Guilds¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.3 Draft¶
Guild is the vocation and social-identity layer, separate from Class. Class governs combat: what a Character's Pool does, what they read in it. Guild governs everything else: who trusts a Character, what doors open to them, what favors they can call in, what non-combat expertise they bring to the table. Any Character, regardless of Class, belongs to a Guild.
Seven Guilds are established for v1. Two more (Heralds, Guides) are strong candidates, held back for now; see open-questions.
Joining a Guild grants standing plus two things: the universal perk (the right to recruit a Retainer of that Guild's type into your Company; see companies-and-command, Part Five) and a personal Opening Ability, small and immediate, distinct from the larger Guild Specialty a Character can earn later (The Priest's Hand, for instance). All seven Opening Abilities below are provisional and untested.
Thief¶
Breaking in, getting out, and knowing what a lock, a guard rotation, or a mark's habits are worth. The Thief's territory is property and access: what should not be reachable, and how to reach it anyway.
Opening Ability. Once per session, the Character simply has a way in: a contact, a sewer route, a friendly guard who owes them. No roll; it is declared true.
Guild Rank, not found in canon. The Golden Rose's source material names two singular leadership roles, the Thornkeeper and the Master of Flowers, but no mid-tier personal rank ladder for ordinary members the way Guardians, Bards, and Alchemists have. Not building a ladder here rather than inventing one unsupported by canon; see open-questions.
Mage¶
The Guild home for the Witch's kind of power, and for anyone who studies the uncanny rather than merely wielding it in a fight. Covers lore of the Mists, the old bargains, and the standing that lets a Character be taken seriously when they claim to know something true about magic. The Guild's communal, ceremonial magic, Ritual casting through seven Components (Circle, Silence, Word, Flame, Root, Blood, Bone), is a bigger Specialty a Mage Guild Character builds toward; see character-creation/rituals.
Aspect. A Mage Guild Character's personal expression of their power: how their magic looks and feels to someone watching it happen. Chosen at Guild entry, purely flavor, as light as a Priest's Domain or a Character's Lineage. Named Aspect rather than the source material's "Focus" to avoid colliding with the Ranger Class's own Focus resource; see style-guide. A starting menu, meant to grow alongside Domain (see open-questions): blood, song, fae illusion, carved runes, a half-understood relic device, mirrors, smoke, a familiar's borrowed voice.
Volition. The name for the arcane force a Mage channels while leading a Ritual: not a separately tracked resource, just the in-fiction name for what the lead Character's Wits-tier Casting Pool represents when a working succeeds. Leading a Ritual requires Mage Guild standing because only a Mage can anchor a working to the Mists' own currents; other Guild Participants in the circle lend their own Guild's flavor of power instead, which is exactly why a Priest's contribution is called Verbum rather than Volition. See character-creation/rituals, Guild Participants.
Opening Ability. A passive sense for the uncanny. No roll required to notice when something in a scene is mist-touched: a ward, a cursed object, a fae bargain.
Guild Rank, flagged rather than built. Canon's own Mage ladder is trainee-then-Mage, and canon's own word for the trainee rung is "Apprentice," the same word already locked to the Mage Guild's Retainer type (companies-and-command, Part Five; style-guide). Reusing it for a Mage Guild Character's own personal rank would overload a term that's supposed to mean one specific thing. Not building a Mage Guild Rank ladder until this is resolved, either a different name for the personal rank or a case for why the collision is fine in context; see open-questions.
Specialty: Appraising Eye. 3 Advancement Points. Migrated from the Legends Sage (Chemical Breakdown) and placed here rather than left open, because reading what a working actually does is the Mage's own knowledge. You may study a consumable, a lingering magical effect, or an enchanted object and learn whether its effect is beneficial, harmful, or inert, and roughly how long it lasts. This is knowledge, not disarming: it tells you what a thing does, not how to stop it. Extends the Guild's passive Opening Ability, which only notices that something is mist-touched, into active identification, the Character-facing counterpart to the Apprentice Retainer's identify perk (companies-and-command, Part Five). See sage-migration.md.
Priest¶
Faith, rite, and the vocabulary of the sacred. Covers standing within a temple or order, the authority to bless, witness, or condemn, and the social apparatus around death, oaths, and the Mists that a temple would care about. The Priest's Hand (in-combat revival) lives here, not in any Class.
