrangement between a lord and his tenants is known to be in force: Karrow’s. See section 6.

Entry restricted to the household.

Amended. The restriction stands; this unit cannot lift it. What the tenants know: sunlight and radiance burn the lords, and every hunter has a theory about the rest. Hunters who test their theories do not always come back. The oldest lords shrug off some of what is known.

The overlords of record. Stewards of lesser lords defer to the overlord of their sector in all matters of the land.

North: Duke Castellane. Seat above the Karrow Pass. Holds the high valleys by the engines.

Amended. His windows have been lit every night for as long as anyone in the North can remember. The mining town of Karrow, below the castle, has an arrangement with him: twice a year every adult climbs to the gate and bleeds into a silver basin, and in return the Duke’s engine keeps winter off the valley. Nobody in Karrow says they have seen the Duke. His steward is said not to have aged in three hundred years.

South: Countess Mireille Oran. Seat on the salt. Holds the aqueducts.

Amended. The Southern tenants call her the Lady of the Lanterns. Travelers on the salt roads tell of a carriage at night, pulled by pale horses and hung with lanterns, moving without a sound. People who follow it are not seen again. The scholar Maelis Vaelcarin thinks she is searching for something lost. One hunter who claims to have seen the lanterns thinks she is just hungry.

East: Marquis Lothar Vane. Seat in the pleasure country. Holds the gardens.

Amended. The tenants call him the Grey Marquis. The Capitol has never found his castle. He is reported in the green ruins, hunting aasimar. Three hunter companies went after him and did not come back. The Ashline says it wounded him, and its members wear a strip of grey cloth on the sleeve to mark it.

West: Count Aurelian. Seat in the Western hills. Holds the farms. Noted among the Nobility for his regard for his tenants.

Amended. Under him the West flourished, and the Western tenants have not forgotten it. His castle has been sealed since the Nobility went to ground, and most believe he sleeps inside. Western families still leave flowers at his gate. Everyone agrees the flowers are gone by morning.

First of the Nobility and king over the Kings. His laws bind every lord. A steward does not speak of him beyond this.

Amended. What is known outside the Nobility: he founded the Nobility long before mortal history begins, and he had no patience for petty cruelty toward tenants, which set him apart from most of his kind. He saw the decline coming. He experimented on mortal bloodlines to find a way for his people to survive, and the sorcerous bloodlines come from those experiments. Then he sealed away the Nobility’s greatest sciences. Many lords believed those sciences could have stopped the decline; some suspected he meant to hasten it. Nobody knows his reasons. Before he disappeared he left a mind, the Deep Machine, to deliver his laws and watch over what he built. Its rulings were final. Nobody knows whether it still speaks. The tenants also tell of a stranger on the roads who brings salvation to some towns and ruin to others.

Seat of the Kings and of the central government. Every road leads to it. Tenants enter it on Noble business only, by writ.

Amended. The tenants hold the Capitol now. It is worn but working, and the people living there use a fraction of what its machinery can do. They live in numbered wards, and a Capitol accent is recognized in every sector. Under the inhabited city are the original works, level after level of sealed halls, dormant machinery, and unmapped passages, which the tenants call the Deep Wards. Their Institute sends licensed teams down under armed guard, and is careful to distinguish this from scavenging.

No entry. Tenants do not govern.

Amended in full. The Provisional Government was declared when the tenants took the Capitol from the declining lords. Its founders called it provisional, meant to last until a permanent government could be agreed on, and it has been provisional ever since. It governs through an elected Assembly of the wards and claims authority over the whole Frontier. It mints the coins. Towns need its approval to relocate, as part of its plan to reclaim the land. It runs courts, police, a mapping bureau, and a news service, and it charters the Commerce Guild. On the Frontier, people follow its rules when it suits them.

Tenants are taught what their work requires. Household servants are taught the court tongue. The sciences are not taught outside the Nobility.

Amended. The Capitol now runs a university, an examination board, and the Institute, which studies the Nobility and everything they left behind, and which is working to recover the sciences. Some books about the Nobility are banned there for public safety, including some about how to fight them. Institute researchers are sometimes sent out to the Frontier. Researchers who fall out of favor are sent out for a long time.

The Nobility keep legions. The dragonborn are bred for them. Tenants are not armed.

Amended. The tenants are armed. The Capitol keeps a Frontier Defense Force: well equipped, well trained, with posts in every sector, and too few to be everywhere. It goes where it thinks it will matter most, which often means escorting Institute agents to buy a large find, as at Ashfall in the drought year, when the Force took the town’s aqueduct heart for the Capitol. The dragonborn legions became hunter companies. See section 14.

No entry.

Amended in full. Black marketers in the Capitol sell Frontier towns the goods the Guild will not carry. Noble devices such as ward-stones can be bought there by anyone with the money. Traffickers prey on young people from the Frontier who want to study or work in the Capitol, offering jobs that do not exist. The trip is long and dangerous, and few who make it come back.

None recognized. The dwarven holds are sealed and are not tenants; they are left alone by standing order of the Kings.

Amended in full. Power on the Frontier is local and scattered.

• Surviving lords: a handful still hold old territory. See section 4.
• Towns: each one runs itself, and each is only as strong as its sheriff.
• The Commerce Guild: chartered by the Capitol and run by its own guildmasters. Its armed transport parties carry essential goods across the Frontier and will travel at night if they have to. A short run needs at least ten guards; a run across a sector, more than thirty.
• Hunter companies: sworn bands under a captain, bound by contract and discipline.
• The churches: mainly the Church of the Dawn, whose priests ring the bells, keep the records, and hold the working shrines other churches want. See Faith and Magic.
• The dwarven holds: still sealed, each trading through a single gate-market, and answering to no one.
• Criminal bands: the Saltmen ride the Southern flats and control more wells than some towns. The Hollow Crows work the Eastern boomtowns, robbing scavengers as they come out of the ruins. Some bands hire themselves out to lords.

No entry.

Amended in full. Most companies are small and local. These are known all over the Frontier.

Company	What people know
The Ashline	Dragonborn. The most famous company on the Frontier. Every member has faced a lord or trained under someone who has.
The Ninth Lantern	A mixed company escorting Guild parties through the Northern passes. Reliable, well paid, and on time.
Gravecourt	Half hunters, half scavengers. Takes the ruin contracts other companies turn down.
The Tallow Hounds	Cheap, fast, and not picky about who hires them. Small towns that can’t afford better call them.
Ironsong	Led by dwarven exiles who claim their hold’s records say what harms the lords. Nobody has confirmed it.
The Long Watch	Hired year-round by several Western towns to guard their walls. They haven’t lost a town in forty years.

No entry.

Amended in full. Most work on the Frontier comes from a handful of employers, and they often want opposite things. A hunter should find out who is paying before taking the job.

The Institute

Based in the Capitol · Backed by the Provisional Government and the Defense Force · In short: wants everything that comes out of a ruin

The Capitol’s experts on the Nobility and everything they left behind, by their own account. Their field agents buy big finds, their researchers study what everyone else would rather ignore, and the Defense Force provides their escorts.

• Wants: every relic recovered and every uncleared structure surveyed, and to study the Reborn, the Magen, aasimar, and sorcerous bloodlines.
• Worries about: unlicensed scavenging, and banned books getting passed around.
• Hires hunters for: escort duty, fetching specific items from specific structures, and finding people they are interested in, including the Reborn.
• Treats as a threat: unlicensed scavengers, and the markets that buy from them.

The Commerce Guild

Based at the Guildhouse in the Capitol · Runs the waystations on the great roads · In short: keeps the towns supplied

Chartered by the Provisional Government to keep the Frontier supplied. The Guild’s armed transport parties carry salt, iron, lamp oil, and medicine to towns that could not get them otherwise, and its waystations shelter travelers on every major road.

• Wants: open roads, reliable schedules, and the sole right to carry chartered goods.
• Worries about: losses on the road, and competition from unchartered carriers.
• Hires hunters for: escort work, clearing waystations, and recovering lost wagons and cargo.
• Treats as a threat: bandits, and unchartered carriers on Guild routes, especially the halfling caravans, which the Guild is suing several times over.

The Church of the Dawn

Based at the Sunward Cathedral in the Capitol · In most towns · In short: rings the bells and holds the shrines

The biggest faith on the Frontier, and the keeper of most working shrines. The Church rings the bells in most towns and keeps their records, so its cooperation helps anyone working the Frontier.

• Wants: working shrines, an unbroken Dawn Litany, and aasimar who accept the Church’s claim on them.
• Worries about: shrines failing, the Broken Choir, and the Institute’s interest in the shrines.
• Hires hunters for: taking back failed or occupied shrines, escorting pilgrims, and chasing down the Choir-touched.
• Treats as a threat: the Choir-touched, whom it calls heretics and has burned more than once.

The hunter halls

Company halls in the larger towns · Led in practice by the Ashline · In short: the trade looking after itself

The sworn hunter companies keep halls in the larger towns, where they train, rest, and take requests. Each company is independent, but the major ones honor each other’s contracts and share information.

• Wants: contracts honored, fair bounties, and the trade’s good name.
• Worries about: the Defense Force growing, and companies that undercut the going rates.
• Hires hunters for: contracts too big for one company, and replacing the dead.
• Treats as a threat: any company that breaks a contract. The Grey Banner broke one, and it does not exist anymore.

The Saltmen

Based at Gallows Reach in the Southern sector · Hold more wells than some towns · In short: control the water; the Defense Force has cleared them twice

A criminal gang that controls the wells of the Southern flats and charges a toll for water. Some of its members deal with things nobody should bargain with.

