The Black Iron - 5th edition Grimdark setting [3]

Table of contents :
Contents
Step into the Dark
The Book
The World
The Players
The GM
The Rules
Combat Basics
Survival Horror
Abbreviations
“The end of us all”
The Beginning
The Land Above
The Last City
Crime & Punishment
The Black Fort
The Pale Lands
The Known Cities of the Pale
The Land Below
Cults
Faith
Threats
Mythic Artifacts
The Blood Lords
Axas - The Lord of Blood and Vein
Barston - Lord of Salt and Rust
Kiall - The Lord Chirurgeon
Laidon - Lord of Depravity
Nicran - Lord of Death and Decay
Xertin - Lord of Conflict and Murder
The Luck of the Dice
Attributes
Skills
Skill Descriptions
Performing Actions
Example of Play
Creating a Character
The Four Steps
Chimeer
Half Elves
Humans
Backgrounds
Life Experience
Martial
Exploration
Arcana
Shadow
Derived Stats
Group Experience
Weapons, Armour & Gear
Item Quality
Crafting Weapons
Armour and Shields
Weapon Descriptions
Guilds and Cults
The Black Fort
The Guild of Explorers
The Guild of Silence
The Fighter’s Guild
Sisters of Stone Cult
Cult of the Malice
The Grey Order
Explore and Survive
Travel across the Pale
Travelling the Below
Survival
Corruption
Combat and Injury
Damage and Healing
Fear and Stress
The Arcane
Using Magic
School of Necromancy
First Circle
Second Circle
Third Circle
Necromancy Rituals
School of Pyromancy
First Circle
Second Circle
Third Circle
School of Sorcery
First Circle
Second Circle
Third Circle
Spell Creation
GMs Guidance
The Pale
Mapping the Pale
The Below
Creating Adventures
The Feel of the World
Experience
Optional Rules
Threats & Abominations
Threat Abilities
Threat Description
Ash Nomads
Bandits and Villains
Corrupted Beasts
Blood Lord Knight
Corrupted Wardens
Cultists
Fanatics
Ghul
Greater & Lesser Abominations
Ice Worms
Lich
Marsh Wraith
Pale Ones
Rot Golems
Ruin Dwellers
Shrike
Tribals
Non-Player Characters
Trader
Militia
Civilians
Noble
The Anvil

Citation preview

The Black Iron A Grimdark Fantasy RPG

Credit Written and Designed J Lasarde

Additional Writing Richard August

Artwork

Chris Cold Tan Nguyen Marck James Nahe Doon Satoshi Kamanaka Erick Efata C. Nambiatooran Dean Spencer Art Earl Geier Peter Temesi Bob Greyvenstein Forest Imel Jeffrey Koch

Maps

Phil Bate Niki Lasarde August Hahn

Layout J Lasarde

Editing J Lasarde

Proof Reading Phil Bate Ian F. White Gareth H. Graham August Hahn Niki Lasarde

Special Thanks

To all the Backers, to everyone that supported me on this journey, To my wife and my two cats Max and Louie for keeping me sane. To John ‘Mr Mean’ Polack for the reviews, cheers bud. Dedicated to my Mum who always encouraged and will never be forgotten. The Black Iron is copyright FeralGamersInc Ltd, all rights reserved 2020. Some artwork © Grim Press, used with permission. All rights reserved.

Contents

Step into the Dark

8

Example of Play

78

The Book The World The Players The GM The Rules Combat Basics Survival Horror Abbreviations

8 8 9 9 9 10 13 13

Creating a Character The Four Steps Chimeer Half Elves Humans Backgrounds Life Experience

82 83 84 86 88 90 92

“The end of us all” The Beginning The Land Above The Last City Crime & Punishment The Black Fort The Pale Lands The Known Cities of the Pale The Land Below Cults Faith Threats Mythic Artifacts

15 16 20 29 29 32 34 38 44 45 46 48

The Blood Lords Axas - The Lord of Blood and Vein Barston - Lord of Salt and Rust Kiall - The Lord Chirurgeon Laidon - Lord of Depravity Nicran - Lord of Death and Decay Xertin Lord of Conflict and Murder

55 57 58 61 63 64 67

The Luck of the Dice Attributes Skills Skill Descriptions Performing Actions

70 70 71 71 75

Roles Martial Exploration Arcana Shadow

95 97 99 101

Derived Stats Group Experience

102 104

Weapons, Armour & Gear 106 Item Quality Crafting Weapons Armour and Shields Weapon Descriptions

Guilds and Cults The Black Fort The Guild of Explorers The Guild of Silence The Fighter’s Guild Sisters of Stone Cult Cult of the Malice The Grey Order

Explore and Survive Travel across the Pale Travelling the Below

107 108 111 114

120 122 124 126 128 130 132 134

138 139 139

Survival Corruption Combat and Injury Damage and Healing Fear and Stress

The Arcane

140 144 148 153 155

156

Using Magic

158

School of Necromancy First Circle Second Circle Third Circle Necromancy Rituals

162 163 164 165 165

School of Pyromancy First Circle Second Circle Third Circle

167 169 170 171

School of Sorcery First Circle Second Circle Third Circle Spell Creation

173 174 175 177 179

GMs Guidance The Pale Mapping the Pale The Below Creating Adventures The Feel of the World Experience Optional Rules

Threats

182 183 185 187 189 190 192 192

196

Threat Abilities

196

Threat Description Ash Nomads Bandits and Villains Corrupted Beasts

197 199 201 203

Blood Lord Knight Corrupted Wardens Cultists Fanatics Ghul Greater & Lesser Abominations Ice Worms Lich Marsh Wraith Pale Ones Rot Golems Ruin Dwellers Shrike Tribals

205 207 209 211 213 215 217 219 220 223 225 227 229 231

Non-Player Characters Trader Militia Civilians Noble

232 232 232 233 233

The Anvil

234

The Black Iron

Step into the Dark T

he Black Iron RPG takes you to a land ravished by war and corrupted by evil. A world where you will struggle to survive but survive you must. Where you will pillage great ruined cities, fight foul beasts twisted by sorceries, discover cults worshipping horrifying gods and unveil plots and twists that will bring down kings. The world is a frozen and dark place, and that is only on the surface, those that fled to the ancient dwarven cities below ground have their problems, with dark uncharted mines and caves that unveil dwarven treasures or horrifying beasts with wars between wealthy families that control the cities inhabited by those that fled the surface. Guilds, factions, and corrupt nobles’ rule over the survivors who have already thrown off the yoke of one master just to discover another.

The Book This book is made up of eight main chapters; these will guide you through an understanding of the mechanics of the game, onto character creation, understanding the skills, how to deal with combat and running the game as a Gamemaster (GM). A

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list of monsters and NPCs, along with adventure plots and campaign seeds, these will allow you to play and create adventures for years to come.

The World In Chapter 2 – The Pale, we will go into much more detail regarding the people, places, and background to the world of The Black Iron, but to truly understanding the world an important fact must be understood, the world is divided into two parts, the land above and the land below.

Above

The surface of the Pale Lands is a frozen wasteland, a never-ending volcanic winter. Nothing much survives beyond the lands of the Last City. To the north, in the shadow of the mountain range called the Claws the mages have constructed magical sun spires that have kept the lands around the last city temperate, this is where food is grown, and animals kept, supplying food to the city and those below ground. Keeping this small piece of land free of ice takes a lot of energy, and new solutions will need to be found before the whole world succumbs to the eternal winter.

The Rules

Below

It is said that centuries ago dwarves lived in vast cities beneath the ground that their mines and tunnels spread for hundreds of miles. For a long while these ancient tunnels and ruins were considered cursed, haunted places, and to some, they still are. But as the Black Iron fell and the earth was beset by volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters any who could passed through the ancient doors to these dwarven mines and fled below ground for protection. The cities found there were reoccupied, and after 25 years, the cities are now rebuilt and are being defended, against the beasts that prowl the darkness.

The Players The Black Iron is a game, and a game needs players, we suggest that a group of 4-5 players make a good number, but any number of players can be involved. Each player must make a character so they can walk the land both above and below. These characters are the avatars; they will often be different from the players, have skills and abilities most players do not possess, wield magic and strange powers. Creating a character is describe in more detail in the Character Creation chapter.

The GM Along with players the game also needs a referee an adjudicator, someone that decides the difficulties, responds to the questions, has the answers and has the final say in disputes. This person is often called a Gamemaster, or GM.

NPCs

The GM controls all the people, monsters and creatures not controlled by the players; these others are called Non-Player Characters or NPCs for short. If you question a blacksmith, threaten a bandit or interact with a monster, the GM will be the one that responds.

In every game, there are rules and The Black Iron is no exception; what follows is a look at the core mechanic and how to play. Combat will have extra rules as will certain other actions like magic and survival etc. And these will be covered in later chapters, but the following is all you need to understand to play.

Dice

The Black Iron uses dice, and these are mainly sixsided dice, but it will also use four-sided, eightsided and ten-sided. These will be abbreviated as d4, d6. D8. D10, with the d indicating dice and the number indicating the number of sides.

Rule Zero

The most important rule is to have fun if a rule doesn’t work change it or remove it. Only roll dice when it is really necessary or when failure or success can change the course of the game.

The Core Mechanic

The Black iron uses a simple system for resolving tasks. You roll the number of D6 that the attribute has and only keep the highest result, you then add to this any modifiers and the skill number, removing any penalties and if the result is equal to or higher than the Target Number you succeed. Example Niki is attempting to jump a crevice the GM says that the Target Number is a 7, Niki has 3d6 for her Agility, so she rolls these and gets a 2, 4 and a 6. As the 6 is the highest number Niki keeps this, she adds her Skill number of +2 which gives a total of 8 and a success, Niki reaches the other side safely.

One of the dice should be of a different colour as this is the Iron Die. All the following rules will be explained in greater detail in the Explore and Survive Chapter.

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The Black Iron The Law of 6’s

For every 6 the you roll beyond an initial 6 you add +1 to the result so if Niki had rolled 2, 6 and 6 then her result would have been a 7 (6 and a +1 for the extra 6) if Niki had rolled three 6’s then the result would have been 8 (6 and +2 for the extra two 6’s). A roll of 6 on the Iron Die would result in a positive consequence

Opposed Rolls

An opposed roll happens when you are in competition either with another player or an NPC, this is most likely going to happen during combat. Opposed rolls involve both players or the player and GM rolling the dice as they would normally with the highest result winning. In the case of a tie then the win goes to the one with the highest skill or attribute, if it is still a tie then the player wins.

The Law of 1’s

If at any time the result of your Iron Die roll is a 1 Aiding Others then a negative outcome has happened, the result Others can aid you as long as their character has of this outcome and how to deal with it is covered the skill you are attempting at the same or a higher in the Explore and Survive chapter. level than your own character. By giving aid they will add a +1 to the roll result. Not all tasks can benefit from aid. Target Numbers (TN) A Target Number will determine how difficult the task is and what you need to roll in order to succeed. Modifiers are never used to adjust a Target Number as often modifiers can change whereas the difficulty of the task will always stay the same. Difficulty Easy Average Difficult Hard Very Hard Extremely Hard Near Impossible

Modifiers

TN 3 5 7 9 11 13 15+

In the Black Iron the result of your dice rolls can be modified by bonuses and penalties, these can come from the characters skills, the gear they are using, help from others, adverse weather conditions, injuries and other factors like stress. The modifier only affects the roll never the Target Number.

Corruption

The Pale is corrupt, and some places are more corrupt than others. The characters corruption is measured in a pool. This pool starts at 1, what this means is that all characters start the game with their corruption at one, there is no way to avoid it or cure it to zero.

Combat Basics As we have stated the Pale is a dangerous place and with danger comes combat, whether this is a bar-room brawl or a fight against a horde of corrupted. Combat involves several actions which the character can choose to make. The Iron Die will expand these options, the Iron Die and how it effects combat will be explained in later chapter.

Melee

Melee covers both the attack and parry and involves the use of any hand-held weapon such as a sword, axe, sturdy branch or assassins dagger More information on Modifiers and the Modifier in one hand or even both hands and a shield, Table can be found in the Explore and Survive second weapon etc, in the other hand. Parrying or blocking an attack acts as an opposed roll, we will Chapter. go into more detail in the Exploration Chapter.

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The Black Iron Ranged

Ranged is the use of Bows, Crossbows, and Slings, these weapons take both hands to use and during their use the character cannot use a shield or parry, but they can dodge. Ranged weapons need ammo which is supplied separately. See the Exploration Chapter for more on ranged combat and using ranged weapons.

Magic

Casting Magic on the battlefield will take time, and this can often leave the mage open to attack. Mages cannot defend while casting, and rely on their fellow explorers for protection whilst casting complex spells. Spells come in various forms and will be discussed further in the Arcane chapter of the book.

Skills

You can attempt to use a Skill during combat, often this is healing but can also include unlocking a door to escape, brewing a poison, or even sneaking into a better position on the battlefield. Characters performing a Skill will not be able to block or parry an attack.

Surprise

Surprising the enemy gives you a whole round of actions in which to act before the enemy can respond, and even then, the response will be an Initiative roll. Surprise is often achieved through ambush or stealth, both of which is an opposed roll, in regard to ambush the target is rolling against the success of the ambush and with stealth this would be an opposed roll vs. the targets perception. Surprise and its many benefits will be gone into more detail in the Explore and Survive chapter.

Damage

All weapons inflict damage if the attack is a success. This damage is a combination of weapon damage + Attribute. All damage is modified by the armour worn by the target.

Armour

Some characters may have special talents or items they wish to use during combat; they will always fit in one of the above categories, for example talents will be treated as skills and so forth

Armour protects the wearer against damage inflicted by weapons. When a successful attack happens, the attacker reduces the weapon damage by the armours protection level, someone wearing armour with a protection level of 5 who is attacked by someone who does damage of 8 will reduce the number of damage done to only 3.

For more on combat, see the Explore and Survive chapter.

Wounds

Special

Aiming and Called Shots

You can spend your time aiming a ranged weapon and for each round spent aiming you can add a +1 to your roll, this also allows you to state a particular location, item or body part that you are aiming at. A successful aim will indicate that you have hit the location. Aiming is only used for Ranged or Thrown attacks

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in the Explore and Survive chapter along with the other Combat Modifiers.

Called shots are not aimed but are attempts to hit a particular item, location or body part, doing this will give a penalty to the roll based on the size of the target. The range of penalties can be found

All characters begin with a base Wound level of 10 and added to this is your characters Body Attribute and any bonuses from Talents or Advantages. Taking a lot of wounds can affect your attempts to succeed in tasks as the more wounds you take the more penalties you will receive.

Hit Locations

Your character also has a number of Hit Locations which is where what armour is worn is made a note of including that armours protection level, this is mainly for called shots or aimed shots.

Stress

Your character has a stress level which is affected by exhaustion, hunger, thirst and extremes of weather. Magic also effects your stress levels and some spells can increase the stress level significantly. Stress us a gauge of how well your character is managing in the current situation and a high stress will affect your characters ability to deal with not only tasks but danger and fear.

Survival Horror The Black Iron RPG emphasises survival, and the characters will find themselves in a situation where they are struggling against the elements as much as they are against abominations and cultists. The GM should make this clear to the players before they start, that this is not a game where you go from room to room killing and looting (though there may be elements of that) but a game of hard decisions, desperation, cruelty and of death. Those parties that plan ahead, equip themselves well, do their research and work together will survive the longest.

The Black Iron is also a game of horror, of terrible visions, fearful encounters and situations which many may find gross and unnecessary, but this is the world of The Black Iron, those that survived the fall crawled over the bodies of the weak and dying so they could survive and rebuild, this is the way of things, so beware.

Abbreviations The Black Iron uses several standard abbreviations found in most Tabletop RPGs. For those new, to the hobby, we explain these below.

Abbreviation GM PC TN NPC RND AP DMG RNG

Meaning Games master Player Character Target Number Non-Player Character Round Armour Points Damage Range

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The Black Iron

“The end of us all” I

t gets called a lot of things. The great war. The war to end all wars. Some even called it the last war, which should make anyone who has seen the world laugh until they choke. Whatever name you want to give it, it was almost the end of us all. Almost.

The Elves fled the suffering and corruption. Used their foul sorceries to damn the world they fled; black-hearted cowards to the end. That was a long time ago, of course. Long enough that people pretend not to remember. Long enough that there are children who don’t remember what the world was like before the black iron fell. Before the eternal winter, before the sun was blinded, before the dust consumed the sky. The lucky ones went below to the abandoned cities of the Dwarves. The Dwarves were the first victims of the elves. Poor bastards. They all burned down there. All of them. Those who were quick enough, or lucky enough, to get to the Last City can scrape something approximating a life upon the earth if you can call being crammed into a crumbling city a life. They cling on, barely, for as long as the walls and the magic hold. Then there is the black fort and its pyromancers…the way you hear the children talk about them. As though they were heroes. Immortals. Not men, tiring and breaking a little each day. The magic was draining just a little more of them — the corruption eating away at muscle, and brain, and skill. And the ice is waiting. The walls won’t hold forever. It’s much safer underground, not that we’ve long left down here either. Oh! You want hope, do you? You want assurance that we’ll find some way out of this…out of the creeping shadows. I have nothing. There are some who’ll tell you the ruins of the past have some way of staving off the end. The Mages send out parties of brave lads and lasses to seek out the things that the elves left behind. Maybe, they say, they left a means of turning back the corruption. Fucking idiots. I’ve seen them drag back the survivors…not that there was much left. Skin shrivelled over bones that were turning to ice. Eyes hardening to crystal. And that was the best of them. Do you think the elves would leave us any means of saving ourselves? They burned the Dwarves. They’ll freeze us to death. The world will consume itself, like ice worms spewing from the guts of a corpse. And then, wherever they are, they’ll laugh; that laugh like a handful of sand sliding through your fingers — a laugh like snakes hissing.

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The Beginning They say that giants once walked upon the earth, stripping the land of life and turning the oceans into stagnant pools. The Old Gods, the creators of the giants, called the Yazata by those few priests who still keep the old wisdom alive, made war on their children. The Giants lost, though few of the Yazata survived to glory in their triumph. The corpses of the vanquished were left to rot upon the earth, where the blood of a savage conflict gradually seeped into the ground. The blood of the giants, steeped in their corruption, warped the soil itself. The blood ate away at the roots of the trees, and, when finally, spring returned to the land, the roots which formed beneath the earth contained the essence which eventually became the elves. The blood of the Old Gods seeped into the mud and clay of the wilderness. From this, eventually, the rough forms of humanity eventually crawled forth. That is what the legends say. The legends do not say how the Dwarves were created, and the Elves scoured their writings and records from when they wiped the Deep Peoples from the earth. Such is their way. For the Elves looked upon themselves, in the dawning of the new world, and saw that they were better. As man gradually formed thought and learned to use fire and tools, the Elves had built a civilization. As man began to invent the plough and to use the land to sustain himself, Elves had mastered the arcane arts, divined the ways and mysteries of the universe, had become masters of whatever they chose to examine. And, as men aged and died, the Elves remained perfect, unchanging and ageless. Elvish immortality was both boon and bane. Blessed with physical perfection, immunity to disease and old age, the ability to learn without the mind degrading or time dissolving, they were able to make the world into a paradise. But why should a species who were as gods deign to communicate with those who had only just begun to build crude houses from stone?

As the ages wore on, the Elves became increasingly distant, increasingly alien, and increasingly unconcerned with anything beyond their own preoccupations. The other species of the world simply became another resource, to be reshaped to suit the aesthetics of the Elves. The flesh-magic, the rituals of the unmaking, the sorceries of the scattered bones…all of these the Elves devised, to make those who lived in their world beautiful, according to their bizarre standards of beauty. Why should they recognise pain or suffering of any kind, they wondered, after all, were they not rendering the world better through their actions? The world existed for their pleasure; all things existed to be refined through their artistry, through their genius. They performed the rites to call ancient gods down to the earth, binding them into service too, carving the hieroglyphics of mastery into divine flesh. After countless experiments, they finally concluded that the Dwarves could not be rendered beautiful. Their bodies stunted in growth but broad and muscular could not be sufficiently reshaped. Their minds were too limited to provide the Elves with any amusement. They were too much like the stone they lived among; their thinking too rigid. And so, the Elves excoriated the halls of the Dwarves with fire and strange creatures built from the vestiges of those species the Elves had determined to make better. Nothing survived in those ancient subterranean halls. Eventually, the dominion of the Elves became too onerous for any to endure and the realms of men, which had grown in strength throughout the long years of Elvish depredation, united to cast them down. Had the Elves cared at all for any species save themselves, they might have noticed the preparations the cities of mankind were undertaking; they might have heard the endless hammering of smithies, tempering swords and arrow heads. They might have seen the gathering of armies and the coruscating magic’s which mankind had learned, while the Elves had simply continued to treat the world as an object to be played with. At last, the armies of men readied themselves and marched upon those who had spent millennia experimenting upon them. They left a wake of blood as they destroyed their

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The Black Iron elven torturers, masters and enslavers; city after gleaming city was butchered as the elven forces, who for centuries had merely sought to ensure their armour was beautiful and their skin flawless, fought the downtrodden they had tortured and toyed with. Cruel, the Elves may have been, lacking in any qualities which made them human, but never stupid. They had long studied those worlds which existed beyond their own and long contemplated the destruction of the world entire — conceiving new worlds they might make in the aftermath. Seeing that mankind intended their obliteration, the Elves opened a gate to a new world. Then, in a final act, a combining of sorceries and ancient words, the elven witches fractured the moon before departing this realm forever. The moon, as it split apart, disgorged a core of Black Iron which plummeted to the earth splitting into a thousand pieces, immolating entire civilisations and splitting the crust apart. Dust and debris filled the atmosphere, choking out the light of the sun, and the contents of the earth spewed to the surface through the rent, sending forth tidal waves of magma. Once this had finally settled, as the ash began to rain from the sky, the ice moved in to claim the world for its own.

The Land Above The blasted land, this world of ice, was once abundant in life. Now it is a barren, frozen waste. From the vast poisoned forests in the west to the ash plains in the south, and the frozen sea in the east, all compass points harbour death.

A scant few of the human cities still stand, though they are shrouded in white now, and most are abandoned. Those that do, house those few Ice Tribes which remember the old ways, and what cities were built for. Others provide shelter for bandits or worse — the abominations crafted by the Elves, or by cults dedicated to things best left unnamed. Some of the tribes are willing to trade with outsiders, exchanging the results of their hunts for barter. Others don’t bother trading with those travelling the ever-shifting pathways of snow; instead, they trade for them. Selling them to the fighting pits or simply as food. The tundra is an unremitting place and cannibalism is often the only way to survive. Scattered along the way, old signs stand crooked and point towards what once existed, these signs now are mostly rotted or broken, but some are decorated with dead animals nailed to the frozen wood to warn those that travel the roads that danger lies nearby and they best beware.

The Western Lands

To the west lie the Dragon Tail mountains, and in their shadow, the forest once called Arbren or the Great Wood. Now the forest is a poisoned, decayed thing and partly marshland, populated by abominations and marsh wraiths who worship the God of Rot. The Dragon Tail Mountains themselves are home to a series of degenerate tribes, constantly warring for control of whatever fertile land is left amongst those crags and outcrops. Some of the tribes opted to move north, now living upon the claw itself, at a greater distance from the Rot God and his suppurating corruption. These tribes are more civilised and will trade with the last city that stands at the base of the mountains, their minds untainted by the sinister oozing song of the rot which seethes in the heart of the forest.

As for the north, the north is an endless mass of creeping snow and ice and cold death. A hardy few seek to survive in the endless tundra, forging uncertain paths through the snow used by those traders, slavers and bandits who travel between The majority of the Dragon Tail tribes, however, the small communities that attempt to endure in have lost themselves to the joy of war and the ice. savagery. Others have given themselves utterly to the service of the Rot God, their limbs becoming studded with buboes and their flesh sloughing away from the bone.

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Others have become strangely decadent, their consumption of human flesh leading them into ever darker and stranger behaviours. It is considered fortunate by many that the constant warfare stops them from ever becoming a threat; but should the Rot God ever gain sway over all the tribes in the west, the world would surely tremble at their coming.

The Eastern Shore

Once home to the twin cities of Chain & Sail, along with several smaller villages and towns, who grew fat with the wealth from fishing, the Eastern Shore now lies entirely abandoned. The sea, from which these empty places once feasted has now frozen over entirely. Pack ice swarms the streets of the coastal conurbations, a thickening hide which conceals everything it covers. Those few continuing to live upon the shores worship strange beings, the things they say they have found as they plumb the ice for anything to help them survive. Beneath the ice, things lurk waiting and watching. Frozen wrecks poke frost-buckled mastheads through the ice, fuelling rumours of treasures lost to the depths. It takes the bravest or most foolish of souls to risk the cold and whatever horrors lurk beneath the ice. Amongst the wrecks the Raiders thrive, once fishermen and whalers now driven mad by the corruption from deep beneath the sea ice, these raiding bands seek out any that stray too close with net and spear, so they can harvest the fat and oils.

The Shackles

The Roadsigns As you travel the roads of the Pale you will often find roadsigns that have small animals attached to them with shards of bone or splinters of iron hard wood. The signs are warnings and should be heeded as they could save your lives. Each of the animals indicate a different threat: Blackbirds indicate a cult ahead Rats indicate cannibal tribes Rabbits indicate Bandits Bones indicate fanatics of a Blood Lord Tree Bark indicates wild animals Grey or white birds mean safety or a Rangers hut.

A small, insignificant set of islands off the eastern coast, considered haunted in the past due to its abandoned castles and deserted villages. It soon became a haven for pirates, who use its coves and caves to hide their ships. The elves quickly took the island wiping out the pirate threat in a welter of bloody violence. It soon became apparent that the Elves had chosen to occupy the island, precisely because of its isolation.

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The Black Iron As the uprising against the Elves reached its bloody climax, the forces of mankind launched an invasion of the Shackles, what was discovered on the islands drove several soldiers to fling themselves from the cliff-tops. The Shackles had been used by the Elves as an artist might use their studio — to experiment, to attempt that which might yet yield new, beautiful results. The melding of beast and humans was attempted, rituals of dark blood magic and terrible torture in the name of healing took place within the walls of the various island’s citadels. In the end, the place was scourged with fire and steel, though the survivors of the process would say only that the islands themselves should have been buried beneath the ice. Only then could the stains upon existence be truly cleansed. The fires did not cleanse everything as many thought, and the citadels and towers often went as deep below as they stood tall above. Deep dungeons held the prized possessions of the Elves, the Chimeer, those successes of the melding. As the fires ravaged and weakened the stone, and the

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ice came making the gates of iron that held them brittle, many of these Chimeer crawled from the ruins and their human memories drove some to seek out others, caring little or not mindful of the reaction they would receive.

The Claws

The northern mountains are called the claws; they are home to the more civilised barbarian tribes, who maintain some of the traditions of the world as it used to be. This does not stop them, however, regularly carrying out the Wild Hunt, plunging across the mountains on their horses, stalking the wild beasts and monsters which call the jagged passes of the Claws their home. It is also here, nestled in the shadow of the claws, that the Last City can be found. Trade has been established between the city and the tribes, mainly the tribes bring skins and ores, and in return, the city provides corn and steel. Though tribal members are seen within the Last city, they are still eyed with suspicion, their strange appearances and beliefs can make them

stand out amongst the more ‘civilised’ people. It has been known for tribal members to be accused of crimes often unfounded and the result of fear or mistrust of the mountain people.

The Southern Ash Plains

Home to the Ash Nomads who serve the albino god, the ash plains have managed to keep the ice at bay and replace it with the ash from the twin volcanoes that smoke and spew forth their venom in the form of lava flows. An endless stretch of the grey desert, the Ash Plains are punctuated only by the faint, umber gleam of the cinder forests and ash encrusted ruins of cities. The cities are fossils, petrified remains of the places that once offered shelter to thousands. The streets are now populated by the still-screaming shadows of those that once called the city home. Few venture into the morgue-cities as they have become known; those few that do report that strange things, now call the places home; flickering shapes shift between the once-living statues, lurking, always just unseen.

Out in the grey desert, some form of civilisation is beginning to establish itself. Small towns, many built on the rubble of places which did not survive the volcanic eruptions, have been rebuilt, communities grow, some even prosper, and trade has been attempted. Contact with the Last City is impossible except by magic or by Raven, though it is rare that the messenger survives the journey. Those that have attempted the journey south in the hope that it would offer an opportunity or a better way of life must first navigate the ice of the northern lands and then the heat of the grey desert. It remains uncertain whether any have survived the journey. The Ash Nomads hunt the cinders for sacrifices to their god, daubed in the dust from the dunes they are known to ambush caravans and travellers by leaping from within the very ash itself. Other dangers are the Pirates who sail the dunes in their land ships, powered by the heated air that fill their ship sails or the slaves that work to turn the wheels, they bear down on victims swiftly and without mercy.

The Southern Ash Plains

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The Black Iron

The Last City ‘The Last City is held between two claws’ goes the saying. In the northern mountains, lies the final surface redoubt of mankind. The final place where human beings live, dwell and flourish above ground. Home to over half a million people, the Last City, is unique. The city is a hub of trade providing food and other resources, both to the cities below ground and the barbarian tribes inhabiting the nearby mountains. Those hired by the Black Fort or the City’s many Guilds are often found within the constantly defended walls. Sell-swords seeking fame and wealth, hunters who track down both man and abomination and Relic Knights looking to redeem the fallen of the past, all congregate here, waiting to pass beyond the Final Gate and reclaim the world. It is said that many even believe that this is actually possible. Such is the vanity of the Last City’s populace.

People

As is to be expected in a city so vastly overpopulated, it’s inhabitants are extremely diverse. Though mainly human, it is not uncommon to see VriDael (Half Elves) stalking through the streets or catch the smell of a Chimeer in the dank avenues. The city is always awake, and the streets are constantly busy, with everything in short supply — most of the citizenry is unemployed, and food and other basic necessities are never available in abundance. This results in regular bouts of significant unrest, with the City Watch and the Council constantly struggling to keep control and the people fed. As refugees continue to arrive from the frozen wastes, the city has been forced to expand in order to accommodate them. Bit by bit, buildings growing out of other buildings, walkways now criss-cross the streets metres above the ground, rope bridges extending from towers to platforms, hundreds of feet above the streets below. The city swells and splits, metastasising like a tumour. Brothels, taverns, gambling dens and fighting pits have all sprung up in the city, and with them a

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thriving criminal underground. The underworld doesn’t simply consist of thugs and gangsters. Hidden cults use the chaos of the City, and particularly its slums and refugee camps, as a cover for their activities, performing the most hideous of rituals to the Blood Lords. These, it is considered, pose the greatest threat to the integrity and longevity of the City itself.

1. Refugee Camps

As the world turned to ice thousands flooded to the Last City, the city quickly became overwhelmed and the gates were finally shut, those that failed to make it inside built shelter under the protection of the city walls and the refugee camps were formed. The camps now expand outward and have become a thriving, living organism, many live within the camps peacefully and some have even created a trade offering food, basic crafting services and goods to barter or exchange, but deep in the heart of the camps crime has taken a hold and gangs rule with fear, running taverns and brothels, gambling shacks and even fencing goods and food stolen from the city itself. The Silent Guild holds sway and keeps many of the criminal activity to a minimum, but murders happen nightly, people are forced from their homes on a daily basis and many are forced into prostitution or become dependent on drugs. The City watch have designated men to watch the roads leading through the camps in order to protect traders from the outlying farms or from below and the mountains, but few of the watch travel into the camp proper as those that have in the past often never returned.

2. Merchant District

A walled city within a walled city and unlike the rest of the city the merchant district has kept itself similar to how it was before the fall. To enter through the gates, you would not be remiss to forget the world outside as life seems to go on as usual, but underneath this charade of normality is a dark heart.

Key 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Refugee Camps Merchant District Administrative District Temple District Slums Market District

5

3

6

4

2

1

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The Black Iron All goods from the outlying farms and the below are transported here to be catalogued and stored in order to make sure the people of the city are fed, but sometimes this system falls down and there is not enough to go around and thousands will go hungry for days while new supplies are delivered and checked, but is this always the case? The council and even the Malice have been investigating corruption for years amongst the merchant class and their ties to the criminal underground, often supplies are stockpiled and then ‘lost’ only to appear on the tables of the wealthy or the storerooms of the Silent Guild.

The Guilds

Though criminal activity is almost definitely going on, the merchant district is the safest part of the city with Guild militia and the City Watch patrolling the streets and guarding the warehouses and homes of those that control the food.

Guild of Merchants By some distance the largest and most prosperous of the guilds, the Merchants hold considerable political and public power within the City. The guild of Merchants deals with the trade and distribution of food and other goods as their name indicates. This includes exerting tight control over the growth of grains, fruit and vegetables, the keeping of livestock and the manufacture of bread, beer and wine. The Merchants also control the influx of goods into the City; while they may not have the power to prevent an individual’s entry to the City, they can rightfully claim everything that an individual possesses. Unsurprisingly, this right has ensured that they are both loathed and so wealthy that being loathed doesn’t really concern the Guild at all. This wealth is further supplemented by the fact that all the trade stores within the precinct of the City are managed by guild members, who pay extortionate taxes from the sale of goods. This has led to a flourishing black market which the Merchants expend a great deal of effort tracking and destroying. The punishments for being caught trading without Guild Sanction are…brutal, to say the least. It is said that the great ledgers of the Guild are bound in human flesh, taken from the backs of those who attempted to avoid paying their tithes.

Commerce Coin is rare but is used still, in forms which existed before the fall. No new coins have been minted in a long time and those returning from exploring the wastes having uncovered an old cache of coins hand it over to the Merchant’s treasury in return for a promissory note of the same value they can use with traders, rather than having to establish the relative worth of the obscure coinage they find. Most of the coins in circulation are of so ancient a style that none truly know what they are worth, judging chiefly by size and weight, and the metal they are cast in. Copper coins are the most common, with silver being much rarer. There is, however, no consistency in availability or exact value, with coins of bronze, brass and gold being used.

The guilds are the most powerful organisations within the Last City, behind only the Council in terms of direct power, though most believe that it is the Guilds who truly control things. The most prominent of the guilds are the Guild of Merchants, the Guild of Expeditions and the Guild of Armourers. There are also a number of smaller guilds, usually linked to their larger brethren. Rumours, at least amongst those who study the strange and arcane past of the Last City claim that there are a number of other, more secretive guilds whose very existence is still to be determined.

Barter is often the more efficient form of commerce, especially for small or travelling traders, as those still trying to survive outside of the City do not have access to the continual oversight of the Merchants Guild. The value of barter is often based upon their rarity, with the more sought-after items able The Guild’s activities are not limited to the Last City, though their power is less inviolate elsewhere. to command higher prices. Merchants representatives also operate in the subterranean Dwarven tomb-cities, and there are even a few who travel to the barbarian citadels. Most travelling traders at least pretend to belong

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to the Guild, banking on the slim measure of protection which such a membership conveys. The Merchants protect their own. Those, however, who would seek to stand on their own, without the interference of the Guild, are rarely so fortunate. There have been many sudden and unexplained fires in the houses of those who refused to pledge their loyalty and money to the Merchants. Family members are known to disappear, leaving behind only traces of blood and the odd severed ear. The Guild of Merchants is a powerful friend. And a deadly enemy. Guild of Expeditions Begun as a way of finally extorting some money back from the Merchants, the Guild of Expeditions supervises all travel from the Last City which seeks to explore and exploit the wastes. Initially, the Finders (as members are often called) was a group of mercenaries who offered protection to the Merchants who left the city regularly. This proved sufficiently lucrative that the Guild soon established itself as a permanent organisation, determining the safest routes through the tundra, establishing a few outposts where travellers could rest and restore. During this gradual emergence, the Finders soon noticed something else — that all goods brought into the city as the possession of an individual came under the purview of the Merchants. But this did not count if the individual left the City with nothing and returned having found something. This arcane loophole provided the Finders with a new way to procure money and power, and it soon seized on it, petitioning the Council to provide them with full sovereignty over anything salvaged from the waste. While the Merchants were initially incensed, the additional protective services which the Finders provided meant that there was little opposition (though a few assassinations on both sides indicated the general feeling). Since then, the Finders have become the second guild in the city, forming one half of the bloc which ultimately rules the Last City. Where the Merchants control the politics of the City, the Finders have much of the manpower. The Finders offer regular and well-paid employment to many of the mercenaries and soldiers who live within the City or pass through. The Finders are less punitive about those operating outside of their

influence…anything they find can be seized at the gates, goes the reasoning, and the Guild has not had to pay anything for armour or resources…a perfect arrangement. Guild of Armourers The fall of the world made it difficult to find the ores needed to create new weapons and armour, so the armourer’s guild now concentrate on repairing and reforging what gear is available or can be found. The Black Iron which now lies scattered across the land has become a much sought-after commodity, capable of containing potent magic while retaining its strength and sharpness far surpasses that of even the finest and carefully wrought steel. The Armourers have spent decades carefully studying the substance, defining its properties and uses. The Guild trains and supports smiths and armourers in the City, and those who operate beneath the earth’s surface. The demand for Black Iron goods has ensured that the Armourers have a continual and impressive income, more than enough to secure their ongoing survival and influence. The Armourers are a far more insular guild than either the Merchants or the Finders, but they are only marginally less influential. As they often remind those who would deny them their requests — who will you turn to when the hordes of abominations reach our gates? The Merchants?

Other Guilds Mages Guild – A small, unassuming building close to the gate of the City houses the Mages’ Guild. While the building is opulent and carefully attended, it does not truly house a Guild. Instead, those Mages who make it to the City are tended to here, before they begin their next journey to the Black Fort. The Guild also acts as an embassy for the Black Fort, ensuring communication remains swift and effective. Silent Guild – The Silent Guild (or the Thieves Guild, as it is referred to, in whispers) does not exist officially, but there is no denying that there is a certain level of organisation amongst some of the criminal classes in the city. Those thieves entering the city must follow the marks that grace

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The Black Iron door frames, hitching posts and other places to one of the many locations the guild control, before announcing their arrival and intent. Thieves operating within the city without the say-so of the Affiliation are usually deprived of their hands. The unluckiest are deprived of other appendages as well.