Faith: Religion or Cult. A Priest Character chooses whether their faith is an established Religion, with its own temple, clergy, and a patron deity already known to the world, or a Cult they are personally building from nothing. No mechanical difference yet; this is a flavor choice carrying the same light weight as Lineage. Every Priest, Religion or Cult, communes with a deity of their own; Hynafol confirms no single, shared pantheon. Nothing about a Priest's patron confirms or denies anything about the Mists themselves. Whether any deity has a hand in the Mists' workings is exactly as unconfirmed in-fiction as everything else about their origin; see 00-design/03_The_Mists and open-questions.
Domain. A Domain names what a Priest's patron represents: the essence their faith is built around. Chosen at Guild entry, purely a naming and flavor choice for now, deliberately as light as Lineage. A starting menu, meant to grow to 30 or more entries over time (see open-questions): the Vow, the Passage, the Hearth, the Judgment, the Long Vigil, the Hunt, the Harvest, the Salt Road, the Nine Bells, the Unspoken Name.
Verbum. Power granted through devotion rather than personal force, drawn from a Priest's own followers rather than from the Priest alone. A Retainer in a Priest Character's Company may Pray instead of fighting on their turn. This contributes no die to the Company's Pool that turn, the same state as a Retainer who is Disarmed or out of range (core-rules, Part Eight), except freely chosen rather than forced. Praying requires no roll: each praying Retainer simply generates 1 Verbum, banked immediately and available for the Priest to spend right away. Verbum accumulates across a fight and resets between fights, the same convention as the Witch's Mana. What Verbum can be spent on is a growing list of Priest abilities, not yet built; see open-questions.
Opening Ability. A blessing, not a heal. Once per rest, grant an ally one extra die (+1d6) on their next roll.
Guild Rank. Canon's three-rung clergy ladder: Cleric (the rank granted on joining), Priest, High Priest. Reaching Priest is what earning The Priest's Hand as a Specialty represents fictionally, so The Priest's Hand doubles as this Guild's Priest-rank Specialty rather than needing a second name. High Priest is a singular, campaign-scale position (an Avatar of their deity, and canon ties heavy use of that power to the deity eventually consuming them), tied to the already-logged Priest-led Rituals and corruption-cost questions rather than a normal Specialty purchase; see open-questions. The High Priest's signature power is Reclaimed by the Mist, below.
High Priest Ability: Reclaimed by the Mist. [PLAYTEST] Not a routine Advancement purchase but the power the High Priest rank confers, the way The Priest's Hand represents reaching Priest. Reimagined from the Legends Sage's Breath of Time (an in-combat heal-and-reset) and re-themed onto Hynafol's own cosmology: the High Priest borrows, early, the mercy the Mists normally grant only between fights.
Flavor. You open your hands and the Mists answer, not with mercy earned but with mercy borrowed. Your people are made whole where they stand, wounds closing as if the fight had already ended. The Mists always collect what they lend.
Effect. No more than once per Combat, as your Action, call the Mists to reclaim the still-standing: every ally and Retainer within a set range is restored to full Hit Points and freed of every Condition (Weakened, Slowed, Stunned, Blinded), exactly as the Mists close wounds between fights (core-rules, Part Thirteen). It does not raise the Fallen; it saves those not yet down.
Cost, deliberately heavy. Two prices, both paid every time. First, spend a large sum of banked Verbum (a threshold set high enough that the Priest's Retainers must have Prayed rather than fought to fuel it); this is the first real Verbum sink, the growing list of Verbum abilities begun here. Second, each use marks one step of the deity's claim: after the third use across the Character's whole life, the deity consumes the Priest, an Avatar's end, and the Character is claimed by the Mists and removed from play, the campaign-scale beat the High Priest rank already carries. This is a first concrete answer to the logged corruption-cost question, not a settled one; the Verbum threshold and the three-use ceiling both need calibration. See sage-migration.md and open-questions.
Bard¶
Art, inspiration, and memory. The Bard's territory is what gets remembered and how: songs, genealogies, the shape a story takes once it is told a second time. A Bard's leverage is reputation, not force.
