Guardians Guild Specialties

Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.4 Draft

The Guardians Guild's mechanical layer: the Opening Ability granted on joining, and the Specialties a Guardians Guild Character can buy afterward. The Guild's vocation and its five-rung rank lore live in setting/guilds. Note that the Guardians Guild is distinct from the Warden combat Class; see setting/guilds, Guardians. How joining a Guild and buying its Specialties works is in character-creation, Advancement.

Opening Ability: The Tabard

A Guardian Tabard is Guild-issued, not personally owned or crafted; a Character holds one only while the Guardians' authority grants it. While worn, a Fall costs no Life, the same mercy a Wellspring grants (core-rules, Part Twelve); the mercy is absolute, and a Coup de Grace does not override it. The Tabard is the risk, not a cooldown: it can be lost, damaged, stolen, or recalled by the Guild, and the mercy ends the moment it is.

The Tabard binds as much as it protects. While wearing it, the Character cannot lie, steal, or commit another unjust act; no roll, no choice, the compulsion is absolute for as long as it's worn. The only way to act against it is to take the Tabard off first, a real beat in the fiction (removing it is at minimum a Free Interaction, not an instant declaration mid-lie), which also ends the death-mercy the moment it happens. This is what makes the power sit differently than a Wellspring: it costs the Character something every single time it protects them, not just the once, when it's stolen.

Guild Retainer

Joining the Guild grants the right to recruit a Guardians Retainer into your Company (companies-and-command, Part Five). It uses the Shieldbearer base stat line and advances as a Shieldbearer (companies-and-command, Part Three), with one difference true to the Guild: it is trained rather than levied and carries 3 Hit Points instead of 2. This is the one Guild Retainer whose perk touches the combat stat line rather than sitting beside it. Provisional and untested.

Specialties

Detective

3 Advancement Points. Once per session, when the Character formally questions someone about a crime, a wrongdoing, or whether a Ritual is legitimate, that person must answer honestly or visibly refuse. No roll; the Guardian's authority makes evasion obvious. (Working name Authority of the Badge before it found its Guild Rank name.)

Sergeant and Lieutenant

Reserved Specialty names on the Guardians' rank ladder (see setting/guilds, Guardians), not yet designed. Tracked in open-questions. [PLAYTEST]

Changelog

• 2026-08-06: Corrected the Tabard mercy to be absolute; a Coup de Grace no longer denies it (aligned with core-rules Parts Eleven and Twelve).
• 2026-08-06: Added the Guild Retainer section (base stat line, advancement, and the Guild perk), moved here from companies-and-command, Part Five. This Retainer is the one deliberate combat-stat exception, carrying 3 Hit Points.
• 2026-08-05: Created. Guardians Guild mechanics moved here from setting/guilds as part of the per-Guild Specialties split.