Mages Guild

Assassins Guild –More a network than a guild, each assassin (and there is no agreement on how many actually reside within the City) acts as a private enterprise, earning contracts based on their reputation or on their particular specialties. This system keeps the Assassins protected, as none are known to another, and so no one can betray or influence the whole.

Assassins receive their contracts at hidden drops across the cities both above and below. No one knows who places the contracts within the drops.

Silent Guid

Assassins Guild

Warriors Guild

Those who wish to place a contract leave the name of the target and their intended price at an empty table in a tavern — The Iron Hand. The commission disappears and reappears in the assassin’s drop points. Any assassin may accept a contract, placing their sigil on the contract to indicate acceptance. Multiple assassins might accept the same contract, with the first to succeed receiving the payment. It is not unknown for small scale assassin wars to break out in the gantries and suspended walkways of the City, as killers seek to claim an especially profitable reward. Warriors Guild – More a mercenary guild for sellswords, pit fighters and bodyguards than anything as reputable as the name guild implies. Its quarters are, in essence, barracks — training halls and sleeping quarters, along with a rough space in which business can be conducted. There is no training facility here; those who join the Guild must be sufficiently competent with the blade to justify their position. Or else, they are likely to be quickly killed. There is a forge and armoury, where those who are able to pay can have their gear repaired or upgraded.

Members of the guild are expected to act (relatively) honourably, fulfilling any contract they

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take on and ensuring the safety of their clients. Guild membership is revoked if the masters feel that someone has brought dishonour to the guild.

3. Administrative District

The beating heart of the city, home to the council and the voiceless King. The militia barracks and Grey Ranger headquarters can also be found here along with the jails and gallows park. Though one of the more secure areas of the city it is still a place where crimes are committed openly, beggars can be seen, crippled and diseased praying and crying out to now dead gods and those that would try to bring the city to its knees attempt to destroy the council and the Remnants that called the district home. Those that wish to leave the city on ‘official business congregate here at the militia barracks for council warrants allowing them access to and from the city and beyond the sun spires or through the dwarven gates to the below. The warrants have a seal and allow the bearer various legal rights within and beyond the city walls, these warrants are valuable and much sought after and the council do not hand them out easily.

The Grand Library Once a cathedral to now-dead gods (whose names have been carefully removed from all statues, books and works of art that once bore them), the grand library is now a vast archive. Here, all that survives of human writing, poetry, science and magic is kept and endlessly copied, in the hope that the memory of what once was will never be lost. It is also a repository of any and all written works found beyond the walls; anything retrieved from the Pale lands which might contain knowledge of the past is brought here. Books, scrolls, notes, maps all find a home within the walls of the library. Many of these works are in tongues ancient and lost, alien or esoteric. The untranslatable tongue of the long dead Dwarves, the secret language of Elves and the guttural words of the Giants, all await to be deciphered and studied. this duty: the librarians. The librarians are known for the strange, trance-like state in which they wait to be approached; none can say how such a fugue is achieved, though many whisper of strange drugs or incantations learned from the books all around them. Others claim that simply

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The Black Iron being able to read at all induce such reveries. Those who would know the answer to a question must present a librarian with a suitable offering (usually food). The librarian will then wander to one of the hundreds of shelves and select, apparently at random, a tome, before reading the answer to the supplicant. Other visitors to the library extract a book from the shelves and bring it to a librarian, simply to hear language read aloud. Each librarian is fluent in all of the languages contained within the various books under their charge. This is achieved through the Remnant — one of the most mysterious and obscure beings in creation. A series of tentacles extend from the bizarre contrivance which is connected to the mosaic ceiling of the Library. The central element of the creature is a mass of scaly flesh and bone. From this central point extend a series of sinuous tentacles, spread throughout the building and plugged into a librarian’s cranium, through a single hole at the base of the skull. Through this strange creature, the librarians are able to share ancient knowledge, communing with the past, so that others can unravel its various mysteries. Strangely, it is not the connection with the Remnant that grants the librarians the dreamlike lack of focus.

The Council

4. Temple District

Established religion crumbled after the fall when those that had fled to the Last City or the below began to place their faith in the Mages (in particular the Pyromancers) of the Black Fort to hold back the encroaching ice, which they did and continue to do with the Sun spires. The Temples at first called this faith in magic blasphemous, but as time went on and the gods did not return or even seem to care the temples became quiet. Many priests were killed after the fall mainly for their willingness to allow the elves to perform their atrocities, people began to ask difficult questions when the temples opened their doors for the refugees, why had the priests and the gods not intervened against the elves, where was their help when it was needed? It was believed that greed had silenced the temples that and a lack of faith in their own teachings. The Temple district is now mostly free of the original religious beliefs, but the area is still considered a holy place and many new religions and cults can be seen there. Doom-sayers hawk their prophecies and warnings from atop the temple steps, seers blind and chained still beg for food and pity on the street corners and refugees still fill the temples. At night strange rituals take place and it is not unknown to see a Relic Knight entering the district after the midnight bell to hunt heretics, abominations and disciples of the Blood Lords.

The city is ‘ruled’ by a council which decides upon laws and the day-to-day issues that the city faces. The council is made up of twelve members, one of which is always a representative of the Black Fort. Five are merchants, two are from the city guard and the military arm of the city, and the final Faith remaining members represent the three largest With the death of the gods — or at least their guilds. disappearance — faith and worship is either non-existent or has been warped, distorted. The Council is often accused of corruption, with Besides the cults, performing their sinister work various decisions being challenged or railed in the shadows, the city is home to a number of against by the masses, as laws are passed that religious orders of varying sizes and influence. only benefit a handful, or ration cuts are enforced The following are the more prominent orders, but for all but the wealthy few. Despite this, in the 45 the variation and number of different religious years that the council has existed, there have only beliefs are extensive. been two successfully completed assassinations. Many roles in the city carry much higher mortality Children of the Old Gods rates. A small order, made up of mostly scholars who believe that the gods never died. Instead, they

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merely went into solitude until such times the people of the land can prove themselves worthy of their return. The order is rarely seen on the streets of the city preaching. They prefer to sequester themselves in the library, composing eloquent homilies, which attest to the need for man to curb their sinful ways, in order to entice the gods to return. Few bother to read these verbose texts, though the closeness of the Children to the Remnant is enough to convince many that they are keepers of some form of truth.

Order of Bones Even more rarely seen in the City, the Order of Bones only make the perilous journey to the Last City when in desperate need of supplies. Part of their doctrine, and faith, requires the order to make their home within the bones of the dead giants, still scattered across the land. As to what the Order of Bones actually believes, few are able to say. Paranoid about the importance of preserving the secrecy of their beliefs. At some point in the last two centuries, the order developed their own language. The language is indecipherable to any without access to the order’s inner mysteries. The order claims it has access to the most ancient and insightful of all religious texts — those that are etched into the bones of the giants themselves. Whether this is true or not is really unknown; what is known is that the Order of Bones is split into two sects. One, the Unfallen, believe that the texts were written onto the skeletons of the giants at the moment of their creation. The other, the Remainders, believe that the words were engraved after the giant’s death. While the sects are theologically opposed, they tend to work together without a great deal of animosity. Or at least, this appears to be the case when they visit the City; in their homes, within the temples of nude bone, brutal conflicts are routinely fought. Disciples of the Daer The Disciples of the Daer are outlawed within the City limits, as they worship the Elves that fractured the moon. What their actual beliefs are, none have, as yet, troubled to find out. Their religious practices, however, are horrifyingly easy to discern. They perform strange, crude surgeries on themselves, scarring their flesh and making

clumsy attempts to graft the limbs of wild animals onto themselves and others. The Disciples were discovered after a number of people had gone missing in the slums, and witnesses told stories of strange creatures stalking the alleys. The order had established itself in a temple of the Old Gods, long since abandoned, where they had been experimenting on themselves and others. The explanation for these peculiar experiments, extracted under torture, was a twisted attempt to learn the secrets of Elvish science. The order officially no longer exists in the City but sightings and the number of missing people, stolen from the slums, suggest otherwise.

5. The Slums

As with all great cities, there are those that have and those that have not. In the Last City, such a divide is impossible to miss and, there are very few who have anything. When the moon fractured and the world responded with devastating volcanic upheaval, earthquakes and tidal waves, thousands fled north to the Last City and the gateways to the land below. As the gates to the forsaken Dwarven burrows were shut, thousands still clamoured for safety. There was little within the City to sustain them, but there was, at least, space. Within the open areas of the Last City — those places which had once been the pleasure gardens and plazas for the wealthy — crude houses and streets began to grow, built from whatever could be scrounged or stolen. Over time, the slums continued to expand, becoming a sprawling morass of crumbling tenements and swaying, toppling edifices, in which thousands live and die. Ramshackle houses piled one upon another, narrow streets like open sewers and a population which has given up on being anything other than tired and oppressed. Murder, rape and theft are the only real currency in the slums. These quickly extended to the refugee camps outside the city walls, a vast field of tents, huts and ramshackle hovels. Those that cannot get through the city gates end up here at the mercy of criminals, disease, cold and hunger.

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The Black Iron

The Beggar Lords

The Rot Within The overflow to the refugee camps from the slums has created issues with security and the integrity of the walls of the city, with sewers running beneath the streets and into the rivers, many that now have dried up these tunnels now provide a way into the city from the outside. This has led to many threats entering the city via the slums.

The slums have many beggars and these unfortunates are often not what they seem. Spies and what are referred to as Mockers are on every street corners, often disguised as beggars. These mockers watch the city streets for anyone breaking the rules of the Silent Guild or for any information they feel is pertinent to the guild and its interests.

Many of these threats come in the form of cults and spies for the Blood Lords, other threats are corrupted individuals seeking shelter or to satisfy some need or desire. These infiltrations have made the slums even more dangerous and it is not unheard of for hired swords to enter the slums on guild sanctioned ‘purges hunting down those that are deemed a danger to the people and safety of the city.

These beggars and along with them many others are almost a guild of their own, with heirachy and rules. Earning the favour and trust of the Beggar Lords can be extremely helpful in a city slums where life is cheap and danger lurks on every corner.

6. Market District

The central market centre of the city, this was once a thriving square catering to the needs of many but now is a mere shadow of its former self. Hunters trade their skins, bottles of fat and carved bone gewgaws to whomever shows an interest, crafters sell weapons and armours of an often-low grade beside tools for farming or re-purposed objects of interest. The odd enterprising scavenger may offer items from below or found out beyond the spires. The more popular traders are those selling ingredients or potions they claim can cure corruption, keep away horrors or magically makes one wealthy, but often guards from the Black Fort either shut these down or strong-arm the trader to the Mages never to be seen again. It is also not unheard of to find people selling their skills, scouts, smiths, navigators and even novice mages have been known to sell their particular expertise to those planning on entering the Pale or exploring the lost roads below.

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Crime & Punishment Crime is rampant in the City, and as more and more refugees arrive, the more overcrowded the City becomes. Desperation, hunger and dwindling resources has led to an increase in murder, rape and theft. A City so overcrowded has no space for cells and so other punishments had to be decided upon. Petty crimes typically lead to banishment from the city or being sent to the Gray Order. More serious crime leads to death or dismemberment — murder or rape results in hanging or beheading. Lesser crimes like theft lead to the removal of a hand or ear. The slums deal with crime in their own way, not bothering with the city watch or the guilds. Trials and legality take much too long a time to provide a resolution to crime. It is not unheard of for mobs to burn or impale criminals on the streets as a warning to others. The only exception to this are members of the Silent Guild who, if hunted, are protected by the guild. The thief council simply steps in and ‘pays’ their respects to the family of the victim, making it all go away. With all things, the larger guilds seem to be above the law, avoiding the consequences of their crimes whatever they may be. This has caused significant disputes and a number of active calls to restrict the power of the guilds. The guilds, however, have managed to suppress many of these claims. Such are the advantages of wealth and influence.

The Gray Order

An order of criminals given the task of patrolling the border of the ice and to maintaining the sun spires, the Gray Order are those unfortunates press-ganged into protecting the City they are excluded from. They are often seen marching along the few roads leading to the city, protecting travellers and refugees from the depredations of bandits…and much darker things. The Gray Order is composed of two parts the first being the Militia — those condemned to walk the ice border. The second are the Rangers who search the forests and fields for criminals and bandits whilst keeping the roads safe.

The rangers are often not criminals at all but Hunters who have offered their particular skills to keep the city safe. Very few prisoners have the skills needed to survive the pale or even be called a ranger. Even though the rangers are still part of the Gray Order there has been calls to separate the two so that rangers are given the respect they deserve.

City Militia

The militia are often no better than common thugs with only the most desperate joining the militia, which is a dangerous profession that pays badly (three square meals and a roof in the form of a barracks) and garners little respect. Of course like all things there are some good amongst the bad and certain members of the militia wish to see the city prosper and for it not to fall into anarchy and corruption which would surely happen if they were not there to keep a balance. The militia are seen much more often and in a much better state in the administration areas of the city, with infrequent patrols of brutish militia patrolling the slums.

The Black Fort Two leagues west of the last city stands the Black Fort, true home to the Mages. Home to those who hold the ice back, for as long as they can. The Fort itself is, as the name suggests, a dark and brooding place; a fortress-built centuries before to protect the north from barbarian tribes. The Black Fort teaches those with the innate ability to wield magic, inculcating those talented few who survive long enough to receive tutelage of the arts of Pyromancy, Necromancy and Sorcery. With the coming of the ice, Pyromancy becomes the most vital of the Arts. Without it, the Last City would cease to exist, and the surface would be surrendered to the ice and to the Blood Lords. Pyromancy is also what lights the roads Below, preserving that civilisation and ensuring that it does not tumble into anarchy, and it has been wielded as a weapon against corruption for decades. Those that study the flame do so in

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The Black Iron full knowledge of their fate; they will eventually become flame themselves. The fire gradually consumes those who wield it, but it is a future many are willing to accept. Necromancy’s place within the Black Fort remains controversial. For an age, the study of the art of death was forbidden. When the prohibition was eventually relaxed, those who practiced the art did so under strict guidelines, demanding that the art only be used for the healing of others. This led to extraordinary advancements in medicine, with Necromancers able to perform miraculous surgical operations, including the reattachment of severed limbs and the resurrection of the dead. These activities fell within the areas of permitted study, but the experimental processes used to

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achieve the ideal magical method were far less salubrious. Many Necromancers within the Black Fort kept corpses which they continually killed and reanimated, trying each time to restore the dead to full life, rather than to a state of shambling movement. Other experiments were conducted on those whose brains had deteriorated to the point that they were mindless slaves to the Necromancer. When discovered, such practices were violently repressed, though rumours insist that such practices continue today. These same rumours make claims about other directions the Necromancers explored, and there are tales recounted by refugees who reach the City of golems, prowling the night attacking livestock and person alike. There are even accusations of the use of recovered Elvish texts to guide magical

research, though the Mages angrily refute such insinuations.

Novices

Every year dozens of men and women, boys and girls attempt to earn the rank of novice in order to join the Mages and enter the walls of the Black Fort to study the various forms of magic taught there. Some of these do indeed become novices, some are sent away, and others are never heard from again. The role of a novice is hard and can take many years before they become recognised as a fully-fledged mage of the particular art they are instructed in. Study within the Black Fort covers a multitude of skills including the healing arts, alchemy,

academia and history. Novices are encouraged to see the world and experience the threats it offers, this is a dangerous instruction to enforce as many novices have died in the wastes, but many mages in the Black Fort believe that it is necessary to understand the dangers of magic.

The Sun Spires

Created by the Pyromancers of the Black Fort these spires keep the ice at bay and allow the Last city to grow food and the many refugees to build shelters outside the city walls. It is said that twelve pyromancers gave up their lives to build the spires and that their burning hearts lie at the centre of each one.

The Black Fort

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The Black Iron The Spires also have sorceries etched into their structure which repels abnormalities from crossing the border of ice, these dark powers are ancient and are said to be the words created by the giants, others claim that the Mages twisted Elven sorcery to act against itself which is how those created by the elves cannot cross. The Black Order checks on the spires during their patrols as often they have been attacked in order to push them over and quench the flames in ice or have been daubed with blasphemous text in an attempt to nullify the magic’s within. But the magic’s are woven tight, with threads like a web criss-crossing each one, and nothing will extinguish the flame of a Pyromancers heart.

The Pale Lands Between the border of the lands surrounding the Last City and the Ash Lands in the south lies hundreds of miles of ice and snow, dead forests and ruined cities. These lands are hazardous in so many ways it is hard to pinpoint one above the other, but if the cold, starvation, or dehydration doesn’t kill you the bandits, corrupted wild beasts, cultists and abominations to name a few surely will.

Cults and Threats

The frozen world beyond the Last City is a land of danger; wild beasts hunt the forests and snow plains, abominations hide in the dark places, bandits and slavers make life hard for travellers and those trying to survive in the wastes. When the Blood Lords rose, many saw them as new gods, created in the image of those deities long dead. The power and ferocity with which the Blood Lords forged themselves, fiefdoms quickly drew believers, who saw, in their new masters, salvation. And, where there is a belief, there is someone to take advantage of it. Cults dedicated to the Blood Lords quickly sprang to ugly life. The cults themselves are brutal things, predicated on a ruthless commitment to their respective Blood Lord and the infliction of punishment on any who do not believe.

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The Relic Knights

As the Black Iron fell, in screaming shreds from the sky, the armies of man died in their thousands. These killing fields are all now covered by snow. Those who rode forth against the Elves are commemorated in endless songs, poems, and paintings. The little joy left to those who inhabit the slums of the Last City, or congregate in the Land Below, are the stories of the Knightly Orders. The greatest and most terrible of mankind’s warriors. Always in the vanguard when battle was joined, none survived the Elves’ final trick. There were only corpses to attest to their valour and, soon after, these two vanished beneath the endlessly falling snow. And so, they wait, encased in ice. The order of the Relic Knights began with the belief that the return of the Orders was the only means by which mankind could be saved. Those who wish to become a Relic Knight must search the battlefields of the past, digging through the snow to find the bodies of their forebears and take from them their armour. Once a complete suit of knight’s armour has been assembled, the owner is ready to be inducted into the Order. Though small in number, the Relic Knights are widely loved and supported; few of them pay for food or struggle to find accommodation, so long as they are seen to conduct themselves as Knights should. Such behaviour — protecting the weak, warring against tyranny, offering mercy — is unconducive to a long life, after all, and those who follow such codes are to be rewarded. There are many that believe the knights have long gone and should be left in peace beneath the snow, that those that seek out to revive the order are deluded or in some way corrupted. That these so-called Relic Knights are mere shadows of what was and that those that rummage in the ice seeking the armour of the dead are not only stealing but committing sacrilege. But to enter a battlefield and risk the danger of the carrion eaters and the abominations that wander those dark places in order to revive a once honourable order is seen by many as bravery itself tempered with a sense of justice and conviction that should be respected.

The Remnant

The Remnant are an anomaly, totally alien and able to speak and exert powerful control, via telepathy. They have never explained their sudden appearance or their motivation, yet without the knowledge and guidance they provide, mankind would almost certainly be extinct. Were the Remnant disturbed by the Elvish madness, awoken from some aeons long slumber by the falling Black Iron? Those few who have confronted the Remnant with sword and flame scream that the Remnant are memories of mankind’s sins incarnated to punish us. Others, those who have spent long hours studying the surviving ancient tomes have a radically different thesis. The Remnant are watchers, guardians, placed in the earth by the long dead gods, to preserve humanity and keep the darkness at bay. They are said to be ancient and all-knowing, guardians of those that came from the fall. It is unknown how the Remnant sustain themselves, but many have claimed it is from the dreams and thoughts of men, but access to their power offers so much, even this is acceptable. It is said that there are six Remnant. The one that resides within the grand library is unique, living on the thoughts and dreams of the librarians. The librarians claim it is for this reason, they are able to commune with it, their energy does not infuse and sustain it but instead act as a catalyst, awakening some other form of being within the Remnant itself. It is also said that another Remnant resides within the chambers of the council, although this has never been proven; the fact that almost no successful assassinations have ever been carried out against any member of the council does, however, indicate some measure of protection for its members. A third is placed in the city below. A fourth is said to have been aboard a ship when the ice arrived, consuming the sea and that both the Remnant and the ship that bore it, lie lost on the ocean of tears, trapped in frozen waters. The fifth and sixth are lost, but alive their life force is felt by the known Remnant, within the Library. The Library, with the assistance of the Council, has sent a number of expeditions to recover these lost creatures who may prove pivotal to man’s survival, but without success.

The Fallen Gods There are some that believe that when the Black Iron fell that it passed through the realm of the gods and destroyed their home, many gods perished but some fell to the earth below and these are the Remnant. This belief like so many is unproven, but what has made many consider it as fact is that the belief continues to also include the Blood Lords and the theory held that in all things there must be balance. The fall of the Remnant summoned the Blood Lords from deep within the earth where the purest strain of the giant’s blood seeped.

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The Black Iron The Remnant are presumed to have their own agents, who act on their behalf directly. While few truly know this to be the case, most assume it must be. And they are right. Called the Malice, the Remnant select their pawns from among the Chimeer and those corrupted by darkness. Why they choose such broken and degenerate beings to pursue the their goals is unknown; speculation amongst those few sufficiently well-informed to recognise the Remnant’s plans presume it is dictated by some strange, alien sense of pity or they are simply easier to control. The Remnant never speaks of the Malice, but continue to send their agents on deadly missions, to find tokens and talisman of the world before, or to spy on cities under the sway of the Blood Lords. The Malice allows the Remnant to stretch forth across the land, pursuing their increasingly obscure goals.

The Known Cities of the Pale With the Black Iron came destruction and the loss of knowledge. Some of this knowledge included the maps that were held in noble houses of the known lands and the cities that could be found there. For many, these maps were invaluable, but to others, they were a fancy, an indulgence of the wealthy, and all they knew were the roads and the direction to travel in. Now with the ice and snow, even these are not reliable. Those that choose to travel beyond the protection of the city and the Sun Spires enter a wasteland without form; the snow has covered most roads and landmarks less than the size of a town or city have become buried. Road markers are lost, and roadside taverns deserted or torn down. Travellers are asked to keep records of their travels and to mark locations of cities or even features of the landscape that can aid other travellers to navigate their way, and maps of this kind are highly prized by the Grand Library and others.

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What follows is a list of cities that are known and a rough location of where they can be found along with any landmarks that will be seen nearby.

Varsara – City of Sails

The city had the largest harbour on the Eastern coast and was a bustling merchant city before the fall, now it stands desolate and ice bound. The harbour is a graveyard of rotted hulls and broken masts, caught in the frozen waters. Inhabited by the ice tribes who guard the city against the Reavers further out who worship the Blood Lord Barston.

Location – Eastern Shore Distance from the Last City – 40 Leagues

Old Lighthouse The lighthouse juts from an outreach of rock a few miles off the eastern coast. The lower levels encrusted in ice and the light that once guided ships to the harbour of Varsara now dark. Some say the lighthouse is occupied, that strange lights and sounds have been heard by the tribes as they hunt the frozen sea, many of whom see the old lighthouse as haunted.

Lortumia – City of Chains

The twin city to Varsara and itself a bustling trade port, Lortumia became famous for its trade in slaves. The city was the scene of a major battle before the fall and the fields outside its gates are said to be littered with the dead. The elves trade in humans was a major factor behind the war that led to the long winter. The city is now home to the Blood Lord Laidon, and the trade in flesh continues.

Location – Eastern Shore Distance from the Last City – 90 Leagues

The Forest of Wrecks The forest of wrecks stretches across the eastern shore, 10 leagues from the coastline, it moves up the coast and encompasses the Shackles and ends 10 leagues beyond the city of Lortumia. This is the home to pirates and Reavers, killers and worshippers of Barston. When the war began, and the Black iron fell, many tried to flee via ship, and these met their fate facing tsunamis and ice.

Barche – City of Arenas

The city that held the grand arena that entertained the elves with gladiatorial battles, beast slaughter and various other cruelties. The city is now home to Xertin and his pallid; the arena’s still function as Xertin’s Worshippers scour the land for victims to be flung in the pits for the blood lord’s entertainment.

Location – Eastern Lands Distance from Last City - 120 Leagues

The Great Wood In the west close to the mountains of the Dragons Tail is the Great Wood, once a vibrant forest used for hunting and the gathering of herbs. It is now poisoned and rotted, home to abominations and bandits.

Antria – City of Gems

For those that brave the Ash Plains, the first city they find will be Antria, built on trade from gem mining, Antria was once the wealthiest city in the land. Now the city is home to bandits and slavers who describe Antria as a free city, but it is far from free, gripped in the thrall of crime and corruption. Travellers can stay in the city, but they do so at their own risk, the city has laws, but these are very flexible and often ignored depending on the circumstances. There is trade in the cities, but this comes with a tax that must be paid and often prices items outside the reach or beyond that of other trade cities. To travel the Ash Plains, a visit to the city is a must if it is only for supplies to get you to your final destination.

Location – Southern Lands Distance from the Last City – 230 Leagues

Crimson Citadel Called the Crimson Citadel for the amount of dead and dying that grace its walls, and can be found crucified along its many roads, the citadel is home to Axas, greatest of the Blood Lords.

The Dead Marsh Where the ice begins to melt stands the dead marsh, 30 leagues of bog and swamp that stretches the boarder of the ash fields and acts as a natural border (warning) to all those travelling to the desert of dust beyond. The marsh is the domain of Nicran, lord of the Wights that infest this marsh.

The Holy City

The largest city and the second to fall during the war, the holy city was the hub of elven science and belief, and it was here that the black iron was summoned. Outside the walls is the league of the dead, a mass battlefield of corpses buried beneath the snow and ice. The area is filled with carrion, scavengers, corpse eaters and those that wish to take up the mantle of the Relic Knights. The city itself is said to be cursed, home to dark magic’s left unchecked, ghosts of the vile elves and huge sentries said to be formed by sorcery and the bones of those that died on the chirgeon slabs.

Distance from the Last City – 50 League

The Bone Field

South East of the last city can be found the field of bones, a vast graveyard of giants, now just bone. These granite-like protrusions have become the temples and bastions of strange cults and bandits. Deep within where the corruption is at it’s strongest is the cathedral to the flesh and home to the Blood Lord Kial. The abominations that serve the Blood Lord search amongst the bones for victims and ancient devices to aid the blood lord in his experiments.

Distance from the Last City – 90 Leagues

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The Black Iron Vorne – City of Spires

The city began as a single tower, a construction of vanity by a wealthy elf, and it soon became a thousand. Also called the city without walls the people of Vorne lived in the clouds, or as close as they could. The spires connected by glass and steel that lit up with alchemical globes at night which could be seen for hundreds of leagues in all directions. Access was from glass boxes lifted by chains operated by slaves. The spires still stand, some of the bridges that connected one to another are broken or buckled, the glass boxes that once ascended the spire powered by the sweat of the oppressed now stand dormant and unusable. It is said that much wealth and knowledge lies unreachable far above, and that the towers were held together with magic still active, but as yet no one has managed to gain entry even though the Black Fort and many of the guilds have offered rewards for many of the objects said to be held there.

Distance from Last City – 30 Leagues

Landmarks & Places

The Pale is littered with old temples, ruined roadside Inns and villages and even small towns. Those exploring the Pale may also find Ranger huts, Bandit camps or even cultist covens. Travelling along the roads will bring its own dangers with slaver caravans, ambushes and even soldiers of the Blood Lords. Small forests, marshes and other natural dangers will be encountered, and as you travel closer to the sea, thin ice can often drop the unwary into an estuary or river bringing about death very quickly in the icy waters. Travelling the mountains is often safer in regards to some environmental threats, but there are many other dangers that will replace them, barbarian tribes, cannibals, wild animals and corrupted horrors stalk the cliffs and falling is a serious hazard.

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The Land Below As the moon fractured and the land tore itself apart, many fled the surface for the ancient world below, home of the long dead dwarves. This was a perilous choice none had ventured into the Dwarf holds for a long time. No one knew what lurked in the darkness, and whether the potential death which awaited them in the Land Below was any better than the certain death which would come to them on the surface. Many were consumed by fell things in the unexplored passages beneath. More, however, survived and found the dwarven cities intact and magnificently built. The dwarves may have died thousands of years ago, but their cities remained, along with many of the unusual technologies created to secure them. The social order which had existed on the surface quickly imported itself to the Land Below; the first to establish themselves in the dwarven cities were the wealthy families, able to hire guards and workers, to create well defended and protected estates, cannibalising the existing architecture and using these positions of power to assert authority over those who elected to live nearby. Despite the decades spent by man in the Land Below, there are many dark places and tunnels still unexplored. Fear over the strange things which wait and fester in the hidden regions of the Land Below has rendered the population increasingly insular and reserved. In the early years, regular expeditions through the tunnels were carried out. Now, almost no new ground is examined or explored. Instead, the defences of the cities are reinforced and perfected, with the dwarven technologies augmented. Tunnel spanning doors, moats and collapsible bridges prevent the unwanted from entering, and many are content to stay in the cities or to only walk the protected and illuminated routes, desperate to believe that nothing exists beyond the light.

Roads in the Darkness

The cities are linked by roadways, many of the cities have had these roads patrolled and lit with help from the Black Fort. The roads are still dangerous and travel from one city to the next can take days. Often, shorter routes are available but require the use of roads leading through crumbling passages, or places which the dwarves walled off. The roads are also home to the vagrant camps; even in the Land Below, there is not enough space for all to live in comfort. Those who fled the world above and were not part of a noble family or had nothing to offer their new rulers have been forced to subsist, as they can, within the labyrinth beneath the earth. These camps are typically set up in old dwarven mining complexes or way-stations. Many are off the roads and are at constant threat from the creatures that live deep in the caves and mines. These vagrants offer themselves as guides for those wishing to risk the quicker routes to the cities, exchanging their hard-won expertise for food. With little edible in the Land Below, food is always scarce for those who have no place in the cities. Such guides are however, rarely entirely reliable. Sometimes, their charge reaches their destination safely; sometimes, they enter the dark never to be seen again. A vagrant family often eats well on such days. As a road gets closer to a city patrols will appear, gates and doors barring the way and requests must be made for the way to be opened. Each city has its different laws, and tolls for entry. Traders are usually known and possess a Merchants Guild license, allowing swift access. Messengers and explorers are usually hirelings, retained by a family, carrying their seal to show they have permission to pass. Obviously, depending on the city, possession of such a seal may be a hindrance as much as a boon. Most roads are well made and easy to travel on and in some areas taverns and inns have been set up; these are still rare but have begun to be more widespread as families do not want to seem less benevolent than others. Such rivalries run deep as the dwarven mines, dating back to the first years after the fall.

The Lost Cities

There are currently five occupied cities in the Land Below, each with a population in the hundreds of thousands. The cities, being of dwarven build are strong but built for smaller people, which means that many of the doorways force people to duck in order to enter, that windows are lower than normal, and ceilings often have to be raised for comfort. A dwarven city is built like a fortress and utilises the stone around it, meaning that many are built into the very earth, with corridors, halls and whole areas going deep into the rock. Thermals from lava deep underground keep the cities temperate, and the little food which can be grown in the Land Below (or food suitable for humans, at least) is as a result of the climate which this heat enables. Most cities have farms dedicated to the production of edible fungi and moss, a few have even begun to experiment with the keeping of some livestock. Rivers can also be found stemming from natural mineral springs, and some of those are home to pale, blind fish which are, at least, edible. Trade exists between cities, but this remains subject to the whims of the ruling families; a careless word in a letter can result in all mercantile activity between two cities stopping immediately. A trader may carry their wares for days to only discover that there is now an embargo and they must return to where they came from. Trade with the Last City flows more freely between all the cities — in part because all the Cities Below rely on this trade equally, and in part, because incurring the wrath of the Merchants Guild by denying their representative’s entrance and care would effectively constitute suicide for the city. Even the Merchants Guild has lost goods in the Land Below, to vagrants and to the shapeless things which hunker in the abyssal darkness.

The Ruling Families

Each city is controlled by a family and the laws within each location are determined by and passed down by that family. This system is frowned upon by the Council in the Last City, who dislike it for its inherent instability. For some on the council, the

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The Black Iron Land Below might as well be ruled by crime gangs below. Carefully suppressed whispers state that something still lurks in the tunnels near Karalk, — fitting, some might say, for the underworld. waiting to return to the surface. Each city is named for the family who controls it, and any who bear that name are treated as Kazadim – City of Iron effective royalty — which in many ways, they are. The ancient dwarven city of kings can be found to The true dwarven names of the Dwarven cities the west of the great road; its iron towers reach up have either become lost or indecipherable. to touch the roof of an enormous cavern, bridges link together vast stalactites hanging from the ceiling, leading to curving staircases and walkways Dresen – The City of Gods Dresen was once a city of Dwarven gods, a place eventually leading back to the city below. of knowledge and harmony. Its fountains were arranged to create exquisite melodies, in the sacred The city is home to the grand palace of the last musical language of the Dwarves; its temples dwarven king, a building that has managed to stretched everywhere in perfect alignment, thwart all attempts to enter it. Huge iron doors honeycomb structures of sacred geometric locked by mechanisms, entirely unfathomable infallibility. Now it is overcrowded, noisy and to the new occupants of the city, bar the way into home to the Sisters of Stone nunnery. Dresen is the palace, but speculation of what wonders and the northern most city and was discovered by treasures must lie within keep the workers and the Thieves guild occupied with attempts to unlock Taris Dresen, a trader and merchant. the secrets.

Paxtim – The City of Coals.

Once the hub of the dwarven forges, its soot blackened walls are now home to 40,000 survivors. The city is considered the capital of the crime families as it was discovered and first occupied by the Paxtimian clan, founders of the Grey Rat Thieves Guild. Claims by the descendants that the family now only deal in legitimate business is considered, by most, to be a joke and recounting it, with a straight face, is the most certain way of getting a laugh in Paxtim. Paxtim lies to the east and was the most recent city to be discovered and claimed. Some rumours insist that it was first discovered by vagrants, who attempted to render the conurbation a haven for the dispossessed and broken. Instead, they were forced to divulge its location.

Karalk – The Great Gate

Less of a city and more a fortress built to hold back something now entirely forgotten, this dwarven bastion was the first of the cities to be discovered. Its vast towers and gate lead downwards, down to the deepest of the dwarven territories and all must pass beneath its walls in order to reach the other cities. This places the city of Karalk in a position of power as it controls the flow of trade into the

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Beremholme – City of Bridges

To the southeast stands Beremholme — once a great mining city. Beyond its southern borders lie the gateways to dozens of mines, through which metal tracks snake their way deep underground. Many of these gateways have been barred or locked up, some by the original occupants and others by the recent occupiers. The city itself is criss-crossed with underground rivers created by a number of natural springs. It is said that the rivers eventually end at a vast underground lake but as of yet no one has found it. Elaborate iron bridges cross the rivers connecting the different wards of the city, many with the iron tracks found at the mines. It is believed that the tracks once led to all the cities and may lead to many more if only they could follow the tracks for long enough.

The Black Iron

Cults Though not as numerous as on the surface, there are a number of hidden cults conducting their pernicious work in the Land Below. These are relatively small and hold little power within the cities themselves, where the ruling families deal with them quickly and viciously. Beyond the gates, on the roads and in the dark, however, the cults thrive. The wretched state in which many vagabonds are forced to live makes them an ideal breeding ground for the Cults, who use their desperation to secure loyalty. Many believe the Cults infiltrate the Land Below in search of old sorcery or clues to replicating the technology of the Dwarfs. Others assert that the elves crawled up to the surface from the Below and that the Cults seek to breed new elves or to make themselves in the elves image. Whatever the truth, the threat from the cults continues to grow, as they traverse the darkness and head deeper into the Below, who knows what they will find?

Seekers of the Long Dead

As the cities settled and life ‘normalised’ deep underground many became curious of who built these cities and many academics and students began to examine the murals, the writings and architecture of the old dwarves. This led to discovery of secret doors that there were no obvious ways to open, strange mechanisms that seemed to have no purpose and the discovery of paintings that told of an advanced race of builders and inventors who had developed new life from the iron and stone they mined. These discoveries created a movement of scholars determined to find out everything they could, but the risks were high and very soon after a number of deaths the families outlawed the pursuit of knowledge outside the gates of the city, for safety reasons. This law pushed the movement into the shadows and soon it was branded a cult by many as the members were fanatical. Hiring dubious Vagrants that often ended in robbery or in some cases injury and death the members would travel deep into the old mines or dark roads as yet unexplored, in the hope to find marvels, artefacts and documents of

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this presumed dead race. Many expeditions never returned but those that did spoke of the noises of metal upon metal, forges still burning and more cities full of wonders, of course this could all be lies to justify their beliefs, but who knows.

The Seed

Many have heard the tales that the Elves were born of the ancient giants and that the roots of the trees fed on the magic and blood of fallen giants and from this spawned the elves, though many believe these were just lies told by elves in order to power some fantasy of dominance the tales persist and some who prospered or loved their elven masters no matter the cruelty they endured believe them fully and hope to bring about the time of the elves again. The seed are a cult of worshippers that hope to bring about the elves return to the world mainly through finding the very roots that birthed them and reigniting that spark. The Seed search the

dark places for arcane magic’s and secrets left by the elves. This is often a fruitless endeavour and many of the cult have now gone missing or were found dead. The cults number have diminished so now only the true believers continue the search and these are often insane and rambling shells of humanity, denied entry into city or camp alike.

The Banished

The Black Fort is not free of troubles and many mages, mainly from the Necromancy school have strayed from the path and the laws of the Last City and the Mages guild itself. Experiments outlawed by common decency, the study of ancient magic’s that are declared banned or the inflicting of corruptions upon the innocent however low on societies ladder they stand are all illegal and those that are caught are often banished to the land beyond the spires, but some come back and travel the below.

These Banished Mages seek out scrolls and knowledge of the past deep below, in the hopes to find where the elves first formed their arcane lore’s. It is believed that enclaves and covens have been formed, dark places in ancient underground ruins where the nefarious and heinous experiments and studies of the elves can continue, a place of torture and the forming of abominations from flesh and iron that send the echoes of screams even to the cities above. Both the Black Fort and the Families have vowed to seek out and destroy these sanctuaries of death and the Mages that form them, but this has been met with little success.