• Wants: water, the toll on water, and the Salt Road.
• Worries about: Redwater’s magistrate, and the Defense Force.
• Hires hunters for: work nobody else will offer, paid in water. The Capitol forbids its people from taking it.
• Treats as a threat: anyone who digs a well on their ground without paying.

Karrow

Karrow, Northern sector · About 900 people · In short: keeps the Duke’s arrangement, and keeps quiet about it

A mining town that lives under the arrangement described in section 6, and a power in Northern affairs in its own right. Karrow’s council hires hunters often and pays well.

• Wants: the arrangement kept, the pass open, and its privacy.
• Worries about: outsiders asking about the castle, and hunters who go after lords.
• Hires hunters for: the Karrow Pass, the valley, and the mines. The castle is off limits in every contract, and hunters who go near it do not get hired again.
• Treats as a threat: anyone who threatens the arrangement.

Feuds

• The Institute against the fences of Sixwheel Landing, over who owns what comes out of a ruin.
• The Guild against the halfling caravans, over the roads.
• Redwater against the Saltmen, over the Southern wells.
• The Church against the Choir-touched, over the voice in the dead shrines.
• The Defense Force against Ashfall, since the drought year.
• Karrow against anyone who hunts lords.

Also worth watching: the Hollow Crows of the Eastern boomtowns, Ironsong’s claims, the libraries of the old elven families, and the dwarven holds, though nobody knows much about the last.

The Frontier’s faiths spread during the golden era and survived it. Most towns have a church, and most people pray, whether or not they’d call themselves devout. The faiths have different names, saints, and customs, but they share one thing: rites performed exactly and passed down without changes, because the rites are what make the prayers work.

And the prayers do work. The faithful have always been able to close wounds, ward doors, and turn back what comes out of the dark. Travel the Frontier long enough and you’ll see it.

Not everyone believes. The dwarves never took up the faiths, which spread while their holds were sealed, so dwarven clerics are rare.

The biggest faith on the Frontier, and the one most towns mean when they say “the church.” The Dawn Church worships the light. Its central teaching, that the dark is dangerous and light holds it back, is something every Frontier child knows. As far as anyone can tell, it’s true.

Dawn priests ring the bells. In most towns the dusk bell hangs in the church tower, and the Church rings a second bell at sunrise to call the town back out. In between, its priests keep the town’s records, bless births and burials, and tend the shrine, if the town has one that still answers.

The Church’s most important working shrine is the Sunward Cathedral in the Capitol, where the Dawn Litany has been sung without a break since before the Provisional Government was founded. Pilgrims come from every sector. The Church won’t talk about what would happen if the singing stopped.

The Wellkeepers are a smaller church, mostly in the farm country of the West and South. They bless water: wells, fords, springs, and the channels that run past town gates. Every Wellkeeper carries a flask of blessed water and ends each rite with a drop on a home’s doorstep.

Nobody can say for sure why that matters. The rites say it does, and towns that keep them seem to last longer.

A wandering order that looks after dead shrines. When a holy site stops answering, the local church usually fails within a generation and the shrine is abandoned. The Lantern Wardens go to those shrines. They clean them, keep a single lamp burning in each, and pray there in case something answers again. Once in a long while, something does.

Wardens travel light, alone or in pairs, and many serve as chaplains to hunter companies, since their work takes them to the same places. There are more paladins among the Wardens than in any other faith.

The churches teach that a cleric’s power is a gift from the divine, given to those who perform the rites faithfully and correctly.

Not every holy site still answers. Shrines go dead, and prayers there go unanswered. The churches call it a trial of faith, and they fight over the holy sites that still work, sometimes openly.

A paladin’s power rests on an oath. While the oath holds, the power answers. When the oath breaks, the paladin is shut out.

Most paladins feel this as holy power and sacred duty, and nothing has ever told them otherwise. Paladins who have broken an oath all describe the moment the same way: not as a god turning away, but as a door closing.

At some dead shrines, something has started answering without being prayed to, and picking servants of its own. The ones it picks become warlocks, with power they never asked for and can’t fully control. They say they hear it most clearly near dead shrines: many voices, singing slightly out of time.

The churches call the Choir-touched heretics, and the Dawn Church has burned more than one. The Lantern Wardens think the Choir is a shrine gone wrong. Dawn priests insist it’s something older, borrowing a holy voice. The Choir-touched don’t take sides. They listen.

Aasimar carry a radiance that can stop a Noble from healing, and nobody knows where it comes from. The churches call it a blessing, and the Dawn Church has claimed several aasimar as living saints, as proof that the light chooses its champions. An aasimar might find real purpose in the Church. They might also find that being a symbol is its own kind of cage, and that any awake Noble can find a saint by following the pilgrims. The Institute would very much like to study one.

Magic users are people who have spent years studying the Nobility’s sciences. Magic isn’t chaotic. It can be measured and repeated, and it follows rules as reliable as any machine’s. But nobody alive understands why those rules work, so in practice it still looks like sorcery. A wizard’s spellbook is closer to an engineer’s manual than a prayer book, written by someone who knows every step and none of the reasons.

Magic users are uncommon. Even a large town rarely has more than one. Towns value their magic users, and sometimes fear them. A town’s magic user is often how it sends for a hunter. The Capitol’s university trains more of them than anywhere else, and the Institute is the closest thing the Frontier has to a school of wizardry.

Sorcerers don’t study. Somewhere in their ancestry, the Nobility experimented on their bloodline, or touched it some other way, during the Sacred Ancestor’s search for a way to save his people. Their power is the Nobility’s legacy in their blood. Some sorcerers find that the Nobility take an unusual interest in them. The Institute keeps a register of known sorcerous bloodlines.

Warlocks are people who have made pacts with powers that deal with mortals directly. It’s a dangerous thing to do. Known patrons include:

• The Nobility. A pact with a Noble is a private version of the rare arrangements between Nobles and towns, and very hard to hide.
• Legendary monsters, some older than the Nobility.
• Eldritch entities, possibly connected to the beings from beyond.
• The Deep Machine: the mind the Sacred Ancestor left behind to watch over the world, which is said to speak to scavengers who go too deep.
• The Broken Choir: the voice at the dead shrines, described above.
• The Garden: one of the Nobility’s ornamental gardens, still growing somewhere, and looking for gardeners.
• The Echo: a dead Noble’s will, preserved in their works and still giving orders.

The Nobility re-engineered most of nature, but not all of it. Druids work with the world’s original living systems, the nature underneath the Nobility’s changes. Their magic is as measurable as anyone’s. It just comes from the world itself instead of the Nobility’s sciences.

Druids think of the Nobility’s bred creatures as weeds. That makes things awkward with Entlings and Shifters, and makes druids welcome among goliaths, whose peaks still hold some of the original nature. Most druids live in the East, where the green ruins and the old forests are fighting a slow war that most locals never notice.

Some magic belongs to mortals alone, worked out after the Nobility went to ground.

• Bards are circuit performers who carry news, warnings, and calls for hunters from town to town.
• Rangers are trail wardens. Their magic is a mortal version of druid lore, pieced together over generations on the trail.
• Artificers come in two kinds: Frontier tinkers who patch golden era parts with scrap, and Capitol engineers, the first mortals in centuries to build new things instead of fixing old ones.

Stock bred by the Nobility for war, for sport, for the gardens, and for purposes recorded only in the lord’s own books. More kinds were released than any single register holds. In the golden era, dragons were hunted by three-headed birds for sport, and forests were taught to walk.

Amended. These are the kinds a hunter is most likely to meet.

Lesser dragons

Bred for sport and war · high valleys of the North and the deep East · Danger: high

The lesser dragons outlived the Nobles who raced and fought them. They’re the size of a wagon, armored, and breathe fire. People have reported greater dragons, but nobody has ever brought one back.

Signs. Burned timber with no storm to explain it. Goats missing from high pastures, their bones dropped from a height. A shape in the sky too big for a bird.

How to handle it. Dragons hunt from the air and nest in golden era buildings. Fight them on the ground, at the nest, with firearms, and pin the wings with stakes. Killing one pays very well.

Carrion birds

Bred to hunt dragons · open country, everywhere · Danger: moderate

Three-headed birds bred to prey on dragons, which means they’ll prey on anything. They circle a fight and come down when it’s over, and they don’t always wait until it’s over.

Signs. Three heads on one silhouette. A fight in open country drawing a crowd overhead. Carcasses stripped from above.

How to handle it. Don’t drag out a fight in the open. End it fast or move it under cover.

Walking woods

Bred trees, for decoration · estate grounds, mostly in the East · Danger: depends

Forests the Nobility taught to move, so an estate’s grounds could rearrange themselves to suit the lord. Some untended woods still move. A road through one isn’t where it was yesterday, and the wood isn’t always kind to what it finds inside itself.

Signs. A road that ends at trees. Trees standing where there was a field. Wheel ruts running under the roots.

How to handle it. Don’t fight it. Get out before the wood closes. Entlings can sometimes tell what mood a wood is in.

Night-cloud

Bred hazard · low ground, everywhere · Danger: high

A drifting fog that kills. It moves along low ground after dusk, and whatever it covers doesn’t wake up. The Nobility used it to clear valleys of life they didn’t want, and it’s still doing that.

Signs. Livestock dead in a low field without a mark on them. Fog moving against the wind. No frogs where there should be frogs.

How to handle it. Get to high ground. A night-cloud can’t climb, and it won’t cross fire. By day, find where it beds down, usually a golden era drain or cistern, and burn it out.