Opening Ability. Reputation precedes you. NPCs who would otherwise default to hostile default to wary instead.
Guild Rank. Canon's Echelons of Recognition: Player (the rank granted on joining), Performer, Idol. Aficionado sits alongside these as Guild-officer standing (brokering bookings, handling the Guild's purse) rather than a fame rank, reserved for a future social or political Specialty distinct from the four below, not yet designed. Impresario Extraordinaire is the Guild's singular leader, narrative rather than purchasable.
Specialty: Performer. 3 Advancement Points. An instrument played outside of battle to hold a formation together, not inspire it to violence. While the Character plays, Communication Range doubles to 20 squares for their own Company (see companies-and-command, Part Four), letting a spread-out march or approach stay one coordinated Pool instead of splintering into Detachments. Stops the moment the Character stops playing.
Specialty: Idol. 3 Advancement Points. A song loud and known enough that a formation holds around it even when its own officer falls. While the Character plays through a fight, any allied Company whose Character Falls does not disengage or scatter; it keeps fighting under GM control until the Combat ends, the same as if its Character had simply stepped back (core-rules, Part Twelve, When a Character Falls). Answers what was previously an open question for exactly this case; the general case, no Idol-rank Bard present, is still a GM judgment call.
Specialty: The Long Watch. 3 Advancement Points. Played during a march, a vigil, or any extended stretch of travel: a Presence Check, and on success the Company does not accrue Fatigue for that stretch. Smaller and personal where the Root Ritual's Blessing of the Long Watch is communal and ceremonial; no circle, no other casters, just the one instrument.
Specialty: Before the Horns Sound. 3 Advancement Points. Played in the stretch before a fight begins, never during: the whole Company gains one extra die (+1d6) on the first roll of the Combat. Nothing further once the fighting starts; the smallest and safest of the four, since it never touches the bank-and-push loop itself.
Specialty: Information Broker. 3 Advancement Points. Migrated from the Legends Diplomat and placed here rather than left open, because gathering and steering what a place believes is the Bard's own remit. During downtime in a settled area, a Presence Check (GM sets the Difficulty by how buried or how sensitive the matter is) to either learn something of real local weight or to plant a rumor that takes hold. Larger or more outlandish efforts are Extended Checks (core-rules, Part Seventeen), resolved across several downtime attempts. The Bard understands the shape of rumors well enough to trace one to its root and to seed a message that reaches only the ears intended. See diplomat-migration.md for the full migration record.
Alchemist¶
Potions, poisons, cures, and the transmutation of ordinary materials into effects that are strange but not uncanny. Distinct from the Mage, whose power is channeled, personal, and drawn from the Mists. The Alchemist's product is consumable and mundane-adjacent: a vial, a draught, a tincture, something anyone can use once it is made.
Opening Ability. Once per Combat, the Character produces a single-use consumable already on hand. No brewing roll required; it is simply carried, the way the trade's habits stay with a person.
Guild Rank. Canon's five-rung ladder: Novice, Apprentice (the rank granted on joining), Journeyman, Artisan, Master. Journeyman, Artisan, and Master are reserved Specialty names, not yet designed; see open-questions. ("Artisan" is why the Artisan Guild was retired; see Retired, below.)
Specialty: Field Alchemy. 3 Advancement Points. Migrated from the Legends Sage (Nothing Up My Sleeve) and placed here, since making a usable thing on short notice is the Alchemist's trade. Deepens the Opening Ability: during a lull in a fight (an Action spent in a quiet moment) or in downtime, you may craft one chosen single-use consumable rather than only the one the Opening Ability hands you, holding a small number so crafted at once (a soft cap the GM sets by Wits tier). Not a Guild-rank Specialty; it sits alongside the reserved Journeyman, Artisan, and Master names rather than claiming one. See sage-migration.md.