Faith Some below have adopted the religion of the Dwarves, worshipping the stone and marvelling in the architecture that inspired the worship. These

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The Black Iron people are considered harmless, and some cities have even allowed the order places to hold their ceremonies and religious teachings, ultimately resulting in the creation of the Deep Church. Many suspect that the families have learnt a lot about dwarf skills from the Church, whose dedicates spend much of their time studying the ancient books of the dead race, supporting their faith through the wealth earned from the family’s patronage. The Church has recently begun to hire explorers, sending those brave enough out to tackle the dark pathways leading deeper into the earth, all in the hunt for more knowledge and other dwarven artefacts.

Sisters of Stone

When the city of Dresen was discovered, it was evident it had been a holy place of the dwarves. The centre of the city consisted solely of an enormous stone temple. Surrounding it were hundreds of intricately carved statues of dwarven heroes or gods, standing watch around the temple perimeter. Within, the walls were adorned with paintings and mosaics of battles and holy ceremonies. Many scholars believe the whole history of the dwarves is etched upon the walls, though dwarven script remains indecipherable. The temple was soon occupied by a holy order declaring itself the Sisters of Stone; the sisters converted the temple into a kind of nunnery. Young girls are taught to read and write, schooled in the history of mankind and given the skills they need to serve as healers and teachers. The sisters also learn other skills, and, it is for these alternative teachings that the temple has now become famous. Most of the temple has been converted into vast training halls and alchemical laboratories. Here the sisters are schooled in the way of the blade and the explosion, the bow and the use of poison, deception and shadow, warfare and butchery. The Sisters of Stone are reckoned the most potent fighting force in the Land Below and many from the Last City and beyond send their daughters to be taught at the temple. It is said

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that there are other branches of the sisterhood, spread throughout the world, though they remain entirely secret. Only those few who have become true initiates are taught their locations and how to enter them.

Threats Many things scurry in the dark in the tunnels and roads uncharted by those that now live below. Secret paths into cities are often utilised by smugglers and assassins, but these paths are fraught with danger, and many rely on the knowledge and guild trust of the Vagrants that live in the dark places. When the elves destroyed the dwarves and looted what cities they could, it is said that they sent expeditions into the deeper mines to discover if any dwarves had survived. The expeditions mostly failed, but those that did survive spoke of cities and wonders not seen before, of vast libraries of knowledge and treasures that filled vaults the size of small towns. Forges were seen fuelled by dragons which could form items of pure magic and bend the mightiest of ores to the smith’s will. Why the elves never explored these wonders are anyone’s guess, but many presume it is what they do not tell us that scared the elves and why so many expeditions failed. An aspect of the below that is not spoken of or even acknowledged by some are the deep rumblings heard by many emanating from deep within the earth. Also, the bizarre lights seen by vagrants and scavengers or the strange writings scrawled on walls, often in blood and always in the common tongue. These rumours are frowned upon and even dismissed by many, especially those that are at risk of losing the most if these rumours ever began to be taken seriously.

The Dispossessed

Living along the roads, within the old mining camps and outside the gates are those that have been denied access, the unwanted, the useless and the corrupted. The families have been harsh upon those they see as burdens or undesirable,

removing them from the cities and any protection offered. Many would ask why these Vagrants don’t just return to the Last City above, and many do but those that have discovered that the situation was not much better. Some went off into the Pale to meet their doom from the cold or by other means. As time passed, these unwanted created their own laws, designed positions for themselves as guides or thieves, killers and smugglers, anything that would allow them to survive. Also, some had families who needed shelter and food, and these were provided often from some feckless traveller or gullible trader. Life on the outside is harsh and many of those pushed to the edge have found ways to survive, ways often seen as criminal or against nature. The Silent Guild has attempted to monopolise on these unwanted vagrants recruiting many in a guild within a guild, a house of beggars if you will, this is denied by the masters of the Silent Guild and no evidence has proven it to be so, but the Guild is known to commit very little to paper and those that tell tales are often found hanging from bridges or dead in alleys. This recruitment has

changed things and travel on the roads between the cities has become marginally safer, payments for guides has increased but this is a small price to pay for safety.

The Guilds

The Families hold most of the power below but the guilds do have some sway, the merchant guild organises food and other materials to be delivered to and from the cities and in the past disagreements have halted this until a amicable outcome was achieved, to many this showed that the merchant guild had power over the families but this belief was quickly crushed when many of the merchant guild top members were arrested by the city militias and ceasing deliveries were outlawed for the good of the people. There is currently no power struggle between the families and the guilds but it is only a matter of time before it could happen, all it would take would be a discovery of something that disrupts the status quo or a shortage of food and materials that would place the control in either one or the others hands.

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The Black Iron

Mythic Artifacts Throughout the ancient books studied by the mages and the librarians in the Last City, there has been mention of artefacts wielded by gods and ancient heroes, or elven sorcerers and Dwarven artisans. These treasures have become lost in time, but with the help of the Remnant, many may have been located, or a place found marking the artefact’s last known location. Too many, including the Remnant, the finding of these ancient relics, could be the key to turning back the fall or the discovery of secrets buried centuries ago. Unbeknown to these scholars is the fact that the Blood Lords also seek these items and have sent their own agents to scour the ruins for clues to where they may be hidden, but for what purpose is unclear, also what is strange are reports of ghosts seen near the deserted cities and towers of the elves. The remnant stir and warn caution but when pressed, say no more.

Discovering an Artefact

Artefacts are rare and to be honest the only reason anyone knows they exist is from a few pages in old books, in fact there could be hundreds of these relics out there being overlooked or shoved in some box and no one knows. Mythic Artefacts are said to be once used by gods or heroes of renown, but like all thing’s history is not always accurate and relies on the perspective of the author, a hero or god to one person is often a villain or demon to another. The mythic artefacts listed here are those that are known of but there are many more and you should use the guidelines offered here when creating your own artefacts. They should not be easy to find, not easy to wield by mere mortals and should often have a cost to owning. They may be found broken or lacking any real power, what appears as a mighty sword in the books may be but a mere butter knife in reality, and of course these could just be works of fiction, children’s tales of adventure and mystery

Artefact Locations

The locations mentioned in the text is the last location the artefact was seen and so that does not mean they will be there still, but maybe a clue to where they were moved to or maybe hearsay of such an item being seen elsewhere could be a clue to another location. This will make finally getting to find one of these relics a challenge and be part of a more extensive campaign.

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The creator and wielders of these artefacts were cunning and creative so secret doors, traps, magic and other challenges can be included, dark ancient arcane sorceries can be woven around a location in order to protect or hide the relic.

Using Artefacts

The use of an artefact should be both unknown and dangerous; these items do not come with instructions, and any related nearby text will be in an unknown language. Attempting to use the item could result in injury or some other disaster or an actual success. It is suggested that you apply a target number of at least 10 to the use of the item without knowledge with fumbles leading to serious negative results. Characters will need to use Arcane or Lore to attempt to use the item. To gain instruction in the use of an item will involve a journey to the Black Fort or to a Remnant or some other scholar of the ancient world. 2d6 2-5

Artefact State Artefact is dusty but seems to emanate power, which appears to twist and simmer the air around it 6-11 Artefact seems dormant and shows no sign of being in any way powerful. 12 Artefact is broken in some way.

The Blade of the Archmage

Forged from steel and tempered with the blood of the dwarves, this elven blade was created as a gift for the Archmage Daelias for his work conquering the dwarven capital of Fenkos and halting the defence of the lower tiers. The sword is said to be just over 3ft in length, the hilt made of dragon bone and wrapped in the cured skin of the king of Fenkos. At the centre of the cross guard sits the holy jewel taken from the king’s crown and said to be formed from the blood of the first of the dwarves. The sword itself is highly magical and absorbs energy from the blood of those that it cuts and transfers some of that to the wielder. The blade can slice through any material and the energy it absorbs adds to the blade’s strength and sharpness, making this a devastating weapon in the right hands. Also called Dwarf Bane as it is rumoured to be able to kill a dwarf in a single strike. Last known location: Vorne: Home of an Elf noble

Iron Crown of the Crow God

Krawn the God of Crows was gifted the crown from the master of the god forge Towat Yagin to reward the god for his destruction of the twin giants Vog and Xerta, it is said that the crown is forged from the iron derived from the twin giants blood, and that within the crown the hearts of Vog and Xerta still beat. The crown is said to make the wearer immune to mind attacks and to bless them with mental powers beyond that of mortal and god alike. It is claimed that the crown has regeneration powers and that Krawn still lives but is asleep being kept sustained by the power of the crown. Last known location: The Holy City

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Crowders Axe

The axe of Crowder Elf slayer last hero of the Dwarves, crafted by Kaerdin Gato and blessed by the rune smiths of the last dwarven city. Crowder held the gates of Fenkos for 30 days and nights and is said to have killed so many elves the pile of corpses he stood upon lifted the dwarf above the walls of the city. The axe called Elf Bane and Earth Shaker is known to send a wave of pure energy that would strike those 100ft from the wielder of the axe, it can cut through multiple foes and heal the wounds of the user. It is also claimed that the axe was melted down and used to forge the Blade gifted to the Archmage Daelias, but these rumours are unfounded. Last known location: Lortumia: Grand Cathedral

Bow of the Sun

Formed from the rays of the sun by the god Herrick to kill the giant champion Bandoro during the battle of the Dragons, it is said that the velocity of the arrow caused earthquakes that formed the Dragon Tail mountains. The Bow is of simple wood but is endowed with the power to create magical arrows as hot as the sun that will burn through any substance they pierce, and that the bows range is infinite. The stories claim that Herrick need only whisper the name of his foe to the bow and the arrow it launched would seek them out no matter where they hid. Last known location: Unknown

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Long Reach of the Daur

Wielded by the elven skirmisher Lorjen Ferrik during the conquering of the surface realm he would often make references to cutting down humans like they cut their wheat ‘in great sways’. The pole axe was forged in the dying embers of the great fire that destroyed the dwarven capital city and burnt to death 3000 dwarven women and children, the last of the dwarfs. It is said that the pole axe screams as it cuts and gathers the souls of those harvested transferring the essence of its victims to the wielder imbuing them with power both to heal the body and to enhance the magical capabilities, as well as to give strength and endurance, the more the pole axe kills the more the wielder can kill. Last know location: Antria

Visage of the Daur

Worn by the dwarven assassin Herik Kranork to enter the palace of the elven lord Yelon Faressian and assassinate him, the mission was a success and considered the first great blow against the elven destroyers. Herik was hunted down by elven rangers and executed, his body nailed up on the great road as a warning to others, it is said that magic kept Herik’s corpse repeating the elven phrase ‘Sada Daur usan ur torajak’ which translates to ‘Our Elven Masters are Merciful’. The mask is said to make you appear in every way like your target and was created specifically for the purpose of the Elven Lord, which many believe means that it can only take on the appearance of elves. The Sisters of Stone have offered a sizable reward to anyone who finds the artefact. Last known location: Holy City

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Iron Shaper

Given by the gods to the dwarven craftsman Kaerdin Gato as a gift and to aid him in the crafting of the weapons of the gods. The weapons and armour crafted by Kaerdin were paramount in the destruction of the giants. This simple hammer looks like any other except for a small mark of a horseshoe and the initials KG inscribed in the haft. The hammer allows the wielder to craft magically powerful weapons and items and it is believed that many of the artefacts were created using iron Shaper. Last known location: Unknown

Towat’s Fist

Master of the God Forge and quartermaster of the armoury Towat was the strongest of the gods, he built many of the weapons and armour they wore and is said to have taught the dwarves his secrets. Towat was also a lover of brawling and fist fighting and was known to enter many dwarven prize- fights disguised as a humble blacksmith. Many would consider this unfair as who could beat a god and it is true Towat rarely lost a fight, and eventually this irked him, he needed a challenge so he crafter Towats Fists. These unassuming leather gloves give the wearer an increase in strength and endurance allowing the wearer to fight harder and longer, they also increase the toughness and coordination of the wearer. These were given to the only person to beat Towat by Towat himself and legend has it that as Towat was knocked from the sand circle he vowed never to fight again. Last known location: Barche

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Cloak of Gallows

Once worn by the Executioner Valis, who dealt with those that the gods condemned to die the cloak was designed to not only disguise the executioner’s true identity but also to give him the strength to strike true and with a single blow. The cloak is made from silk and a fine mesh of an unknown metal all woven together with the hair of Loranda the most beautiful of all the gods. The cloak changes the appearance or cloaks the appearance of the wearer and increases the wearers strength. Last Known Location: Unknown

Blood Gem

A fine silver necklace that holds a red gemstone, it is said this piece of jewellery was the final item ever created by the last master crafter of the dwarves before being killed by the elven hero Jarith Torrel. Jarith presented the item to his bride to be on their wedding day and the day before the elven armies entered the surface world for the first time. The gem is said to hold the soul of the ancient dwarven craftsman and will enhance the abilities of the wearer as well as allow them to know the secrets of crafting held by that ancient master. Last Known Location: Crimson Citadel

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The Blood Lords After the fall and the long winter began many of those that had fled to the Last City to avoid the destruction began to make their way back to their homes in the hope to rebuild, thinking that the cold and storms would eventually diminish and life would return to normal. What they discovered was a new horror in the form of the Blood Lords, these demons had taken up residence in the abandoned cities and began to gather disciples to their cause, and it quickly became clear that returning home was not an option.

Who are they?

No one is really sure who the Blood Lords are, some claim they are elves left behind and effected by the very magic they used to corrupt and destroy the land, others believe they escaped the Shackles and were experiments there, humans twisted by arcane chirurgeons. Many rumours and theories exist, what is unquestionable is that before the fall the Blood Lords did not exist. The Blood Lords seem connected, they recognise each other’s authority and no conflict over land or cities have been heard of, they each rule the land they seem built for, almost as if this has been planned. This knowledge of the Blood Lords connection has sparked many of the rumours that this was the last act of the elves to continue to control even after they fled. What is known is that they appeared after the fall and the Black Iron froze the land and this makes many of those that worship the Blood Lords claim they are gods, knocked from their thrones in the heavens and who now rule from their earthly thrones.

What do they want?

Power seems to be the obvious answer but power through fear as many that have faced them have died, they seem to send corruption out and those affected return as disciples to their lord. But, there is a method to their madness and an agenda, the Blood Lords seem intrigued by past artefacts and have sent out their disciples, cults and killers to

seek out the lost relics of the past, they also seem determined to continue the depraved experiments of the elves and many of the lords have a good grasp of arcane magic beyond that of the Black Fort. There has been talk of a connection between the Blood Lords and the Remnant, neither has made a move against the other and if the Remnant are questioned regarding the Blood Lords they are vague, but some mages have mentioned that it seems uncanny that when the Remnant discover or request that a relic be found that the Blood Lords also seem interested in that exact same relic, is there a link between the two? The other connection is that both the Remnant and the Blood Lords appeared after the fall, what does this mean?

Should you face them?

To face a Blood Lord is death and discussion on the subject has concluded that it is wiser to whittle away at a lords power, cut off the head of the snake, because it is the disciples of the Blood Lord’s where their power rests, or so it is believed. It is from the Remnant that most knowledge of the Blood Lords come and from the interrogation and torture of the cult members. The Remnant are vague stating that taking away the source of power in the form of disciples who sacrifice offerings, seek out the relics and protect the cities will be the way to strike back, some Mages of the Black Fort have claimed that this makes us no better than the corrupted as are we not just killing those controlled by evil, and hence being controlled ourselves by what we presume are benevolent beings, the Remnant. Whatever your belief or reason facing a Blood Lord will bring corruption, insanity and death and it is advised that you avoid at all cost.

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Axas - The Lord of Blood and Vein Axas is the cruellest of the Lords and is known for gifting blood magic to his priests. He is said to reside within the Crimson Citadel, 80 leagues to the south of the Last City. Those who have been unfortunate to stumble onto the single road that leads to that dreaded place whisper that the Citadel’s walls are covered with freshly crucified sacrifices to Axas, flayed and perpetually suspended in some kind of vile unlife. Even as crows pluck their eyes from their sockets, or flies lay eggs in exposed strands of muscle, they scream Axas’ name, over and over again from ruined throats. The Citadel itself was once the home to an elven mage renowned for his experiments and construction of horrors formed from flesh. It is believed that the citadel fell along with the Black Iron as many claimed to have seen the place sundered by a piece ‘as big as a hut’, evidently this was untrue. GM Note Approaching the Citadel is very dangerous and will lead to attacks from both abominations and worshippers of the blood lord. Reaching the citadel and entering its walls will place the characters in a situation of dire danger, facing Axas will lead to either insanity or death.

Description

The Lord of Blood and Vein, High King over all the other Blood Lords, Axas is said to be elven in appearance, though others insist he is a corpse reanimated, strips of flesh hanging from ruined features. Of course, both may be true. It is known that he walks the land where death lays, feeding off the blood of the slain, drawing it towards him in great crimson ribbons. He demands blood sacrifice, and his followers happily oblige, stabbing, skinning and slicing their victims with tainted blades, pledged to the Blood Lord. Wherever he appears, and whatever visage he wears, vein-like appendages extrude from his arms, moving with sinister intelligence, seeking out the freshly dead to drain.

Few have seen Axas and survived leading many to believe that the Blood Lord does not exist or is a story told to scare people away, but these are lies told to those with no intent on leaving the relative safety of the last city. Many hunters have witnessed the worshippers and seen the aftermath of their rituals, and some even claim they have seen the citadel itself.

Followers

The worshippers of Axas are a craven people often drinking the blood of their victims or eating the flesh. They travel the wastes in flocks preaching to towns and travellers alike, demanding a tithe or sacrifice to the Blood Lord, falling upon any who deny them in a frenzy of murder and slashing. Often, they are said to wear the faces of those they have killed or of a fallen comrade as a homage to them, and many a traveller has been found dead upon the road their face removed, and the Sigil of Axas burned into their flesh. The sickly smell of burnt flesh follows the worshippers as they travel as many carry and wave censers containing human flesh and hair or have them hanging from carts. They carry knives and razor-sharp sickles, which are used to attack and skin their victims. Most wear robes or armour made of cured skins (often human).

To Face Him

Axas is a sorcerer and master of Blood Magic; he is surrounded by his devoted followers and an aura of corruption which is able to turn most who set eyes upon him insane. Facing Axas is folly but it is believed that he controls all other Blood Lords in the Pale, so face him one day you must.

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Barston - Lord of Salt and Rust The forest of Wrecks which lies ten leagues from the western coast and includes the shackle isles is home to Barston and his Reavers. The bones of their victims hang from the broken masts of ships frozen into the ice around them. The Shackle Isles was once home to pirates before the elves forced them out and turned the islands into a charnel house of dark surgeries. The war and the subsequent invasion of the shackles turned many of the villages on the isles into ruins, but some believe that this is where Barston calls home, in one of the many abandoned castles on the islands.

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GM Note The western coast is still home to many small fishing villages struggling to survive, many of these ‘Ice Tribes’ have no connection to Barston and cast a wary eye towards the Forest of Wrecks. But further off the coast it soon becomes clear that corruption spreads beneath the ice, and no friendly locals will be seen there.

Description

The Herald of the Blood Lords, the agent of their coming, Barston is the Lord of Salt and Bone. It is said that Barston was once a Pirate captain and scourge of the waters around the Pale Lands and that his ship was struck by a piece of the Black Iron causing it to sink. From the wreckage, he crawled changed, twisted bearing the marks of corruption. He was hailed as the fish king and lord of the oceans by the ice tribes and those that lived their lives on the sea; he quickly gathered followers whom he twisted to his insane whims. Barston is believed to be the first Blood Lord to appear, and his preachings foretold the others, some say that the words of Barston gave form to

the corruption which whence came to the likes of Axas and Xertin. He has since been known as the Herald. Due to Barstons appearance on the Shackles, many have presumed that he is, in fact, a Ghul, but one that went terribly wrong as it seems that his merging was with a crab or Lobster.

Followers

The seas around the pale lands are littered with the wrecks of ships frozen to a standstill, and here, amidst these wrecks jutting forth from pack ice, Barton’s followers hide and wait. Pirates, Raiders, Reavers and wreckers — all worship and align themselves with the Lord of the Preserved Dead, dragging their victims out from the shore and hunting them through the maze of split-open wooden hulls and toppled masts. Once they are caught, as they inevitably are, the victims have their throats slit, and their bodies packed into salt. Over time, the withered flesh is removed from their bones, perfectly preserved by the salt. The meat is eaten in tribute to the Salt Lord, and the bones are suspended from the masts above the dozens of ruined ships. GM Note Many of the Ice Tribes became corrupted and fell under the sway of Barston; these are recognisable by the totems of human bones they wear, the signs of corruption and the often-filed teeth. From a distance, they are indiscernible from the normal Ice Tribe’s, carving fish holes in the ice or attacking seals and other creatures that roam the ice.

To Face Him

Barston sits upon a throne of crabs and barnacles deep inside a rusting, rotting hulk. Like most of the other Blood Lords, his appearance causes discomfort and fear. A stench of decay and rotted fish emanates from his skin and blood is tinged with bacteria.

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Kiall - The Lord Chirurgeon The great granite like bones of giants protrudes from the snow for as far as the eye can see. These vast monuments to dead gods are now home to the abominations, skull temples of corruption and death and rib cages of chirurgey and melding. Walls created by pelvis and clavicle surround the cathedral in the centre of this vast field. This is the home to the Blood Lord Kial.

Description

It is said that Kial lived on the Shackles, performing ancient chirurgie’s on the people sent there and that he was instrumental in the techniques of melding species together which eventually formed the Chimeers. His work was noticed by the Elven high lords, which led to him being transferred to the Holy City to continue his work there, among the elite of Elven sorcerers and chirurgeons. When the war came to the city, Kial was deep in its bowels amongst the screams and smells of torture and progress, and was unaware that the human armies stood at the gates and assaulted the walls of the city above. It was the thunderclap of raw magic that finally alerted him enough to raise his head from the abomination he was creating upon his table. This sound of a thousand realms tearing and the subsequent cracking of the cities stone, made Kial leave the caverns and cells and venture upwards to the surface, in time to see the Black Iron fall. From there time stands still as nothing was written in ink or blood, and the world changed forever. It was amongst the bones of the fallen gods, the giant’s graveyard as it had become known, that whispers of a Blood Lord with skills of a Chirurgeon began to be heard. They passed from ear to ear and tribe to tribe until eventually the Remnant in the Grand Library of the last city shuddered and declared the birth of a new threat. The malice was sent to see. Hunters watched from the hills above, and the people wondered if the spires would be enough, before going about their day.

Reports of activity were confirmed, and that at the centre of the graveyard a new edifice had been constructed from the bones of those fallen. A cathedral of cartilage from which poured forth abominations and a creeping darkness that blackened the ice around itself with corruption and rancid blood. The screams of the tortured of whatever dark sorceries are performed in that foul place fill the air, a cacophony of suffering, pleasure, chanting and pain. Kial himself is said to be truly twisted, a mass of corrupted flesh that has melded and grown into tumours and cists, a rotting mass of disease erupting with feelers and tentacles that writhe and exude purple globules of sweet-smelling pus. Below this is still the form of the man he was, still dressed as a Chirurgeon the only clue to who he truly was.

Followers

Those that follow or worship the Blood Lord are twisted by his promises of immortality or physical improvement; they hunt down any that stray too close to the Giants’ bones and drag them to the cathedral for experimentation. The more worthy of the followers eventually become the abominations that now scour the lands spreading corruption and death. It is not clear whether the Order of Bones has any connection to Kial and his followers, as they do share an interest in the bones of dead giants. Some believe that the Order of Bones is a front or an acceptable public face for the Lord of Corruption which allows him access to the Last City and Below, but this has never been proven.

To Face Him

Kial oozes so much corruption that any who get too close will begin to twist and change internally and mentally within hours of being in the his presence. Those brought to him become his new fascination and are quickly adapted and reconstructed into an image of awful beauty by the lord chirurgeon.

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Laidon - Lord of Depravity The harbour city of Lortumia was often referred to as the city of chains due to it’s thriving slave market and transportation of slaves by the elves. The cities purpose made it a focus when the war began; many humans had seen loved ones dragged away, or had experienced the whip and chastisement of slavers to allow the city to stand any longer. The number of slaves contained in the city were subsequently freed as the armies surrounded the walls, assured that the city fell quickly and that the slavers were the ones that now wore the chains.

Description

Laidon had been a human it is said, a slave trader and degenerate that bowed and scraped at the feet of his masters to earn favour at the cost of other humans. His depravity, it is claimed, knew no bounds. Brothels that catered for any tastes, slaves slaughtered for the entertainment of the elven aristocracy, displays of mother eating child, father killing son enforced the belief that humans were nothing but animals. Laidon prospered as others suffered, rewarded for his debauchery and decadence he lived in splendour and wealth despised by other humans if he ever felt remorse for his actions or shame for the wealth he acquired it never showed. As the Black Iron fell, the city lay unscathed, but the tidal waves that followed and then quakes that followed those brought half the city to rubble, and then the ice covered the rest. Laidon survived the destruction, but the corruption had eaten away at his mind and as the destruction settled and the winter crept in Laidon convinced those that had survived to aid him in rebuilding. Those that listened were hopeful that he meant their homes and lives soon discovered that Laidon cared little for those things, and Lortumia once again became the city of chains.

deeper and darker acts of depravity and fuelling a lust that is now almost impossible to quench. With the help of Kial, he has mastered the art of keeping severed heads alive and now many of these adorn the city walls and the palaces, silently screaming or being used for lewd acts of depravity. It is said that where Laidon steps the ground blackens.

Followers

Those that follow the commands of Laidon travel the coast capturing slaves to fulfil the appetite of the Blood Lord and his baying maniacs that amass at the city gates to watch the fights in the pits, indulgence in the perversities available in the brothels and join the debauchery, the murders and unspeakable acts seen on the cities streets. The alchemists of the Vapour Guild concoct drugs that can kill or create pleasure, cause hallucinations or murder frenzies, these drugs are pumped into the streets from the royal palace at the cities centre, and a permanent smog hangs above the city to join with the wails and screams from within the city walls. The smog confuses and removes the inhibitions of any that inhale it, and those wishing to enter the city should beware spending too much time in the sweet, sickly smoke may mean they will never leave.

To Face Him

To view Laidon is to be both repelled and enticed, though his visage is bruised and syphilitic, coated in a thick layer of greying makeup and rouge to give the semblance of life he exudes an aura that makes any that face him become attracted to him, entering into a depraved orgy of corruption and physical pleasure.

As the years have passed Laidon has become more twisted by the Blood Lords corruption, spending time in the presence of Barston and Axas has burnt his mind and curdled his veins, driving Laidon to

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Nicran - Lord of Death and Decay Before the Southern Ash Plains lies the Dead Marshes, a 30-league strip of swamp and bog. Once a great forest that joined with sweeping grasslands that led to the city of Antria and the many mining ventures created by the elves, the fall turned the grassland into a marsh when the snows met the volcanic ash. Corruption seeped in from underground rivers, and the marsh became the home of the dead and their Blood Lord Nicran. This marsh has now been creeping slowly, spreading further out and will soon connect the Dragon Tail mountains with the Sea.

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Description

No one knows from where Nicran came; some believe he was a hunter that was in the forest when the Black Iron fell, others that he was a Chimeer from the shackles that was washed upon the shores of the marsh before the sea turned to ice. Either way, Nicran became a Blood Lord and master of Wraiths. The idea that Nicran was a Chimeer comes from multiple sightings of the Blood Lord and his wings, a trait brought about from the melding of man and beast, in this instance a bat of some kind. Others

The truth is that Nicran is himself dead in some way and relies on his wraiths to gather victims from which he can feed. He was also indeed a Chimeer that was washed up on the mainland when the Shackles were hit with the Tsunami after the fall. Surviving on corrupted meat and poisoned waters of the Marsh he soon changed into what he is today.

Followers

The marsh has a quality that seems to bring back those that die within its waters and bogs as wraiths and living dead. The rivers that formed the marsh do pass by the holy city, and many presume that whatever powers were used there infected the rivers and lakes nearby, whether this is true or not the fact remains that the marsh is corrupted in a way that brings back the dead. The inhabitants of the marsh are part of a living, corrupted organism; each relies on the other to exist and acts like anyone entering is an invading parasite.

more loyal to the Blood Lord say he was an angel sent by the gods to protect those he feels worthy or to give a home to the restless dead. Nicran seems not to venture far from the Marsh he calls home and is content to allow his wraiths free reign to guard their home from intruders and to deal with them as they see fit. Unfortunately, this includes any travelling to the Ash Plains via land and have to pass through the marshes. Also in recent years, it is rumoured that the marsh holds secrets, towers and forts once occupied by the elves, and these places have become of interest to both the mages guild and scavengers alike.

GM Note The Marsh blocks the way south if the party takes the land route. It is considered haunted by many but also a place of many mysteries, mysteries of which, the Mages guild and others are intrigued to discover. The marsh is dangerous, not just because of the living dead that wander its swamps and forests but also because of the natural dangers, quicksand, marsh mud, and various insects that carry the corruption. Entering is a dangerous decision to make but may end up a lucrative one if you survive.

To Face Him

No one has ever claimed to have seen the Blood Lord in the flesh and the closest there has been to an actual sighting is of an enormous bat flying above the marsh, but this could have just been an enormous bat.

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Xertin - Lord of Conflict and Murder Barche was once a city of cruelty, men and women were pitted against wild beasts and each other in the grand arena or the numerous fighting pits throughout the city. The heads of those that lost were placed upon spikes that adorned the arena walls. Slaves transported from Lortumia were cut down in mass executions by the more popular gladiators. This is what passed as entertainment in the city of Barche, the city of Arenas. After the fall the city was left relatively untouched, the arena stood intact, and even some of the population survived, but they had become corrupted, ravenous and raging, scarring themselves and eating the flesh of any they captured, the city fell to horror and chaos until Xertin appeared.

Description

Xertin was a gladiator, one of the arena’s greatest fighters, his cruelty knew no bounds, and it was said that he even killed for pleasure outside of the pit, suggesting he was corrupted and broken before the fall. When Xertin reappeared in the city, no one knew who he once was; he had been twisted so much by the elven sorceries that kept him strong and the corrupting power of the Black Iron that many thought him a demon come to punish those that had survived. But all Xertin wanted was to kill and be praised and that is exactly what happened. Xertin is said to stand 8 feet tall, towering over many of his followers, he resides at the grand arena, and insatiable lust for death and murder is forcing his pallid to bring more and more victims to the slaughter. Often content to watch as his champions cut down their victims and feast on their flesh; it is known for Xertin to wade in armed with axe or club to kill all that stand before him, victim and pallid alike.

matters. A sigil etched into Xertin’s gut could explain these new found powers, but no one that has managed to hear a description of the mark recognises it, and many have presumed that it symbolises some type of barbaric shamanism.

Followers

They are called the pallid, pale skinned and hairless, cannibalistic and insane the pallid worship Xertin as a god, scarring their bodies or piercing their flesh with bones and thorns. The Pallid hunt the land around the city of Barche seeking victims for the arena or to eat. Hunting in packs like beasts and moving faster than any normal human should the pallid are a fearsome sight to behold and horrifyingly dangerous opponents. Many of the Pallid came from the barbarian tribes to the east and Xertin seems to have sway over those tribes with many worshipping him as a god. Anyone walking the mountains caught by these tribes loyal to the Blood Lord will be taken to the city and forced to fight or become food for the Pallid hordes. In recent months reports from hunters and scavengers state that they have seen the pallid miles outside the borders of the city in hunting parties. Fearing that the Blood Lord has begun to extend his reach and maybe even as far as the Last City, bounties have been placed on the heads of the pallid in the hope to discourage them ranging too far.

To Face Him

Xertin is a fighter and a killer and to face him is to face death. Xertin never turns down a challenge and his corrupt enhanced strength and stamina means that any who challenge him really should have something planned or it will be a very short fight.

Xertin has also exhibited knowledge of dark sorceries even though before the fall he was known to be illiterate and had no interest in arcane

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The Luck of the Dice A

s you rise from your catharsis and decide now is the time to fight back you will need to learn how the world works and how to operate within it. This is done by learning the mechanics for day to day survival and how to overcome tasks.

may see you and will influence the skills that are linked to them. Each attribute will have a value of between 1 to 5, with 1 being the average human attribute. As someone that has risen up to fight back some if not all your attributes will eventually be above the average.

Learning how to use skills and how your attributes, gear choices and the environment around you influences the result and use of those skills is paramount to success and getting to live another day. Teamwork and knowing each other’s weaknesses is also important, along with understanding your own shortcomings and when to back away from a challenge you cannot possibly win.

Each attribute starts at 1 with the characters species increasing two attributea by 1 each.

The world beyond the spires or deep within the dark roads are a dangerous place, darkness, weather, foliage, and the animal life are not your allies, and those that walk the roads are more often enemy than friend. Plan your journeys well and your comrades better.

Attributes You are made up of four attributes that describe you as a being, each will determine how others

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The player can also choose at this point too increase their characters Corruption to two in exchange for an increase of two attributes by +1. This is an optional choice and is only offered at the starting stage of character creation. The Attribute total is the number of dice rolled when attempting a task or engaging in combat.

Body (BDY)

Your Strength, health, and toughness. Your ability to carry heavy loads, to fight off disease and poisons and how well you can take a hit before falling. Body is linked to those skills like fighting with or without weapons, Athletics like climbing, jumping, and swimming, Body also determines Wounds and Resistance.

Agility (AGL)

Your nimbleness, speed, and reflexes. Your ability to manipulate small items and use hand eye coordination, how quickly you can react to situations and how flexible and fast you are. Agility is linked with using ranged weapons, dodging, and using skills like stealth, agility also helps determine the characters Initiative.

Mind (MND)

Your intellect, memory, and knowledge. Your ability to remember details or information, how much you know of the world and your logic and reasoning when dealing with situations. Skills like Lore, Arcane and Healing are linked to the Mind. Mind also helps determine your learning and how quickly you improve.

To use a skill the player would roll the attribute dice keeping the highest result and add the skill number plus any bonuses from connected Knacks, the final result is then compared to the difficulty of the task with an equal or higher number succeeding.

Attempting a Task without a Skill

If you are faced with a task which you have no skill in you are considered at a disadvantage, but you can still attempt the task by just rolling the attribute dice that the skill is linked to, but instead of keeping the highest you keep the lowest result. Remember you do have a pool of Iron die for these very situations, we will discuss the Iron Die later in this chapter (Pg. 77).

Skill Descriptions

Instinct (INS)

Your perception, survival, and Initiative. Your ability to sense danger, to know where to find water or what plants to avoid, plus your ability to recognise intent or to understand body language. Skills like Perception, Survival, and Scout use Instinct. Instinct will also determine Courage. Along with skills the attributes effect the characters Derived Stats. Derived Stats can be increased on their own despite the attribute linked to them but this is rare and hard to do, their totals will ordinarilly be determined by the attribute they are linked too.

Skills Skills are used to accomplish tasks and are linked to the attributes. Each skill will range from 1-5 and have a number of Knacks linked to it. A knack is an element of the skill that the character has become above average with and is often only gained from the characters chosen role. A knack will offer either a bonus, a reduction in penalties or some other affect.

There are 15 skills in The Black Iron each with a number of Knacks. Arcane Knacks are only available to Mages

Arcane (MND)

Use this skill to understand arcane text, to detect and recognise magical effects and to use scrolls and devices.

Knacks

• Necromancy – Reduces the spell difficulty by one step when using the Necromancy school of magic. • Pyromancy – Reduces the spell difficulty by one step when using the Pyromancy school of magic. • Sorcery - Reduces the spell difficulty by one step when using the Sorcery school of magic.

Athletics (BOD) Use this skill to Jump, climb, swim and any other active that will involve stamina and strength to attempt.

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The Black Iron Knacks

• Acrobatics – The ability to flip, somersault and dodge adds a +1 to the skill roll when used • Ropework – The use of ropes for swinging, rappelling and tightrope walking adds +1 to the skill roll when used. • Tumbling – Breaking your fall from height or leaping off moving animals or vehicles, reduces damage by half when successful.

Crafting (AGL)

The skill of repair and creating clothing, jewellery and also potions and recipes.

Knacks

• Armour – Repairing armour takes half the time and materials, creating armour using a forge will make armour a +1 to AV • Alchemy – The ability to create poisons and to recognise poisons and create antidotes, +1 to crafting when the Knack is used. • Weapons – The ability to repair and create weapons, repairing weapons takes half the time and they will do +1 extra damage

Fight (BOD)

Brawling, wrestling, and unarmed combat can be used to block attacks and subdue enemies.

Knacks

• Dirty Fighting – When used and successful the target is stunned for one round if they fail their Dodge attempt. • Knockouts – When successful the target must make a Body roll to resist and a failure would indicate they are rendered unconscious. • Blocking – When used you receive a +1 to blocking an unarmed attack.

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Healing (MND)

Used to heal injuries, works best with a healing kit, and can be used with the Survival and Crafting skills to make potions and salves.

Knacks

• First Aid – When used with Healing gives a +2 HP on a success • Magical – When used with healing gives a +1 to heal magical damage • Battle Medic – When used during a battle the Knack cancels out penalties to using the skill.

Lore (MND)

Understanding the world, people, and the past, used when needing to understand landmarks, maps and any other task that involves some kind of knowledge.

Knacks The player can choose the Knack they would like to have regarding knowledge this could be on any subject except knowledge of the Blood Lords or Remnant.

Melee (BOD)

The use of weapons to engage in combat, includes parrying and techniques. Also the use of skills or unique and improvised weapons.

Knacks

• Dual Wield – With this ability you can wield two one handed weapons without penalty. • Disarm – During a successful attack you can choose to disarm rather than attack with no penalty • Sundar – During an attack you can choose to destroy the opponents shield or cover with no penalty.

Perception (INS)

The skill used for detecting danger and hidden things, use this skill to thwart ambushes and surprise attacks, to spot items and to determine a person intent.