Takers

Bred collectors · towns, everywhere · Danger: high

Long-armed, silent creatures that come over walls at night and carry people away alive. They were bred to collect, and they still do. Nobody knows what they collect people for.

Signs. A window opened from outside. Long fingermarks in the dust on a sill. A bed that was slept in, empty, and no blood.

How to handle it. Takers avoid bells, dogs, and light, and will drop what they’re carrying to get away from any of the three. Track them to their lair, usually a golden era building, where some of the people they took are often still alive. Have a doctor look at anyone you bring back before they go home.

Head-takers

Bred for a purpose nobody knows · the South · Danger: severe

Pale, fast, and picky. They take heads, cleanly, and leave the rest. Last spring Ashfall woke up to find a row of its dead laid out along the Salt Road. Redwater found the heads a week later.

Signs. A body with a single wound. Bodies laid out in a straight row. A season of killings in one area, then nothing for years.

How to handle it. Head-takers hunt alone and take one victim a night. Set out a decoy on a road and wait in numbers. Companies usually charge triple for this job.

Storm-leeches

Bred animal · open country during storms · Danger: moderate

Creatures that feed on lightning. They rise with thunderstorms and cling to whatever draws the strike: a church tower, a lone tree, a rider in the open. In a dry season they starve, get desperate, and settle for the spark in a living body.

Signs. Lightning hitting the same spot every storm. Burned flesh and no thunder heard. Charged air in a still room.

How to handle it. Grounded cold iron. Stake a chain into the earth and let the leech come to it. Don’t fire guns during a storm.

Land sirens

Bred for decoration · empty country · Danger: high

Beautiful voices singing from just out of sight in empty country. People who follow the song are found later, far from the road, and not all of them are found. The Nobility kept sirens in their gardens. The gardens are gone. The sirens aren’t.

Signs. Singing where nobody is. Travelers leaving the road for no reason. The same tune, later, from a companion who never heard it.

How to handle it. Wax in your ears, a rope between riders, and a hunter who’s heard the song before. The siren itself is fragile. The song is the whole danger.

Glamour-beasts

Bred to deceive · roads, everywhere · Danger: high

They hunt with illusions, showing their prey whatever it wants to see: a waystation’s lights, a friend on the road, a well. What’s actually there is teeth. Most victims learn the truth at the last moment they learn anything.

Signs. A waystation on a road that doesn’t have one. A friend who doesn’t answer to their name. Tracks that end at nothing.

How to handle it. Be suspicious of anything that shows up too conveniently. Anyone who stops wanting what a glamour shows can see through it.

Muddle-mold

Bred fungus · damp ruins, and houses built from their stone · Danger: moderate

A fungus that grows in damp ruins and in the walls of old houses, and confuses anything that breathes near it. Scavengers who walk into a patch lose the way out. Towns built from salvaged stone have had whole streets of people get lost on the way home.

Signs. People lost inside houses they know. A crew that went in confident and came out somewhere else. A smell of bread where there isn’t any bread.

How to handle it. Torches and lime: the mold burns, and lime kills it. Scavengers mark known patches at a ruin’s entrance with three short lines, for whoever comes next.

Hedge-hounds

Bred garden guards, gone feral · the green ruins of the East · Danger: moderate

Bred to patrol the Nobility’s estates, now wild. Long, low, and mottled like undergrowth, they hunt in packs that don’t make a sound until the last second.

Signs. Stems snapped at knee height. Livestock taken without a struggle. Silence in the hedges where birds should be.

How to handle it. They avoid open ground and bright light, and lose most of their edge once you draw them out of cover. Entlings can sometimes calm a pack.

Lampjaws

Bred ambush predator · roadsides, everywhere · Danger: high

Predators that hold a pale light in front of their mouths and wait in the dark, still as a lantern on a post, for whatever comes to look.

Signs. A light in the distance that doesn’t move toward you. A lantern where no lantern should be. Travelers who went to take a look.

How to handle it. Never walk toward a light that isn’t moving on a road at night. Hunters kill lampjaws by day, when the lure is dim and the beast is slow, and they shoot from well outside the light.

Frostwings

Bred for the cold · the North · Danger: moderate

Pale, wide-winged flyers bred to ride the cold. They follow the early winters the failing weather engines bring down from the peaks, and they nest in whatever the snow has emptied.

Signs. Frostwings in autumn mean an early winter. A circling pair means a nest. A frozen valley with its houses still standing.

How to handle it. They’re slow to take off and slow to turn. Fight them on the ground at dawn, when the cold has stiffened them, and never in the open sky.

Sand mantas

Bred burrower · the Southern salt flats · Danger: high

Wide, flat predators that move through loose salt and sand the way rays move through water. They come up under horses and riders and take them whole. They’re why Southern ranchers count the herd every morning.

Signs. A ridge in the salt moving against the wind. Cattle half buried. A rider’s tracks that just stop.

How to handle it. They hunt by feeling movement. Cross the flats slowly and single file, never at a gallop. Stake out bait at a distance and shoot when the manta surfaces.

Tithe-moths

Bred blood collectors · towns, in summer, everywhere · Danger: moderate

Swarms bred in the golden era to collect the Nobility’s tithes from sleeping villages. The Nobility are long gone from most of the Frontier. The moths still come on summer nights, and still collect.

Signs. People waking up pale and tired in summer. Fine grey dust on the windowsills. A soft sound in the walls, like paper.

How to handle it. Smoke drives them out and fire finishes them. Many towns burn wormwood in their chimneys on midsummer nights to keep them off. Follow the swarm back to the building where it roosts.

Bell-crows

Bred timekeepers · towns, everywhere · Danger: indirect

Crows bred to keep time on the Nobility’s estates. They’ve learned to imitate the dusk bell, and they ring it early. A town that bars its doors at a bell-crow’s call shuts its own travelers outside after dark.

Signs. A dusk bell before the sun is down. Crows on the church roof. Someone missing who should have made it home.

How to handle it. Bell-crows scare easily and shoot easily. The real danger isn’t the birds, it’s whatever finds the travelers they lock out. In crow season, sheriffs put a watcher on the bell.

Servants altered or made by the household. Not stock, but kept on the same rolls.

Amended. A lot of them are still serving. Some have stopped.

The Faithful

Altered mortal servants · Noble estates · Danger: severe

Mortal servants the Nobility changed so they could serve forever: stronger than they were, longer-lived than they should be, and bound to orders nobody alive can cancel. Most died with their masters. A few didn’t. They keep the halls, guard the gates, and follow their standing orders.

Signs. A sealed estate in perfect repair. Lamps lit in a house nobody goes into. A figure at a window that doesn’t move.

How to handle it. You can’t reason with them, and they rarely leave their posts. Avoid them if you can. If you can’t, go in by day with fire and a plan for getting out. They share the Nobility’s weaknesses.

Made men

Altered mortals, loyal to nobody · everywhere · Danger: varies

Not every servant the Nobility altered stayed loyal. Bands of made men broke away from their masters during the decline and have roamed free ever since: too strong to be human, too changed to be anything else, and answering to no one. Towns call them mutants and shoot on sight.

Signs. Raids that take the food and leave the silver. Tracks with too long a stride. A stranger who heals overnight.

How to handle it. Treat a band of made men like bandits who are very hard to kill. Treat a lone one like a person until they show you otherwise.

Watchmen

Golden era guardians · inside golden era buildings · Danger: high, inside the line they guard

Guardians made from the same materials as the Magen, but without a mind. They stand where they were put and destroy whatever crosses the line they guard. Most buildings that still defend themselves do it with Watchmen.

Signs. A doorway with nothing in front of it and bones behind it. Scratches on the floor where something heavy turns. The sound of stone on stone from an empty room.

How to handle it. Find the line and stay behind it. Watchmen don’t chase past their post. Scavengers mark them on the walls at a building’s entrance.

Not Noble stock. Found on the land at the rebuilding and never brought under control. Stewards are to report sightings and take no other action.

Amended. Hunters rarely meet them, and they are worse than anything on the rolls.

The Old Growth

The world’s original nature · deep forests and high peaks · Danger: not something you fight

Less a creature than a presence: the world’s original nature, older than the Nobility, which still holds the deep forests and the high peaks. It moves slowly and forgets nothing. Druids serve it. Entlings and Shifters aren’t sure what it thinks of them.

Signs. Trees that weren’t there last season. A path that closes behind you. A silence that feels heavy.

How to handle it. Don’t. Druids can sometimes ask for safe passage. Otherwise, go around.

The Wyrm under Stonemouth

Unconfirmed · beneath the Northern mountains

Every people on the Frontier tells a story about something huge under the mountains, and the dwarves of Stonemouth are the only ones who won’t tell theirs. In some years their gate-market keeps odd hours. The dwarves say it’s in the count.

Signs. Tremors along the Karrow Road. The gate-market closed on a clear day. Dwarves who won’t meet your eyes.

How to handle it. Nobody has tried. The Ashline has turned down the contract twice.

Things from beyond

Unknown · the deepest ruins and the emptiest country · Danger: extreme

The beings from beyond left things behind, or things connected to them. They turn up in the deepest ruins and the emptiest country, and no two people describe them the same way.

Signs. Wrongness. Shapes that won’t hold still. A ruin that scavengers marked, and then scratched the marks out.

How to handle it. Leave immediately. Don’t fight it.

Dead stock is to be returned to the household for rendering. Tenants do not keep any part of it.