Specialty: Immunization. 3 Advancement Points. Migrated from the Legends Additional Specialties and reworked from a flat poison-immunity into the Alchemist's true signature: mastery over which substances take hold in their own body. You are immune to your own poisons and concoctions, and your body is yours to command. Whenever a consumable, poison, drug, venom, or other ingested or contact substance would affect you, you choose which of its effects apply and which you negate, each effect separately: keep a draught's benefit and refuse its side effect, blunt only the worst of a hostile poison, or shrug the whole thing off. This reaches only effects from an alchemical or toxic source, never a wound, a weapon, a spell, or a Condition applied by anything other than a substance (so the Chancellor's Pacify or a monster's venomous bite that works by pure magic is untouched, while a coated blade's poison is not). During downtime you may extend immunity to your own poisons to chosen allies, and revoke it at will. See additional-specialties-review.md.
Guardians¶
Wardens of walls, gates, and watches, in the social and vocational sense rather than the combat sense. A Guardian's standing is about what they are trusted to protect and who lets them stand at the door: castellans, night-watches, oath-bound sentinels of a keep or a border. In Hynafol canon (2025 Hynafol Guilds) their real work is investigation and the sanctioning of Rituals: protecting the ones done properly, disrupting the ones that aren't, and getting to the truth of a suspicious death. Distinct from the Warden Class, which is a combat role (Borrowed Strength, Hit Points 8) available to a Character of any Guild, including a Guardian who never draws Warden as their Class, or a Knight who happens to belong to the Guardians Guild.
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), and a Coup de Grace still denies that mercy exactly as it denies a Wellspring's. 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 Rank. Canon gives the Guardians a five-rung ladder: Guardian (the rank granted on joining, no special reward beyond standing and the Tabard), Detective, Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain. Captain is a singular position, the Guardians' own leader, narrative rather than a purchasable Specialty. The others are used below as Specialty names.
Specialty: 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, not yet designed; see open-questions.
Assassins¶
Killing on contract, and the craft of reaching someone who is guarded, warded, or asleep behind a locked door. The Assassins share the Thief's stealth toolkit but not the Thief's goal: where the Thief's territory is property and access, the Assassin's is the life itself, taken cleanly and for a price. What sets the Guild apart from the Thief mechanically is the Contract, the distinct hook it was held back for until 2026-08-01.
Opening Ability: The Contract. Swear a Contract naming one target as your Mark, a Free Interaction, once per Mark. While the Contract holds:
- You gain one extra die (+1d6) on every roll to find, approach, and Vanish against the Mark.
- Once per Combat, your first strike on the Mark is treated as though the Mark were Unaware of you (core-rules, Part Eleven), bypassing its screen onto its Card even if it has already acted.
You break the Contract in one of two ways: by striking a different enemy while the Mark is also within your reach, choosing another target over the one you swore to kill, or by walking away from the kill entirely. Until you fulfill the Contract, or a Guild superior formally releases you from it, you roll every Check at Disadvantage.
The Contract is distinct from the Guardian Tabard, which the Guild imposes on its wearer, and from the Chancellor's Mark and the Blade's Marked Prey, which are debuffs placed on an enemy. It is a self-sworn oath with its own teeth: an edge against one named foe, paid for by a real penalty if the Assassin strays. Provisional and untested. The Contract pairs with, and does not duplicate, the Vanish Specialty (character-creation/universal-specialties): the Contract grants one free Unaware bypass per Combat without spending an Action, while Vanish re-imposes Unaware repeatedly at the cost of an Action each time.
Guild Rank, pending canon. Hynafol's own Assassin rank ladder is not reconstructed here. As with the Thief, no mid-tier personal rank is invented without canon to support it. Logged in open-questions.
Held Back for Now¶
Heralds. Oaths, courts, treaties, and heraldry. A strong Arthurian fit and a natural foil to the Bard (law and word, versus art and memory), held back for v1 scope. Logged in open-questions.
Guides. Known-World and Hynafol liaisons: who knows the safe roads, and where the Mists run thin. Less combat-adjacent than any Guild above, useful mainly as an adventure hook. Logged in open-questions.
Retired¶
Artisan (Guild). Retired 2026-07-29. Proposed as the in-fiction source of Named Weapons, Mounts, and Foci. Cut for two reasons: it collided with "Artisan," an existing Alchemist rank title in established Hynafol canon (the 2025 Guilds book), and it contradicted that same canon's statement that true Artifacts "cannot be crafted or made; they must be found." Named items are now found relics rather than commissioned work; see character-creation's Advancement section. See retired-mechanics.