Knacks

• Search – When used to discover a hidden item, location, or door you receive +1 to the skill. • Sense Corruption – When perception is used successfully the GM will inform you of any nearby corruption what form the corruption takes will not be known. • Body Language – When used with Perception you gain a +1 to read the body language of the person you are communicating with to determine whether they are lying, dangerous or have a hidden weakness.

Performance (MND)

The skill used for performing and public speaking. Use ths skill to get the attention of crowds, playing instruments and story telling.

Knacks

• Play Instrument - The ability to play and instrument to a good level, this will add a +1 to the Performance skill or to many Social based actions. • Bard - You know how to tell tales and keep your audience focused on you, will add +1 to deception attempts and to crowd control. • Sleight of Hand - You can juggle and do card tricks using dexterity and speed, allows you to gamble and to use sleight of hand to amaze and confuse.

Ranged (AGL)

The skill used for shooting bows and crossbows as well as using slings and thrown weapons. Mages use ranged to cast spells that are directed at a target.

Knacks

• Mounted – This Knack allows you to fire whilst on horseback or travelling in a vehicle with no penalty • Marksmanship – Using Marksmanship allows you to use a ranged weapon as if you have aimed for a round giving you a +1 to aimed shots • Quick Shot – Allows you to prepare and shoot in one round, whether this is nocking an arrow, loading sling shot or unholstering a thrown axe with no penalty for doing so.

Scout (INS)

The scouting skill covers a number of important abilities such as tracking, navigation and nature lore which includes a knowledge of herbs and plants as well as animal behaviour and habitats.

Knacks

• Tracking – You are able to track over any terrain without receiving any penalties. • Animal Care – You are able to use scout to determine animals in the area and to calm animals that may act aggressively. • Set/Disarm Traps – You are at a +1 when setting or disarming traps.

Stealth (AGL)

The ability to move quietly and avoid notice, also to hide and conceal actions and items. Also includes stealth attacks.

Knacks

• Hide in Shadows – You receive a +1 when near shadows or using shadows to hide and move. • Stealth Kill - When attacking from stealth you may instant kill your target. • Conceal – Others are at -1 when attempting to find a concealed item or weapon on your person.

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The Black Iron Survival (INS)

The ability to find food and water, shelter, and herbs out in the wild.

Knacks

• Forage – You are able to find food and water in the most hospitable environment without any penalties. • Find Shelter – You are able to find and build a shelter which will reduce the effects of the cold by half. • Medicinal Herbs – You will find twice as many medicinal herbs per round of searching as you would normally.

Social (MND)

Your ability to converse, negotiate and command others, determines your ability to barter, gather information or intimidate others.

Gaining Knacks and Skills

The characters role will offer a number of Knacks after which any further knacks can be bought using experience points. Some Knacks are only available to some roles. Skills work similar to knacks in that they must be bought using experience and those skills associated to the character’s role are cheaper than those which are not

Knacks

• Barter – On a successful Social you will receive a 10% discount and an extra 10% when selling. • Charm – You gain a +1 when dealing with people and getting them to see your way of thinking. • Diplomacy - +1 to dealing with authority and calming down situations in a tactful way.

Thievery (AGL)

The ability to pick locks and pockets, break an entry and to follow targets without being noticed.

Knacks

• Pick Locks -When picking a lock you gain a +1. • Pick Pockets - The target is at a -2 Perception to notice you pick their pockets. • B & E - You gain a +1 Perception to notice a places that allow you to break & entry into a building such as windows, skylights etc..

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Skills and Knacks by Attribute Body Athletics - Acrobatics, Rope Work, Tumbling Fight - Dirty Fighting, Knockout, Blocking Melee - Dual Wield, Disarm, Sundar

Agility Crafting - Armour, Poisons, Weapons Ranged - Mounted, Marksmanship, Quick Shot Stealth - Hide in Shadows, Stealth Kill, Conceal Thievery - Pick Locks, Pick Pockets, B&E

Mind Arcane - Necromancy, Pyromancy, Sorcery Healing - First Aid, Magical, Battle Medic Lore - Varies Social - Barter, Charm, Diplomacy

Instinct Perception - Search, Sense Corruption, Body Language Scout - Tracking, Animal Care, Set/Disarm Traps Survival - Forage, Find Shelter, Medicinal Herbs

Performing Actions Not all actions should rely on a dice roll, and those actions which are considered routine or easy should just be allowed to succeed, the only time dice should come into play is if the action has a consequence to failure such as injury or missing something important. Combat is one area where rolling is a must due too the dangerous nature of the actions involved. A GM could call for a dice roll when the situation is tense or dangerous and an action that would seem simple in a normal circumstance may suddenly become more difficult because you are being chased or are injured. When called to roll dice you will have a pool of D6 (six-sided dice) equal to your Attribute total to roll, once rolled you choose the highest dice as your result, for example:

3,2,5

Rolling three dice with this result would indicate that 5 is the highest number.

1,1,2

Once the dice have been rolled you then add your Skill Rank and any other modifiers or penalties, the end number is your total which you then compare to the Difficulty Number (DN) you need to equal or beat. Task Easy Average Difficult Hard Very Hard Extremely Hard Near Impossible

DN 3 5 7 9 11 13 15+

The above numbers are examples and can be adapted by the GM as they see fit, but they should work fine for all situations. Example Niki’s result is a 7, her characters Stealth Skill Rank is a 2 and this she adds to the dice roll giving Niki an overall total of 9. The Target Number Niki had to beat or equal was a 9 and because Niki’s result is exactly 9 her character has succeeded.

Rolling three dice with this result would indicate that 2 was the highest number

The rolling of a 6 will always be the highest result but rolling a number of 6s would increase the result by 1 for each extra 6 rolled, so for example

2,6,6

Rolling three dice with this result would be a total of 7, the highest result of 6 plus a +1 from the extra six rolled. Example Niki has a rank of 4 in Agility which means she rolls 4 dice, Niki rolls her dice and gets the

following result

2, 4, 6, 6.

The highest number rolled is a 6 which becomes the result, but Niki has rolled two 6s so the second 6 becomes a +1 and makes the total of the roll 7 (6+1=7)

Modifiers

Certain circumstances can affect the difficulty of a task by making it harder or easier, climbing a rock face which may be easy on a dry day will be harder on a day of rain or snow, picking a lock will be much harder when you are trying to get it open before the guard returns. Modifiers come in two types those that change the difficulty of the task and those that change the characters ability to do the task.

Modifying the Difficulty

The GM should only modify the difficulty of a challenge because of environmental or outside influence, such as weather or danger, situations the characters cannot control. Below are examples of how a difficulty could change due to these external factors.

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The Black Iron Situation Modifier Wet or Icy surface +2 Darkness +3 Fog or Smoke +2 Wind and Rain +2 Mud +1 Danger +1 Immediate Danger +2 Partial Light +1

The modifier would be added to the Difficulty Number of the challenge. A difficulty number of a task is considered to represent how difficult that task would be on a clear dry day, so difficult numbers are never lowered.

Modifying the Ability

The characters ability can be modified by injury and the use of specialised tools and equipment, also by help from others (see Cooperation below). As you become more injured you will receive penalties to your attributes from -1 to -5, these penalties reduce the number of dice you can roll, depending on the type of injury. Fear can also cause a penalty to your attributes causing the character to become stressed and flustered, and these can range from -1d to -3d. Hunger, dehydration, and sleep deprivation also places penalties on your actions with the longer you go without food or sleep the harder it is to concentrate on tasks. On the bright side some items will offer bonuses to actions, climbing gear, lock picks and even healing kits will make the task more achievable by giving a +1 to +3 bonus to the Skill Rank. Ability modifiers will be gone into more detail in the Injury and Survival sections of the Exploration Chapter.

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Levels of Success and Failure

Often you will roll much higher than you need or much lower and these will then begin to give levels of success or failure. Combat actions have different results regarding levels of success than non - combat actions and these will be gone into more detail in the Exploration chapter. For every two levels you are above the target number you gain a benefit and for every 2 levels you are below the target number a drawback. These benefits and drawbacks can be consequences such as triggering an alarm, or a trap, gaining more information or a bonus to your next action. The benefit or drawback should relate to the circumstances and is ultimately up to the GM, though offering it up to the other players to choose can sometimes be fun. The number of levels above or below should also affect the severity, someone that rolls 2 levels above the target number should have a lesser benefit than someone that rolled 4 or 6 levels above and vice versa. Levels of success and failure are a good way to make the characters feel they have succeeded amazingly or failed horrendously Example Niki is attempting to unlock a door before the guard returns, the Lock is pretty simple and only has a DN of 6, but with the imminent approach of the guard this adds a +2 modifier, increasing the DN an 8. Niki has an Agility of

3d so she rolls 3d6 and the result is a

5, 6

3

. Niki’s Thievery is 3 and she is using a and lock-pick which is +1, altogether Niki gets a 10 (6 + 3 + 1 = 10). A result of 10 is 2 points above the DN of 8 so the GM decides that Niki not only unlocks the door but also gains a +1 to her next action.

Cooperation

A character can aid another character with certain actions, this will be determined by the type of action and whether more than one person can be

involved, all crowding around a lock in order to try and pick it is unlikely to work, but aiding in healing or giving someone a boost over a wall are totally feasible. When attempting to cooperate the helping character will give a +1 bonus to the character performing the action which then can be added to the dice roll to help beat the difficulty number. Of course, even during cooperative actions levels of success and failure are still in affect. A character can only help another if they have at least 1 in the skill that is being used, without the skill the character cannot offer aid.

Rolling without a Skill

If you have no rank in a skill, then you still get to roll the attribute dice linked to the skill but instead you take the lowest number rolled on the two dice as your result, you still add any modifiers, including items, and you also receive the same penalties.

Choosing a Different Attribute

Sometimes a skill is used in a way that does not seem to fit the attribute it falls under and this is fine, just choose the most relevant feeling attribute and use that instead, for example Healing may involve intricate surgery to remove an arrowhead and you might feel that Agility would be better instead of Mind, or you could use Thievery to stake a location out and this might use Mind or Instinct rather than Agility. If you feel a particular use of a skill calls for a different attribute, then bring this up with the GM and work together on deciding which would be best.

Attribute Tests

Sometimes an attribute test is needed, this will not happen very often but will be needed to resist poisons or disease. When a test is called for you roll the attribute dice choosing the highest result and include any positive or negative modifiers. As long as it is equal to or higher than the target you succeed.

Normal Actions during Combat

You can choose to perform a normal action during combat rather than perform a combat action. Normal actions that are performed during combat should receive a modifier for either danger or stress based on the situation.

Opposed Actions

Opposed rolls are rolls that involve either a character versus an NPC or character versus another character, example would be arm wrestling, chases or holding a door to stop someone entering and so forth. With opposed rolls each player or a player and GM rolls the appropriate attribute, adds the appropriate skill and any modifiers and the highest result wins, it is as simple as that. Some opposed rolls are a forgone conclusion based on factors such as skill total etc and this should be a judgement call by the GM.

The Iron Die

Every action you take that involves a dice roll will also include an Iron Die, this dice should be a different colour from the other dice. The Iron Die is treated the same way as the other dice unless the Iron Die falls on a 6 or a 1, this could be a positive or negative consequence to the action. Rolling a 6 on the Iron die not only means it is treated like a normal dice roll as explained earlier but also that a positive effect has happened, this could be an extra level of success, more information, or even extra damage. On the result of a 1 on the Iron Die a negative effect has happened whether the overall result was a fail or a success. A negative affect could be setting off an unknown trap or alarm, a weapon breaking or even an arrow hitting the wrong target. Effects can be decided between the GM and Player based on the action that led to the affect.

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T

Example of Play

he party is moving through a forest of dead trees, up ahead they see a hut, one side has banked up snow the other a lean to for a horse. This is a Rangers hut, before the fall these were scattered throughout forests and large wooded areas, but few survived the fall. The hut is a place of safety and warmth but judging from the smoke rising from the clay pipe protruding from the roof someone is already there. Ian is playing Borlan a Human Sell-sword from the Last City with no Guild Affiliation Phil is playing Jenfa a Half Elf Thief from Below with a Rank 1 in the Guild of Silence Niki is playing Tornee a Human Hunter with no Guild Affiliation Chris is Playing Fade a Human Mage of the Black Fort studied in Pyromancy

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GM: The area is quiet, and no snow has fell for an hour, the wind has died down and the only thing moving is the smoke curling up and out of the clay chimney on the huts roof. You can see light emanating from beneath the door and from its flicker the light is of an open fire. Suddenly from within you hear a slight whimper of pain. Tornee: Are there any windows? GM: Yes on the side of the building with the banked-up snow you can see wooden shutters. Tornee: Ok I want to sneak over to the shutters so I can peer in. GM: Ok what is everyone else doing? Borlan: I will wait here and tackle anyone that comes through the door. Fade: I will stay with Borlan. Jenfa: I will also sneak to the hut but will move to the other end with the lean to. GM: Ok so Tornee and Jenfa I need stealth rolls, you each gain +1 due to the snow, this is more about noise than reaching the hut without being seen. Jenfa has an agility of 3d6 and an stealth of +2 whereas Tornee has an agility of 2d6 and an stealth of also +2. Jenfa rolls 1,2, and 5, meaning Jenfa gets a 7 (5+2) with the bonus +1 this gives a total of 8. Tornee rolls a 2 and 6 which is a total of 8 and with the +1 this comes to 9. The GM rolls the for the highest perception of the people in the hut versus the lowest stealth result of the two characters which was Jenfa’s. The GM rolls a 1, 5 and 6 with the NPCs +1 instinct this comes to 7 (6+1) and no one hears the characters. GM: You both reach the hut without alerting anyone inside. Tornee: I will see if I can see through the shutter.

Jenfa: I will draw my dagger and crouch down preparing for the hut door to open. Borlan: As I see them both reach the hut; I will draw my sword. Fade: I will begin to create a fireball. Borlan: I will also move slightly away from Fade. GM: Ok so Tornee you peer through a crack in the shutters and inside the hut you see three men, heavily scarred, there teeth filed to points and long metal knives grafted onto the fingers of their left hands, these are Axas Cultists, loyal to the Blood Lord. Tied to a cot is a woman, she is bloodied and bruised, semi-conscious. Tornee: Bastards, ok we need to kill these horrors and save the woman. I will signal to the others to get ready and then draw my bow and kick the side of the hut three times, preparing myself. Borlan: I am ready to leap out as soon as one gets close. Fade: I will stop my Fireball, with the woman in the hut it could be too dangerous, I will wait to see what happens. GM: Ok from inside Tornee everything goes quiet, then you hear shuffling and you sense someone peering through the shutter, I need another Stealth. Jenfa you hear the latch on the door lift with a clack. Tornee rolls agility and gets a 1 and a 2, not good her stealth of +2 increases this to 4. The GM rolls for the Cultists perception and gets 2 and a 6 making an 8 the Cultist spots Tornee and yells an alert. GM: You all hear a yell from inside the hut, but the door is already swinging open and one of the cultists steps out, both Jenfa and Tornee have the surprise so you can act first. Tornee you are using ranged so attack.

Tornee rolls her attack and gets three 6’s a Critical Success which gives a +2 , and a postive affect from the Iron Die, with her ranged skill of 3 gives a total of 11, but her bows quality reduces this by 1 to a 10. The Cultist would normally be able to attempt a dodge but the Iron Die result means that the cultist stumbles in to bow shot and gains extra damage. Tornee rolls her damage she rolls her agility and with the highest result is a 5, the bow does an extra 4 damage with a total of 9, the GM allows the bow damage to be doubled making a grand total of 13. The cultist is wearing skins and leather which gives 2 protection, but the remaining 11 damage kills him. GM: With a gurgle the Cultist drops to the ground his blood painting the snow red. The door to the hut is open and light from the fire spills from the hut. No movement is heard, and the two remaining Cultists are not leaving the hut. Tornee: I will keep my bow nocked and trained on the door as overwatch. Fade: Can I see the source of the light? GM: Yes, you can see that the fireplace has been lit, it is the only light in the hut. Fade: Ok I will attempt to absorb the flame, effectively dousing the fire. GM: Ok that would be difficult as you are a distance away, let’s say a DN of 10. Fade: Wow ok I will give it a go. Fade opens his arms wide and takes a deep breath inward, willing the flame into his embrace, the air seems to shimmer, like a hot summers day and the ice melts around Fade’s feet. Chris rolls his Mind of 4d6 and gets 2, 3, 6, 6. Unfortunately neither 6 is from the Iron Die. The second 6 adds +1 to the roll making a total of 7, Fade’s Arcane is 3 and he has the Pyromancy Knack which reduces the DN to 9, so with a total of 10 Fade absorbs the flame and the hut goes dark. Jenfa: As the hut goes dark I will sneak in, my knife at the ready. Phil rolls 3d6 for Jenfa’s agility an gets a 5, the stealth of +2 is a 7, because its now dark the GM lets Jenfa sneak in undetected by the cultists. Borlan: I will wait to see what happens and also deal with anyone coming out. GM: Jenfa you enter the hut and see the two remaining cultists, one is peering out through the

shutters and the other is moving to the woman on the cot. Jenfa: Ok I will try to indicate to Tornee that one of the cultists is at the window. GM: How will you do that? Jenfa: I will mime quickly and point at where the window is, can use Mind plus Performance? GM: You can do that but Tornee will receive a penalty to understand. Tornee: What should I use? GM: Use Instinct and Perception Phil rolls for Jenfra rolling a 3,3 and 5 for mind and adding Jenfra’s performance skill of 2 makes a 7. Niki has to beat a 7 but then the GM imposes a +2 DN to Phil’s result making the 7 into a 9. Niki rolls Tornee’s Instinct and gets a 6 on the Iron Die, Tornee’s perception is 3 which makes 9, success. Tornee: I shift my aim to the window and take a shot. GM: You are firing blind but because your rolled a 6 on the Iron Die you receive no penalties, but the cultist will be able to attempt a dodge. Tornee: I should use instinct rather than agility to make the shot I guess as I cannot see my target. GM: Agreed. Niki rolls the instinct and gets3, 4, 4, 5, Tornee’s ranged is 3 which makes a total of 8, the cultist can attempt a dodge and the GM rolls the agility of the cultist and gets a 3, 1 and 4, with an athletics of 2 the cultist has a 6 and fails to dodge. Tornee: Yes my damage is 8. GM: The arrow punches through the shutters and pierces the cultists eye killing him instantly. Jenfa: Can I throw my dagger at the other one. GM: Let’s roll initiative and see who acts first. Phil rolls the d6 initiative dice and gets a 4 he adds Jenfa’s +3 Initiative bonus making a total of 7. The GM rolls the d6 and gets a 6, he adds the +2 Initiative bonus for a total of 8. GM: The cultist grabs the woman using her as a shield, one of the blades grafted to his fingers is held against the woman’s neck. Jenfra: I drawback my knife, not sure what to do, the woman could be corrupted, saving her could be pointless, but if she isn’t... GM: What are you going to do? Jenfra: I throw my dagger aiming at the cultist. GM: Roll your attack...

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Creating a Character B

ehind the Grand Cathedral in the Last City, out of ear shot of the chained priests and the howling preachers, is a crypt to the Last Knight, the one that led the first charge against the elves and took back the city. The corpse was allegedly dragged from the battlefield before the ghuls and the corpse robbers flocked to pick at the bones and returned here to the cathedral to be a monument of human bravery and strength. The crypt was built using the stones from the house of an elven lord, and what a marvel it is, adorned with a fresco of the famous uprising, marching soldiers led by a shining knight, no images of screaming, missing limbs, or soldiers shitting themselves as they die, all very heroic and now after so many years weathered and worn. Over the last decade skulls have begun to appear here, said to be an epitaph to those that brave the Pale that seek to drive back the corruption, the ‘heroes’ of the people, this macabre monument placed beside the crypt of the first knight is visited often by someone because the pile of skulls forever grows. Could this be your last resting place, will your skull grace the pile, or will you be the one that makes a difference that pushes back the corruption and strikes down the Blood Lords?

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I

n order to explore the Pale, you will need to Step 5. Character Completion create a character, and this is done through This step involves determing the characters character creation. There are a number of steps derived stats. to creating a character some of which we will do now and others that happen during the game and when your character has earned the experience or Before you Start Each characters attributes start at 1, two of these fulfilled what they need to advance. can be increased by 1 if the characters permanent The Black Iron RPG is designed to be hard, to make corruption is increased to 2, otherwise the you feel like death awaits around every corner and permanent corruption starts at 1. in every ruin. The world is trying to kill you and that is just a reality. As a player you must work with The characters wound level starts at 10, this will the other players and your GM to build a party that change during step 5. will complement each other and survive.

Aging

The lifespan of a species is shown in the table below, the age of the character has no affect on the attributes or skills of that character, but it may There are five steps to character creation which affect how others view you or treat you, e.g. an adult will be treated differently to a child in some must be taken in order, these are: circumstances.

The Four Steps

Step 1. Choose a Species

There are three different types of species available and each has their strengths and weaknesses. They are the Humans which are the most prolific species, the Half Elves and the Chimeer. Choose carefully as these cannot be changed.

Gender

The characters gender also has no bearing on their attributes or other abilities. With so few left after the fall everyone is expected to pull their weight and work towards the survival of those that are left. Over two decades of scratching in the dirt and surviving what horrors live beyond the spires has Step 2. Choose a Background toughened many beyond what they would have There are a number of backgrounds that can ever been before the Black Iron fell. be chosen and the species will dictate which backgrounds are not available to the character. These background tell us what the character Talents did before they decided to brave the pale. A Each species has a unique talent they can use background offers skills, knacks and starting gear. whenever they choose, often they are always active in the background and are just part of who the character is. Talents will be described within Step 3. Life Experience the species description and have both benefits This is where your characters experiences and drawbacks. convert into points to spend on improvements to attributes, skills and knacks

Movement Distance

All characters have a base 30ft movement rate, this doubles for running and triples for sprinting. The characters role is their position in society, Being crippled in the legs will reduce this to half. what they are perceived as or what they desrcibe themselves as. The role will offer knacks and starting gear and also determine what Guilds the character can join.

Step 4. Choose a Role

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Chimeer A small island called the Shackles lies off the eastern coast of the Pale, originally the home to pirates it was invaded by a large elven force sent to eliminate the pirate threat to shipping and fishing. The elves quickly took control of the island and the pirates were either killed or fled. What the elves found were fortresses and small towns all thousands of years old and presumably built by the dwarves. The elves spent decades on the island experimenting and testing magical powers and effects, some of these experiments involved humans in one form or another and it is now known that the fortresses of the island held vast dungeons converted into cells and torture rooms. These experiments were mostly barbaric as the lives of the humans were seen on par with animals to the dominant elves meaning that nothing was left off the table, and the Chimeer are the result of some of these horrifying practices

Chimeer Characters

The Chimeer are the result of elven experiments involving the melding of humans and animals through magic, originally it is believed the elves were planning on building vast armies of melded and it is believed they had limited success at this as one of the cities sent out beasts that seemed strangely human in movement and even intelligence against the armies of humans during the war before the fall. But it seems the elves took these experiments much further and the result of this are the Chimeer. Each Chimeer has been melded with a wild animal, which animal It was can sometimes be obvious on those Chimeer that are more animal than human and on the less animalistic not so clear. This can be

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a problem when travelling the Pale as many towns and villages and even guards of the Last City and the below will see Chimeer with more animal like features as being corrupted and will either attack or at least refuse entry through the gates. Chimeer characters should fall into the less animal, more human bracket mainly to make life easier and to be able to function like the human members of the party. For those that choose to have their Chimeer look almost like a normal human they will have an option to share their heritage with the party or not and likewise party members may have suspicions of the Chimeer character and how that is played out should be part of the fun. Chimeer tend to have short lifespans naturally, with the average Chimeer living to about 35 to 40

years, on the flip-side they tend to mature quicker than a normal human with maturity being reached by the age of 12. Most Chimeer will not remember their childhoods with the average age in game play being around 20-25.

Appearance

Chimeer who bear more human traits than animal will still have signs of their animal side, whatever that may be, they may not be obvious, but they should be there. The eyes are often a giveaway as are the hands or feet. Signs could be subtle like hair colour or slight scaling to skin (which can be covered up), elongated canines or a stub of a tail under clothing. Other signs could be a keen sense of smell, night vision or excellent hearing. The player should decide how obvious the signs are of the characters animal side, how much they wish to tell the party and how much they wish to embrace or cast away that side of themselves.

Chimeer Names

Chimeer were not named by their elven creators and the most they ever received would be a number. When they fled the Shackles and entered human society, they realised that a name would be appropriate and began choosing names for themselves. Chimeer names can range from the standard human names to animal like names and even just words that sound pleasing or beneficial in some way and Chimeer have been recorded with names ranging from Jared and Sara to Anvil and Wagon. Players should name their character whatever they feel is appropriate for their character.

D6 1 2 3 4 5 6

Animal Wolf

Benefits +1 to AGL and INS Talent - Awareness Bear +1 to BDY and INS Talent - Strong Lizard +1 to AGL and INS Talent - Regeneration Wild Cat +1 to AGL and INS Talent - Night Vision Rat +1 to BDY and AGL Talent - Resistance Boar +1 to BDY and INS Talent - Tough

Talent Descriptions Awareness - You gain +1 to Perception when attempting to spot danger or traps. You are at -1 to hit or spot objects at Long Range Strong - You are brutally strong and gain +2 damage to unarmed attacks. Your hands are clawed which means you are at -2 with social interactions. Regeneration - Physical injuries heal back faster than normal and you heal 2 wounds for every four hours of rest instead of 1. Poisons and disease are 1 level of potency higher. Night Vision - You can see clearly at night as if it was day. You only see in black and white and cannot discern colour.

Creating a Chimeer

Resistance - All poisons and disease are two The first step to creating a Chimeer involves levels of potency less. Physical damage heals finding out what your animal half is derived from, slower meaning that you heal back one wound for this is done randomly as a Chimeer has no control every 8 hours of rest. over the process. The player rolls on the table below which will determine the animal they were Tough - You have a thick skin and gain +2 armour, unfortunately you cannot wear armour heavier melded with and the benefits they receive. than medium. You start with the skills - Survival, Fight and Scout at 1.

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Half Elves Born of an elf father and human mother the half elves are the last memory of the elven race and their cruelty. During the final years of elven rule, the elves began experimenting on human females to discover whether they could procreate with the elves and if the result would lean more to the dominant elven gene or the lesser human. The humans had always been stronger physically than the elves and fear of an uprising by the humans led the elves to attempt to create a hybrid, a race which had the strength of humans but the magical aptitude and higher mind of an elf. Human females were impregnated by elves, always against their will and placed in birthing rooms, cells were the pregnant female would spend the entirety of her pregnancy. On the day of the birth the child would be examined and if the child showed more human than elven traits they would be disposed of in various ways, the mothers returned to their cells and allowed to recuperate for 14 days before the experiments would begin again. Those children showing elven features indicating the purer gene were kept and brought up by elven parents. These are the half elves of today.

Half Elf Characters

Appearance

As a half elf you can choose to have more human or more elven traits, this doesn’t mean appearance but what you have taken genetically from your parents.

Those half elves with more human features will be treated as any normal human would and their more agile movement or being more attuned

Like Chimeer Half Elves are rare and find it difficult to fit in. Many half elf children that survived birth because of their prominent elven looks changed as they grew taking on more human traits, and this can vary from person to person. Those that look more human have an easier time in the cities and towns whereas those that exhibited strong elven features tend not to last very long amongst humans, this has led many half elves to cut their ears or scar themselves in order to look like their elven fathers.

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Those half elves that have more elven features will try to hide the fact in various ways, the less extreme solutions are often growing their hair long or wearing hoods and hats in public but even then, that often does not work. In game terms those characters that have the elven trait selection will have the more elven appearance and this should be dealt with however the player wants. The GM may be less harsh on half elf characters allowing them to just have a harder time than normal by adding penalties to social tasks, but this should be discussed.

magically can be easily explained away by training or other reasons.

Human Ancestry

Appearance is linked to how human or elven you want the character to be, there are benefits to both and the world the GM decides to create, what laws, prejudices and fears they emphasis will affect you more in one way than the other.

Starting Attributes +1 Body, +1 Agility

You have the dominant human gene.

Traits choose one

Courage - You gain +1 to courage rolls when facing fear inducing threats. No intelligent or self-respecting Half Elf will take Conduit - Magic comes easy to you and all spells an elven name so many take human names, are one dificulty level less. though this is often just first names and often they Resistant - You are more resistant to disease and choose names that have a flourish to them. poison with the potency of each being 1 less.

Half Elf Names

Male: Arvo, Alain, Bertran, Davron, Ethan, Finnis, Garrett, Herron, Isaac, Jeremi, Kendrick, Lothian, Mallack, Niallin, Oris, Pelta, Reso, Severin, Talon, Verren, Wellem. Female: Aria, Bella, Corinth, Dera, Elaine, Fraia, Gesa, Heather, Ila, Jena, Kora, Lauren, May, Nelly, Oria, Poppy, Resia, Sorella, Tia, Violet,

Creating a Half Elf

The first step is choosing which ancestry will be the dominant one, once this has been decided just take the benefits that apply. You start with the skills - Athletics, Fight and Survival at 1.

Elven Ancestry

You have the dominant elven gene

The Genes

Those characters with the dominant Elven gene will look more like typical elves, dark haired, grey eyes and the pointed ears. These features will make all social interactions more difficulty (-2) even in some cases impossible. Choosing a character with a dominant Elven gene will be a challenging choice. The characters with a dominant Human gene will have a much easier time of it as they will look a lot more human and unless scrutinised closely will pass as human most times. This will cause no social issues. Characters with dominant human genes may wish to keep their ancestry to themselves and this is possible as it will be almost impossible to tell without a close examniation.

Starting Attributes +1 Agility, +1 Mind

Traits choose one Dark Vision - You can see in natural darkness without penalty. Balance - You receive no penalty moving on narrow ledges or branches. Conduit - Magic comes easy to you and all spells are one dificulty level less.

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Humans The humans had thrived in the Pale for hundreds of years before the elves arrived, and they had thrived pretty well. Built to adapt the humans could survive in most environments and this had spread them not only across the land but into the mountains and the seas. Cultures sprung up as did regional accents, religion became important to many and altars and temples could be found in many towns and villages. Life was harsh but good for most. Of course, there was still crime, still those that would take from others, the world was not any kind of paradise. Since the fall life has got harder with the cold, corruption and attacks from Fanatics and Cults supporting the Blood Lords being a common cause of death. Those that could fled behind the walls of the Last City or deep underground to the ruins, but many still live out there in the cold trying to survive, and many are losing the battle.

Human Characters

Humans are the most common species in the Pale, most towns and villages are human, the Last City is mainly human, and your party will be at least 80% human. When the last war began many humans, who had not joined the army fled for safety to the last city or walked the roads as refugees, fleeing the elven lords and their revenge. This movement disrupted the cultural differences of the humans as they all mostly ended up in the Last City which was ironically the first city to fall to the humans. Those barbarian tribes in the mountains were mostly untouched by the war and to many it was

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news that only affected others. But when the war ended, and the Black Iron fell, the corruption spread and it was the tribes and their indifference that were infected first. Those tribes that could attempted to flee and some ended up in the mountains north of the Last City and safely behind the Spires. Many humans fell to war and then later to corruption and the lure of the Blood Lords, these are what make up the largest part of the cults, bandits and slavers, not to mention the corrupted that plague the Pale. But behind the walls of the Last City and deep within the dwarven ruins humans continue to thrive and many have begun to fight back.

Appearance

Humans vary vastly in appearance from short and tall, to thin and fat, dark hair to light hair, dark skin to light skin. Accents vary, customs are unique, and clothing goes from rags to well made and expensive. What makes you different is often your attitude and how you see the world, the way you treat others and your moral codes. People of the north tend to have fairer hair and paler skin, whereas people from the Ash Lands in the south will have darker skin, with those living on the coast ruddy complexions. Because of the refugees the Last City is a metropolis of cultures.

Human Names

The human population come from all regions and all backgrounds and in many cases status from family names no longer mean a thing. Below is a selection of male and female names most common amongst the human population. Male: Arvo, Alain, Bertran, Davron, Ethan, Finnis, Garrett, Herron, Isaac, Jeremi, Kendrick, Lothian, Mallack, Niallin, Oris, Pelta, Reso, Severin, Talon, Verren, Wellem. Female: Aria, Bella, Corinth, Dera, Elaine, Fraia, Gesa, Heather, Ila, Jena, Kora, Lauren, May, Nelly, Oria, Poppy, Resia, Sorella, Tia, Violet.

Creating a Human

Creating a human character will involve choosing what part of the Pale they will come from.

Dragonclaw Mountains You were born into one of the many tribes that call the mountains that shadow the Last City home. You start with the skills - Athletics, Ranged and Scout at 1

Starting Attributes +1 Body, +1 Instinct

Southern Plains You come from the Ashlands in the south, you have darker skin and be of a slight build compared to the more hardy northern humans. You start with the skills - Athletics, Melee and Stealth

Starting Attributes +1 Body, +1 Agility

The Below You were born and raised in the cities below, living your life surrounded by stone lit by candles and lanterns. You have a palid complexion

Starting Attributes +1 Agility, +1 Mind

Eastern Coast You grew up on the eastern coast, a harsh cold existence living off the fish under the ice, avoiding raiders and other horrors. You have a ruddy complexion.

Starting Attributes You were born and raised in the Last City either +1 Body, +1 Instinct within the city itself of the refugee camps that surround it. Traits choose one

The Last City

You start with the Skills - Crafting, Fight and Social at 1. . Starting Attributes +1 Body, +1 Mind

Courage - You gain +1 to courage rolls when facing fear. Resistant - You are more resistant to disease and poison with the potency of each being 1 less. Ambidextrous - You can use both hands equally and receive no penalty for duel wielding weapons.

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Backgrounds Everyone has a past and your character is no exception. What your character did before they decided to face the horrors of the pale is as important as their species in terms of making them who they are and what they know. Many backgrounds may relate to your families profession rather than the characters, the character would have grown up learning the family trade. The following backgrounds are not available to every species and will be clearly marked to indicate which species can take them. Each background also offers a number of skills and knacks that the character begins with. Characters can choose to keep their background and make it their role, this will mean that they will expand the backgrounds basic description to encompass their new endeavours and all skills gained from the background will increase by 1 point. It is suggested that the player creates a story around their characters background to add depth and maybe even future options for the GM to personalise the encounters or adventures. Niki makes a Last City human character and decides to pick a Vagrant Background as she wants to play a Thief type character. Niki adds a short background story of her character growing up in the slums, her only family the other urchins and members of the silent guild who employed the young uns to cause distractions or climb into small places. The GM makes a note of this and considers that maybe some point in the future Niki’s character may get called to help one of those urchin friends who has got themselves into a bit of strife or maybe Niki owes the Silent Guild a debt or favour. Either way plenty of food for thought and future adventures.

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Artisan (Human)

You grew up learning the skills of an artisan whether that be the art of the armourer, the weaponsmith or the alchemist. You learnt everything needed to ply your trade, though you may have chose a different path, the knowledge never leaves you.

Skills – Crafting, Lore, Social plus three skills of your choice all at +1

Knacks – Armour, Weapons or Alchemist (Choose One), a Lore Knack, Barter Starting Gear Tools of your trade, warm clothing, an item of your trade (common weapon, armour or potion). backpack, rations.

Hunter (Human/Half Elf )

You learnt the skills of a Hunter whether that was hunting in the ice for fish and crabs or deep in the pale for rabbit and deer. You learnt to track and skin your kills and recognise dangers and traps.

Skills – Lore, Ranged, Survival plus three skills of your choice all at +1 Knacks – Wilderness, Marksmanship, Forage Starting Gear Warm clothing, common bow, 20 arrows, light armour, backpack, rations.

Merchant (Human) You grew up learning how to trade and sell, maybe your parents were merchants in the city or traders moving from town to town in the pale or the cities below. You learnt how to deal with people and the value of items. Skills – Lore, Perception, Social plus three skills of your choice all at +1

Knacks – History, Body Language, Barter

Starting Gear

Skills

Warm clothing, backpack, rations, credit at a traders for d10 x 10 BC.

Arcane, Healing, Lore plus three skills of your choice all at +1

Militia (Human)

Knacks

Soon as you were old enough you joined the Militia, went through the two weeks training then went out to guard the gates, patrol the slums or break up bar fights and hunt down criminals.

Skills – Lore, Melee, Social plus three skills of your choice all at +1 Knacks – City Laws, Disarm, Diplomacy Starting Gear Warm clothing, light armour, common melee weapon, backpack, rations.

Nomadic (All)

You travelled the Pale moving from town to town, avoiding fanatics and corrupted horrors. Maybe you sold skins and other animal products, or you may have been travelling performers juggling, telling stories, or playing instruments for any that would listen and pay for the privilege.

Pyromancy, Necromancy or Sorcery (choose one), Magical Healing, Arcane Lore.

Starting Gear Warm clothing, scroll cases, pack, staff, rations, grimoire

Tribal (Human)

You were born amongst the many tribes that can be found in the Dragon Claw mountains. Life was hard amongst the ice and stone of the peaks and canyons and you learnt many skills to survive. Your tribal roots are important to you and you still wear the gewgaws and colours of your tribe.

Skills – Crafting, Scout, Survival plus three skills of your choice all at +1

Knacks – Weapons, Tracking, Forage Starting Gear Warm clothing, tribal gewgaws, common melee

Skills – Athletics, Performance, plus three skills weapon, backpack, rations.

of your choice Social all at +1

Knacks – Acrobatics, Any one performance knack, Barter

Starting Gear Warm clothing, Instrument, common weapon, backpack, rations.

Novice (Half Elf/Human)

From a very young age you were taken by the Black Fort for exhibiting an affinity for magic and the arcane arts. Your younger years were spent in study, experimentation and meditation. The outside world did not exist for you, it was just a memory. Then one day you were a novice no longer and you were cast out into the Pale to prove your worth as a mage.