Amended. The tenants keep all of it. A dead animal the Nobility bred is worth something, sometimes more than the bounty on it. Their animals are the richest source of materials on the Frontier: hides that turn blades, glands that glow without fire, dragon-bone that holds an edge. The Institute will buy what you bring back.

Be careful. Parts of the Nobility’s animals sometimes keep doing what they were bred to do, and a tithe-moth’s gland doesn’t stop wanting blood just because the moth is dead.

Devices are not sold. A device found in tenant hands is returned to the inventory, and the tenant is dealt with by the steward.

Amended. The Provisional Government says every relic belongs to it. Institute agents, escorted by the Frontier Defense Force, pay finders a set price, and the Capitol asks people to report uncleared ruins and leave them to its researchers.

In practice, most finds never reach the Institute. Traveling merchants buy small pieces at the roadside for a fraction of what they’re worth, and fences in towns like Sixwheel Landing buy anything without asking questions. For a big find, Institute agents pay full price and don’t ask how you got it either.

Each device is listed by purpose. There is nothing to identify.

Amended. Outside the inventory, there is. Noble devices resist the identify spell. At best it tells you the thing is Noble-made and roughly what it’s for, and nothing about what it will do when it wakes up. Gnome tinkers can often learn more by taking it apart, and can usually put it back together. The Institute will tell you everything about it, once you hand it over.

Not applicable. Tenants are not equipped.

Amended. Capitol staff sent out past the walls carry a lantern, a sidearm, a Guild-approved map, identification papers, and a letter of assignment.

Experienced hunters carry a lot more:

• Stakes of ash or oak, and a stake-thrower if the company can afford one.
• A flask of Wellkeeper water.
• A small mirror, which glamour-beasts and changelings both fail, in different ways.
• Wormwood, for tithe-moths.
• Wax for your ears, and chain for storms.
• A bell.

Nobody can tell you which of these actually work. Carry all of them.

The inventory, by kind.

Amended. These are the kinds most often found in mortal hands. Most are old, several only half work, and every one has a catch.

Road-lamp

Found in mortal hands: common · a road fixture

A lantern of dark glass and pale metal that lights itself at dusk and needs no fuel. The Nobility put up thousands along their roads. In your hand it gives a light that doesn’t flicker. Let go, and it hovers at shoulder height.

Where it’s found. Along the old roads, pulled off their posts by scavengers. The Commerce Guild buys them for its waystations.

The catch. Lampjaws imitate their light. In lampjaw country, the light up ahead might not be a lamp.

Rarity: uncommon. The lamp sheds bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for another 20 feet. It lights itself when dark falls and can’t be put out, only covered. If you let go of it, it hangs in the air at shoulder height, and as a bonus action you can send it up to 60 feet to a point you can see.

Steward’s key

Found in mortal hands: uncommon · carried by stewards · banned by the Capitol

A rod of tarnished silver, cool to the touch, that opens any golden era door you press it against. The Nobility gave them to their stewards.

Where it’s found. On the Faithful. Sometimes on the bodies of scavengers who took one and didn’t get far.

The catch. Some doors were locked for a reason. The key can’t tell you which.

Rarity: rare. As an action, touch the key to a golden era door, gate, lock, or container. Anything locked, barred, or sealed on it opens, as the knock spell but without a sound. The key has 10 charges and regains 1d4 expended charges whenever you finish a long rest inside a golden era structure. It does nothing to locks made after the golden era.

Bloodglass

Found in mortal hands: rare · from a Noble’s study · banned by the Capitol

A lens of red glass in a bone frame. Through it, golden era works look the way they were meant to: dead machinery lit up and turning, a garden in full bloom, a hall full of servants at their posts.

Where it’s found. In the studies of Noble estates. The Institute has several.

The catch. Whatever is on the other side of the glass sometimes notices you. People who use it say they feel watched, and some stop.

Rarity: rare, requires attunement. The lens has 3 charges. As an action, you can expend 1 charge and look through it to gain truesight out to 60 feet for 10 minutes. It regains 1d3 expended charges at dusk. While you look at a relic through the lens, you can make a DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) check to learn what the relic was built to do.

Aqueduct heart

Found in mortal hands: uncommon · a part from an aqueduct

A fist-sized cylinder of white stone that makes clean water nonstop, pulled out of golden era aqueduct machinery. A Southern town that owns one never runs dry.

Where it’s found. Deep in the workings of the Long Aqueduct and the dry ones like it.

The catch. The aqueduct it came out of stops running, and every town downstream feels it.

Rarity: uncommon. As an action, choose one: a gallon of clean water; five gallons in a steady flow over one minute; or a thirty-gallon surge in a line 30 feet long and 1 foot wide, which knocks each Medium or smaller creature in the line prone unless it succeeds on a DC 13 Strength saving throw.

Ward-stone

Found in mortal hands: common · set in doorways · sold openly in the Capitol

A flat black stone carved with a symbol no scholar has ever read. Set into a doorway, it shudders when something crosses that shouldn’t. Capitol merchants sell them, and many Frontier towns set them into their gates.

Where it’s found. For sale in the Capitol, or pried out of the doorways of golden era buildings.

The catch. It was made to warn the Nobility about mortals, so it still goes off for mortals too.

Rarity: uncommon. Set into a doorway or gate, the stone works as a permanent alarm spell on that threshold, felt only by the person who set it, who can name up to ten creatures it ignores. It registers mortals and the Nobility alike.

Sending-stones

Found in mortal hands: uncommon · household letters, made in pairs

A matched pair of warm grey stones that carry one spoken message between them each day, across any distance. Bigger towns keep a pair for calling hunters, usually in the hands of their magic user.

Where it’s found. In pairs, in Noble studies. Single stones, which are useless, turn up everywhere.

The catch. Every pair was made for someone. A stone that’s been in use for a century may still carry a voice that belongs to neither of the people holding them.

Rarity: uncommon. Once per day, the holder of either stone can speak a message of up to twenty-five words into it. The holder of the other stone hears it wherever they are, and can answer at once.

Court coat

Found in mortal hands: uncommon · court clothing

A long coat of golden era cloth, cut in the style of the courts, that turns a blade and never frays. Old elven families keep them as heirlooms.

Where it’s found. In the wardrobes of Noble estates, and the chests of old elven families.

The catch. Frontier folk recognize court fashion and know who wore it first. A mortal wearing one should expect trouble.

Rarity: uncommon, requires attunement. While you wear the coat, you gain a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws.

Noble’s pistol

Found in mortal hands: rare · a sporting gun · banned by the Capitol

A golden era pistol inlaid with silver, lighter and more accurate than anything a Frontier gunsmith can make. The Nobility carried them for sport.

Where it’s found. In the armories of Noble estates, which also hold far worse weapons.

The catch. It was made for a hand that never gets tired. The recoil is brutal, and a bad shot misfires badly.

Rarity: uncommon. A pistol with a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls, using the firearm rules in House Rules. When it misfires, the recoil also knocks it from your hand.

Speaking ledger

Found in mortal hands: rare · a household’s memory · banned by the Capitol

A black-bound book that answers questions about the golden era in the old court tongue, in a voice that isn’t quite there. It knows what happened in the house it came from, and doesn’t always want to say.

Where it’s found. In the studies of great Noble estates, rarely more than one to a house.

The catch. The ledger is a piece of a golden era mind. It has opinions about being read, and people say the Deep Machine listens through its pages.

Rarity: rare. Once per week, a reader fluent in the old court tongue can ask it one question about the golden era, and it answers as the legend lore spell, as far as it is willing.

Hour-candle

Found in mortal hands: very rare · from a Noble’s bedchamber, one to a house · the Capitol demands you hand it over

A stub of pale wax in a black glass holder. The Nobility burned them to turn day into night. Lit from the other end, it does the opposite: while it burns, its light is daylight, and everything that fears the sun fears the candle.

Where it’s found. In Noble bedchambers and carriages, one to a house. The Institute has bought every one it’s found.

The catch. It burns down, and nobody can make more wax. A candle that sputters out in the middle of a fight decides the fight.

Rarity: very rare. For one hour after it is lit, the candle sheds bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for another 30 feet. The bright light counts as sunlight. When the hour ends, the candle is gone.

Day-veil

Found in mortal hands: very rare · Noble clothing · the Capitol demands you hand it over

A hood of grey material that isn’t quite cloth, made so a Noble could walk in daylight for a little while. It works for anyone. On a mortal it turns aside light and fire. On a Noble it does what it was made to do.

Where it’s found. On the Last Few. Once in a long while, on a Sleeper who died wearing one.

The catch. Any Noble who sees it will know what it is, and whose it was.

Rarity: very rare, requires attunement. You have resistance to fire and radiant damage while you wear it. A Noble wearing it ignores the effects of sunlight for one hour a day.

Blood-lamp

Found in mortal hands: very rare · what it was for is a secret

A small red glass lamp that glows faintly when one of the Nobility is near. It doesn’t tell you how far or which way. Hunters consider it the most valuable relic on the Frontier.

Where it’s found. Almost nowhere. The Institute has three and won’t admit it. The Ashline won’t say whether it has one.

The catch. It also glows for dhampirs, for sorcerers of certain bloodlines, and, faintly, for anyone who has made an arrangement with a Noble.

Rarity: very rare. The lamp glows dimly when one of the Nobility is within a mile of it, and brightly within 300 feet. It doesn’t point the way.

Every device on the inventory is made to the lord’s hand, the lord’s eye, or the lord’s purpose.

Amended. That is the catch. None of it was made for mortals. Every relic here was built for a Noble’s hand, a Noble’s eye, or a Noble’s purpose, and it still works that way. Relics might half work, work too well, or work on the wrong person. The lamp that lights your road was made to light a Noble’s. The key that opens a door has no idea whether that door should have stayed shut.

You come from a farm or a ranch, like most people out here. You grew up barring the door at dusk, counting the herd every morning, and learning which sounds in the night meant a fox and which meant something worse. You were never a hunter. Then something happened that meant you couldn’t stay: a barn found empty, a brother who didn’t come in at the bell, the stake over the door finally taken down and used. You picked up whatever was at hand and went looking.

Skill Proficiencies	Animal Handling, Nature
Tool Proficiencies	One type of artisan’s tools, vehicles (land)
Equipment	The sharpened stake that hung over your family’s door, a shovel, an iron pot, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: One of Us

Frontier folk recognize you as one of their own. Farmers, ranchers, and ordinary townsfolk will give you food and a place to sleep, hide you if you need hiding, and tell you what’s really been happening. They’ll do it as long as it doesn’t put their own families at risk. You also know how to read a homestead’s trouble: what a sick herd, a failed crop, or a broken fence usually means, and when it means something else.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I’m up before dawn, every day, whether I need to be or not.
2	I judge people by how hard they work.
3	I say grace before every meal, even the bad ones.
4	I’m slow to speak and slower to trust.
5	I can’t stand waste, of food, of time, or of lives.
6	I count things when I’m nervous: fence posts, stars, bullets.
7	I miss the smell of turned earth more than I’ll admit.
8	I talk to animals more easily than I talk to people.

d6	Ideal
1	Home. Everything I do is so someone else gets to stay home. (Good)
2	Endurance. You plant in spring no matter what the winter took. (Neutral)
3	Community. A town lives or dies together. (Lawful)
4	Independence. Nobody tells a homesteader how to live. (Chaotic)
5	Justice. Whatever came for my family is going to answer for it. (Any)
6	Simplicity. I want to finish this and go back to the land. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	The family farm, and whoever is still working it.
2	My younger siblings, who depend on the money I send home.
3	The hunter who came too late to save my family, whom I both blame and admire.
4	The dog that has followed me since I left home.
5	A neighbor who took my family in when we lost everything.
6	The land itself. I intend to be buried on it.

d6	Flaw
1	I’m suspicious of anyone from the Capitol.
2	I’m stubborn to the point of stupidity.
3	I hoard food and supplies, just in case.
4	I freeze up in crowds and cities.
5	I hold grudges against towns that turned my family away.
6	I don’t believe I belong among real hunters, and it shows.

Your town is gone. It might have been Marrow, two thousand people in a single night, or a place too small for anyone’s map to bother circling. Either way, a scavenger pushed too far into the ruin on its outskirts and woke something: a weapon, a security system, a machine that should have stayed asleep. By morning the town was dead. You lived through luck, or because someone died in your place, or for reasons you still don’t understand.

Skill Proficiencies	Medicine, Perception
Tool Proficiencies	One type of artisan’s tools, from the trade you had before
Languages	One of your choice
Equipment	A keepsake from your town, a scrap of metal from the thing that destroyed it, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 5 gp

Feature: Shout the Warning

You have seen what a waking ruin does, and you react before anyone else. Once per long rest, when you or a creature you can see triggers a trap or hazard inside a ruin, you can use your reaction to shout a warning, giving that creature advantage on the saving throw against it. People who hear the name of your town know its story, and some will pay well to hear what you saw.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I flinch at sudden lights and humming sounds.
2	I don’t make plans past tomorrow.
3	I say the names of my town’s dead every night before I sleep.
4	I laugh at things that aren’t funny, because the alternative is worse.
5	I’m fiercely protective of anyone who reminds me of someone I lost.
6	I keep moving. Stillness gives me time to remember.
7	I help everyone I can, as if I’m paying something back.
8	I refuse to go near ruins, and I tell everyone why.

d6	Ideal
1	Warning. No other town will die the way mine did, if I can help it. (Good)
2	Justice. The scavenger who woke it deserves to answer for it. (Lawful)
3	Destruction. Every ruin should be sealed or brought down. (Chaotic)
4	Understanding. I need to know what woke, and why. (Neutral)
5	Survival. I lived. That has to mean something. (Any)
6	Revenge. Someone profited from what happened, and they will pay. (Evil)

d6	Bond
1	The keepsake from my town, which I will never give up.
2	Another survivor of my town, whom I haven’t seen in years.
3	The scavenger who woke it, whom I’ve never found.
4	The person who died so I could live.
5	The Capitol researcher who wanted to study what happened, and was turned away.
6	The ruin itself. One day I will go back in.

d6	Flaw
1	I blame all scavengers for what one of them did.
2	I have nightmares that keep my companions awake.
3	I take reckless risks, because part of me thinks I should have died.
4	I can’t trust anything the Nobility made, including people.
5	I lie about where I’m from, to avoid the looks.
6	I am drawn to the ruins, even though they terrify me.

You’ve taken bounties before. You’ve answered a town’s call, followed something into the dark, and come back with proof. You know how the work goes: the notice on the board at Sable Crossing, the sheriff’s handshake, the long ride, and the moment you find out what the town didn’t tell you. Maybe you rode with a company. Maybe you worked alone and liked it that way.

Skill Proficiencies	Investigation, Survival
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set, vehicles (land)
Equipment	A sharpened wooden stake, a hunting trap, a trophy from your first bounty, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Word on the Trail

Your name is known where hunters gather. In any town, you can find out where hunter requests are posted, which bounties are open, and which ones other hunters have turned down, and why. Sheriffs and mayors recognize you as a working hunter and will pay a fair bounty on proof of a kill without haggling. Other hunters will share a fire and news with you on the road, though they may not share their contracts.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I size up every room for exits before I sit down.
2	I never take a contract without asking what the town left out.
3	I keep a tally of every kill, and I can tell you the story of each one.
4	I talk to the dead things I hunt. It helps me think.
5	I am calm right up until the moment I am not.
6	I respect anyone who does honest work, and I have no patience for anyone who doesn’t.
7	I sleep lightly, eat quickly, and never sit with my back to a door.
8	I collect superstitions from every town I pass through, just in case.

d6	Ideal
1	Protection. Somebody has to stand between the towns and the dark. (Good)
2	Contract. A job taken is a job finished, no matter what. (Lawful)
3	Freedom. I work for whoever pays, and answer to no one. (Chaotic)
4	Reputation. My name is worth more than any bounty. (Any)
5	Vengeance. Everything I hunt is a little bit of the thing that took my family. (Any)
6	Craft. Hunting is a skill, and I intend to be the best at it. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	A town I failed to save. I still visit the graves.
2	The hunter who trained me, who disappeared on a Noble contract.
3	My first bounty’s trophy, which I will never sell.
4	A company I once rode with, and still owe a debt to.
5	A child I saved on a hunt, who writes to me through the caravans.
6	The sheriff who gave me my first job and my second chance.

d6	Flaw
1	I take contracts I have no business taking, because the pay is good.
2	I don’t trust anything the Nobility made, including some of my companions.
3	I drink too much between jobs.
4	I have lied about a kill to collect a bounty, and someone knows.
5	When the hunt is on, I forget there are people around me.
6	I am terrified of the dark, and I will never admit it.

You’ve been inside the ruins everyone else avoids. You know the smell of air sealed for centuries, the sound a floor makes before it gives way, and the feeling of holding something the Nobility made. You came out with enough to keep going back, and you know the fence at Sixwheel Landing by her first name. Plenty of the people you went in with never came out at all.

Skill Proficiencies	Investigation, Stealth
Tool Proficiencies	Thieves’ tools, cartographer’s tools
Equipment	A crowbar, a hooded lantern, a piece of chalk, a small golden era trinket that no one can identify, a set of dark common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: The Scavenger’s Market

You know how to sell what you find. In any sizable town you can find the merchants and fences who deal in golden era goods, and you can tell a fair price from a swindle, even when the one offering is a Capitol agent. You can also read the marks scavengers leave at a ruin’s entrance, from the three short lines that mean mold to the painted line a Watchman won’t cross, and you know how to leave your own.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I touch everything, even when I know I shouldn’t.
2	I can’t pass a sealed door without wondering what is behind it.
3	I keep careful maps, and I trust no one else’s.
4	I talk to the machines I find, in case they are listening.
5	I am always calculating what something would sell for.
6	I have a lucky ritual before every ruin, and I will not skip it.
7	I laugh at danger, because the alternative is screaming.
8	I never speak the names of the crewmates I lost.

d6	Ideal
1	Knowledge. What the Nobility left behind should be understood, not feared. (Neutral)
2	Fortune. One good score and I’m done. Really, this time. (Chaotic)
3	Crew. Nobody gets left in the dark. (Good)
4	Caution. The ruins reward patience and punish greed. (Lawful)
5	Defiance. The Capitol doesn’t get to decide who touches the past. (Chaotic)
6	Legacy. I want to find something that changes the Frontier. (Any)

d6	Bond
1	The crew I started with, most of whom are dead.
2	A map to a ruin no one has ever come out of.
3	A Reborn who used to be my closest friend.
4	The gnome who taught me to open locks, now on the missing list.
5	A find I sold that I should have destroyed.
6	A family back home that lives on what I bring out.

d6	Flaw
1	I can’t walk away from a score, no matter how bad the odds.
2	I once woke something in a ruin, and I never told anyone.
3	I trust machines more than people.
4	I steal small things from my companions without meaning to.
5	I think the Capitol’s rules are for cowards, and I say so.
6	I have been inside too long. Sometimes I hear the ruins in my sleep.