Vagrant (All) You grew up in the slums and refugee camps outside the cities, living off your wits by stealing, begging, and sometimes even mugging your victims. You learnt many diverse skills and gained something interesting friends and enemies. Skills – Fight, Stealth and Thievery plus three skills of your choice all at +1

Knacks – Dirty Fighting, Hide in Shadows, Pick Pockets

Starting Gear Clothing, lock picks, dagger or sling, backpack, rations.

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Life Experience Early Experience

Early experience is to show your progress through life up until the moment you decided/accepted or fell into your role. Every role has prerequisites which can be attributes, backgrounds, or skills that you must have in order to become or be recognised as that role, this is why advancement comes half way through character creation rather than at the end.

Choose you Role

Before continuing with Life Experience it is a good idea to have a role in mind for your character this will allow you to decide how to advance in order to hit the prerequisites that role requires. Spend some time thinking about the type of character you would like to play, why they decided to change to an adventurer or explorer and what they would need to know and be skilled in to fulfil the roles expectations.

Future Experience

All future advancements are done from experiencing the world as a group rather than as individuals, with each member of the group receiving points as the group rises in ranks. This is explained on page 104

Start Experience

Everything you have done to your character up to now plays a part in their ability to advance and learn. Your attributes, skills and Knacks are split into two types Primary and Secondary, any attribute increases you gained from your Race are considered Primary, likewise with any skills you gained from backgrounds these are also Primary. Every other attribute and skill is considered Secondary.

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Primary attributes and skills are cheaper to advance then secondary ones. Knacks whether they are for a primary or secondary skill will always cost the same. On the character sheet there is a boxes next to the attributes and skills, these can be ticked to indicate their primary status.

Derived Stats cannot be advanced using experience points, only through improving the attributes they are derived from.

Experience Points

Each character receives 50 experience points to spend and these can be spent however they like. The cost of advancing attributes and skills as well as buying knacks are shown on the table opposite. In order to advance either an attribute or skill you must be at the previous total, for example to increase a skill to 2 that skill must have a current total of 1. So to advance to 2 you must first advance to 1 and then advance to 2.

Advancement Table Attribute Primary Secondary

1-2 10 20

2-3 15 30

3-4 25 50

Skills Cost 4-5 50 75

0-1 10

1-2 10 20

2-3 15 30

3-4 20 40

4-5 25 50

+6 18

+7 21

+8 25

+9 30

+10 40

Derived Stats Wounds

+1 3

Knacks

25

+2 5

+3 7

+4 10

+5 15

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B

Martial

orn to fight whether it be with blade, fist or club, you are the front-line of every conflict and the heroes that storytellers speak of, but those are pretty tales of princesses and vanquishing evil the truth is much grimmer and much more shit stained. To be a fighter is to have a life of glory and defeat, soaked in blood sometimes your own often that of others, it is to face your fears with a grin and deal with whatever is out there in the darkness.

Sell Sword

They call you a mercenary, killer, adventurer and sometimes even bandit, but you are just trying to survive in a messed-up situation, there are things out there in the ice and darkness that want to kill us and it is often up to the few to stop that from happening, asking for payment seems like a small inconvenience. They say join the Militia, why would you do that? Taking orders, patrolling streets, risking your life for just enough to feed yourself is a fool’s game, you’re better than that. No job is unworthy or dishonourable, as long as they pay or there is a promise of wealth and fame at the end of it then it’s worth doing, but the reward has to match the danger, reputation is everything and your profession hinges on your reputation.

Prerequisite - Body 3, Melee Skill 2+ Background - Any Bonus Skills - Athletics, Fight, Stealth +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

Warrior

You are the weapon, the avenger and the wall holding back the horde. You go where you are needed and kill what needs to be killed. You have trained with the most brutal of weapons. walked miles in the heaviest armour and spat in deaths eye. You are a killer there is no denying it, you have no interest in heirs and graces, don’t care if someone is noble or a beggar, they all die the same. If something needs to be killed or someone needs protecting you are sent, you do not fear death you embrace it and up to now it has not been you that death embraces back.

Prerequisite - Body 4, Melee Skill 3+ Background - Any Bonus Skills - Athletics, Healing, Perception +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

Brave

You protect the tribe from dangers that wish to take what you have or destroy the tribe altogether. This is your calling and what the ancestors chose for you and you are proud to be the tribe’s strength. You trained with the other Braves and as you came of age were sent out to seek your first kill, in your case this was a mountain cat that had killed a hunter of the tribe. You sought out the cat, and with your spear, you slew it and returned with its head, from that day you became a Brave. There are bigger dangers out there than mountain cats, and you will do what it takes to protect the tribe, even if that means travelling to the city and joining with teams to hunt down the corrupted monsters that live on the ice. One less monster is one less danger to the tribe.

Prerequisite - Body 3, Melee Skill 3+ Background - Tribal Bonus Skills - Fight, Perception, Survival +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

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S

Exploration

earching through the ruins of the past can be a dangerous pastime, but it can be highly rewarding, which is the only reason anyone does it. Explorers travel those paths others fear, and many join with parties for safety in numbers.

Explorers exist both above and below ground, with those below travelling the ancient unmapped dwarven roads and those above going to the ruins of the elven cities to find artefacts, knowledge and wealth. Those that return are sometimes hailed as heroes and become well known amongst the guilds others have been blamed for several issues due to their unearthing of knowledge that some feel was best left lost. Prerequisite - Mind 3, Lore Skill 3+ Knowledge Broker Seekers of knowledge and lore, you search the ancient libraries of the dwarves the ruined cities Background - Any of the elves and unearth those secrets wanted by Mages and rulers alike. The value of lost Bonus Skills - Arcane, Scout, Social +1 cartography, forbidden incantations, and damned experiments is high as long as you know the right Bonus Knacks - Any 2. (Arcane knacks unavailable). people to offer it too. The Knowledge Broker is not just someone that finds the knowledge but is often the one that also has access to knowledge, many keep the most important finds to themselves or study their discoveries before passing them on.

Prerequisite - Mind 3, Lore Skill 3+ Background - Any Bonus Skills - Athletics, Scout, Social +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

Relic Hunter

The elves are known for their powerful magical artefacts, and the dwarves created mechanical wonders that still operate in the cities today, finding more of these relics is the goal of the Relic Hunter. Dealing with unknown magic’s and ancient contraptions is a dangerous job, and each Relic Hunter must understand the risks and prepare themselves for all eventualities.

Treasure Seekers

Wealth and profit is the only law, and what you search for has to be worth something to someone. Old books and scrolls are hard to shift, and who knows what an artefact looks like? Give them gold, silver and famous pieces of art and they will find a buyer. Treasure Seekers are rare amongst Explorers as money is really no longer a recognised currency, and often what they find is exchanged for favour and reputation.

Prerequisite - Mind 2, Social Skill 3+ Background - Any Bonus Skills - Athletics, Social, Thievery +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2. (Thievery knacks unavailable).

The understanding and knowledge of a relic are not just recognising it’s worth but also the possible implications of handling such dangerous artefacts.

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A

Arcana

student of the arcane and the mysteries. You spend your days in the grand library or one of the many guild houses established by the Black Fort that tutor and select Mages. To become a member of the Black Fort is not an easy task, and the work is hard and dangerous with Mages leaving or dying before they reach full power. Mages are expected to not only know their histories but also to have knowledge of the world outside the guildhall doors and the city gates, and many are sent on tasks to test their resolve, temper their knowledge and measure their ability to avoid corruption.

Necromancy

Novices often start as students of local healers before beginning the study of Necromancy and joining a guildhall. The Black Fort is very aware of the power and misuse of that power that Necromancy is often associated with and keeps a close eye on the Novices. The art of Necromancy is the study of healing through the study of death and what causes death, and this includes poisons, disease, and death by other means. You aspire to be a Necromancer and have studied the lesser rings of the art. The study of Necromancy is thwarted with problems mainly related to the elves and their studies of death that gave Necromancy a bad name. The Guild tutors keep a close eye on students and what they are studying.

Prerequisite - Mind 3, Arcane Skill 3+ Background - Novice Bonus Skills - Crafting, Healing, Lore +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

Pyromancy

The Fire Mages are highly respected throughout the Pale as those that hold back the ice. Fire is a highly destructive force and has been the one element that has been consistently beneficial against the corruption and that which it spawns. But the life span of a mage is often short unless they use their powers with caution.

You aspire to be a Pyromancer and have studied the lesser rings of the art. The responsibility placed on these mages is high, and the Black Fort select very few Novices to take on the role.

Prerequisite - Mind 3, Arcane Skill 3+ Background - Novice Bonus Skills - Crafting, Lore, Ranged +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

Sorcery

Sorcery is the darkest art taught by the Black Fort and one that is frowned upon by many of the guilds and Lords of the cities both above and below. Sorcery is very much linked to the elves and their experiments. Though the art of Sorcery is older than the elves and was first used, and many believe created, by the giants, much of the study of the art comes from elven manuscripts and research. You aspire to be a sorcerer and have studied the first levels of the art. As a sorcerer you are feared, and are sometimes refused entry to cities and towns, due to prejudice against the elves more than an actual understanding of the sorcery

Prerequisite - Mind 3, Arcane Skill 3+ Background - Novice Bonus Skills - Crafting, Lore, Ranged +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

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Y

Shadow

ou act within the shadows or outside of the law, stealth, and misdirection, striking silently and the use of frowned upon techniques and items are your signatures. You learn what you know from hardship and need, stealing as an urchin in the slums, avoiding gangs and those that would take advantage of the weak in the refugee camps or navigating the dark warrens and pathways of the below has made you who you are today. With cunning, guile, and uncanny skills you are called upon to do the dark deeds, lead others through the dark places or hunt those that have committed dark deeds.

Thief

Very few thieves work outside the guilds, but some have no choice, guilds are only established in the larger camps or certain areas of cities and working outside the guild’s protection is often dangerous. You can work for or outside a guild this is a choice, you do not have to share what you steal with anyone. You could be a cut-purse, mingling with the crowds in the market squares cutting the purses from belts, or you could be a burglar breaking into the homes of the wealthy (though compared to you everyone outside the camps is wealthy), stealing whatever you can sell or trade. The work can be lucrative but carries a large price for those that are caught.

Prerequisite - Agility 3, Thievery Skill 3+ Background - Any Bonus Skills - Athletics, Perception, Stealth +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

Bounty Hunter

You are hired to hunt down criminals and bandits both inside and outside of the cities. Bounty hunters are given licenses to ply their trade allowing them to ignore certain rules, such as killing in public, damage to property laws etc. Outside of the city you track your prey across the pale, often facing dangers you have not been paid to kill, but often there is a nearby village or town that will show their appreciation known that the monster is dead.

Bounty Hunters have become more popular as the cities have become more overpopulated, both above and below the guilds have relied upon Bounty Hunters to deal with annoying criminal threats and ridding the city of undesirable problems.

Prerequisite - Instinct 3, Scout Skill 3+ Background - Any Bonus Skills - Ranged, Perception, Scout +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

Survivalist

You hunt to survive, wild animals that are not corrupted in some way are hard to find, but in order to feed yourself and provide food for others you must find and hunt them. Often when hunting is sparse you will guide travellers or be a scout for an adventuring party. You have trained on how best to survive out there in the cold and you are the best equipped to do so, travelling the Pale without you is a death sentence, but still many try it. Eventually you will find their corpses and sell what you can, it will keep hunger from the door for a while.

Prerequisite - Instinct 3, Survival Skill 3+ Background - Any Bonus Skills - Crafting, Perception, Scout, +1 Bonus Knacks - Any 2.

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Derived Stats

E

ach character has six stats derived from Influence their attributes. These will often only change Influence is a combination of personality and when the attribute they are derived from appearance, a high influence will offer bonuses changes when the group gains a new level. to barter and persuasion attempts whereas a low influence will stop you from entering towns, Below are instructions on how you can find the attract angry mobs and scare children. Influence total for each of the character’s derived stats. is affected by corruption and as the characters corruption increases their influence will start to decrease. Corruption Every character starts with 1 permanent corruption, this can never be decreased to 0 as Your starting corruption is a combination of Body the corruption already exists in everyone. If you and Mind with the result checked on the table chose to gain a corruption to increase attributes below. at the beginning of character creation, then your corruption will begin at 2 and can never be less Body+Mind Penalty/Bonus than 2. Check the corruption table on Pg. xxx for 2-3 -2 what benefits and penalties corruption gives. 4 -1 5 0 Corruption has 10 levels and each level will 6-7 +1 offer a number of benefits and drawbacks from 8-9 +2 becoming more corrupted, this will be explained in the corruption section on Pg. 144. 10 +3

Courage

Some threats you face in the Pale or deep underground can cause fear and this fear must be faced by courage or you will flee, have a breakdown, or even suffer from physical ailments. A character’s courage is derived from the Instinct and Mind attributes added together, the total will then be used to generate a 3d6 plus bonus amount that is rolled vs the threats fear rating.

Instinct+Mind 2-3 4-5 6-7 8-9 10

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Result 3d6+1 3d6+2 3d6+3 3d6+4 3d6+5

Initiative

Your Initiative will determine how quickly you react in combat situations. Your initiative is derived from the Agility and Instinct attributes added together with the total of the two giving you a bonus to the D6 roll made at the start of a combat situation. Other factors will also give you bonuses and penalties to Initiative and that will be gone into more detail in the Explore and Survive chapter.

Agility+Instinct Bonus 2-3 +1 4-5 +2 6-7 +3 8-9 +4 10 +5

Resistance

Your ability to fight off the affects of disease and poisons all come down to resistance. Every poison and disease has a potency, and you will need to equal or beat that potency in the same way that you equal or beat a difficulty number. Your character’s resistance is derived from the Body attribute, this is rolled in order to beat the potency of the poison and disease. Potencies can be reduced with healing herbs and antidotes. Resistance will be gone into more detail in the Explore and Survive Chapter.

Stamina

Is your endurance against the cold, starvation and dehydaration that you will face beyond the spires or deep below ground. Your character has Stamina equal to their Body attribute multiplied by 3. For more on Stamina see the Explore and Survive chapter.

Wounds

The characters wounds are Body x 5. The wounds are linked to the hit locations on the character sheet. When attacked 2d6 should be rolled to determine where the character was struck, if that location takes 5 or more wounds from a single hit (minus AV) then this can cause penalties to the characters actions. Each locations is linked to one of the characters attributes.

2d6 2-3 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11 12

Location Left Leg Right Leg Left Arm Body Right Arm Head

Attribute Agility Agility Agility Body Agility Mind

For every 5 points of damage (minus AV) inflicted on a location the linked attribute goes down by 1 until the wounds are healed.

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The Black Iron

Group Experience

T

he group experiences the world together as they travel the pale or the dark roads below. Together they will face horrors, discover secrets, find treasures, and fight battles. As they work together and complete adventures, they will receive experience which in turn will allow them to improve themselves. The GM can reward experience for a number of reasons, a few examples of which are listed below along with suggested experience amounts. • Completing a session 10 pts • Completing an Adventure successfully 20-50 pts • Overcoming a hard challenge together 10 -20 pts • Encountering a horror for the first time 10 pts • Learning Knowledge 15 pts • Working as a Team 20 pts On each character sheet there is a place to write the group’s current accumulated experience and what rank the group currently is. Once the group has enough points to move up to the next rank the experience is lost and starts once again at 0.

Individual Experience

Character’s within the group can also earn experience which goes towards the groups total, so a GM would reward an overall group experience at the end of a session and then individual experience to any character they feel deserved the recognition, reasons for handing out individual experience can be as follows. • • • • • • •

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A character performs a heroic action Self-Sacrifice to save another Solving a puzzle by themselves Roleplaying the character well Interesting and exciting ideas Killing the monster single handed Taking risks to benefit the group

As stated above whether the experience is earned by an individual or the group it all goes into the overall group experience pool.

Group Rank and Fame

As the group goes up in rank, they will earn fame and become sought after for adventures. At first the group will be unknown but as they travel the pale and discover new secrets and destroy those that threaten the land their endeavours will spread. An increase in rank will also increase the rewards offered for the groups help. Unfortunately with fame comes enemies and eventually those that you have wronged will come seeking revenge, assassins, hunters, and other corrupted followers of the Blood Lords will begin to see you as a threat and need to eradicate you, making it more dangerous to venture into the pale or the dark below. On the rank table opposite there is a column describing what each rank means to those outside the group and what you will expect as your fame grows.

Rank Table

The following Rank table will tell what experience is needed to reach each rank, how many advancement points that each character in the group receives plus other benefits. The group starts at Rank 1 immediately. The Advancement Table shows the cost of improving your character’s Attributes and Skills as well as the cost of buying new Knacks. Using the Advancement Table is described on Pg 93. Unspent Advancement Points will be kept and will add on to any new points received.

Rank Table Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6

Exp 0 100 250 400 600 900

7 8 9 10

1200 1500 1800 2500

Points/Benefits 75 points One free Knack +1 to Resistance and Initiative Rolls 75 points Character receives a second species trait of their choice +1 to Resistance and Initiative rolls 75 points Two free Knacks 75 points, +1 to Courage and Resistance rolls

Advancement Table Attribute Primary Secondary

1-2 10 20

2-3 15 30

3-4 25 50

Skills Cost 4-5 50 75

0-1 10

1-2 10 20

2-3 15 30

3-4 20 40

4-5 25 50

Derived Stats Wounds Stamina

+1 15 20

Knacks

25

+2 20 25

+3 25 30

+4 30 35

+5 50 50

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The Black Iron

Weapons, Armour & Gear A

fter the fall and the sun went out, not much was left. The cities lay either destroyed or under a sheet of ice and those that survived fled to the last city or to the below. As things slowly went back to normal the opportunity to rebuild arose, and it was soon discovered that many of the crafters that once built the tools and temples had perished. The cities of the Pale and the Below lack quality crafters, some did survive and are sought after, but along with the lack of armourers and weaponsmith, tailors and builders is the lack of materials to build what is needed. This lack of skill and material is reflected in the quality of items available to the characters, many characters start with either low or good quality items, but these definitions on quality is based upon what is available at the time.

Barter

Everything is bought through barter; this is done in two ways straight exchange or Chits.

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Straight Exchange – This involves bringing items to a trader and exchanging those items for different items that the trader has, this is often dependent on what is available and what is needed by either or both the trader and character. The value of an item will change from place to place and from time to time, so just because you got a good deal on some rabbit furs last week with a trader, does not mean that this week that trader would offer the same deal. Chits – Traders can give Chits for the value of items bought to them that cannot be exchanged due to lack of goods or lack of any thing that is needed by the character. These chits are either metal stamped coins, a sealed letter of value or sometimes engraved pottery or wood. All traders accept Chits in exchange for goods and services. Barter always indicates some form of deal being struck, and this is definitely the case, with characters attempting to get a better price. Barter is the obvious way to do this but Charm and Diplomacy could also work depending on what you are attempting to obtain and how you wish to obtain it.

Traders can be found both on the road and in villages, the Last City and the cities of the below, Traders on the road will often be reluctant to carry lots of trade goods unless they have a cart or mules, but often these traders will have more exotic items.

Item Quality Low-quality items are knocked together with low-quality materials by barely skilled crafters, so, for example, a low-quality sword would be a sharpened piece of Iron with some leather wrapped around an end section for a grip, a lowquality bow will be a flexible stick and some catgut. Good quality will indicate a bit more time spent and maybe better materials used. A sword will look more like a traditional sword with a discernible hilt and a cross-guard, whereas a bow will be more sturdy and may come as short or long. When you begin to get into High Quality the rules begin to change, many crafters cannot forge a high-quality sword but can repair one, so many of the high-quality items available are built from various items found and brought to the crafter. Finding a broken sword in the wastes should not be discarded, bringing that sword to a crafter will allow them to mount your current blade into the hilt, improving the weight or balance of the weapon. Master-work items are the rarest find of all and are often magical in some way, again most masterwork items are found in the wastes, stories of lost master-work items have spurred many an adventure-seeking these legendary swords or artefacts. Master crafters do exist but are very expensive or live out there amongst the ruins, fabled masters of the forge contemplating the grand design while sitting cross-legged on a mountain top is a romantic view that many crafters have of these mythical characters. Finding a master crafter will lead to the creation of truly wondrous objects if you can afford the price.

Crafting

Any character with a crafting skill can create a low-quality item or repair one as long as they have the materials to do so. The GM should set the difficulty based on what the character is trying to accomplish. Repairing armour or a weapon would involve finding a material that can be either sewn or welded on in the case or armour or welded or replaced with a weapon, often a repair could lead to an upgrade.

Upgrades

Upgrading a weapon or piece of armour can only be done by someone with the right Knack and access to a forge. To upgrade the character must first have the pieces they need to do the upgrade, so a worn chain mail shirt will allow the blacksmith to repair it to make it wearable, all parts of a sword will allow a blacksmith to rebuild the weapon. A low quality sword of iron will be heavy and do less damage, but replacing the blade with one of steel with make it lighter and sharper, or replacing the low grade hilt with one made of better materials will improve the handling. A character can start with a low quality weapon and rather than obtain a new sword just keep improving the one they have, meaning that they may only buy one weapon their whole life. Difficulty based on Quality Tools and Materials Available Bare minimum of both Bare minimum tools, plenty of materials. Plenty of tools, bare minimum materials Plenty of tools and materials

LQ

GQ

HQ

8

10

14

7

9

13

8

10

14

6

8

12

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The Black Iron Skill Characters with the Crafting skill can repair weapons and armour and sometimes based on the Level of success could turn a low-quality item into a common quality item as long as they have the materials. Characters that wish to forge or reforge new weapons and armour will need the appropiate Knack. The GM should decide the difficulty of what the character is attempting to do based on materials and tools at their disposable, the above table is a suggestion.

Wear and Tear

All low and good quality weapons will suffer from wear and tear, becoming blunt, falling apart or just plain breaking is always a risk. Rolling levels of Failure can indicate that the weapon or item has either broke or become less efficient in some way.

Crafting Weapons The crafting of weapons requires two things the materials and the skill, neither of which is easy to acquire.

Materials When we talk of materials we are not talking of Iron ore or Trees but more broken versions of what you would like to make, though the raw materials can be found it is much easier to use or repair what is already available like old armour and weapons found in ruins, taken from enemies or traded for from tribes and villages in the pale. Often one item can be used to repair another; two old steel swords could be melted down to reforge a new one, whereas scraps of chain mail could be linked together to form a shirt. The haft from an old iron axe could be used to hold a better quality steel or obsidian axe head and so forth.

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Current Material Improved by Iron blade Birch Wood Haft Leather Pine Wood Steel Obsidian

Steel Blade Hickory Wood Cured Leather Yew Wood Obsidian Black Iron

Black Iron The chunk of rock and Iron that was called down by the elves scattered as it hit the land causing pieces of it to be sent all across the pale, these pieces can be reforged and are highly sought after by master craftsman as the Iron is said to be unbreakable and magical in nature. Of course, others claim that the corruption seeped from the Black Iron and spread, causing the rise of the Blood Lords and the foul beasts that now prowl the ice. Finding chunks of this metal will allow you to forge new weapons and even armour, as long as you can find a smith capable. The rock is claimed by many to be a piece from the home of the Gods, that as the gods watched over and aided the humans in conquering the elves their home was torn assunder by magic and a piece fell to earth. Whether this is true or not is for you to decide but the rock did have strange powers. The shattered pieces spread far and wide, far beyond the Pale, what effect it had across the world is unknown, but pieces are somewhere in the forests, marshes and mountains of the land beyond the spires and in the now frozen sea of tears just waiting to be found.

Worn Gear Items

Cost*

Descriptions

Clothing 5/7/10 Standard Clothing Climbing Spikes 5 Attached to boots to aid climbing. Adds +1d to athletics rolls Packs 4 Adds 6 free slots Pouches 2 Adds 1 free slot and up to 5 can be worn Sack 1 Adds 3 free slots Ski’s 5 Used to move quickly, increases movement by 5 Snow Shoes 4 Cancels movement penalties for deep snow Snow Goggles 8 Used to avoid snow blindness Warm Clothing 8/10/12 Used to travel the Pale, furs, hoods, gloves *Cost separated by an / indicates poor/good/high quality

Encumbrance

Each character has several free slots equal to their Body x 3, for every slot used above this the characters movement is reduced by 1, for every 5 points the character loses 1 rank from movement based skills. Buying Backpacks, Pouches and Sacks will increase the number of available free slots.

Expendable Items

Some items are expendable such as candles, torches etc. Unlike other items like food and drink which the character can control, it is much harder to regulate how quickly a candles burns or lantern oil is used up, so when these items are used they last several hours, the GM regulates this and decides when the time has passed. Out in the Pale, some items can freeze up causing them to degrade faster, this is up to the GM, but items that are not wrapped in oil clothes can freeze or become wet and useless.

Cost

All costs are in Barter Chits. Costs can be adjusted to emphasis different locations if the GM wishes.

Rare

Some items are rare; this is mainly because they are no longer made or the means of creating them no longer exists. Rare items should not be

available everywhere and should turn up only occasionally. Characters cannot have rare items at creation.

Guild Costs

Most of the items, weapons and armour listed can be bought from Guild stores once the option becomes available. The Guild cost is 50% of normal trade cost. Guild stores cannot be bartered with.

Value

Items that are sold to traders are valued at half their sale cost rounded down, so if an item costs 5 Barter Chits to buy that same item is valued at 2 Barter Chits to sell back to a trader.

Gear Descriptions

Equipment comes in two kinds Worn (w) and Carried (c). Worn items do not take up slots whereas carried items do, and each carried item takes up a different number of slots Pouches, Packs and Sacks – These allow you to carry more gear without costing too much more encumbrance. Each will add several extra free slots. Up to five pouches can be worn. Lanterns, Torches and Candles – These are used to light the dark places, each one lights a different radius and lasts a different length of time to the others.

109

The Black Iron Carried Gear Items

110

Cost Expendable Slots

Description

Animal Traps Bedroll Candles (5) Chalk (3) Clay Bottle Compass Excavation Kit Firestone Flint & Steel Grapple Lantern Lantern Oil Leather Ties Lock Picks Oil Cloth

2 5 2 1 2 10 20 12 2 3 4 2 1 5 3

Lasts 3 hrs.. Holds 1 pint Lasts 2 hrs.. Has 3 uses -

4 3 1 1 1 1 7 1 1 2 2 1 1 1

Rations (5) Repair Kit

3 20

Has 5 uses -

2 3

Rock Salt Rope Scroll Case

2 2 3

1 3 2

Skinners Kit Spyglass Tent Tinderbox Torches (3) Trophy Hook Water-skin Writing Kit

6 20 5 3 1 3 2 9

Has 3 uses Holds 5 scrolls Lights 2 fires Lasts 1 hr. Holds 1 gallon -

Used to trap animals A padded blanket with a tarp. Candles will light a 5ft area Used for marking paths Can hold 1 pint of fluid Rare. adds +1 to navigation attempts Shovel, pick, bucket and trowel Small stone that when rubbed heats up Used for lighting fires Attached to ropes. Will add +1 to athletics A Lantern will light a 20 ft area Used in the lantern lasts 2 hrs.. Used for tying objects together securely Will add +1 to Picking Locks To wrap items to stop them freezing or getting wet 5 Days of food Everything needed to repair armour and weapons Used to preserve meat and grit ice 50’ of hemp or fibre rope Can hold up to 5 scrolls securely

3 1 5 3 3 2 2 3

Kit for the skinning of animals Rare. Allows user to see distant objects Will hold one person comfortably Used for the starting of fires A Torch will light a 10ft area Allows hunters to display their kills Holds 1 gallon of liquid Contains pens, paper and ink

Snow Gear – Used for travelling the Pale, will aid in survival Fire-Stones – Stones harvested from the below, expensive and rare these stones when rubbed heat up warming the user and warding off the cold. Tools and Kits – Used by those with the skills to understand their purpose, Low-Quality tools and kits will give a -1 penalty to the skill.

Transportation

Travelling across the pale can be dangerous not just because of the bandits and monsters but also the ice and cold. Animals like horses and dogs are also affected by the cold and also need to be kept warm and fed regularly, using the Scout skill or Animal Care Knack, the GM must be aware of whether the characters feed and take care of any animals when they camp. Vehicles like the Wagon and Carts come wheeled, but for an extra 20bc, they can be fitted with skis which will allow them to travel across dangerous areas of ice as well as frozen lakes and rivers easier

Use

There are two ways to use Potions, Poisons and Salves and these are shown under the Use column, the first way is Applied, this means that it needs to be either applied directly onto the wound in the case of healing items or applied to a weapon in the case of poisons. Ingested means exactly that the item must be eaten or drank to gain the effects.

Resistance

All poisons and diseases can be resisted by rolling higher than the potency with a Body Attribute Test with any Resistance modifier.

Armour and Shields Armour Points

Break

When the maximum is rolled on the damage dice, this will effect the armour’s integrity, and for each maximum rolled the armours break level is reduced by 1. Once the armours Break reaches 0, it no longer protects the wearer and must be either repaired or discarded.

Repairing Armour

For each break level that the armour has dropped to adds another -1 penalty to repair it, so if the armour has dropped five break levels the player would receive a -5 penalty to repair it. A character can opt to just ‘Patch’ up the armour which will only repair a certain number of break levels rather than all of them.

Shields

Shields are used to parry attacks, and with each successful parry they are used for the break level of the shield will drop by 1 point. It is much harder to repair a shield, and they must be repaired someone with the Armour Knack and a workshop, often with low or good quality shields, it is cheaper to buy a new one.

Modifiers

Some armours will effect stealth because of there bulk or materials, this effect is shown via a modifier which will give a penalty to the roll by the player from -1 to -3 depending on the armour type.

Rare

Some armours are rare; this means they are either hard to have made unless a qualified Blacksmith is found or they have to be discovered by the person wishing to wear them and often this will lead to them having to be repaired. To repair a rare item would be a difficulty of 12 at the minimum depending on available materials and tools.

Your armours AP reduces the damage caused by weapons by the amount of the AP, so wearing Chain armour will reduce any damage by 5 points.

111

The Black Iron Transportation and Lodging Type

Cost

Low quality Inn Average quality Inn Good quality Inn Cart Horse Sled Sled Dogs Wagon

Description

Lodgings 1bc per night Often found in villages 3bc per night Standard city Inn 6bc per night High end city Inn Transportation 30bc Open box on wheels pulled by a horse 70bc A good quality riding horse 40bc One or two person sled pulled by 6 dogs 15bc each A dog trained to pull a sled 85bc Closed box and insulated, pulled by a horse

Potions, Poisons and Salves Type

Cost

Use*

Frostbite Salve Healing Salve Healing Potion Purge Barrier Weed Yardin Root

18 20 35 50 100 150

Applied Applied Ingested Ingested Ingested Ingested

Marsh Leaf Fellon Root Wraith Sweat

45 60 30

Ingested Applied Applied

Potency Effect Potions and Salves Will heal the effects of Frostbite Will heal 1d6 Wounds Will heal 1d10 Wounds Will purge poisons and disease from system 10 Blocks magical ability in mages for d10 rnds Removes temporary corruption Poisons 9 Reduces Stamina by 1d6 per rnd 8 Causes paralyses for 1 day 7 Does 1d4 wound damage per rnd

Diseases Type Potency Marsh Shakes 3

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Gut Rot

3

Black Boils

4

Running Death Corpse Sweats

4

Red Fever

2

3

Cause Leeches or Ghoul bites Eating rotten or corrupted food Bite from Carrier either human or animal Tainted Water Undead or digesting corpses Animal bites

Effect Uncontrollable shakes with a -3 penalty and death within two days if untreated Vomiting and Diarrhoea. Victim is unable to act, will cause death if untreated Black Boils appear on the body, if not treated victim will day within a week. Victims inside turn to water and run from their orifices, Victim will die in two days. Victims starts to sweat and eventually collapses. Left untreated death will come within a week Victim becomes feverish and begins to hallucinate and become aggressive

Armour and Shields Type

Cost AP Break Low Quality Armour & Shields Hide 15 2 4 Layered Hide 20 3 5 Plated Hide 35 4 6 Bone Plate 25 4 4 Wooden Shield 30 10 Good Quality Armour & Shields Reinforced Leather 35 4 5 Plated Leather 75 5 7 Chain 150 5 9 Reinforced Shield 75 15 High Quality Armour & Shields Reinforced Chain 225 6 12 Scale 300 7 15 Half Plate 200 7 20 Full Plate 500 8 25 Relic Knight 10 30 Corrupted Plate 10 30 Metal Shield

100

-

25

Relic Knight Armour

Modifiers -1 Stealth -1 Stealth +1 Parry

Availability

Worn by Fanatics

-1 Stealth -2 Stealth +2 Parry -1 Stealth -1 Stealth -2 Stealth -3 Stealth -3 Stealth -3 Stealth

Rare

Rare Rare Very Rare Worn by Corrupted Chiefs

+2 Parry

When the armour was crafted for the knights many were built using the same design as old plate armour. The elves never used heavy armours and so the art of making the chain and plate armours had almost been forgotten by human blacksmiths. This lack of knowledge means that Relic armour is much more sought after as only the best smiths worked on it.

D6

Effect

1 2

It is rumoured that some suits of armour had been crafted with magical elements, or in this case antimagical runes etched into it, along with other effects, making the armour much more valuable and desirable by those seeking it.

6

Nothing +1 Body when wearing the armour +2 Magical Resistance Light - Stealth modifier removed Healing - Heals d6 wounds once per day Strong +2 AP and Break

When a suit of relic armour is found the player must roll on the following table to discover if any magical effects had been etched into the metal.

3 4 5

Magical Resistance is described in more detail in the Arcane Chapter.

Corrupted Armour

The Blood Lords are known to reward their more savage and cunning fanatics with corrupted armour and this is seen as a blasphemous take on the Relic Knight Armour so highly prized by those

113

The Black Iron that live in the cities beyond the spires. This corrupted armour is plate formed from iron and infused with the blood of mages and priests, etched with runes to give it power. Those found wearing it are the knights of the Blood Lords.

High Quality Weapons – made with durable and lighter materials like steel, and fired wood, these weapons are the top end for most people in the pale. High-quality weapons are not easy to come by, and a skilled armourer is needed to repair or build them.

Like Relic Knight Armour the Corrupted Plate of the fanatics is magical and when facing one of Master-work Weapons – Extremely rare and these fearsome enemies a roll must be made on sought after weapons made with a variety of materials from ancient steel, obsidian and Black the table below. Iron, these weapons are rarely made and are almost always magical in nature. These weapons D6 Effect must be found with the prices on the table just 1 The runes on the armour causes being a presumed cost. dizziness to anyone seeing it, making them -1 in all skills Melee Weapon Damage 2 +1 Body when wearing the If the attack with a Melee weapon is rolled with armour certain number of Levels of Success they may do 3 +2 Magical Resistance extra damage, this can be linked to the damage 4 The armour absorbs the blood letter seen next to the damage on the table. Melee of the victims and heals the weapons use the Body Attribute for damage. wearer an equal amount (damage inflicted heals the wearer) Stabbing/Slashing (s) – Weapon either stabs 5 The armour tightens around the or slashes or even both, this can cause bleeding wearer causing pain and causing damage. the wearer to go berserk, wearer ignores stuns and has +2 magical Bludgeon (b) – Weapon causes Bludgeoning resistance damage, which can stun a target. 6 Strong +2 AP and Break Piercing (p) – The weapon pierces the target which can also cause bleeding damage.

Weapon Descriptions

Modifiers

Low Quality Weapons – Made from low-grade The weapon modifiers represent the weight and materials like stone, bone and untempered irons, quality of the weapon and how those factors will these weapons are often heavier and harder to use affect the use of the weapon. due to their rough design. Leather is sometimes wrapped around the lower part of a weapon to Break serve as a grip. Weapons like armour will break or become unusable over time; this is shown in-game with Good Quality Weapons – Made using better the break number. Each time the character rolls a materials but often still heavy and difficult to 1 for damage with the weapon, the break number wield for long periods. They will be built with good is reduced by one. Higher quality items take quality materials and often come with grips and a longer to break. Like armour, weapons can be hilt with cross guards etc. Good quality weapons repaired as long as the correct skill and repair kit look like the weapons most people expect to see. is available to do so. Otherwise, the character can take the weapon to a smith and pay for the repair to be made.

114

Melee and Thrown Weapons Type Axe. Hand Bone Axe Chain Whip Claw Club Dagger Hammer Spear Staff Sword Axe, Hand Axe, Battle Club, Iron Club, Spiked Dagger Hammer, Hand Hammer, War Spear Sword, Broad Sword, Great Sword, Short

Damage Modifiers Throw (ft) 4s 4s 3s 3s 4b 3s 4s 3p 3b 4s 5s 6s 6b 5b/p 4s 5b 7b 4p 5s 7s 4s

Low Quality -2 to hit x2 Body -2 to hit -2 to hit 6ft range -2 to hit -2 to hit -2 to hit x3 Body -2 to hit x2 Body -2 to hit x5 Body -2 to hit 3ft range -2 to hit Good Quality -1 to hit x3 Body -1 to hit -1 to hit -1 to hit -1 to hit x4 Body -1 to hit x3 Body -1 to hit -1 to hit x7 Body -1 to hit -1 to hit -1 to hit

Hand

Break

Slots

Cost

1h 1h 1h 1h 2h 1h 1/2h 2h 2h 1h

10 8 7 6 8 5 8 6 6 8

3 3 2 1 3 1 2 4 4 4

5bc 4bc 3bc 3bc 2bc 2bc 3bc 2bc 2bc 4bc

1h 2h 2h 1/2h 1h 1h 2h 2h 1h 2h 1h

15 18 15 12 10 15 28 10 15 18 13

2 4 4 3 1 2 4 4 4 5 3

7bc 12bc 8bc 7bc 5bc 7bc 14bc 5bc 8bc 20bc 7bc

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The Black Iron Melee and Thrown Weapons Continued Type Axe. Hand Axe, Battle Dagger Halberd Hammer, Hand Hammer, War Mace Morningstar Rapier Spear Staff Sword, Broad Sword Great Sword, Short Axe, Hand Axe, Battle Dagger Hammer, Hand Hammer, War Mace Spear Sword, Broad Sword, Great Sword, Short

Damage Modifiers Throw (ft) 6s 8s 5s 8s 6b 9b 7b/p 7b/p 7p 6p 5b 7s 10s

-

6s

-

10s 14s 7s 8b 12b 8b/p 8p 10s 16s 8s

High Quality x3 Body x5 Body 5ft range x3 Body

4ft range x10 Body 3ft range

Masterwork +1 to hit x4 Body +1 to hit +1 to hit x6 Body +1 to hit x4 Body +1 to hit +1 to hit +1 to hit x12 Body +1 to hit +1 to hit +1 to hit

Hand

Break

Slots

Cost

1h 2h 1h 2h 1/2h 2h 1h 1h 1h 2h 2h 1h 2h

20 30 10 18 20 30 15 15 17 8 10 15 25

3 4 1 5 2 4 3 3 3 4 4 3 4

9bc 17bc 8bc 20bc 10bc 20bc 18bc 22bc 14bc 9bc 9bc 15bc 25bc

1h

18

2

13bc

1h 2h 1h 1h 2h 1h 2h 1h 2h 1h

22 35 12 20 32 20 10 20 23 20

2 4 1 2 4 3 4 3 4 2

80bc 100bc 35bc 85bc 125bc 75bc 70bc 95bc 200bc 85bc

When acquiring a masterwork weapon roll on the table below to discover any magical effects it may carry. These effects only exist when the weapon is being wielded.