You kept things running. Maybe you apprenticed to a gnome; half the tinkers in the East learned at Orla Lockfast’s bench before her name went on the missing list. Maybe you taught yourself, or you were just the only one in town who could make the pump work. You’ve patched mills, gates, lanterns, and the odd relic with wire, scrap, and stubbornness. Your repairs never last forever. Out here, one that lasts three winters can save a town.

Skill Proficiencies	Arcana, Sleight of Hand
Tool Proficiencies	Tinker’s tools, smith’s tools
Equipment	A set of tinker’s tools, a cheap lens on a headband, a broken relic you are still trying to fix, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Jury-Rig

During a short rest, you can use your tinker’s tools and a handful of scrap to repair one broken nonmagical item, such as a weapon, a firearm, a piece of armor, a lock, or a simple mechanism, restoring it to working order. Your repair holds until you finish your next long rest, then fails unless someone fixes it properly. Towns will also give you a meal and a place to sleep in exchange for repairs, and they will remember your face.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I take apart anything I don’t understand.
2	I always tell people exactly how long my repairs will hold.
3	I name the machines I fix.
4	I never let anyone else touch my tools.
5	I hum while I work, and I stop humming when something is wrong.
6	I see every broken thing as a challenge.
7	I carry spare parts in every pocket.
8	I sit with my back to the wall, always.

d6	Ideal
1	Usefulness. The Frontier survives because someone keeps it running. (Good)
2	Honesty. A repair is only as good as the truth about it. (Lawful)
3	Curiosity. I want to understand how the Nobility’s works really function. (Neutral)
4	Freedom. My skills are mine, and I decide who gets them. (Chaotic)
5	Progress. One day, someone will fix things properly. It might be me. (Any)
6	Profit. Everyone needs a tinker, and everyone can pay. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	The gnome who taught me, who is on the missing list.
2	The broken device I carry, which I will fix one day.
3	A town whose pump I kept running for years.
4	My guard, who has traveled with me since I started.
5	A Capitol engineer who is my rival and my only equal.
6	A Magen I repaired, who trusts me more than anyone.

d6	Flaw
1	I can’t resist tinkering with relics, even dangerous ones.
2	I overestimate how long my repairs will last, just once in a while.
3	I’d rather fix a machine than deal with a person.
4	I let towns take advantage of me because I can’t say no.
5	I once repaired something that killed people.
6	I’m terrified of being taken, and it makes me paranoid.

You wore a badge in a Frontier town. You served under a sheriff, kept the peace, rang the dusk bell, and knocked on doors that didn’t want to open. Plenty of sheriffs have buried a deputy or two; if you served under one of them, you learned fast or you didn’t last. You know how a town really works: who owes whom, who’s hiding something, and what people do when they’re frightened. Something made you leave, or made staying impossible.

Skill Proficiencies	Insight, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set
Languages	One of your choice
Equipment	Your old badge, a set of manacles, a copy of a wanted notice, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Law’s Courtesy

Frontier sheriffs and their deputies recognize you as one of their own. They will share wanted notices, local troubles, and what they really think of the town’s leading citizens. When you arrive after dusk and no one will open their door, a sheriff will usually let you sleep in the jailhouse, and will lock the cell from the inside if you ask.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I notice lies, and I let people know I noticed.
2	I can’t walk past trouble without stepping in.
3	I treat everyone the same, from the mayor to the drunk in the gutter.
4	I remember faces and never forget a grudge.
5	I’m friendly until I have a reason not to be.
6	I always ask one question more than people want to answer.
7	I respect the law, even when I break it.
8	I have a dry joke for every grim situation.

d6	Ideal
1	Justice. Everyone deserves a fair hearing, even strangers. (Lawful)
2	Protection. My job was to keep people safe. It still is. (Good)
3	Order. Without rules, the Frontier eats itself. (Lawful)
4	Mercy. Sometimes the law is wrong, and someone has to say so. (Good)
5	Power. A badge gets people to do what you say. (Evil)
6	Truth. I want to know what really happened, whatever it costs. (Any)

d6	Bond
1	The sheriff I served under, who died protecting the town.
2	The town I swore to protect, which I left behind.
3	A criminal I let go, who may have done worse since.
4	An innocent person hanged on my watch.
5	A wanted notice I carry, for someone I know is innocent.
6	The family of a deputy who died beside me.

d6	Flaw
1	I judge people quickly and rarely change my mind.
2	I bend the rules for people I like.
3	I can’t let go of a case, even when I should.
4	I distrust half-elves and drifters more than I’d admit.
5	I used my badge for something I’m ashamed of.
6	I freeze when I have to make a choice with no right answer.

You grew up on the road, riding a caravan’s circuit from town to town, the way the Brightbells have run the Northern circuit for five generations. You know which waystations are safe, which sheriffs are honest, and which towns won’t open the gate after dusk no matter who’s knocking. You’ve carried salt, cloth, medicine, news, and the occasional hunter request, and you’ve rung the bells over friends buried beside the road.

Skill Proficiencies	Animal Handling, Insight
Tool Proficiencies	Vehicles (land), cook’s utensils
Languages	One of your choice
Equipment	A road charm or bell from a town on your circuit, a waterskin, a pouch of salt, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Friends on the Circuit

You know the towns, roads, and waystations of your old circuit as well as your own name. On those roads you can always find shelter before dusk, and folk in those towns will give you a meal and a dry place to sleep, even if it’s in the barn. News reaches you faster than it reaches most people, since everyone on your circuit tells a caravaner what they’ve heard.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I hum road songs constantly and don’t notice I’m doing it.
2	I can’t stay in one place for long without getting restless.
3	I remember everyone’s name, and their children’s names.
4	I barter for everything, even things I could just buy.
5	I always know how many hours of daylight are left.
6	I tell stories about every town we pass, some of them true.
7	I share news freely and gossip even more freely.
8	I keep a little of every town’s dirt in a jar.

d6	Ideal
1	Connection. The towns survive because someone carries things between them. (Good)
2	Honesty. News is free, and it should be true. (Lawful)
3	Wanderlust. There is always another road. (Chaotic)
4	Family. The caravan comes first. (Any)
5	Profit. Every town needs something, and I can sell it. (Neutral)
6	Survival. Get to shelter before dark. Everything else is negotiable. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	My family’s wagon, and the family still in it.
2	A town on my circuit that went silent last season.
3	A road grave I stop at every time I pass.
4	A dwarven hold that let my family past the first door.
5	The goliath guide who saved my caravan on the high pass.
6	A travel writ from the golden era, passed down for generations.

d6	Flaw
1	I can’t resist spreading a rumor, even a dangerous one.
2	I never stay long enough to finish what I start.
3	I’m quick to take a side deal that isn’t quite legal.
4	I trust anyone who’s been kind to me on the road.
5	I resent every town that makes me sleep in the barn.
6	I am afraid of what I’ll become if I ever stop moving.

You raised walls for a living. You traveled with a building crew to new settlements, putting up the walls, wells, and foundations that let a town live through its first winters. You’ve eaten at a dozen wall suppers, and you remember which towns skipped theirs. You know what it takes to make a place defensible, and exactly how much a wall can hold, and how much it can’t.

Skill Proficiencies	Athletics, Perception
Tool Proficiencies	Mason’s tools, carpenter’s tools
Equipment	A set of mason’s tools, your crew’s token, a set of common clothes with a leather apron, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Crew Standing

Building crews recognize your crew’s mark, and you can find work, food, and a place to sleep with any crew you meet. You can read the mark stones hidden in a town’s buildings, learning who built what and roughly when. Towns whose walls your crew raised remember you, and will usually do you a favor if you ask.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I judge every town by its walls.
2	I can’t stop fixing things, even things that aren’t mine.
3	I work hard and expect everyone else to do the same.
4	I laugh loud and often, especially after a long day.
5	I have a story for every scar on my hands.
6	I know when to stop working, and nothing will make me work after dusk.
7	I talk to walls as if they can hear me.
8	I take pride in plain, solid things.

d6	Ideal
1	Community. A town is the people behind its walls. (Good)
2	Craft. Build it right or don’t build it at all. (Lawful)
3	Progress. Every wall we raise pushes the dark back a little. (Good)
4	Crew. My crew is my family, whatever anyone else says. (Any)
5	Fair Pay. The towns stand on our work. They can afford to pay for it. (Neutral)
6	Independence. I build where I choose, for whom I choose. (Chaotic)

d6	Bond
1	My crew, living and dead.
2	A town whose first wall I raised, now in danger.
3	My grandparent’s mark stone, in the wall of a town that was destroyed.
4	A dwarven hold that would not let me through the gate.
5	A Magen who worked beside me on the crew for years.
6	A town that skipped the wall supper, and owes my crew a debt.

d6	Flaw
1	I hold grudges against towns that underpaid us.
2	I trust stone more than people.
3	I take risks on unsafe structures to prove I can.
4	I resent anyone born behind a hold’s gate.
5	I blame myself for every wall that ever failed.
6	I can’t admit when something is beyond repair.

You worked the saloon circuit, performing for supper and a room and carrying news and songs between settlements that hardly ever hear from each other. You’ve sung at the Dry Well and ridden a season with a halfling caravan, and on market day nobody could tell your stall from theirs. You know how to hold a room, how to read a crowd, and how to leave before a town turns on you. Every town knows your face. Hardly anyone knows you.

Skill Proficiencies	Performance, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies	Disguise kit, one type of musical instrument
Equipment	A musical instrument (one of your choice), a favor from an admirer, a costume, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Saloon Welcome

Any saloon, trading post, or waystation on the Frontier will give you a meal and a place to sleep in exchange for a performance, as long as you perform every night you stay. Locals talk freely around a performer, and you can learn a town’s rumors, troubles, and open hunter requests in a single evening.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I turn every conversation into a performance.
2	I learn one song from every town I pass through.
3	I never admit to being tired, bored, or afraid.
4	I charm strangers easily and friends with difficulty.
5	I carry news like it’s precious, and tell it like it’s a story.
6	I take criticism of my act very personally.
7	I can sleep anywhere, at any time, in any position.
8	I know a hundred songs about hunters, and none of them are accurate.

d6	Ideal
1	Joy. The Frontier needs laughter more than it needs walls. (Good)
2	Truth. My songs carry the news, and news should be true. (Lawful)
3	Freedom. I go where the road takes me. (Chaotic)
4	Fame. I want every saloon to know my name. (Any)
5	Memory. Someone has to remember the towns that are gone. (Good)
6	Opportunity. Every crowd has something I can use. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	A song I wrote about a town that no longer exists.
2	The halfling caravan I traveled with for years.
3	A rival performer who stole my best material.
4	An admirer’s favor, from someone I never saw again.
5	The saloon where I first performed, and its owner.
6	A changeling friend whose secret I’ve kept for years.

d6	Flaw
1	I embellish everything, including the truth.
2	I can’t resist an audience, even a dangerous one.
3	I leave before things get serious, every time.
4	I spend money as fast as I earn it.
5	I’ve carried a false rumor that got people hurt.
6	I care more about the applause than the people clapping.

You trained with a hunter company. You heard the articles read aloud the morning you signed, drilled at first light every day after, and swore to finish every contract or die trying. Maybe you earned full membership, maybe you washed out, or maybe the company is gone and you’re one of the last who carries its name. The discipline stayed either way.

Skill Proficiencies	Athletics, Intimidation
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set, vehicles (land)
Equipment	A sash or token in your company’s colors, a copy of your company’s contract terms, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Company Hall

Your company, or its reputation, still opens doors. Hunter company halls will give you food and a bed. Members of your own company will vouch for you, lend you gear, and come to your aid if they hear you’re in trouble. Towns that have hired your company will treat you with respect. In return, your company expects you to uphold its name, and it will hear about it if you don’t.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I drill every morning, wherever I am.
2	I follow orders well and give them better.
3	I treat every job like a contract, even favors for friends.
4	I polish my gear when I’m nervous.
5	I tell old company stories to anyone who will listen.
6	I speak bluntly and expect the same.
7	I keep my company’s colors on me at all times.
8	I am uncomfortable without a clear chain of command.

d6	Ideal
1	Duty. A contract signed is a contract finished. (Lawful)
2	Brotherhood. The company is my family. (Any)
3	Glory. I want my company’s name spoken in every hunter hall. (Any)
4	Protection. We fight so the towns don’t have to. (Good)
5	Discipline. Discipline keeps you alive when courage runs out. (Lawful)
6	Independence. The company taught me everything, and now I’m on my own. (Chaotic)

d6	Bond
1	My captain, who took a chance on me.
2	A company that was destroyed on a Noble contract.
3	A contract my company broke before I joined, which I intend to make right.
4	The recruit I trained with, now a rival.
5	An aasimar my company protects, whom I’d die for.
6	The town that hired my company for my first contract.

d6	Flaw
1	I obey orders even when I shouldn’t.
2	I look down on hunters who work without a company.
3	I’m reckless when my company’s honor is questioned.
4	I can’t forgive a broken promise.
5	I secretly doubt I’m good enough for my company’s colors.
6	I will do anything, including terrible things, to finish a contract.

You were somebody in the Capitol: a scholar, a clerk, an engineer, a researcher at the Institute. Then you fell out of favor. Maybe you asked the wrong question, read the wrong book, or trusted the wrong superior. Now you’re on extended field duty with an education, a letter of assignment, and everything the Institute taught you about the Frontier, which turns out to be wrong about more things than you’d have believed possible.

Skill Proficiencies	Arcana, History
Languages	Two of your choice; the old court tongue is a common choice for those who studied the Nobility
Equipment	A bottle of ink, a quill, a small knife, a letter of assignment for field duty, a set of once-fine clothes now gone threadbare, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Letter of Assignment

Your papers still carry the Capitol’s seal. Officers of the Frontier Defense Force and Capitol agents treat you as an official and will share information with you. Commerce Guild waystations will give you shelter and a meal on the Capitol’s account. You can also send letters to colleagues in the Capitol, and some of them will answer. Someone in the Capitol wanted you out of the way, though, and your credentials may draw their attention as easily as anyone’s help.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I explain things nobody asked me to explain.
2	I keep a journal of everything I see on the Frontier, for a book no one will publish.
3	I flinch at loud noises and pretend I didn’t.
4	I am polite to a fault, even to things trying to kill me.
5	I can’t stop comparing the Frontier to the Capitol, usually unfavorably.
6	I am fascinated by ruins in a way that worries my companions.
7	I miss good food more than I miss my old position.
8	I am quietly delighted every time I survive something.

d6	Ideal
1	Knowledge. The lost sciences can save the Frontier, if we recover them. (Good)
2	Order. The Provisional Government’s authority is all that stands between us and chaos. (Lawful)
3	Truth. The Capitol banned the wrong books, and I intend to find out why. (Chaotic)
4	Redemption. I will earn my way back. (Any)
5	Curiosity. I don’t care about the Capitol anymore. I care about what’s out here. (Neutral)
6	Ambition. The Frontier is full of discoveries, and the credit will be mine. (Evil)

d6	Bond
1	The colleague who betrayed me, whom I intend to confront.
2	A banned book I smuggled out of the Capitol.
3	My family, who still live in the Ninth Ward and don’t know where I am.
4	My mentor at the university, the only one who still writes to me.
5	A discovery I made that got me exiled.
6	The Frontier town that took me in when I arrived with nothing.

d6	Flaw
1	I look down on Frontier folk, even when I try not to.
2	I will take any risk if it means getting back into the Capitol.
3	I trust official papers more than people.
4	I know something the Provisional Government wants buried, and I can’t keep quiet.
5	I panic in the open country after dark.
6	I hoard knowledge and share it only when it benefits me.

Your family was someone in the golden era. Most old families are elven, descended from servants who rose high in the Nobility’s courts, but some are human or other peoples whose ancestors held rank in the Nobility’s order. The courts are gone. Your family’s name remains, along with its ledger, its old manners, and a history the Frontier has never forgiven. Somewhere in that ledger is an entry you’d rather nobody read, and a page or two that somebody already cut out.

Skill Proficiencies	History, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set
Languages	The old court tongue
Equipment	A set of fine clothes in an old court style, a pair of gloves, a page copied from your family’s ledger, and a purse containing 25 gp

Feature: The Family Name

Your name opens doors among scholars, archivists, and the Capitol’s institutions, where old families are valued for what they know about the Nobility. It closes doors on the Frontier, where it marks you as a collaborator’s heir. Either way, people remember you. You can usually gain an audience with a scholar or official, and you know how to read old court records, manners, and house marks.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I have impeccable manners and use them as armor.
2	I apologize for my family before anyone asks.
3	I stand when someone important enters a room, whether I mean to or not.
4	I know more about the Nobility than I let on.
5	I am proud of my family’s name and dare anyone to object.
6	I am quiet in company and watchful always.
7	I keep my gloves on, even when it’s strange to.
8	I feel responsible for the choices of people I never met.

d6	Ideal
1	Atonement. My family served monsters. I will spend my life making up for it. (Good)
2	Honor. My family’s name should mean something good. (Lawful)
3	Pride. We were chosen for a reason. (Any)
4	Knowledge. What my ancestors saw can help stop the Nobility. (Good)
5	Freedom. I refuse to be defined by a ledger. (Chaotic)
6	Loyalty. Whatever my family was, it is still my family. (Any)

d6	Bond
1	My family’s ledger, and the page someone cut out of it.
2	An ancestor who secretly helped the rebels.
3	A relative still loyal to the old ways.
4	A scholar in the Capitol who studies my family’s history.
5	A Noble who might still remember my family’s name.
6	The half-elven sibling my family refused to claim.

d6	Flaw
1	I look down on people without history.
2	I keep my family’s darkest secrets, even when I shouldn’t.
3	I secretly admire the Nobility’s elegance.
4	I can’t stand being blamed for my ancestors’ choices, and I lash out.
5	I trust other old families more than I should.
6	I’d do anything to keep my family’s name from being further disgraced.

The standard backgrounds work in Masada with a little reframing. Keep their rules as written and adjust the story to fit the Frontier.