2d6

Effect

2d6

Effect

2-3 4 5 6

Flame on command +5 damage Double damage against magic users Nothing +3 damage, +1 to hit

8 9 10 11

Black Iron, ignores armour

12

Any damage dealt heals wielder Nothing +5 Movement, +1 Agility, +1 Body Chain effect, all enemies within 10ft of target take half damage, when target struck Weapon weighs nothing, +3 to hit, +3 damage

7

116

Unarmed and Natural Weapons Type Bash Bite Claw Head-Butt Kick Punch Leaded Glove Iron Gauntlet Spiked Glove Released Gas Pustile Burst Spitting Spines

Damage

Break Slots Cost

3b 3s/p 3s/p 2b 3b 2b 4b 15 4b 17 3b/s 14 Natural Ranged Corpse Sweats Black Boils Disease d4 x 3s -

1 1 1

6bc 7bc 4bc

-

-

Preparing to Attack

Ammunition A Bow can be nocked as a free action but a Bows and Crossbows can be used with different crossbow will take 1 round to load, meaning that ammunition but often these more unique and when using a crossbow you get to attack every dangerous ammunition types can be rare and expensive. other round.

Cost

The cost represents the average cost in barter chits; this may change to reflect the location that the weapon is bought. Master-work weapons cost varies depending on what and where, the prices listed are an average. It is much easier to find these weapons out in the Pale then with a trader.

Natural Ranged Weapons

Some threats will have natural ranged weapons like spines that can be launched, infected spit or even boils that burst releasing or spraying infected pus. Most natural ranged attacks will be diseases rather than actual damage and the character may not even know until the symptoms start to show.

When combat begins the GM should be aware of what monsters have these natural ranged attacks Both thrown and ranged weapons have a range. and what can trigger them, that solid hit with a For thrown weapons, the range is in feet and is warhammer may have stunned the monster but related to your Body. For ranged weapons, the did it also burst a bunch of fetid boils? distance is in yards. The range given is the furthest range possible, and GMs can offer modifiers to characters who attempt to hit such extreme ranges.

Range

Ranged Weapon Damage

Damage from ranged weapons can be increased by extra levels of success being rolled by the player.

117

The Black Iron Ranged Weapons Type

Bow Sling

6p 3b

Bow, Long Bow, Short Crossbow Sling

10p 8p 10p 4b

Bow, Hunting Bow, Long Bow, Short Crossbow, Hand Crossbow, Light Crossbow, Heavy Sling

12p 16p 10p 8p 12p 15p 6b

Bow, Hunting Bow, Long Bow, Short Crossbow, Dwarven Sling

18p 20p 12p 24p 8b

Arrows Standard Armour Piercing Broad-head Bolts Standard Armour Piercing Broad-head Stones Standard Sharpened

118

Damage

Modifiers Low Quality -2 to hit -2 to hit Good Quality -1 to hit -1 to hit -1 to hit -1 to hit High Quality Master-work +1 to hit +1 to hit +1 to hit +1 to hit +1 to hit Ammunition

Range (yds)

Break Slots

Cost

50 25

6 5

4 1

8bc 2bc

200 80 150 50

10 12 15 20

4 3 5 1

12bc 10bc 15bc 4bc

200 300 100 100 150 300 60

20 20 25 15 15 25 30

3 4 3 2 3 5 1

20bc 25bc 20bc 45bc 60bc 75bc

300 500 150 500 75

-

3 4 3 5 1

400bc 600bc 400bc 1000bc 200bc

0 -2 Ignores Armour +2 Causes Bleeding

Cost 10bc for 20 20bc for 10 15bc for 20

0 -2 ignores Armour +2 Causes Bleeding

12bc for 20 30bc for 10 25bc for 20

0 +1

0 10bc for 50

Guild Weapons and Items Weapon

Damage

Palm Dagger Rangers Blade Twin Blades of the Malice

6s 6s 8s

Ashen Wood Control Dead Wood Flames Heart Tree Master

8b 8b 8b 8b 8b 10b

Type Globe of Eternal Flame Guisers Kit Pendant of Protection Alchemy Kit Rangers Band Ring of Purity Ring of Warning Surgery Tools

Slots 2 4 1 4 4

Giant Bone Dagger Grip of Faith Rune Blade Elven Blade

8s 4 8s 10s

Scar of Faith Mask of the Remnant

1

Spinal Graft Dust of memories

1

Slots Guild Daggers 1 1 1 each Guild Staffs 4 4 4 4 4 4 Guild Gear

Special Concealed None +4 damage vs Corrupted

+1 Ranged Casting +2 to Controlling Undead +1 to Ranged Casting +1 to Magic Fire Attacks +1 to Arcane +2 to Arcane

Effect Everlasting Lantern Needed to use the Disguise Knack +1 Defence against Magical Attacks Needed to use the Alchemy Knack Ranger leaves no Tracks +1 Resistance Grows warm when corruption is within 50ft Needed to use the Surgery Knack Cult Weapons 1 Made from the calcified bone of a giant 1 Glove that stuns the target for d4 rnds 1 Dwarven blade double damage to corrupted 1 Elven made blade causes paralyzes for d6 rnds Cult Gear Carved into the skin gives +2 protection against magic When worn able to communicate with Revenant, also Revenant can see through your eyes Offers +1 to Athletics, and Elven Balance Talent Blown into the face causes targets to lose all short term memories

Guild and Cult Weapons and Items are only available via the Guildor Cult and cannot be bought from a normal trader, though they could be taken from a dead or alive guild or Cult member.

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Guilds and Cults S

ince the fall there has been a rise in Guild and cult activity both in the Last City and the cities below, and many have joined one or the other for the benefits they bring, especially those wishing to expand their roles and influence in the world. Characters can join either a Guild or Cult suited to their role as shown in the Recruitment section of the guild or cult, once joined they must follow the organisation’s rules for membership.

Recruitment

Each Guild and Cult will only accept those they feel best suit their purpose and agenda. These requirements are listed within the Guild and Cult and can be as simple as only accepting those that play a particular role or more detailed such as Skill levels and attributes.

Membership Ranks

Each of the Cults and Guilds have five ranks of membership, each rank will offer certain benefits, but often in order to gain a rank that will mean doing something for the guild or cult, sometimes this may be counter to what you want or the rest of the party.

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Benefits

Benefits to joining can be access to better gear, contacts, information, specialisations, more respect, and access to areas that would be considered out of bounds to many.

Roles that must Join a Guild

There are certain roles that have to join a guild the most obvious of these is the Mage. The Mage begins at Rank 1 of the Mages Guild which is based in the Black Fort. Thieves are also encouraged to join the Guild of Silence as operating within cities as a thief without the protection of the guild will lead to an untimely death, of course if you feel you are good enough without the guilds protection than that is your choice.

Choosing a Guild

Guilds are very obviously linked to certain roles and they will accept characters that have adopted that role as long as they fit the criteria of recruitment. A character does not have to join the guild (except for Mages) and consider the benefits of not joining such as not having to do the guilds bidding, keeping all your findings, and so forth.

Choosing a Cult

Cults are different than guilds as they are often based upon faith or a belief rather than laws and profits. Any Role can join a Cult but there are not as many to choose from as Guilds, (we will be creating more in future Black Iron source books). Some Cults tend to look for specific requirements in recruitment, even though every role is accepted that doesn’t mean that every species or gender is also allowed, and the few cults listed here will show that they only accept certain people.

Joining Both

A character can in theory join both a guild and a cult, there is no rule against it, though they may find themselves in situations when what you have been asked to do may conflict with each other at which point a choice must be made which may end up with your dismissal from one or both. GM Notes A guild or cult may ask the character to perform certain tasks and often these tasks may be connected to an adventure the character is involved in or about to become part of, these tasks can often go against the adventures original purpose and may jeopardise the adventure. The character can choose to ignore the guild or cults wishes and this will obviously delay any rise in rank they would otherwise receive. This choice should be down to the player and they can choose to inform the other players or not.

Also, sometimes a number of players may have opposed tasks, again the characters can share their instructions if they wish but this could make for some interesting role-play and possible conflict which should bring up questions of loyalty etc.

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The Black Fort

he Mages Guild can be found both in the Last City and the cities below, with much more sway in the Last City. They accept anyone that claims to have some form of magical ability as Novices and also those that have experience in research and ancient languages as scribes. The guilds houses are often unassuming buildings in the city, it is claimed they send out a magical marker which only those with some ability will be able to recognise. Otherwise the administrative centres of the cities will have a representative that will test scribe and recruit academics they feel would benefit the guild. The Black Fort is responsible for the sun spires that hold the ice and corruption at bay and this has allowed the guild to dictate and hold power over the Last City and the down below, as both would be overrun without the spires. In the past the guild has threatened to cease maintaining the spires because of some law that was passed that the guild did not agree with, laws that have been quickly changed due mostly to the guild’s threats. Being part of the guild comes with a certain amount of power and the further up the ranks you move the more power you receive, and this is legal power rather than magical. Mages cannot be arrested by the militia of cities they must be handed over to the nearest guild house and the mage will be dealt with by the guild once it is determined if any crime is committed. It is safe to assume that as a mage this will often mean at the worst demotion to a lower rank and at best a stern word not to do whatever was again, at least in sight of the militia or witnesses.

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Due to restrictions to the Black Fort non-guild members many believe that much more goes on within its walls, and this is true. Laws that restrict the study of elven texts or the practice of elven magic and research do not apply to the Mages Guild, meaning they can, and have dabbled in dangerous and some would consider evil practices.

Recruitment

The guild recruits only those they feel are worthy and gifted. Those that have chosen the Mage Role will be at Novice Rank within the guild immediately. The guild has been known to accept membership from Explorers who aid them in discovering and retrieving lost relics and knowledge.

Gaining Ranks

To move up ranks you will be asked to accomplish tasks, retrieve items, show aptitude in your abilities and to obtain information. Once you have achieved what was asked you will them be assessed and your new rank approved, with this will come the benefits of that rank. The following page goes into detail regarding the ranks of the guild, what is needed to obtain each rank, and what benefits you will receive by doing so. All Mages no matter the path receives the Alchemy Knack for the Arcane Skill.

Alchemy Knack (Arcane) The knack increases the potency and healing properties of potions brewed by the Mage by +1, it can also increase the amount of healing a potion Guilds Purpose offers by +2 and gives a +1 to Survival for finding The guilds purpose is the study of magic and the specialist herbs and plants etc. corruption, this is the most basic explanation, but the guild does more than this. The Black Fort which Surgery Knack (Healing) is only accessible by guild members is home to a The knack adds +2 to healing when performing small hospitable, various research areas, a large surgery or autopsies. library, a number of dungeons, large herb garden and many other safe areas for the study of ancient magic.

Rank 1 - Novice Prerequisite: Mage Role, Arcane 3+, Mind 2+ Mage must be learning the first circle of their chosen school. The mage receives access to the Black Fort and its numerous Guild Houses found in various cities, for the purpose of rest and healing. Benefit: You receive your Grimoire and scroll case.

Rank 2 - Adept Prerequisite: Arcane 3+, Mind 3+, One mission completed for the Guild. Benefit: You receive the ashen wood staff. Mage receives access to the Black Forts secret library and scrolls for study.

Rank 3 - Acolyte Prerequisite: Arcane 4+, Mind 3+, Two missions for the guild completed. Mage must have completed the second circle of their school. Benefit: Mage receives access to the Black Fort stores and can by herbs and items at half listed price.

Rank 4 - High Mage Prerequisite: Arcane 4+, Mind 4+, Three Missions for the guild completed. Benefits: Ashen wood staff upgraded. For Sorceror upgraded to give +1 to Arcane For Necromancers upgraded with dead wood adding a +2 to control undead. For Pyromancers upgraded to offer +1 to fire based ranged spell casting.

Rank 5 - Archmage Prerequisite: Arcane 5, Mind 5. Five Missions for the guild completed. The mage must have completed the third circle of their school. Benefits: Mage can open their own guild house and take in novices. The mage speaks for the guild and is protected by guild laws. Necromancers receive the Surgery Knack. Sorcerors recieve the Ring of Warning Pyromancers receive immunity to burning

Grandmaster Alto Felper Alto became Grandmaster after the death of the previous and first Grandmaster of the Black Fort died, almost 20 yrs ago. Under Alto’s leadership the Black Fort has become much more interested in research of artifacts and discovering the truth behind certain realities, this has made a few suspicious of the Mages, and concerned that they may discover something that will affect everyone. Alto is a strict master and is unflinching in his research. His need to know and discover has placed him in conflict with not only the city administrators but also the Remnant who have insisted that Alto’s research is dangerous, a claim that has made Alto believe that the Remnant has something to hide.

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A

The Guild of Explorers

s the dust settled and the world began to freeze it was quickly decided to discover a way to reverse what had happened as many feared that the ice would eventually claim the land making it uninhabitable. These early explorers were the brave men and women willing to risk death to find anything that may save what was left of the people, towns, towers, temples, and cities were explored with a great many books and objects found, but alas none were of any help and with the coming of the Blood Lords and their fanatics the exploration quickly stopped.

and important part of understanding the past and hopefully saving the future.

Recruitment

Anyone can join the guild there are no restrictions and many explorers are also members of other guilds without any issues with conflict of interests.

Gaining Ranks

Many explorers never go beyond first rank, and this is due to the fact that it is much easier to receive jobs as a member than it is for someone that is not a member. For those that do then gaining ranks is about receiving the option to receive jobs with better rewards the higher the rank you are, access to the guild stores and even links to the Black Fort and the Remnant.

Many years went by and with it the fear that many had held, as the land froze it did not encompass every part of the land, thanks to the mages and those Pyromancers that gave their lives and hearts to fuel the spires. A new fear permeated in the souls of the survivors, that of corruption and foul Appraise Knack (Social) magics, and with this new explorations began. Using Social the Explorer can judge the value of The Black Fort was the driving force behind the an item and who would be most interested in explorer’s guild, pushing those willing to seek out acquiring it. magical knowledge and artifacts left by the elves and eventually even the dwarves. This exploration Sense Magic Knack (Perception) was funded by the mages until explorers started The explorer can sense nearby magic and whether finding items of value and even knowledge an item is magical in nature. They can with a high unwanted by the mages but of interest to both success even determine the scholl of magic the the grand library and by association the strange item belongs to. Remnant that resides upon the libraries ceiling. After a couple of decades the explorer’s guild is now an independent (mostly) institution promoting the searching of ruins and dark tunnels for the betterment of all, whether that be knowledge or wealth.

Guild Purpose

Jobs

Many jobs that appear on the guild notice board will specify a rank, this is the minimum rank expected to apply for the job. This is done by many wishing to acquire the aid of the guild to guarantee trust and even secrecy by the explorer they hire.

The guild may even recommend a trusted explorer The main purpose of the guild is often considered for a job, an explorer they feel will be more invested to be wealth, and this is true for many explorers, to the guilds needs than the employers, this may but it is also the need to know and discover. Many seem underhand and it is. explorers are curious by nature and believe that many secrets lie hidden whether that is in the elven ruins on the surface or the dwarven ruins deep below. Much of what is known is because an explorer discovered it, so they have become

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Rank 1 Prerequisite: None Member will gain access to the guild notice board and guild meeting rooms.

Rank 2 Prerequisite: Two missions completed for the guild. Benefit: The explorer is trained in the Appraise Knack. Rank 2 Jobs available.

Rank 3 Prerequisite: Three missions completed for the guild, 10% of profit handed to the guild per year. Benefit: Access to the guild stores. Rank 3 jobs available.

Rank 4 Prerequisite: Five missions completed for the guild, 10% of profts handed over. Benefits: Sense Magic Knack learnt, Access to the Black Fort for information and certain items. Rank jobs available.

Rank 5 Prerequisite: Seven missions completed for the guild. 10% of profits handed over. Benefits: Globe of Eternal Flame, Access to guild library, guild protection. Rank 5 jobs available.

Marcus Barot Current Grandmaster of the guild and fervent explorer Marcus was one of the first to join the guild and is the last surviving member of that first batch of recruits. Marcus is still active as an explorer and spends very little time at the guilds house leaving most of the day to day running (paperwork) to scribes ‘and those that enjoy that sort of thing’. Little is known of Marcus except that he is a good explorer, treats all ranks as equals and is often never around when you need him. Though rumour has it that he is also a member of the Guild of Silence but this has never been proven.

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B

The Guild of Silence

efore the fall there were a number of small thief gangs that controlled particular areas of a city, this was a risky business as the elves would often send patrols to find and hang the thieves publicly, dismantling the gangs and any that supported them. When the humans fought back against the elven oppressors many of the thieves showed their support to the uprising by using their skills to gather information and even to assassinate those that could be troublesome to the rebels. Once the cities started to fall to the human liberators and the thieves were hailed as heroes, but like all things it did not last. As the sea’s began to freeze many pirates fled landward and continued their piracy amongst the chaos of the fall, profiting from the refugees that fled to the Last City and stealing from those that fled the city for the below. As the months passed the thieves became more organised and took on a Pirate democracy, creating a council of thieves and mimicking the guilds by having ranks, laws, and a hierarchy. With bribes and threats the guild gathered allies from the other guilds both above and below, and with this came influence and power. The Silent Guild got its name because it never talks, it does not sit on city councils it does not make public speeches, but it does have a say, either by speaking through the other guilds, or via threats and assassination. Many laws have been passed that have benefited the Silent Guild, many deals made funded by thieves’ gold. They may not speak but their voice is heard. The guild is made up of a number of houses each has their speciality, House of Blades, House of Beggars and the House of the Cat, all have masters that sit upon the council of the Guild, each house abides by the laws and each donate a percentage of their profits to the guild master which in turn allows the guild to invest in legitimate businesses and pay bribes.

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Guild Purpose

The guilds purpose is not as clear cut as you may think, yes it is a guild of thieves but rarely do these thieves steal from any that cannot afford it, the assassins tend only to kill those that threaten everyone with their beliefs or actions, and the spies often spy for the other guilds and even the nobility. The guild does not harbour corrupted or cults that worship either the Blood Lords or the elves and they have been known to actively seek out cults or corrupted from their districts. Thieves from other cities must make themselves known before acting within that city otherwise they will be punished, and any thief known to have killed a child will be publicly killed themselves. Many thieves are recruited or join explorations as their unique skill set can be an advantage, and having someone well versed in the ways of stealth and silent murder comes in handy when facing bandits or cultists (the guild does not recognise those bandits or criminals that operate within the Pale, often seeing them as corrupted or depraved).

Guild Recruitment

Recruitment is done differently in the guild with possible candidates being approached by a member who sees the value in that person to the guild. This has led to many non-criminals being recruited and occasionally a Sister of Stone being approached with unfortunate results.

Guild Ranks

Members do not have to climb the ranks, and many are happy to be taught what they need and never climb any higher. In order to become a house boss, the member does need to understand and study every aspect of what the guild does, and this is reflected in the ranks.

Disguise Knack (Stealth) Character can disguise themselves as another adding a +2 to stealth when used to fool others into believing you are that person.

Rank 1 - Beggar Prerequisite: Thievery 2+, 50% of all earnings handed over to the guild. Benefit: Member is taught Thieves Cant and the meaning of the guilds symbols.

Rank 2 - Cut Purse Prerequisite: Agility 3+, two jobs for the guild, 40% of all earnings handed over to the guild. Benefits: Access to a Fence to sell goods and to the guild stores.

Rank 3 - Blagger Prerequisite: Thievery 3+, Perception 3+, 30% of all earnings handed over to the guild. Take on four jobs for the guild. Benefits: Thief learns the Disguise Knack and receives the Guisers kit.

Rank 4 - Burglar Prerequisite: Thievery 4+, Stealth 3+, 20% of all earnings. Take on six jobs for the guild. Benefits: The guild will protect and shelter you from the law or others. Gain 2 important contacts.

Rank 5 - Capo Prerequisite: Thievery 5, 10% of all earnings handed over to the guild. Benefit: Access to the guild secrets and the ability to start your own guild

‘Blue Eyes’ The current grand capo of the Guild of Silence is unknown accept the fact that they are female and have piercing blue eyes, and that description is just a rumour. Nothing happens in any of the cities without the knowledge of the thieves guild and it is believed that the guilds networks and members, informants and loyal followers range from the lowest of beggars to the seats of the city councils. ‘Blue Eyes’ has a few loyal capo’s that she trusts and they speak for her in all matters, some believe that these capo’s are the grand capo, a thieves council and that Blue Eyes is just a lie they started to draw suspicion away. but who knows.

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M

The Fighter’s Guild

any believe that the Fighter’s guild began after the fall as a way for sell swords and fighters to find work, but that is not quite correct. The truth is much more interesting in that it was a secret guild of fighters that started the uprising, they protected the blacksmiths as they forged the weapons and armour and they trained those that wished to fight, all in secret and under threat of discovery by elven militia.

Purpose of the Guild

The guild was formed in the capital, now called the Last City and it was the first city they captured, cutting off all communications of the elves so that the next two cities fell without warning. Because the guild was already established, the city fell quickly as those taking it were already inside the walls with key members in positions of trust or with help from the thieves’ guild.

Anyone is welcome into the guild, but they do ask for an annual payment of metals and ores in order for them to forge and repair new weapons and armour.

The strongest of the guild were the knights that rode at the vanguard of the ever-expanding human forces, moving across the Pale collecting volunteers from farms, towns and villages as the elven forces were pushed back or eradicated on the spot. It was the greatest moment in the guild’s history and one that assured that the guild, once re-established after the fall, would receive a place at the table. The guild is now the largest one next to the merchant’s guild and the guilds master is currently head of the city council. Below there is a fighter’s guild in each of the cities and they command the militias and guards that patrol the roads and walls. The guild has a lot of influence and members are seen as heroes by some and protectors by many. Unfortunately, there is a large section of people that blame the guild for the fall, claiming that life may have been hard under the elves but at least there was food and less dangers from disease and monsters.

The guilds overall purpose is to train those wishing to learn in the martial arts, this ranges from pit fighting to archery, fencing to pole arms. It also acts as a place where warriors can be hired for guard work, fighting bouts, tourneys, and exploration

Recruitment

Gaining Ranks

Members gain ranks by providing valuable ores and metals when they can, being honourable and purging corruption when found. The guild is very wrapped up with the Relic Knights and the highest rank is geared towards bringing up the myth of the knights as a weapon against the corruption.

Knights Armour

To become a Relic Knight you must find and return a set of knights armour, these are only found on the battlefields from the last war. To retrieve the armour you must scour the battlefield defending yourself against ghuls and other threats that can be found picking at the dead or stealing what valuables can be found there. This should not be an easy task and can if not careful cut short the guild career of even the best fighters.

Shield Bash Knack (Melee) Fighter can bash target with shield as a free action causing target to be pushed back d4 feet.

Arrow Stab Knack (Ranged) Archers stabs with arrow causing Body + 2 damage to target, this is done as a free action.

Hilt Smash Knack (Melee) Fighter smashes their two handed weapon hilt at the target as a free action causing Body + 3 damage

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Rank 1 Prerequisite: Melee or Ranged 2+ Benefit: Access to training areas and guild craftsman.

Rank 2 Prerequisite: Ten barter chits of ore or metal donated, two jobs taken on behalf of guild. Melee or Ranged 3+ Benefit: Access to Guild stores

Rank 3 Prerequisite: Ten barter chits of ore or metal donated, three jobs taken on behalf of guild. Fight at 3+ Body 3+ Benefit: Fighter trained in new Knack Choose one Shield Bash Knack Arrow Stab Knack Hilt Smash Knack

Rank 4 Prerequisite: Ten barter chits of ore or metal donated, five jobs taken on behalf of guild. melee at 4+ or Ranged 4+, Agility 4+ Benefit: One High Quality weapon of choice, one High Quality armour type of your choice.

Rank 5 Prerequisite: Ten barter chits of ore or metal donated, seven jobs taken on behalf of guild. melee at 5 or Ranged 5, Body 5 or Agility 5. Benefit: Master of Arms can start own guild house, and can apply to seek Relic Knight Armour.

Relic Knight Prerequisite: Master of Arms, access to the guild crafters. Benefit: Full set of Relic Knight Armour.

Gregor Tourass The Marshal of the guild is a huge bear of a man, said to be just under 7ft tall and as wide as a barn, though this may be overexaggerated Gregor is big. Gregor is the son of a Blacksmith, one of the smith’s that armed the army that faced the elves and he is proud of this fact. His father died in the war but Gregor vowed to never allow one person to ever control another and dedicated his life to the fighting arts. Gregor is known for his hammer, a huge lump of iron forged and wielded by his father against the elves, it is said Gregor searched the battlegrounds for his father’s corpse for days, fighting off Ghuls and other horrors, until he found it. Gregor sits on the city council as the war chief, he is an outspoken opponent to Alto and the Black Forts research believing that sorcery will be the downfall of those people that remain and will destroy the city, something he has vowed to never let happen, whatever the cost.

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I

Sisters of Stone Cult

t is said that the founder of this holy order was a pirate that fled the frozen seas, that this pirate was so overcome by the beauty of the temples in the City of Dresen that she fell to her knees and wept vowing to no longer pillage and steal but to devote herself to the stone gods. The story tells of the pirate using her wealth to establish the holy order called the Sisters of Stone, and this is partly true. The founder was indeed a pirate by the name of Dera Val Gayet, and she had fled with her ships to the pale as the seas froze. Dera had been invited to help build the thieves guild in the Last City which many of her pirate comrades felt was ripe for the picking, but instead, with no intention of sharing her ill-gotten gains with a bunch of drunken sailors, she went below to see what that had to offer. Dera found herself one of the first to enter the city of Dresen and was indeed overwhelmed by the statues and temples of the dwarves, this had a profound effect on her and with this a plan was hatched. Dera decided to create her own thief’s guild posing as a holy order. At first it was easy to establish herself as a priestess amongst the chaos and she had enough money to bribe the family members who questioned her venture.

girls in the arts that many families valued, such as sewing, cooking, herbalism, and other wholesome activities, and offer a spiritual education. Many of the noble and merchant families began sending their daughters to the temple to become educated. Dera and the other sisters would take in orphan girls or approach Vagrant families offering a better life for their daughters and the temple grew. After a few years and once the order had established itself, she began to put phase two into action and this was to create a school of assassins and spies that would effectively place the power in Dera’s hands. Along with the cooking classes and sewing was training in weapons and stealth, with herbalism was the creation of poisons. The girls learnt how to manipulate through both mental and physical means in order to gather information or learn secrets. Soon the hidden elements of the temple were sent out to learn, kill and steal not just wealth but knowledge.

The Sisters of Stone is considered the most holy of orders and many are proud to send their daughters to study the important life lessons. Amongst the underworld the order is feared and envied, the Silent Guild tolerates the Sisters either because of fear, due to the sharing of profits or for as long as they stay away from each other’s territories. It has been known for each to show mutual respect for As time went by it became obvious that what the other and even to work together. Dera had started was slowly becoming a place for lowlifes and drunkards that felt that with a Purpose of the Order woman in charge they could do what they liked. The order seems to have two purposes the public Fights would break out in the temple halls and one which involves the education of girls and Dera was ignored or laughed at when she tried the hidden purpose of assassination and spying. to regain control, something had to change. Not all girls are taught the hidden skills and Dera called together some of the most ambitious only those that show aptitude and often have no female criminals she knew, gave them a large bag family connections are ever taken into the inner of whatever they wanted and instructed them to sanctums of the temple, this means that only the kill everyone in the temple, which they did. best are chosen and that outsiders can never tell Soon after with the aid of the same female assassins that had helped clear the temple the Sisters of Stone was formed, a holy order of women that would offer healing, prayer, and meditation to any that needed it. They would train

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what type of sister they are dealing with.

Recruitment

Sisters are recruited as children mainly with many having normal lives outside of the Temple once they reach a certain age, though still recognised as Sisters. This was done in order to add another layer to the deception. Only females are recruited.

Order Ranks

The order’s ranks start once the sister begins to become active in the orders various missions. Those that stay as priestesses do not acknowledge a ranking system but instead use seniority, and are the ‘front’ of the order, administering comfort and healing, as well as offering prayers and listening to confessions. Those sisters that are trained in the various secret arts have five ranks.

Assassination Knack (Stealth) When attacking from stealth the assassin does double damage and ignores armour.

Rank 1 - Priestess Prerequisite: Female Benefit: First Aid Knack for Healing

Rank 2 - Novice Prerequisite: Fulfil two missions for the order. Benefit: Receive Punch Dagger, access to guild stores.

Rank 3 - Adept Prerequisites: Fulfil four missions for the order. Benefit: You learn the Poison Knack for Crafting.

Rank 4 - Assassin Prerequisite: Fulfil six missions for the order, Stealth 4+ Benefit: Learn Assassination Knack for Stealth.

Sister Agatha Grandmother of the Sisters of Stone order, Agatha was handed over to the order by her parents when she was very young, it is believed they had been refugees. Agatha quickly rose through the ranks of the order, far faster than her sisters at the time, making her the youngest to ever reach the rank of adept and the inner sanctum of the temple. A closely guarded secret of the order is Agatha’s heritage, she is a Half Elf, though it would take a very close examination to discover this, and if the fact ever came out it could destroy the order, so the secret is kept from even the Mothers of the temple. Since Agatha became head of the order more Priestesses are available for healing in the temple and training in the inner sanctum has become more varied. Also links to the Guild of Silence has become even more frayed as Agatha believes that the temple is a holy order not a criminal one.

Rank 5 - Mother Prerequisite: Fulfil ten missions for the order, Stealth 5, Melee 5 Benefit: Protection of the order, dust of memories.

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Cult of the Malice

ot a guild or even a cult but more an agency that does the bidding of the Remnant and was established within a year of the Remnant setting up home in the Grand Library. The Malice are all Chimeer and it is believed that only Chimeer are excepted, why this is no one knows but maybe the Remnant feels some affinity with the hybrids. The Malice are a secret group, if you are a Malice you never speak of it and deny it if asked. Orders are received via either note or telepathy and often these orders will coincide with what the Malice is currently doing. Though the group are secret it is not unknown for the Remnant to insist that a Malice join a group openly in order to lead the group or to look for something specifically whilst with the group. The Remnant will hire parties to seek out relics and have a Malice go along as security or as the Remnants eyes and ears.

the way of performing their service. The Remnant make sure that the Malice are equipped well and are trained by the best. If injured the Malice are healed, they are housed and fed and though their needs are low they are catered for. The most loyal and trusted Malice speak for the Remnant and often a Malice will be seen off to the side during guild meetings, not saying anything but making sure that it is known that the Remnant is watching. This has led many guild masters to fear the Malice and to start rumours that the Remnant may not be all they seem.

Agent Recruitment

Agents must be Chimeer and they must be loyal. Often a Chimeer is approached by a Malice or sometimes the Chimeer will speak directly to the Remnant in the Grand Library.

Agent Ranks

The Ranks of an agent are based on trust, aptitude Joining the Malice has allowed many Chimeer and loyalty with the Remnant bestowing gifts upon the freedom they would often not be privy to, the those most in favour. There is no real hierarchy protection of the Remnant allows them to walk amongst the Malice but a respect for deeds done. the cities freely without arrest or banishment, this freedom has sickened more of the less tolerant Lip Reading Knack (Perception) guilds or noble families that see the Chimeer as You gain a +1 when attempting to read the lips of aberrations or corrupted elven experiments, but people at a distance. the power and the knowledge the Remnant has forced these prejudices to remain unspoken or Web of Blades Knack (Melee) acted upon. The agent moves at a unnatural speed making two attacks with each blade per round.

The Purpose of the Agents

The Remnant are not able to travel, or so it is believed and hence some form of trusted agent was needed in order for the Remnant to move about in places they could not. Also, the hunt for specific information, relics or even other Remnant could not be left to hired swords as often the value of what they sought was more tempting then fulfilling the job, so the Malice were created. The Malice are loyal to the Remnant and will do whatever is bid, they will dispose of any that get in

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Rank 1 Prerequisite: Chimeer, Pledge allegiance to the Remnant, Survival 3+ Benefit: As an agent of the Remnant you are outside of the law in any city. You receive the Mask of the Remnant.

Rank 2 Prerequisite: Complete 2 missions for the Remnant. Perception at 3+. Benefit: You gain the Lip Reading Knack and the twin blades which are two good quality daggers.

Rank 3 Prerequisite: Complete 4 missions for the Remnant. Stealth at 4+, Lore at 3+. Benefits: You receive good quality light armour and the Pendant of Protection which gives +1 resistance against magical attacks.

Rank 4 Prerequisite: Complete 5 missions for the Remnant, Mind 4+, Survival 4+. Benefit: You learn the Web of Blades Knack.

Rank 5 Prerequisite: Complete 8 missions for the Remnant. Perception 5, Mind 5, Stealth 5. Benefit: You receive the Twin Blades of Malice and become the spokesman for the Remnant in all things. You also receive the ability to communicate telepathically with another within 200ft of you.

Though little is known of the true purpose of the agents, there has been some interest in the face mask each agent wears and it’s purpose. Made of an unknown material it is believed that the mask allows the agent to communicate with their Remnant master over vast distances and also allows the Remnant to ‘see through the agents eyes’. The Black Fort has secretly stated an interest in obtaining masks as part of their ongoing study in to what the Remnant truly are.

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O

The Grey Order

riginally started as an option for criminals who had deserted or committed serious crimes to earn back some honour by patrolling the border between the Sun Spires, the Grey Order over time developed into a small guild of hunters and other adventurers who dedicated their lives to protecting those still trying to survive in the ice or travelling the roads. The order is split into two parts, there is still a large number of convicts that patrol the borders around the Last City, and as long as there is crime this will never change, but now the order also has a Ranger unit. These Rangers are mostly made up of noncriminals wishing to do their part, though a small number of Rangers are still criminals. The Rangers have become an extension of the cities military and are considered the law in the Pale. They patrol the roads, guide travellers and merchants and protect the small outposts and villages still found in the beyond the spires, their job is dangerous, but they have helped keep the northern lands free of many threats. In the below the Grey Order has started a small unit of Rangers willing to risk the darkness and tunnels. The members come from Scavengers, some Hunters, and a few refugees, who some believe join up for the clothes and meals. At the moment the order is struggling in the Below due mainly to the families who are reluctant to have some outside source patrol their roads, but time will tell if this changes. The Grey Order is a guild in structure, they have ranks, guild houses in the cities and a Master but are not recognised by the city council and have no say in matters of importance. This is due partly to the fact that many still see the order as a group of convicts. Amongst the citizens though it is a different story with the Rangers being hailed as heroes and protectors, and many people would take the word of a Ranger over the word of a city administrator any day.

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Guild Purpose

The Grey Rangers main purpose is to patrol the roads and lands of the Pale, but they have been known to act as scouts for travellers and explorers. The lower ranks are encouraged to join up with groups to learn the land as best they can and to be seen by the people that still exist out there.

Recruitment

The Grey Rangers of the Pale tend to recruit those that already have a knowledge of tracking, and hunting and this has led to a lot of Hunters joining. The guild offers a sort of deputy status where a hunter can continue their role but also be a representative of the guild without committing to the order fully, this does not allow the hunter to earn the benefits of ranks but does offer them the benefits of being associated to the Ranger, which is often shown by food and a place to sleep.

Guild Ranks

For those that commit there are five ranks within the guild each offers benefits and Knacks.

Limb Jumping Knack (Athletics) The ranger can travel across a forest via the branches of the tree’s, leaping from branch to branch with perfect balance.

Camouflage Knack (Stealth) When in forests or marsh the ranger gains a +1 to stealth rolls by utilising the environment around them.

Advanced Tracking (Scout) The ranger can track at night with no penalties and gains the ability to track magical and corrupt creatures just by the mental markers left from their passing.

Ranging

Ranging the Pale or below involves any activity that will take you off the beaten track, adventuring and exploring either location qualifies as ranging.

Rank 1 Prerequisites: Perception 2+, Scout 2+ and Survival 2+. Benefits: Access to ranger hut locations and survival caches in the Pale or below.

Rank 2 Prerequisite: Commit to the Grey Rangers. Range the Pale or the below for a month, Instinct 3+, Ranged 3+. Benefit: Badge of Office showing you are part of the guild and are held by its laws. You receive the Rangers Blade.

Rank 3 Prerequisite: Range the Pale of the below for two months. Scout 3+, Stealth 3+, Lore 3+. Benefit: You gain access to Ranger stores and receive training in the Limb Jumping Knack.

Rank 4 Prerequisite: Range the Pale or below for 5 months. Instinct 4+, Ranged 4+, Survival 4+. Benefits: You receive training in the Camouflage Knack and you receive the Rangers Band.

Rank 5 Prerequisite: Ranged the Pale or Below for 1 year. Instinct 5, Scout 5, Stealth 5, Survival 5. Benefits: You are taught the Advanced Tracking Knack. You are given High Quality light armour and a High Quality Bow. You can command lower rank rangers.