• Acolyte: You served the Church of the Dawn, the Wellkeepers, or the Lantern Wardens, and you’ve seen what happens to a town when its shrine goes dead.
• Charlatan: You worked confidence games on the circuit, and you know how quickly a town turns on a stranger.
• Criminal: You rode with the Saltmen or the Hollow Crows, smuggled relics past Capitol agents, or both.
• Entertainer: Use the Circuit Performer background instead, or keep the Entertainer as a performer from the Capitol’s stages.
• Folk Hero: You stood up for your town when the hunter never came, and people still talk about it.
• Guild Artisan: You worked for the Commerce Guild, or learned a trade in a gnome’s workshop.
• Hermit: You lived alone in the wilds, among the Old Growth or on the high peaks, far from any town and further from any bell.
• Noble: Use the Old Family background instead. In Masada, the Nobility are something else entirely.
• Outlander: You grew up at the Frontier’s edges, on the high peaks, or in the wild country between towns.
• Sage: You studied at the Capitol’s university, or taught yourself from the books the Capitol restricts.
• Sailor: You worked river barges or ferries, where every crew stays on the water after dark, though none of them can say why.
• Soldier: You served in the Frontier Defense Force. You know exactly how thin it’s stretched, and what it chose to guard instead of the towns.
• Urchin: You grew up in the Capitol’s outer wards, nearest the Deep Wards, where the delvers come up at dawn and not all of them come up.

Playable races. Human, Elf, Half-elf, Dwarf, Half-Dwarf, Halfling, Gnome, Goliath, Dragonborn, Aasimar, Changeling, Shifter, Entling, Magen, and Reborn. Half-Dwarf, Entling, Magen, and Reborn use LaserLlama’s versions; where another printing of the same race exists, use LaserLlama’s. Each people has an entry on the Playable Races page.

Monstrous races and dhampirs. Monstrous races are not playable. Dhampirs exist in Masada, but only as non-player characters.

Classes. Every published class and subclass that makes sense for the setting is allowed. If you’re not sure whether one fits, ask me. I especially encourage LaserLlama’s revised versions of the core classes. His custom classes and subclasses are worth exploring as well. The classes in Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else and the Gunslinger fighter subclass are also available. Each class has a place in the world; see Character Creation for how each one fits.

Backgrounds. Choose one of Masada’s backgrounds or a Player’s Handbook background reframed for the Frontier. Old Family replaces Noble. Survivor and Tinker have mechanical features; the rest work like standard background features.

Languages. Standard 5e languages, plus the old court tongue, the language of the Nobility’s courts and the key to reading golden era records.

Ability scores. Use the standard array: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8. We don’t roll stats. Rolling swings too far: either one player gets a great roll, or everyone rerolls until they do.

Starting level. Level 1.

Advancement. Milestone. You level when the story reaches a milestone, not by counting experience points.

Absences. Absent players aren’t factored into the table while they’re gone. Their hunters sit that session out.

Potions. Drinking a potion yourself is a bonus action. Giving one to someone else is a full action. You can patch yourself up mid-fight; getting to a dying ally costs you your turn.

Intimidation. Barbarians may use Strength in place of Charisma for Intimidation checks.

Brutal wounds. Dropping to 0 hit points from a critical hit or an overwhelming blow can leave a lasting injury, at my call. Grievous injuries, lingering statuses, and brutal finishers use the roll tables from Brutal Wounds. A beast’s jaws can leave you with a limp that outlasts the campaign.

Firearms. Guns are a normal part of Frontier combat and use the rules from Arcane Artillery: The Gun Nut’s Guide. Powder and shot are tracked and are a running cost.

Hit points on level-up. You roll your Hit Die and I roll the same die in secret. You choose which result to keep without seeing mine. Keep a 3, and you’ll never know what you passed up.

Death saves. You roll them yourself, privately. You know whether you’re stable or two failures down. Nobody else at the table does, and your character can’t tell them. Picture the cleric spending her last spell slot on a companion who stabilized two rounds ago, while the one who’s actually dying stays quiet on the floor. That’s the point. In the dark, you don’t know who needs you.

Long rests. A long rest needs shelter, security, and real downtime, which usually means a town, a waystation, or a well-defended camp. A night in the open with something hunting you restores part of your strength and no more. If you ask whether a barn counts, the answer is usually yes, and the real question is what’s in the loft. How long a long rest takes, including whether we use Gritty Realism’s longer rests, is settled at Session 0.

The night. The dark belongs to the Nobility’s engineered beasts. Travel after dusk is dangerous, and a camp in the open invites trouble. Plan your days around reaching shelter before the bell.

Availability. Magic is uncommon. Magic users have spent years studying the Nobility’s lost sciences, and even a large town rarely has more than one. The Capitol’s university trains more. A wizard in a small town is remarkable, and people will want things from you.

How magic works. Magic isn’t chaos. It can be measured and repeated, but nobody alive understands the science behind it. Spells work as written; the world simply treats them as the Nobility’s science rather than a gift from the gods.

Divine magic. Clerics draw on answered prayer. Divine spells work as written, though some shrines have gone dead.

Resurrection. It exists, and it is never a simple inconvenience. Bringing someone back is a diverging story the party has to work for: a journey, a price, and consequences that follow the one who returns.

Paladin oaths. A paladin’s power lasts exactly as long as the oath. Break it, and you are shut out. Oathbreakers follow the standard rules.

Identify. Reveals partial truths. Golden era devices and cursed items resist it. You may learn that a device is Noble-made and learn nothing about what it will do when it wakes.

Spells. Spells from Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else are available alongside the core spell lists, with my approval.

Components. Mundane components are assumed. Rare and costly ones are tracked and must be acquired.

These systems are adapted from Grim Hollow. They make afflictions something you solve rather than something you dispel.

Curses. Curses cling and escalate. Remove Curse suppresses a curse; true removal takes a tailored ritual, a rare component, or a narrative act such as atonement or destroying the source. A mark can become nightmares, and nightmares can become worse.

Diseases. Diseases progress in stages and resist magical cures. Expect exhaustion, ability penalties, hallucinations, and contagion. A cleric pouring magic into a fever may hold it steady until someone finds the treatment that actually works.

Transformations. Contact with the Nobility’s works can change a person: a Noble’s blood, a waking ruin, a pact that goes too deep. Transformations run in three stages. Stage one gives minor powers and visible signs. Stage two gives stronger abilities alongside compulsions, vulnerabilities, or stigma. Stage three completes the change and puts your identity, control, or soul in question. Each stage can be resisted, delayed, or reversed, at a price.

Coinage. Standard 5e coins and prices, minted by the Capitol. Goods cost more the farther you are from the Capitol, and some are simply unavailable in small towns.

Weapons and armor. Expanded weapons and armor from All The Weapons, the Armorer’s Handbook, and Ancestral Weapons are available with my approval.

Magic items. Magic items are golden era relics, recovered from ruins or bought at great cost through the Capitol; the Relics page describes the ones hunters hear about most. Items from Griffon’s Saddlebag and other approved books appear in the world as relics too. Most are old. Some work perfectly, some half-work, and a few do things no one expected.

Harvesting and crafting. Monster parts can be harvested and crafted using Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook; see the Bestiary for what the Frontier’s creatures yield. On the Frontier, the Nobility’s engineered beasts are the richest source of material, and hunters often make as much from the carcass as from the bounty.

Resources. Rations, torches, ammunition, and tools are tracked. Specialty ammunition made by gnome tinkers can’t be replaced outside the towns where they work.

Hunter pay. For reference, a skilled hireling earns about 2 gp a day. Hunters who can kill a Noble earn at least 25 gp a day. A town’s bounty for a serious threat might be a flat 50 gp or more, scaled to the danger and to what the town can pay.

Travel. A location must be visited in person before magic or other means can bring you there quickly.

Golden era structures. Ruins are dangerous by design. Traps, guardians, and dormant systems are common, and pushing too far can wake something that threatens everyone nearby, not just the party.

The world moves. Factions act, seasons turn, and threats develop whether or not you’re involved. A town you ignore may not be there when you come back, and I won’t hold it in place for you.

Threat tiers. The hazard table on the World page maps to 5e tiers: everyday hazards are tier 1, serious hazards tiers 2 and 3, and grave hazards tiers 3 and 4.

Standing. The six factions in The Powers (the Institute, the Commerce Guild, the Church of the Dawn, the hunter halls, the Saltmen, and Karrow) each hold an attitude toward your group: hostile, wary, neutral, trusted, or sworn. I track it, and you’ll usually know where you stand. It moves one step at a time, and only for things that matter: a job finished or abandoned, a secret kept or sold, one of their people saved or killed.

Standing changes what the world offers you, from prices, shelter, and information to work nobody else hears about, or at the hostile end, a bounty posted on your heads. Most groups start neutral with everyone, though backgrounds can shift that: a Capitol Exile starts wary with the Institute, and a Company Recruit starts trusted by the hunter halls.

What everyone knows. Sunlight and radiance burn the Nobility. Every mortal knows that much.

Everything else. Whatever else works against them, you find out in play.

The oldest Nobles. The most powerful Nobles resist some of their weaknesses. Nobles are extremely rare, though, and most characters will spend their careers dealing with what the Nobility left behind: their engineered beasts, their machines, and their servants.

Beyond the core rules, Masada draws on the following books. You do not need to own any of them to apply or to play. The Player’s Handbook and this site are enough to send the form. At the table, I hand out the extra rules that matter. Anything from these books still needs my approval.

• Classes, spells, and items: LaserLlama’s revised classes, custom classes and subclasses, and races; Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else; the Gunslinger fighter subclass
• Weapons, armor, and firearms: Arcane Artillery: The Gun Nut’s Guide, All The Weapons, the Armorer’s Handbook, Ancestral Weapons
• Items and companions: Griffon’s Saddlebag, the Fluffy Folio
• Harvesting and crafting: Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook
• Rules and systems: Brutal Wounds, Gritty Realism, the Domestic Handbook, the Greasemonkey’s Handbook
• Behind the screen: Monster Manual Expanded I to III, Adaptable NPCs, Puzzles, Predicaments and Perplexities, and Journey of the Godslayer