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Explore and Survive T

he world is a place of cruelty and horror, those with sense stay behind the city walls and accept their fate, produce the food, keep the ores coming in and serve the guilds and their betters. But, there are some among the people who feel the need to venture out, to risk their lives beyond the spires. They try to resurrect a dead land, try to recapture the world before the fall and carry on. Sadly they often are found staked out guts hanging, impaled upon spikes, or if they are blessed dead in the snow, frozen. There are those amongst us that are destined to face the Pale, to walk the tunnels of the Below or the ice of the Above. Those that face the horrors and try to fight back. Every day the ice gets closer and the corrupted howl at our borders, our cities have become breeding grounds for cults of the Blood Lords recruiting those that feel left behind or hopeless. This infection, this creeping pestilence needs to be cut out and burnt, and often it takes those willing few to do the deed. The cities are the safe havens, places with high walls and armed men walking the streets. Administrators and Guilds are making sure that supply lines stay open that even the poorest are fed, and to some real degree this is true, (though few see the machinations behind the walls of the guild houses and the assassinations of dignitaries). But as the years have moved on since the fall, and the Pale has become more and more under the control of the Blood Lords, some of the rot has seeped in. The mass of refugees that flooded the cities brought with them chaos and those that supported the rule of the elves, that harboured resentment to their fellow humans for bringing the world to its icy knees. This resentment and anger grew and became a threat.

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Travelling through the Last City and the cities below is relatively safe during the day, there are dark alleys where murders may lurk, and the overcrowding does allow the petty thieves to pick their targets easily. But generally, the streets are safe. The merchant and administration districts tend to have larger patrols of better armed and better-trained men, but that is to be expected. After dark, especially in the Last City, it becomes much more dangerous. The cults hold their secret rituals and some, mainly in the slums, will openly hunt out victims or parade their beliefs without fear of retribution. The night is also when the corrupted walk the streets.

In the Below the problem of cults and corrupted is not so bad, the families hold a tight rein on who they allow to enter the cities, and this has helped limit the reach of the corrupted and the Blood Lords. Unfortunately, this does not reach as far as the tunnels and Vagrant camps that have been built upon the roads and caves. Reports of strange noises are reported daily of unnatural sounds of chanting coming from deep below, encounters with strange creatures and even rumours of missing people are whispered throughout the cities and have even reached the Last City above.

Travel across the Pale There are few ways to travel across the pale if you stick to the roads you can use wheeled vehicles like carts and carriages, mostly the roads stay clear from years of use, but it is not unheard of for roads to become blocked with snow or ice making wheeled vehicles useless. Many travelling traders have fitted sledges to their vehicles, dispensing with wheels altogether. This allows the traders to travel fast across open land, though passing the sun spires suddenly make the vehicle harder to use, at least it is safer. Horses and riding animals can be more straightforward for groups but then comes the extra care needed for the animals when resting, a horse will freeze just as quickly as a person in the ice, extra food needs to be brought and finding food for yourself, and the horse making foraging more difficult and time-consuming. Walking the Pale will take time and journeys will be longer, food will run out, and the dangers of hypothermia, frostbite, snowdrifts and other natural threats will need to be considered. Those that choose to walk can obtain snowshoes which makes travel by foot slightly more accessible and faster as shown opposite.

Leagues Per Day* Travel via Roads Snow Ice Mountains Walking** 8 5 4 3 Snowshoes 7 8 7 Mounts 16 12 10 12 Wheeled 14 5 5 5 Sledge 16 12 10 5 Dog Sledge 14 14 14 8 *League = 3 Miles ** Walking Pace is 30ft per round

Travelling the Below The dwarven roads that connect the cities are wide and well made, making travel easy both on foot or using vehicles or mount. Closer to the cities they are patrolled and the main issue many will face will be the gates and gaining access as some cities restrict this to traders, residents or those with passes supplied by either a family or guild. The mines, tunnels and caves lead deep underground, and many have never been explored and can become hazardous the deeper you go, but the lure of ancient treasures and more abandoned dwarven cities is, for many too much of a temptation to not try. Vagrants have discovered roads that will shorten a journey and even secret ways into the cities that bypass the gates, and they will offer their services as guides to those wishing to avoid the scrutiny of the guards. This has led to a few problems, and the many feel the reason why corrupted or cults even exist in the well-guarded cities. Scavengers in the pay of the Guilds or the Mages will venture downward often because of some passage in a dusty tome that speaks of an ancient artefact hidden in a yet to be discovered dwarven city. What they have found has been vast cave systems, more well-built dwarven roads that stretch to unknown locations, narrow mines and tight tunnels. Claims of voices speaking in an unknown language. Constructed chambers filled with pipes that hum and rattle, and the sounds of terrible monsters from deep below are discovered.

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The Black Iron On the roads, travel can be made at a good pace, and they are wide enough for wagons to travel two, sometimes three abreast. Most roads are well lit and free of problems, but once you step off these roads, everything changes. Travelling the tunnels can often be hazardous and narrow passages can become more extensive and then disappear to nothing. Keeping track of direction can be difficult without a map or someone with good direction sense. Darkness is absolute except for those chambers that are home to a strange fluorescent fungus, but these are rare. It should go without saying that once you leave the roads that vehicles and mounts will become useless and travel by foot will be the only option, as climbing and manoeuvring through small crevices and areas will not allow for the luxury of transportation.

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Food and water are not as much of an issue below as they would be above, with natural springs, small creatures and edible fungus easily found as long as you know where to look. But other dangers will exist, cave-ins, unknown poisons or creatures, traps set hundreds of years ago and monsters that crawl from the depths or have wandered the mines and tunnels unaware of the world above.

Survival It is the cold that can be the first threat to your survival. Living in the Last City can be cold, though the Sun spires keep most of that at bay, they cannot hold back the wind or the ice storms that can tear through the city and rip those not quick enough in reaching shelter to shreds. Beyond the city, there are the swamps, poisoned forests, corruption and

disease, and of course the ice and snow. Lakes and rivers may appear to be solid ground to the ignorant, but one wrong step and you can plunge to an icy death. Knowing how to find food, water and shelter can be the difference between dying in the snow or returning safely.

Stamina

Your Stamina reflects your endurance and the will to go on. Hunger, thirst, tiredness and some diseases can weaken your stamina, and this will have a knock-on effect when attempting tasks or engaging in combat. For every 3 stamina you are reduced by you will receive a -1 penalty to all task rolls. Resting for 4 hrs. will restore half of the stamina lost, whereas resting for 8 hrs. will restore all lost stamina.

Weather

The area around the Last City is cold, but it is not cold enough to stop the growing of food and the breeding of livestock. The mountains behind the city provide both shelter and fresh water; many thrive within and around the city reasonably well without much issue. Once you step beyond the Sun spires, everything changes, the cold hits you like a hammer and if you are not prepared, hypothermia can quickly follow. Warm clothing must be worn at all times, and the warmer and better made the clothing the longer it will keep out the cold. When wearing poor quality winter clothing, you will lose 2 stamina points every two hours of travel.

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The Black Iron When wearing good quality winter clothing, you will lose 1 stamina point every three hrs.. of travel. When wearing high quality winter clothing, you will lose 1 stamina for every four hours of travel. A fire stone will adjust the above as shown below With a fire stone and wearing poor quality winter clothing, the stamina loss is 1 for every three hours of travel. With a fire stone and good quality winter clothing, the stamina loss is 1 stamina for every four hours of travel. With a fire stone and high-quality winter clothing, the stamina loss is 1 for every five hours of travel.

It is said that the land beyond the spires is littered with the remains of those that succumbed to the ice, and this is true. As you travel across the pale you will find skeletons frozen in the ice, rigid flags stuck to trees or just rigid and unmoving upon their poles, rusted metal brittle to the touch and the partially eaten remains of travellers frozen, their skin leathery and discoloured. Those that travel the ice soon realise that these remains are markers, warnings of danger and it would be pointless attempting to move or bury these lost souls.

Food and Water

Food and water are sparse both above and below ground, but many have learnt to find both in the harshest of environments. Obtaining provisions is a good start for long journeys, but you can only carry so much and rations and water-skins only last so long, and often you can be days away from anywhere that can provide what you need unless you learn to forage. Water – Melting snow and ice can help with keeping your water rations high as long as you have a pot to boil it in. You should drink at least a pint of water per day; otherwise, you will lose two stamina points for every day you do not drink. Food – You must eat at least one meal per day, but you can go for two days without eating before losing any stamina points. If you do not eat for two days, you will lose 1 stamina point per day until you eat again.

Foraging

Below ground, it is much easier to find water in the form of streams, and underground lakes, those that have made their homes in the mines and tunnels have cultivated many of the fungi that can be found there into food. The cities below still rely upon the farms that have been encouraged

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to thrive around the Last City above for much of their meat and grains. Those travelling the tunnels will benefit from having someone that knows the best places to find water and the safest fungi to eat, as many of the mushrooms and moulds can be highly poisonous. Issues can also arise as you get deeper underground as many of these tunnels have never been explored, and this can lead to the discovery of new fungi or creatures that could be as edible as they could be deadly. The table below shows modifiers to the Survival roll.

Location Forest Ice Waste Frozen Lake Marsh Ash Wastes Mountains Tunnels Old Mines Ruins Last City Region

Food Water -1 -1 -3 -2 -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2 -2 -3 -2 -2 -3 -2 -2 -1 -2

The GM should adjust the above table based on the Grittiness of the world they have created, or how desperate the situation is.

Sleeping

You can go for two days without sleeping, but for every day after that, your stamina is reduced by 2 points. You can go each day with 4 hrs. of sleep, and this will sustain you for a week or more, after which you will need 8 hours of undisturbed, comfortable sleep or start losing 1 stamina per day.

or tainted water, above ground this is a growing threat as more and more rivers, and animals become infected, below it is less common. Bites from animals and undead are another hazard encountered by those exploring the ruins both above and below with the Marshes to the south being a cesspit of infected leeches and marsh wraiths. Every disease has a potency, and it is this number that you will need to equal or exceed with a Body Attribute Test. The purge potion can be used to eradicate the disease in the early stages, but if that is not available a good Necromancer should be able to help.

Dangers and Obstacles

As you travel through the world, you will encounter threats and obstacles. Below is a list of the most common based on region.

Location Rivers and Lakes Coastal Ruined Cities Marsh Open Road Tunnels Mountains Forests Mines

Threat/Obstacle Thin Ice Ice Raiders/Thin ice Cultists/Corrupted Wraiths/Swamps/ Leeches Bandits/Cultists Corrupted/Cave-ins Tribals/Cultists Bandits/Corrupted/ Poison Bandits/Corrupted

Disease

Some of the dangers you will face as you explore the pale are diseases; these can take many forms and be caught in many ways. Most common diseases in the pale are those found in rotten food

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Corruption

The Sense Corruption Knack can be invaluable when exploring certain locations in the Pale.

When the world fell, ripped apart by the Black Iron something was released, from where no one is sure, but with the corrupted came the corruption. It is thought by many of the Mages of the Black Fort that it was an experiment by the elves that was released when their laboratories were destroyed or the magic that contained whatever foulness they had created faded, but none of these theories have ever been proven.

There are a number of known locations of corruption that are best avoided if possible, and the Grand Library are always appreciative of anyone informing them of more or drawing maps showing there locations. The known locations are: • The Shackles and many of the wrecks that surround the island. • The Great Wood has many patches of corruption within it, the fact the Great Wood is not wholly corrupted is somewhat of a mystery. • The Crimson Citadel has a strong corruption presence; this includes the battlefields and torture gardens that surround it. • The Dead Marsh just oozes corruption.

There are two facts that are known the first is that everyone has corruption, this cannot be undone just controlled, and the second is that with the corruption also came the Remnant, what connects the two no one knows or even knows if there is a connection, but the Remnants importance and the fact that many revere them as the last of the gods means that maybe that question will never Below ground seems to be less infected from the be answered. corruption that festers above, but maybe that is because many that live below are reluctant to Every character begins with one corruption point; delve deeper and search out what can be found in this cannot be removed and is part of the DNA of the darkness. that character. Unfortunately, that one point will become the foundation that corruption can build Failing a Body Attribute Test check will always give upon, meaning that you are very susceptible to 1 point of temporary corruption to the character being corrupted further. and for every point of permanent corruption you

Gaining Corruption

Unlike diseases, corruption does not have a varying potency that can be resisted, that is not to say it does not have a potency at all or cannot be resisted. Corruption has a persistent potency of 8 across the board, no matter the way it was transferred or encountered.

have is a -1 penalty to the resistance test.

Temporary Corruption

Each character can hold up to 5 temporary corruption points, receiving 1 more converts all 5 to 1 permanant corruption point.

Temporary corruption can be removed with the right plants like Yardin Root or by a trained Necromancer. Temporary corruption can not be Location There are a number of locations throughout the healed by normal means or from rest. pale where a miasma of corruption hangs, these pits cannot be seen, or smelt or heard which makes Temporary has no physical or mental symptoms them extremely dangerous. Often the first signs and can remain unknown by the carrier until it that corruption is present will be in the wildlife, becomes permanent. and any foliage, twisted, weeping trees, grass that tears and shatters like glass, animals deformed The following will offer ways for characters to become inflicted by temporary corruption. and rabid are all indicators of corruption.

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Attacks

The Cure

Other Rumours • Drinking the blood of the beast that infected you will cancel out the affects (False) • Chimeer cannot be infected (False) • Breathing in the smoke from a burning corpse will stop corruption (False) • Being bitten a second time by a different carrier will cancel out corruption (False)

Finding this cure or preventative is one of the great challenges facing the Black Fort, everyday the corruption creeps ever closer to the Last City, everyday victims are brought in from the wastes suffering from various effects caused by corruption.

Being attacked by a corrupted monster or carrier of corruption is the fastest way to gain corruption, it is also the only way that it cannot be resisted as the corruption goes directly into the bloodstream. Wearing thick clothing and armour will help lessen this risk as they will protect against tooth and claw.

Items

Strangely enough, some items are known to carry corruption, more often than not, these items are magical in nature and are the artefacts of the elves. This has led many to believe that the corruption is in some way magical and linked to the ancient sorceries used by the elves, why they are linked cannot be determined, speculation has been made that the corruption was not deadly to the elves or they had found ways to control or even cure it, this idea that the elves had created or found a cure has led many adventuring parties to their doom as they search ruins under the orders of the Black Fort. These ancient artefacts are very sought after not only by the Mages but by other guilds, in the misguided belief that they will offer power of some kind and the Remnant who wish to collect these items for their own reasons, reasons they have yet to share. When discovering an artefact, it will not be obvious at first if it is corrupted, often the corruption will only manifest once it has been used, activated by the magic held within the item. Once this happens, you can resist using the guidelines above (corruption potency 10). This resistance must be made each time the item is used.

So is there a cure for permanant corruption? Probably yes, but not for the genetic foundation the single point all characters begin with, that will always stay there. The Mages believe that somewhere out there are clues or writings on a cure or at least a defence against corruption this would have been made by the elves in order to protect themselves and at least protect those humans loyal to them.

Corruption Effects

As your corruption increases, you will start to change both physically and mentally. The table opposite shows this with a list of explanations below. Appearance – The character’s appearance can change in various ways, and this is the decision of the GM and player. It will not be like a Chimeer as these are merged with animals, but more twisted. This change will go in stages with the final stage horrifying to look at with a Fear Rating. Rage – When in a rage, you will attack anyone nearby friend or foe, you cannot be directed and you cannot target one person in particular. Rage will last until you succeed in a Will test, you are dead, or everyone else is dead. Voices – Voices will whisper in your mind, calling for you, telling you to do things against your nature. This will not happen all the time, and the GM should bring them forth during stressful times or whenever they feel appropriate. Language – You will be able to speak, understand and read the ancient language of the Giants, this will be handy as there are a lot of ancient tomes in the library or in the Black Fort needing translation, if only they could keep you lucid long enough.

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Permanant Corruption Table

Corruption Effect The victim will have moments of dizziness and feeling sick as the corruption starts to 2 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

change their biology, nothing evident to others. You will start to show physical signs of corruption, this could be yellowed eyes, slight scaling of the skin, black blemishes and so forth. This will have no adverse effects. Positive: Your resistance to poisons and disease will increase by +1 Negative: Your Influence will decrease by 1 The physical symptoms become worse and more noticeable, your skin will become greyish, your eyes bloodshot, your veins will thicken and become darker, hair may begin to fall out and speech slurred. Positive: You are now immune to Poison and Disease Negative: Your Influence is reduced by 2 The first of the mental symptoms will manifest in a form of rage, you will burst into fits of anger at the slightest provocation, attacking, verbally abusing and spitting at everyone near by friend and foe alike. Positive: Your Fight modified by +1 Negative: To suppress the rage is a Mind Attribute Test vs. 8 Your Physical symptoms worsen as you become hunched and begin to exude an overpowering stench. Positive: Your Body increases by 1. Negative: All social interactions are at -3 You will start to have physical ticks and verbal outbursts which will be uncontrollable, you begin to hear whispers and strange voices summoning and goading you. You have urges to walk off into the pale, but when asked will have no idea where you are intending to go. Positive: You can now sense other corrupted. Negative: A Mind Attribute Test vs. 10 is needed to stop yourself following the whispers Your skin thickens and your ability to talk is almost gone and what is left of your hair falls out. Entry into the cities will be forbidden and you will be attacked by militia and other people, as they see you for what you are. Positive: You can now see in the dark clearly. Your wounds increase by +2 and your armour is +1. Negative: You will be attacked on sight by ‘civilised’ people, other corrupted can sense you. You have a Fear Rating of 7 You will begin to think and talk in an ancient language, no one other than the Blood Lords and the Remnant will be able to understand you. You will be able to read ancient scripts but not be lucid long enough for it to benefit anyone. By this point you are no longer in control of your rage or mental state and only have a basic understanding of self. Negatives: You will burst into rages more often and attack anyone nearby, this requires a Mind Attribute Test vs. 12 to suppress. You are a monster fully corrupted and deformed, the Blood Lords call for you. You will either attack the party or flee into the pale. Negatives: You lost your character and have a Fear Rating of 9.

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Combat and Injury

Combat Actions

During combat, many actions become restrictive as you attempt to avoid injury and flying missiles. Exploring the ruins and dark places above or Combat is hectic, confusing and fast, and this is the tunnels and caves below is a dangerous reflected in how you can act during it. occupation, and you are going to face things that wish to kill you, other than the weather or disease. You can move and act during your turn, and you Combat is a fact of life, and you will need to be can react during someone else’s turn. prepared before leaving the relative safety of the cities. Movement You can move a short distance as a free action, Turn Order and you can move a long distance by using up all Before entering combat, a turn order needs to be your actions. determined; this should be done before any other roll is made. Distance is measured in Touch, Near, Short and Long: Initiative Each combatant involved in combat must roll Type Distance their Initiative, this involves rolling a D6 and Touch Arm’s Length adding the initiative derived stat to the result. If Near 5 Yards two combatants roll the same Initiative, then it is Short 25 Yards decided in various ways, as shown below. Long 100 Yards If both Combatants are PCs then the character Extreme 200+ Yards with the highest skill goes first, or if a success was made with the Iron Die then that wins initiative. Act You can perform one action during your turn; If one of the combatants is an NPC, then the PC you cannot perform a non-combat action if your always goes first. last action was a melee attack and you are still engaged with your opponent Ranged always goes before Melee if both are prepared. Attack – This includes either a melee, brawl, throw or ranged attack. These will be gone into more The GM rolls for the NPCs and can opt to roll for detail later in this section. the NPCs as a whole if there are more than 4 of them, rolling for each would be time consuming. Use Item – As long as you are not currently engaged in a melee or brawl, you can use your Weapons Ready – If the party is weapon ready, action in order to use an item. meaning they already have their weapons drawn and arrows nocked, then they always go first. Skill – You can choose to use a skill as long as you Surprise – If the party is surprised then the attackers receive a free round of attacks on the party before Initiatives are rolled, once the round has ended Initiative is rolled as normal.

are not engaged in a melee or brawl action; this can be any skill. Be aware that using a skill means you cannot react to an attack.

Healing – You can perform healing on yourself or someone else as long as they are a short Hesitation – By hesitating, you give the opponent distance away, healing will cancel out your react the advantage, meaning that for the initiative they opportunity. get a +2 to their Initiative.

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Casting – You can cast magic during your action and depending on the type of spell will act either as a melee or ranged attack or as a skill. Reaction – You can also react to the actions of another combatant, as long as you are aware of the action. Often a reaction will be a defensive action such as parry or block, other times it may be a dodge or diving into cover.

opponent must roll to defend with the highest result winning.

Disengaging You can disengage from close combat by stepping back, this will mean that you can no longer attack unless you step back into close combat.

Parrying Parrying is done with a weapon, normally a sword The reaction is unique in that you can react even if or dagger. To parry you make a melee opposed roll it is not your turn. vs. the attacker’s melee roll. Defence – You can defend against an attack by parrying, dodging or blocking the attack this is an opposed roll. You would use Melee for a Parry or Shield block and Athletics to dodge or dive into cover.

Close Combat

Close combat includes any attacks made at Touch range and uses either the Melee or Brawl skills.

Attacking Attacking is an opposed roll and includes both melee and brawl. You roll to attack, and the

Shields Shields allow you to block an attack and will add a bonus to the Melee skill when used to block. Using a shield means that you can only carry a singlehanded weapon. In order to use a two-handed weapon or ranged weapon, you must drop the shield. Stealth Attacks In order to perform a stealth attack you must reach your target without being spotted. This is done with a Stealth vs.. Perception opposed roll, if successful the attack is considered a success.

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The Black Iron If the stealth roll generates more Levels of Success than the Perception roll of the target, the extra successes count as +1 extra damage done per extra Level of success. This can also happen with a success from the Iron Die.

Situation Darkness Fog High Wind Beyond Range High Ground Low Ground

Successful stealth attacks ignore armour.

Two Weapon Combat Using a weapon in each hand is possible and will allow for two attack actions per turn, but the offhand attack is at -2 unless you have the Dual Wield Knack.

Modifier -1 -1 -1 -1 +1 -1

Aiming You can make an aimed shot; this will increase your skill by +1 for each round you spend aiming, and if successful, you hit what you aimed for. The target can still attempt to block or dodge the attack.

Stance You can choose to use a stance, this will be either defensive or offensive. A defensive stance will increase your Parry by +2 but decrease your attack Called Shots by -2, whereas an offensive stance will increase A called shot differs from an aimed shot as they your attack by +2 and lower Parry by -2. are often done instantly without spending time to focus on a target. To make a called shot, you Ranged Combat must declare what your target is, and this can be a The use of Bows and thrown weapons fall under small item to a specific body part, which will give the purview of Ranged Combat. Shooting bows a modifier. Called shots are great when you don’t etc. works in the same way as Melee and Fight the have the luxury of time to aim but want to make a only real difference is how the target can react. precision shot. Thrown weapons and Arrows cannot be parried so the target can either block the attack with a shield • Head -2 Penalty or attempt to dodge the attack using Athletics as • Arm - 2 Penalty an opposed roll. • Legs - 1 Penalty • Hand - 3 Penalty A Bow can be nocked as a free action, but a crossbow will take 1 round to load, meaning that Cover when using a crossbow you get to attack every With Ranged combat line of site is important other round. and this can be obscured by cover. To shoot at

Range

Ranges are in feet for thrown weapons and yards for ranged weapons. The range shown is the longest possible range for that weapon to be accurate and cause the amount of damage listed. Ranges beyond that which are listed, accuracy and damage become lower. Modifiers are to the attack roll.

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someone in cover applies a penalty to the shot based on the type of cover. • • • •

Quarter Cover -1 Half Cover -2 Three-Quarters Cover -3 Full Cover - No Shots

Stealth Ranged Many ranged attacks can be described at stealth attacks as often the opponent is not aware they are happening, where the attack is coming from and not prepared to block or avoid the attack. Any

attack made against an opponent who is unaware of either your presence or that the attack has been made cannot attempt to block or dodge the attack. Armour still protects against damage. The difficulty for making attacks would normally be an opposed roll but for instances when the target is unaware, then a Target Number comes into effect. • Head or Arms – TN 10 • Body or Legs – TN 9 This TN can also be increased if the target is moving. • Walking +1 • Running +2 • Sprinting +3 Cover also can effect the stealth attack. Once a stealth attack is made and if the target is still alive then they will be aware and can defend against future attacks.

Levels of Success or Failure

During combat you may roll more than you need to succeed or less than you need to succeed these are called Levels of Success (LoS) or Levels of Failure (LoF). For skills these will create special circumstances that can help or hinder what you are attempting to do, whereas in combat they can have a much more deadly outcome.

Levels of Success For every two points you are above the TN (you need 8 and you roll 10 for example) you gain an effect, this will be determined by the numbers of levels with every two points equalling a level. You and the GM can decide what the effect will be based on the current situation or what you were attempting, below are a few suggestions: • Lvl 1: Extra damage, Shield Bash, Second Shot. • Lvl 2: Counter Attack, Knock Down. • Lvl 3: Second Attack, Stun, Third Shot.

Levels of Failure Combat can also take a less than favourable turn and drawbacks can appear through failures, like Magic with successes for every two points you are below Magic that acts as a ranged attack will be treated the TN you have a Level of Failure (you need an 8 as one with the same rules for cover and line of and you roll a 6 for example). Like with levels of sight. Some magic acts differently depending on success the failure should be discussed with the the spell, and this will be described in the spell’s GM what that would mean based on the current description. situation.

Mounted Combat

Attacking from a horse or vehicle will apply modifiers as the motion and ground that is being moved across can affect aiming and balance.

Melee Attacking with a melee weapon whilst riding a horse or inside or on top of a moving vehicle will reduce your attack by -1, it will also reduce Parry by -1, dodging will be impossible. Weapon Damage will increase by +1

Below are a few suggestions of what a Level of Failure could look like: • Lvl 1: Staggered, +1 armour damage • Lvl 2: Dropped Weapon, Snapped Bowstring • Lvl 3: Stunned for a rnd, +2 armour damage

Levels of Success with the Iron Die When the Iron Die is instrumental in a level of success the rules still apply for both, a positive outcome will occur and the level of success will also take affect. The GM can also decide to change this to make the Iron Die result create a more Ranged Shooting from horseback or whilst inside a moving damaging or beneficial level of success, and this vehicle will reduce your attack by -2, aiming will should be decided in order to make the situation not be allowed but called shots can still be made. more exciting.

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Levels of Failure with the Iron Die Similar to levels of success the Iron Die rolling a 1 will effect the results of a level of failure result, this could be a negative consequence added to the agreed LoF result or a fumble making the LoF result that much more damaging. This should be discussed with the GM based on the current situation and without it negatively impacting the adventure or characters in a way that derails the progress so far too much.

Damage and Healing Getting injured and even dying can feel inevitable in the Pale, but as long as you are careful, stay protected, you should be able to keep the wounds to a minimum. If you are prepared, there is no reason for your character to die or suffer irreversible damage.

Armour

Your first defence against permanant injury is your armour and good armour will negate a certain amount of damage for as long as it is kept in good repair by you. Damage that is lower than the armour is considered to be either minimal or has been deflected in some way, minor cuts and bruises are not considered life threatening.

Wounds and Locations

You have a number of wounds equal to your Body attribute x 5, which should give a number between 5 and 25. Wounds can be further enhanced by spending experience points. There are also hit locations, these loactions do not have individual points but are just to allow all involved to see where the character was struck. If a location is struck with 5 or more points of damage after armour has been taken from the damage total then the associated attribute is lowered by 1 until such times as the wounds are healed.

2d6 2-3 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11 12

Location Left Leg Right Leg Left Arm Body Right Arm Head

Attribute Agility Agility Agility Body Agility Mind

As you can see from the above table in most cases the characters ability to move is often the most affected outcome of injury. Called Shots and Aimed attacks do not use a dice roll to determine the location as you state the location you wish to hit and it is presumed that if successful that is exactly what happens. Hit locations are optional and the GM can choose to ignore them, this could be do to speeding up combat or because hit locations can sometimes be nonsensical with the dice result not really reflecting the attack.

Weapon Damage

Weapons can do different types of damage based on the type of weapon they are. Heavy weapons like hammers and clubs will bludgeon, whereas weapons like daggers will slash or stab. These types of attacks can have extra effects. Weapons have fixed damage with the attribute offering the random number to the damage. Melee weapons use the Body Attribute whereas Ranged and Thrown use the Agility Attribute. Damage is rolled like a skill with the highest result added to the damage of the weapon. Rolling the maximum damage (even if reduced by the armour) causes an effect. Bleeding (b) – Weapons that stab, pierce or slash can cause bleeding. Whenever maximum damage is scored the target will begin to bleed and lose 1 Stamina per round until the bleeding has been staunched.

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Critical Hits

Dying

If you lose all your wounds, you will collapse and be unable to act; this will continue until you are healed or you take further damage which will result in your death. Bleeding will continue to reduce Stamina and reaching zero in stamina whilst collapsed will mean instant death.

If the highest dice on a damage roll is the Iron Die Other Injuries then the hit is also a critical strike, meaning that Below are a few other situations where you may the weapon damage is doubled. become wounded.

Fumbles

Falling If the damage roll results in the Iron Die rolling a For every 3 yards that you fall you will take 1d6 1 then the attack has fumbled, no damage comes damage. Using the Tumble Knack will half the from the dice roll and weapon damage is halved damage taken. (rounded down), this is then considered a glancing Frostbite blow and the weapon loses 1 break level. Frostbite affects the extremities like fingers and toes and is slow acting and will drain 1 wound per Healing day until treated. Once the Frostbite has removed Once wounded, you must heal in order to survive half the wounds of the PC that appendage will fall not only the harsh environments of the Pale but off. any further conflict you may face. Wounds The healing of wounds can be done by either using the healing skill, Magic or healing potions. Potions will heal back a number of wounds equal to the total rolled on a 1d10, healing salves are used mainly for burns and will heal a number of wounds equal to the number rolled on a d6.

Drowning You can hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to your Body Attribute x 3 after which you will lose 1 Stamina per rnd until you either drown or are rescued.

Fire Fire will do an initial 2d6 damage (keep the Healing wounds removes any penalties the injured highest result) and then an extra 1d6 per round until extinguished. Armour can effect damage. person may of received. Wounds can also be healed with rest, for every 8 hrs. of rest and relaxation you will receive back 1 wound. Resting like this will involve a soft bed, food and safety.

Magical Healing Having a Necromancer in the party will allow you access to magical healing as long as the Necromancer is willing to sacrifice their own health for yours. See the Arcane chapter for more on magical healing.

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Armour and Fire Leather, Hide, and quilted armours will be reduced to half AP after being set alight, making the armour more brittle and less likely to protect. Metal armours such as chain and Plate will exacerbate the problem by increasing the damage each round to 2d6.

Fear and Stress You will face moments of stress during your journeys across the Pale or the tunnels below, and this stress can affect you in different ways. You have a Courage Rating which is treated similar to an Attribute test, the Courage Rating is your Mind + Instinct Attribute added together add checked on the table below.

Instinct+Mind 2-3 4-5 6-7 8-9 10

Result 3d6+1 3d6+2 3d6+3 3d6+4 3d6+5

Using Courage

Monsters and threats will have a Fear rating similar to a TN, when you face this threat you must roll your Courage which acts similar to an Attribute test if the result is equal to or higher than the TN than you succeed, if it is less than you fail.

Levels of Success

A simple success means that you are unaffected by the threat and can act normally but as with using skills and combat the better your success the more you can do. With every two points you are above the TN you are at a higher Level of Success and you and the GM can discuss what that means based on the current situation or choose from the list below. Every two points you are above the TN equals 1 Level of Success. • Success: You Face the Fear • Lvl 1: You face the fear and gain +1 to your next action. • Lvl 2: Your courage encourages others and those around you gain +1 to their next action. • Lvl 3: You are bolstered and will be at +1 to Courage rolls when facing that same threat in the future.

Levels of Failure

Like with combat and skills you can also have a Level of Failure when facing horrors. When you fail discuss with the GM what that will look like or use the examples below. For every 2 points under the TN you will have 1 Level of Failure. • Failure: You retreat backwards unable to act for 1 rnd • Lvl 1: You flee until you can no longer see the threat • Lvl 2: You collapse in shock for d4 rnds • Lvl 3: You suffer a heart attack taking 2d6 damage (armour has no effect) Like with skills and combat the Iron Die is still active for courage rolls and can still result in a positive or negative consequence.

Injuries from Failure

You can suffer from failing a Courage roll as your mind ceases to comprehend what you are seeing and retreats to protect itself you will suffer shock and collapse, or if the stress is just to much for the body and shuts down causing heart failure. Shock is not permanent but can be dangerous as you effectively collapse unconscious for up to 4 rnds unable to move or defend yourself, other party members can defend you or drag you away but there is no cure for it. Heart Failure can kill, your body will basically shut down causing massive system shock, damage from this will hit you directly and internally causing up to 12 wounds, which could kill. Your armour will not help you with this, and again this could floor you. To avoid this happening enter areas carefully and try to be aware of your surroundings, avoiding nasty surprises could be the difference between life and death.

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hen giants walked the Pale, they formed sorceries, twisted nature and corrupted the forces that bind the cosmos. This interference sent a tremor through the realms, which eventually reached the gods. Watchers were sent to discover the nature of the disturbance, and they quickly travelled to the Pale and the realm of the giants. The giants had corrupted everything, oceans had turned black, the forests became twisted and diseased, and the animals that had once thrived now were dead or mutated. The experiments and sorceries of the giants had tainted everything, and their greed was immense. The watchers knew that soon the giants would turn their corruption to the other realms and that their insatiable need to devour and infect would never stop. The gods listened to the watcher’s observations and prepared for war. With heavy losses, the gods finally defeated the giants and left their carcasses to rot upon the earth, and with that, the gods declared the world dead, removing the sigil’s and wards and closing the gateway to the world forever or so they thought.

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Centuries past and the blood of the giants slowly seeped into the earth, feeding the roots of the mighty forests deep underground. These corrupted roots gave rise to new life, a twisted corrupted being that declared itself Daur, or nature, this first of its kind, who would eventually become the Elves. Clawing their way through the earth, they encountered the dwarves; the Daur were imbued with the power of the giants; sorceries ran through their veins and with this, they first enslaved and then burnt the dwarves within their cities. Eventually, the elves reached the surface world and saw that it was beautiful, where the blood of the giants had seeped into the dark places and corrupted the below, the blood of the gods that had fallen had instead nurtured and renewed the above and had formed new life of its own, the people that called themselves Human. The elves saw potential in this world without a roof, where the below was cramped and dark the above was open and light, and the power that ebbed through the land and the oceans was of the purest kind and was powerful. So began the era of domination.

How Magic Became

It was the elves that introduced magic into the world, they had sorcery running through their veins, and they had quickly sought out the artefacts of the giants, increasing their power in order to dominate the world and those that lived upon it. For decades the humans marvelled in the power of the elves, saw them as gods, feared their magic and felt helpless before it. But what the elves had discovered very quickly as they experimented on the humans was that every human had an untapped well of power deep inside them, a power so strong that it could destroy the elves in a blink of an eye, a power akin to that of gods, and this secret the elves held close for fear that the humans would rebel. Many of the experiments conducted by the elves on their human victims were to see if this power could be tapped, could be utilised by the elves to enhance their own abilities, almost like human batteries, and even though they had learnt to drain this power from the human the power itself was too pure and would kill the elven host. It was by mistake that the humans discovered their potential. The first sign of power came from a small child in a village by the sea, or so the story goes. The boy’s dog had become injured whilst running through a small wooded area and the child so upset by this and unwilling to leave the injured pet managed to heal the dog through magic. Some at first claimed that the boy had called upon the gods and they had listened, but the child had insisted that he had touched the dog and the injury had healed. This revelation began investigations into other claims of magical power being used by humans, and thus began the era of enlightenment.

Magic is Dangerous

All magic has it’s dangers, no one can wield such power without either paying the price or taking a risk, and as you develop and start to use more powerful magicks, the risks and costs will also increase. Depending on what school of magic you choose, it will determine the dangers that you

could face if you attempt to cast spells that sap too much power. Many mages from the Black Fort have regulated their usage and never exceeded their reach and have lived with very little danger but there are those that wish to push the limits, and these mages soon reap what they sow.

The Magical Paradox

The unspoken truth, or magical elephant in the room is that magic is the cause of so much horror and death, when the elves wielded it they did so in order to control, experiment, torture and gain power, it was magic that brought down the black iron, which turned the world to ice. Magic created the corrupted and even, possibly the Blood Lords. Many realise the paradox in knowing that the very power that almost destroyed the world Is the very same one that many rely on to save it. Mages are not loved and some even look upon them with suspicion and hatred, but for many they are a necessary evil, and to others the next phase of the world’s evolution.

The Black Fort

The Black Fort is the name of the Mages Guilds main guild house, the building itself is an old fort used before the fall by the elves to patrol the roads leading to the Last City which was then the capital city of the North. The building itself is large but squat and those that have been inside claim that most of the Fort is deep underground. When you approach the Black Fort for the first time you will get a feeling of tightness in the chest like the very air has been sucked out of your lungs, your skin will begin to prickle and a feeling of anxiety will come over you. Some say this is a warning, others believe that this is the magic from the Black Fort seeping out and affecting the very land around it.

Becoming a Novice

Anyone that shows any affinity to magic must declare themselves to the guild and become a Novice, this involves living and training at the Black Fort until such times as they deem you ready to re-enter the world, this training can take 5, 10

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and even 20 years meaning that Novices come in many ages, though it is said that mages that never progress beyond Novice are expected to offer themselves up as aid to the guild and this means Whatever school of magic you practice, you will that they either become servants or test subjects. learn a number of spells, these spells are given a difficulty number to indicate the complexity of the spell, this is the number that must be beaten Learning by Doing or equalled by rolling the Arcane skill Once the guild has decided that you can return to the world outside the Fort you will then begin The school of magic you follow is often determined moving up the guild ranks. Mages learn by doing, by the Knack you have chosen, and Mages are using what they know in real life situations, unable to learn more than one school of magic in seeking out relics and knowledge and aiding their lifetime, so choose wisely. others is expected. The guilds needs always come first. Like all skills magic uses Levels of Success and Levels of Failure but the results of each can vary from spell to spell. The Agenda The Mages Guild has an agenda, a secret purpose that is only ever told to those novices that have earned the right to represent the guild in the world. This agenda is to make the guild powerful to the point of control over all other things, this is not calling for outright uprising but slow methodical revolution, a coup to place the Black Fort on the throne whatever the cost.

Not Declaring

There are those that have powers that never declare, keep themselves hidden from the guild, and this is possible to do. To deny your power is to never use it and these fall into two categories the first are those that are not aware they have power or have never felt it within themselves, the guild states that this would describe most people as everyone has the ability with a little nudge to discover their power. The second are those that feel the magic coursing through their veins but deny it any release, this can be from fear of the power, or of the guild. You may not wish to become a novice or be tested by the guild, and you would think this would be your choice, but the guild seeks out these hidden mages, claiming it is for the safety of all.

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Schools and Circles

There are three schools a mage can choose from Necromancy, Pyromancy and Sorcery, these three disciplines are then separated into circles of study. Each circle holds a number of spells that the mage must learn before beginning the next. The learning of each circle is determined by the mages Mind and Arcane.

Circle First Second Third

Mind Arcane 3 3 4 4 5 5

A powerful enough mage in both mind and skill can learn many of the circles very quickly, but even mages can only hold so much in their memories which is where the Grimoire comes in.

Your Grimoire

Every mage receives a Grimoire and Scroll Case, the grimoire has a duel purpose, the first is the writing of the spells the mage has learnt and is used for the casting of magic, the other is the writing of notes and discovered texts, so that this knowledge can be returned to the Black Fort intact. The scroll case is used to carry scrolls, as new spells are discovered they will often be offered to the mage in scroll form, the case can also be used to carry any found scrolls to be returned to the Black Fort.

Lost Magic

Magic is still new to the world in human terms and the few spells that each school knows were found by exploring elven ruins and discovering books and scrolls. The Black Fort knows there is

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Casting

There are various methods for casting, and each will have its benefits and drawbacks. All casting no matter the source involves an Arcane vs.. Spell TN roll.

The Black Fort are currently deep in translation of dwarven texts and they believe it leads to a new branch of magic, but it is early days and there are still missing texts yet to be found.

Casting from the Grimoire Each mage learns the spells of their school but copying them into their grimoire. The mage will spend a lot of time studying their grimoires allowing them to cast very quickly as it will be part The Blood Lords and their mages have formed memory using the grimoire as a prompt. A spell Blood Magic, this is thought to be a pure but can be cast each round when using the grimoire. corrupted branch of sorcery. Due to the ancient language the Blood Lords use the magic is Casting from Scrolls impossible to understand and its corrupted power The mage can create or obtain scrolls which have is far to dangerous to study. magical spells inscribed upon them, this allows the mage to carry a number of spells they have not learnt. Scrolls do not disappear once used or turn Spell Cost Every spell has a cost, not just to the world but into a puff of smoke; they can be used repeatedly also to the caster. Magic wears away at a mage but casting from a scroll will take two rnds to do. physically and mentally and can lead to death if not monitored and used responsibly. It can also Casting from Books be dangerous to others, and this means those that As you journey and discover ancient ruins or lost libraries you may find books of magical formulae. are not often a target of a mage. Often found books will be in a language unknown Most spells will absorb Stamina, exhausting the by the mage and must be returned to the Black mage. Reducing the stamina of a mage to zero Fort. Casting directly from a book can take time will have two effects, the first being the temporary as you will need to translate the text, it can also be effect of collapse, reaching zero in stamina will extremely dangerous. Future sourcebooks will go cause the mage to fall unconscious, this will act into lost books and the dangers they hold. as sleep and the stamina will replenish over time. The second effect is physical, each discipline has Casting from Items a point when the magic will take you over in one Some items hold magical spells, how this works way or another, and each mage has 5 chances to is to first transfer power into the item and then avoid this. Each time the mage pushes themselves whispering the spell to be stored. The spell still too far and collapses from exhaustion they need costs to cast but instead of leeching the stamina to cross off a catalyst, these are 5 boxes under of the mage it will take the power from the the Stamina track, once all 5 catalysts have been item. Casting from an item is like casting from a crossed off the mage has become the magic and grimoire, it can happen within a single round for no longer exists. as long as the item has power. The catalyst is different for each discipline with sorcerers becoming arcane energy, Pyromancers will slowly become a living flame and Necromancers shrivel and eventually fall into dust.

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Creating Items and Scrolls

A mage can create ways of making spell casting and storing easier by using scrolls and items which they have created during their downtime.

Creating a Scroll Scrolls allow mages to carry spells they have not learnt and studied; a scroll has no real power it is basically an easy way to read and cast a spell than carrying around a large grimoire. To create a scroll the mage writes the spell on the scroll precisely as it is spoken when cast, this does involve a roll of the Arcane skill and will have the same difficulty as the spell would be to cast as well as the same stamina loss. Example Your mage has discovered a spell in an ancient tome, but instead of carrying the large book around you decide to grab some parchment, ink, and inscribe the spell onto a scroll. The spell TN is 9 so in order to copy the spell onto the scroll you would need to make an Arcane roll Vs. a TN of 9, you would also lose the Stamina cost of the spell.

Once the spell has been inscribed the scroll can be used as often as you like.

power into an item every day, replenishing their stamina through sleep or meditation, and then sending more power the next day and so on. Once the spell has been transferred no more power can be added until the current power is exhausted and then the whole process starts again.

The Danger of Items Items can be unstable and each time an item is used there is a chance it will backfire or just explode. If the Iron Die rolls a 1 for casting the item may explode, with the current power level determining the damage and radius of the explosion. To determine whether the item explodes and what happens if it does reroll the Iron Die on its own and on a roll of a 1 the item does explode. The table below will show the effects of that explosion. Stored Power 01-25 26-50 51-75 76-100

Result

d10 damage in a 5ft radius d10 +3 damage in a 10ft radius 2d10 damage in a 20ft radius 4d10 damage in a 30ft radius

Creating an Item Spells can also be stored inside items, these are normally jewellery, weapons, or staffs. In order to create a magical item first you need to empower it, and this involves transferring stamina to the item. As the mage leeches their own stamina it will enter the item at a one to one ratio, so for four points of stamina the mage leeches, four points of power enters the item. Once the item has been charged the mage must then whisper the spell into the item, this is similar to casting, it has the same difficulty number that needs to be equalled or beaten and takes up the same stamina. Once this has been done the item can cast that spell as long as the power exists. Items do not have a limit to the amount of power they can hold, a mage could spend weeks leeching

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School of Necromancy

he art of Necromancy sprang from the study of death and healing, the surgeries performed by the Black Fort on the corrupted and on those unfortunates consumed by the ice helped build the skills of the budding necromancer. It is also said that those instructions and books discovered in some of the elven prisons and towers used by their own surgeons have aided the Black Fort’s understanding of the melding of flesh and iron as well as the reanimation of dead tissue.

less, if you fail, then you have cured the patient but have now inflicted yourself. Restoring temporary health that has been lost is as simple as a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, a permanent loss cannot be reversed, and you will begin to suffer the more health you lose until eventually, you will literally die for your art, some feel this is acceptable.

The flip side of Necromancy is what is considered illegal within the Last City, and the Below, the The Black Fort hold their studies and resources creation of golems, the raising of the dead and the close to their chest, and it is forbidden for both draining of health are all considered against the novice and mage to speak of their training and laws of the Black Fort. some of the more secretive practices of the guild, but it is strongly believed that the Fort breaks the Necromancy Spells laws and have begun to dabble in more dubious Necromancy spells are listed with a Dark or Light research. or Neutral Descriptor; this will indicate how the spell will be perceived by anyone seeing the Mage performing the spell. Spell cost will not only be in Dangers of Necromancy Every necromancer must understand the risks of stamina but in health if applicable and will state their art and that these risks can be deadly or at whether the loss is temporary (t) or permanent least can wear the Mage down over time if they (p). are not careful. The art of healing can involve transferring of the Mage’s vital essence into the Spell Descriptions and Lists patient, the art of purging diseases and poisons Each spell will have a description of what it does, can cause the Mage also to become infected or how much stamina or how many wounds it costs poisoned. Those necromancers dedicated to to cast and whether that is (t)emporary or (p) aiding others have died at a young age after giving ermanant. their all to their patients. Necromancy is what many consider a tainted art, one which can be used for both good and bad, but unfortunately, the Mage cannot learn the good without also understanding the bad. But whichever path you decide to travel the effects on your health and mind will be the same. Increasing the effect of a spell or exerting yourself will come not only from your stamina but sometimes your health, this can be temporary, but often it is permanent. Permanent loss of health will affect your wounds. Purging a disease or poison will force you to roll resistance against that same disease or poison although at one potency level

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Levels of Success or Failure can be decided by the GM based on how the spell is being used, the circumstances and whether the spell was used for dark reasons or light, as most can be used as both. The following list is the current circles of the Necromancy school and the spells held within.

First Circle All necromancers learn healing and the ability to Purge poisons and disease. Many necromancers never deviate from the healing sphere and spend their lives in the service of others.

LoF 2 - Spell fails but necromancer loses +1 wound 4 - Spell fails and patient takes +2 wounds 6 - As above and the patient takes d6 wounds.

Spell: Healing Aura (Light) TN: 7, Stamina (t): 5 Wound (t): 1 for 1 Some spells will cost the necromancer wounds as Type: Ranged, AoE they transfer their own life force into the patient. The necromancer sends out an aura of healing that will encompass anyone within a 6ft radius of Spell: Cure (Light) the necromancer. The necromancer decides how TN: 5+POT, Stamina (t): 1+ POT many wounds they will heal if successful. Type: Touch The necromancer draws disease from the victim, taking it partially into themselves. This spell will work on all diseases. If successful, the necromancer must roll resistance against the disease, albeit it with a -1 to the disease potency.

LoS 2 - Necromancer heals +1 wound 4 - As above and spells AoE expands by 4ft 6 - Necromancer loses no Stamina and heals +2 wounds.

LoS 2 - Disease POT -2 for resistance 4 - Necromancer does not need to resist disease 6 - Necromancer gains a +1 immunity to the disease permanently

LoF 2 - Spell fails necromancer loses the stamina and wounds. 4 - Spell fails and everyone with 6ft takes 1 wound 6 - Spell explodes and everyone with 6ft takes d6 wounds.

LoF 2 - Spell fails and necromancer must resist disease at full POT 4 - Spell fails Necromancer must resist disease at full POT and also loses +1 stamina 6 - As above and the patient takes d6 wounds.

Spell: Heal (Light) TN: 6, Stamina (t): 3 Wounds (t): 1 for 1 Type: Touch The necromancer transfers his own life force into the target to heal the target’s wounds. This is as simple as laying on of hands on the wounded area. LoS 2 - Necromancer heals +1 wound 4 - Necromancer loses only half the wounds they would normally. 6 - Necromancer loses no Stamina and heals +2 wounds.

Spell: Purge (Light) TN: 5 + POT, Stamina (t): 1 + POT Type: Touch The necromancer draws out any poisons from the victim taking the poison partially into their own body. The necromancer will need to roll a resistance against the poison but at a -1-potency level. LoS 2 - Poison POT -2 for Resistance 4 - Necromancer does not need to resist poison 6 - Necromancer gains a permanent +1 when resisting the particular poison.

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Second Circle To understand the discipline necromancers must also learn those spells that are considered forbidden. Necromancers that focus fully on this sphere are often seen as evil mages.

Spell: Drain (Dark) TN: 8, Stamina (t): 1 for every one Stamina Drained Type: Touch The necromancer can drain the life (Stamina) from a victim using that life to heal their own stamina . The stamina can come from any living creature that is within 10ft of the necromancer. Draining all stamina will kill the victim.

Spell: Wound (Dark) TN: 9, Stamina (t): 2 per d4 wounds Type: Ranged The necromancer can cause physical wounds to open up on the target these will not stun or stagger the target but will act like wounds in every other way, modifiers etc. Spell ignores armour. LoS 2 - Necromancer inflicts +1 wound 4 - Necromancer inflicts +2 wounds 6 - Necromancer inflicts + 4 wounds LoF 2 - Spell fails necromancer takes 1d4 wounds 4 - Spell fails necromancer takes 1d6 wounds 6 - Spell fails everyone within 6ft of necromancer takes d4 wounds.

Spell: Shatter (Dark) TN: 7, Stamina (t): 5 Type: Ranged

The necromancer can shatter bone inside the body of the target, this will cause d10 wounds and also crippling effects to movement and using LoS weapons (reduces movement and skills to half ). 2 - Necromancer receives +1 stamina more than The necromancer should declare the location that they attempted to drain. they wish to shatter. Uses called shot modifiers 4 - Necromancer can transfer the drained stamina into another being, this will involve LoS casting Heal but with no Wound loss. (they can 2 - Bone Shatters and causes +2 wounds only replace up to what they have drained) 4 - Bone Shatters and target is down and out. 6 - As above but necromancer does not need to 6 - Bone Shatters and cannot be healed. cast the Heal spell, just touch the injured party LoF LoF 2 - Spell fails and is directed at a nearby ally. 2 - Spell fails necromancer transfers 1 stamina 4 - Spell fails and rebounds onto caster to the target. 6 - Spell fails boosting targets wounds by +3 for 4 - Spell fails necromancer transfers d6 stamina six rnds. to target 6 - Spell fails as above and the necromancer loses an extra d4 stamina.

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Spell: Sensory Death (Dark) TN: 9, Stamina (t): 4 Type: Ranged The necromancer destroys the targets senses, the caster must choose the sense they wish to destroy, be it sight, hearing, smell, or taste (touch cannot be destroyed). On a success that particular sense is removed and modifiers to the target applied. Effect lasts d10 rnds. LoS 2 - Targets loses sense for an extra 2 rnds 4 - Target also loses a second sense, Necromancer’s choice. 6 - Target loses the sense permanently LoF 2 - Spell fails and targets senses are instead improved 4 - Spell fails and rebounds on caster for same effect. 6 - Spell fails and affects everyone within 6ft of caster both friend and foe.

Third Circle Ultimate goal of every Necromancer is to beat death and decay and this is often done in the sphere of Rebirth. This is an extension of the Healing sphere, but can if used in certain ways also extend within the Death Sphere.

Spell: Corpse Tongue (Neutral) TN: 7 + Age, Stamina (t): 3 Type: Touch The necromancer can commune with a corpse, ask the corpse a single yes/no question on a subject they would know or have some knowledge of. The corpse age affects the TN. 1-5yrs +1 6-10yrs +2 11-50yrs +3 51 to 100yrs +4

LoS 2 - Corpse will answer a second question 4 - Corpse will answer a third question 6 - Corpse will answer a fourth and fifth question in detail LoF 2 - Spell fails Corpse answers but it may not be true, roll a d6 1-4 it is a lie, 5-6 it is true. 4 - Spell fails but corpse answers with a lie 6 - Spell fails and the corpse curses the caster, the necromancer is at -2 to all skill checks for d6 days

Spell: Regenerate (Neutral) TN: 9, Stamina (t): 7, Wounds (t): 4 Type: Touch The necromancer can attempt to regenerate a lost limb or organ. The process takes up to 2 hours of concentration by the necromancer with each ten minutes calling for a new skill roll to continue the spell. The stamina and wound loss is for completing the spell, you should adjust the loss if the spell fails. LoS 2 - Spell Success and stamina loss only 5 4 - Spell success and wound loss is halved 6 - As above and patient is +1 for actions involving regenerated limb or organ LoF 2 - Spell fails stamina loss +1 4 - Spell fails wound loss +1 6 - Spell fails stamina and wound loss +2

Necromancy Rituals Rituals take time and effort compared to standard spells, the necromancer needs total concentration for sometimes days at a time and a number of props and other items in order to complete the ritual. At any point the ritual is disturbed or stopped everything must start afresh and everything used up to that point is lost including stamina and wounds.

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The Black Iron Ritual: Create Golem Time: 36 hrs. TN: 10. Stamina (t) 1 every 5hrs, Wound (t): 6 Props: Body parts, corpse ash, surgery tools, skinners kit, 8 pints of fresh blood. The necromancer must arrange the body parts on a table or flat surface before beginning the ritual. Once the ritual begins the necromancer must slowly empty the corpse ash and blood over the parts after stitching each part of the body together all done whilst reciting the ritual at all times. As long as no mistakes were made the golem can then be empowered by the necromancer’s own vitality (wounds) after which the golem should awaken. The success of the ritual will determine the abilities of the golem, but a basic golem will follow simple orders (go there, lift that, follow me) but will need to be refreshed each day with 2 pints of blood and 1 wounds of the necromancer.

LoS 2 – Golem can follow more complex commands, drive a carriage, recognise items and so forth 4 – Golem is as above but can also communicate in a basic way with caster. 6 – Golem is as above and only needs 1 pint of blood per day, without close scrutiny golem looks alive.

mental function with these being supplied by the necromancer. *For every corpse above the first that is reanimated the wounds and stamina increases by 1.

LoS 2 – Corpse has +1 wounds 4 – As above with a +1 to attack 6 – As above with +2 wounds and +2 attack LoF 2 - Ritual fails and caster loses +1 stamina 4 - Ritual fails corpse/s animate and turn on caster 6 - Ritual fails as above but corpse/s have +2 wounds and +2 to attack. Ritual: Resurrect Time: 24 hrs. TN: 10. Stamina (t) 6, Wound (t): 6 + 2 (p)* Props: Four pints of blood, all corpses belongings The necromancer can resurrect a recently deceased target to a point where they can accept normal healing to repair any injuries. The target must have died within 12 hrs. in order for it to return to its normal self. A Target will often return with memory loss of the last d6 days.

LoF *To return target to 1 wound will cost the caster 2 2 - Body parts are ruined and will need to be wounds permanently. replaced. 4 - Golem stutters into life but it is a drooling, LoS corrupted thing that will attempt to flee. 2 – Target awakens with 4 wounds and only d4 6 - Golem lives but is insane, it will attack caster memory loss and anyone nearby (see Flesh Golem). 4 – As above with no memory loss 6 – As above and caster only lose 1 wound Ritual: Reanimate permanently. Time: 2 hrs. LoF TN: 8. Stamina (t) 4, Wounds (t): 4* 2 - Ritual fails target cannot be resurrected. Props: Corpse ash. 4 - Ritual fails caster loses 3 wounds permanently The necromancer reanimates a nearby corpse that 6 - Ritual fails as above but caster also loses 2 is then controlled by the necromancer for a short stamina permanently. amount of time (d4 days). Reanimated corpses continue to keep any physical abilities but lose all

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C

School of Pyromancy

onsidered the noble art by many and this is due mostly to the fact that Pyromancy is what keeps the ice and corruption from the gates of the city, pyromancy is the hardest and most devastating of the three magical disciplines. Pyromancy began out of necessity with the encroaching ice the Last City needed to find a way to protect itself, discoveries found in the dwarven ruins indicated a form of magic that used the energy of fire that would allow a mage to channel that energy and release it in a different form. After years of study it was discovered that the energy that fuelled fire was not much different than the energy coursing through living things and pyromancy was born. Early experiments resulted in the Pyromancers pushing themselves too hard and this led to early death, this was unfortunate as those that could harness the energy were rare, but when it was discovered that the heart of the Pyromancer continued to burn after death the sun spires were invented and the barrier that kept the Last City safe was erected. Unfortunately, the sun spires need replenishing, and this relies upon sacrifices by the Pyromancers. Many Pyromancers who suffer injury or become too old will offer their hearts for the city, and because of this pyromancy is the most respected discipline taught by the Black Fort

Dangers of Pyromancy

Children are taught not to play with fire and for good reason it will burn and engulf you, and this is something every novice learns during the study of Pyromancy. Apart from the obvious dangers of trying to control huge amounts of fiery energy the use of fire will slowly engulf the mage, starting as a ball of heat in the stomach and blossoming out to slowly turn the mage into a living flame and then finally energy itself. Over the years this immolation has been slowed and a careful Pyromancer can live for many years studying and practicing the art.

Pyromancy Spells

All pyromancy spells are performed using stamina to determine how many spells can be cast and how frequently they can be used. Some spells are area of effect spells and these can be dangerous not just to the mage but to those around them. Fire is an uncontrollable force that the mage is trying to master, and it takes a lot of effort to stop it raging out of control.

Pyromancy Rituals

There are no pyromancy rituals as trying to harness flame for long period of time would cause a massive build-up of energy that would eventually become unstable and erupt. Many rooms and areas were destroyed in the early studies before this was considered a bad idea.

Pyromancy and the Catalyst

The catalyst for the pyromancer works differently to other schools of magic, each of the 5 catalysts leaves a marked effect on the mage. First Catalyst - Mage has red markings on their skin which appear as blotches. Second Catalyst - Mage sweats profusely and their breathe is hotter than normal. Third Catalyst - The eyes of the pyromancer are likes flickering flames and their touch burns. Fourth Catalyst - Mage is robed in flames, no longer able to wear clothing or grow hair, the mage burns contunually, it is at this point the mage would normally donate their hearts. Fifth Catalyst - The mage has become living flame and is no longer in control, they are absorbed into the Aether.

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The Black Iron

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First Circle Pyromancy is about temperature as much as it is about flame, and every Pyromancer novice learns to control their own body temperature as well as the temperature around them.

Spell: Absorb TN: 7, Stamina (t): 1 Type: Ranged, AoE 10ft+ The pyromancers can absorb all the heat in an area, causing the location to freeze. The amount of stamina loss is 1 per 10ft area. The Pyromancer must expel the heat elsewhere and can do this by casting melt, Jet, or Ball. For each round that the heat is not expelled the caster loses 1 wound. LoS 2 - Stamina loss is halved (rounded up) 4 - Heat can be held for 2 rnds without wound loss 6 - Caster can cast either Jet or Melt immediately without a need to roll. LoF 2 - Spell fails and stamina cost is doubled 4 - Spell fails but heat is absorbed causing 2 wounds per round. 6 - Spell fails heat is absorbed and explodes from the caster causing d6 damage per stamina used to everyone within 10ft.

Spell: Boil TN: 6, Stamina (t): 1 Type: Ranged, AoE 10ft+ The Pyromancer can boil any fluid nearby, this will include everything from water to blood, the distance of the fluid can delay the process. Fluids within 10ft of the Mage will boil within a round and for every 10ft beyond another round is added. Sustaining the boil will cost 1 stamina per rnd of boiling. Boil is also an AoE spell with a standard casting covering a 10ft area. When boiling blood or some other bodily fluid all targets within the A0E take d6 damage per rnd as long as the spell is sustained.

LoS 2 - Range increases to 12 ft and AoE increases to 15ft. 4 - Target will take 2d6 damage per round 6 - As above plus the AoE doubles LoF 2 - Spell fails and caster loses double the stamina 4 - Spell fails and caster takes d6 damage from their own blood boiling. 6 - Spell fails and everyone within 10ft of the caster takes d6 damage as their blood boils.

Spell: Burn TN: 7, Stamina (t): 2+ Type: Touch This allows the caster to burn what they touch, damage inflicted is equal to number of stamina points used by the mage, with a d4 for each point. Items like wood, paper, and foliage will burn as expected, wet items will take +1 stamina to burn and items soaked in oil will take -1 stamina to burn. Targets wearing metal armour will not burn but they will begin to boil within their armour with effects similar to the Boil spell. Leather armours will burn causing 2 breaks per rnd. LoS 2 - Stamina loss is halved. 4 - Damage increases to 2d4 per round 6 - Burn targets will also receive the effects of the Boil spell. LoF 2 - Spell fails double the stamina lost. 4 - Spell fails casters clothes catch alight, d4 damage 6 - Spell fails as above with 2d4 damage

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The Black Iron Spell: Melt TN: 7, STL: 2 Type: Ranged, AoE 2ft Pyromancer can melt any substance from ice to iron, stamina loss will vary from 1 to 5 depending on what the mage is attempting to melt, (Ice covered watering hole 1, Iron Bar 3, etc). Metal armours can also be melted with anyone wearing the armour taking Boil damage LoS 2 - Stamina loss is halved 4 - Mage can reshape Iron 6 - As above but AoE is doubled LoF 2 - Spell fails double the stamina lost 4 - Spell fails any metal on caster melts 6 - Spell fails as above but effects everyone or thing within 5ft of caster.

Second Circle The control of fire and how to form and manipulate it in order to turn it into a tool and a weapon.

Spell: Ball TN: 7, Stamina (t): 1+ Type: Ranged 10ft, AoE

LoS 2 - Diameter increase 2ft for no extra cost 4 - Damage is increased 2d6 for no extra stamina 6 - Both diameter and damage are doubled LoF 2 - Spell fails and double the stamina is lost 4 - Spell fails and spell explodes in front of caster 6 - Spell fails and ball expands to double the size and damage then explodes in front of caster.

Spell: Ignite TN: 6, Stamina (t): 1+ Type: Ranged 10ft The Pyromancer can make a flammable object nearby ignite. Candles, torches, dry bushes even trees can be forced to burst into flame. Objects doused in oil will burst into flame with less effort (-1 Stamina). The range can be increased by exerting more stamina, but the standard range is 10ft for every stamina point used. LoS 2 - Spell costs less to cast 4 - Caster can ignite two extra objects in the area 6 - Caster can ignite four extra objects in the area LoF 2 - Spell fails and caster loses double the stamina 4 - Spell fails as above and the object burns out 6 - Spell fails and caster ignites nearest party member.

The Pyromancer can form a ball of fire and then throw it as a weapon. This spell will absorb heat around the mage temporarily and can be combined with the Absorb spell. The more heat absorbed, and the more stamina used the larger Spell: Jet TN: 8, STL: 1+ the ball of flame and the more damage done. Type: Ranged 3ft x 2ft For every stamina point used in the spell the damage increases by d6 damage. The Pyromancer launches a jet of fire from their palm, this follows the same rules as the Ball For every 2ft area of heat around the mage absorbed spell with the amount of heat absorbed and the the ball grows an extra foot in diameter, which in turn number of stamina used to determine the length affects the AoE of the spell. Creating a 20ft diameter and damage of the jet. fireball will need to absorb heat from a 40ft radius, and if it does 10d6 damage that will cost 10 stamina. For every 1 ft of heat absorbed the jet extends an extra 2ft from the casters palm, and with every 1 stamina pt used damage is increased by d6. The

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end of the jet can be made to cover a wider cone by expanding a further point of stamina per 1ft spread. LoS 2 - Range and damage is increased one step for no extra stamina cost. 4 - Only half of the stamina needed is used 6 - Cone of jet extends outward for 20ft and does 2d6 damage to all it engulfs. LoF 2 - Spell fails and casters hand bursts into flame causing d4 damage per rnd 4 - Spell fails as above but d6 damage 6 - Spell fails and reverses engulfing anyone within 20ft of caster in flames and causing 2d6 damage per round.

Spell: Wall TN: 9, Stamina (t): 1+ Type: Touch 3ft x 3ft x 1ft The Pyromancer creates a wall of flame, this can be straight or curved, thick or thin. Anything passing through the wall will take fire damage. The wall starts as a 3ft tall, 3ft long and 1ft thick wall of flame with each dimension being expanded 1ft per stamina point used. The walls thickness will take time to pass through causing more damage to any that do. LoS 2 - Wall burns extra bright and causes 2d6 damage to anyone passing through it per round 4 - Wall can be moved by the caster 6 - Wall will stand for d6 rounds without any stamina use by the caster (effectively allowing the caster to place it and walk away).

Third Circle The ability to cause the very air to burst into flame or intense heat is to manipulate the very laws of the universe and to risk a misfire or self-immolation.

Spell: Explode TN: 9, Stamina (t): 1+ Type: Ranged The Pyromancer causes any nearby flame to explode outward, causing damage to anyone nearby. As the caster forces more stamina into the spell the explosion becomes larger and more intense, to the point when a simple candle could blow apart a building. Source Candle Torch Camp-fire Burning Building

STL 1 1 2 4

AoE 1ft 3ft 6ft 15ft

Damage 1d4 1d6 2d6 5d6

Extra stamina will increase AoE and Damage by 1 step. LoS 2 - Spell increases 1 step without extra stamina cost 4 - All flames in the area explode spontaneously. 6 - Spell increase 2 steps without extra stamina cost LoF 2 - Spell fails and caster loses double the stamina 4 - Spell fails and flame nearest to caster explodes 6 - Spell fails as above with double damage

LoF 2 - Spell fails and caster loses double the stamina 4 - Spell fails caster transfers 5 stamina to nearest corrupted horror. 6 - Spell fails as above and caster gains one corruption point.

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The Black Iron Spell: Flash TN: 7, Stamina (r): 1+ Type: Ranged, AoE

Spell: Trap TN: 10, Stamina (t): 2+ Type: AoE

The Pyromancer throws an orb of light which flashes after travelling a number of feet based on stamina spent (1 per 5ft). The light when activated stuns everyone in a 20ft radius for 2d6 rnds.

The Pyromancer marks an area of a floor, wall or door with a sigil that when passed by anyone other than the caster will detonate causing 3d6 fire damage, by spending twice as much stamina the caster can choose to have a delayed detonation or a double detonation with each detonation doing 2d6 fire damage.

LoS 2 - Radius increases to 30ft 4 - As above and stun lasts 3d6 rounds 6 -As above plus all stunned take d6 damage also. LoF 2 - Spell fails lose double the stamina 4 - Spell fails and casters party are stunned d6 rnds 6 - Spell fails and caster party are stunned 2d6 rnds

Spell: Heat Seeker TN: 10, Stamina (r): 1+ Type: Ranged The Pyromancer sends a spear of energy at a preselected target, this bolt of energy will follow the target for as long as it has stamina charging it (1 stamina per 2 rounds of travel) or it strikes the target causing 5d6 damage. The spear will only travel in a straight path. LoS 2 - Spear will travel around corners 4 - Spear can now pass through walls and doors 6 - Spear will pass through living beings causing d6 damage to each. LoF 2 - Spell fails and double stamina lost 4 - Spell fails spear targets innocent NPC 6 - Spell fails spear targets member of party

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LoS 2 - Only half stamina lost 4 - Sigil detonates with double damage 6 - As above but with 1 extra detonation LoF 2 - Spell fails double stamina lost 4 - Spell fails and explodes causing damage to caster 6 - Spell fails as above but with double damage

T

School of Sorcery

he art of sorcery leads back to the arcane magic studied and created in some part by the elves and passed on to them by the death of the giants. The elves had used sorcery for decades to experiment, torture and enslave humans, so the study of it by the Black Fort is considered dangerous and the following of a dark path. The mages guild has attempted to justify this study by claiming that to understand the elves and what they did involves studying how they did it and maybe once understood gain the ability to reverse it. This explanation may appease some but not everyone.

Sorcery is linked to the corruption and in some way to every living thing in the Pale, including the Blood Lords who practice a darker and more dangerous form of the art themselves, called Blood Magic, and many of the Warlocks that control the cults will be fluent in this dark magic. What is unspoken is the similarities between Blood Magic and Sorcery, and how often they cross paths. To practice sorcery is to accept and be open to corruption, more sorcerers fall to corruption than mages of the other two paths combined, and this alone speaks of how dangerous the study of sorcery can be to those weak willed or morally flexible. It is also believed that Cultists will actively tempt sorcerers to join their cause offering power and knowledge in exchange for giving themselves to the Blood Lords.

The Black Fort pay highly for elven texts and relics in the hope of expanding their knowledge and use of sorcery, after all it was sorcery that created the Chimeer, the corrupted and possibly even the Blood Lords, and imagine what the mages could achieve by fully understanding the magic and Sorcery Spells rituals involved in the art. The study of sorcery teaches three circles of power and it is said that each one takes the mage closer The worries of many is not just what the mages to the ancients. Many presume that the ancients intend this power for but what have they already refers to the Giants that first created the discipline, attempted in trying to learn and harness it. Tales but in recent years study has shown that maybe have come from the Black Fort of diabolical the Remnant are also linked in some way. experiments, strange noises and weather patterns that seem to emanate from the Mages fortress, and All sorcery spells use stamina for casting, and they the strange and sometimes disorientating feeling vary from touch to ranged. Due to its ancient roots that many get as they pass by the Black Fort. many spells will skirt what some would consider Being a sorcerer is to be both feared and despised, few sorcerers are seen as heroes or saviours but are often viewed to be as dangerous and untrustworthy as the elves themselves and every novice that follows this path is warned that the path is not easy.

‘light’ magic and the sorcerer will face corruption as a real threat as the use of sorcery can attract the corrupted and the corruption.

Sorcery can both alert and invite corruption, to alert means that any corrupted monsters nearby will sense the spell and move towards it. To invite means that the very spell itself can corrupt the Dangers of Sorcery caster and a resistance roll (TN 10) must be made The study of sorcery is dangerous and is possibly to resist it. the most dangerous path of all, it is also the study of something that is truly ancient. The origins of sorcery begins with the giants and their sorcery tainted blood is what formed the elves, or so the stories say.

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The Black Iron

First Circle The first circle is the discipline of protection and defence, most sorcerers learn at least one spell from this circle in the beginning in order to prolong their lives against attacks from both friend and foe alike.

Spell: Protection TN: 7, Stamina (t): 2 per rnd Type: Self Corrupted: Alerted The mage creates an invisible force that surrounds themselves and protects them from all damage both physical and magical. The spell lasts for as long as the mage has stamina to keep it active. The mage cannot cast or take any actions whilst sustaining this spell. LoS 2 - The stamina cost is halved 4 - The Spell allows the mage to move and will move with them 6 - The mage can perform actions but not cast spells. LoF 2 - Spell fails and double the stamina is lost (4) 4 - Spell fails and the shield explodes with an AoE of 5ft and causing d6 damage 6 - Spell fails and explodes with an A0E of 10ft and causes 2d6 damage

Spell: Push TN: 8, Stamina (t): 1 per 50Ib/5ft Type: Touch Corruptied: Alert

LoS 2 - The spell pushes back the target an extra 5ft 4 - The spell affects two targets 6 - The mage can choose to lift the target up to the push back range. LoF 2 - Spell fails and mage loses double the stamina 4 - Spell fails and mage is pushed back instead 6 - Spell fails and everyone within 20ft of the mage is pushed back.

Spell: Shield TN: 7, Stamina (t): 1 per 10pts of damage Type: Self Corrupted: Alert The mage creates a shield in front of themselves or someone else. Unlike Protection this spell only protects the caster or target in one direction, it does not surround the user. The shield can protect against 10 points of damage per 1 stamina used, once it has deflected the max amount of damage it protects against the spell shatters. LoS 2 - The shields protection increases by 5 pts 4 - When the shield is hit the Melee attacker takes d4 damage. 6 - As above but attacker takes 2d4 damage LoF 2 - Spell fails and double stamina lost 4 - Spell fails and random enemy receives the shield at 10pt protection 6 - Spell fails and two random enemies receive the shield at 10pt protection.

Spell: Warding TN: 7, Stamina (t): 1 +1 per 25ft Range The mage converts their stamina into kinetic Type: AoE energy and pushes away the object or opponent, Corrupted: Alert without touching them. For every 1 stamina used the caster can push back a target of up to 50 Lbs The mage creates a sigil and places it on a wall, five feet back, the more stamina converted the floor, or entrance. If anyone other than the mage heavier the target and the further the distance. passes the sigil the sorcerer will be alerted. The range of the Ward is 25ft per stamina used and placing the ward costs 1 stamina to do.

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LoS 2 - Range of the Warding is doubled 4 - The Warding does d6 damage against any trespassers within its range 6 - The warding does 2d6 damage to any trespassers and the range is doubled LoF 2 - Spell fails and double stamina lost 4 - Spell fails as above and a roll of 1-3 on the Iron Die will alert nearby corrupted 6 - Spell fails as above except a roll of 1-4 alerts nearby corrupted.

Second Circle The mage learns to control forces which will allow them to move themselves and others.

Spell: Kinesis TN: 8, Stamina (t): 1 per 25Ib and throw 10ft Type: Ranged Corrupted: Alert

Spell: Levitate TN: 7, Stamina (t): 1 per 5ft rise/1pt per rnd Type: Self Corrupted: Alert The mage can levitate up to 5ft above ground per stamina point used and can travel horizontally up to their movement base, crippling injuries have no effect on levitation. Mages can perform actions whilst levitating and the effect will last one round per extra stamina point used. LoS 2 - Stamina loss halved 4 - Mage can double their movement base 6 - Mage can triple their movement base LoF 2 - Spell fails and double stamina lost 4 - Spell fails and mage loses the use of their legs for d4 rnds. 6 - Spell fails as above but extends to 2d4 rnds

Spell: Spirit Path The mage can lift distant objects and either move TN: 9, Stamina (t): 6 them or throw them. This spell will not allow Type: Self delicate manipulation of an item such as placing a Corrupted: -Invite key in a lock. This spell works similar to Push and with every 1 stamina used the mage can lift and The mage can enter a spirit world that runs move up to 25Ibs in weight and move or throw it alongside their own and bypass locations in the 10ft. real world. The spirit path is often seen as a silver path in a world of darkness. The mage must have LoS a clear idea of their destination in order for the 2 - Stamina loss is halved spirit path to form. This Is often used to avoid 4 - Throw distance is doubled dangerous locations or even armies, allowing the 6 - Mage can suspend object in the air for d6 mage to reach their chosen destination safely. rounds without stamina loss. LoF 2 - Spell fails and double stamina is lost 4 - Spell fails and the mage takes d6 damage from strain 6 - Spell fails and mage is unable to move for d10 rnds, can take no actions and feels rooted to the spot.

LoS 2 - Stamina loss is halved 4 - Mage gains +1 corruption resistance 6 - Mage can take another person with them on the path. LoF 2 - Spell fails and double stamina lost 4 - Spell fails and player rolls an Iron Die, on a roll of 1-2 nearby threats are alerted. 6 - Spell fails as above and if corruption resistance fails the mage gains +2 corruption

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The Black Iron Spell: Teleport TN: 10, Stamina (t): Varies Type: Varies Corrupted: Alert The mage can teleport themselves and others to a place they can either see or know of. The stamina cost varies based on distance and how many are to be teleported, see table below. Range in Miles