Esoteric Hermit

The stone of your cave is one with the stars. Silence and perfection. Now the chaos of a fallen world disturbs your rituals and the caul of night grows blacker than your cavern's gloom. Irritating!

• Begins with: 1d6×10s and d4 Omens.
• HP: Toughness + d4.

Abilities

• Wise: roll 3d6+2 for Presence.
• Weak: roll 3d6−2 for Strength.
• Ordinary starting equipment plus one random scroll (sacred or unclean).
• Roll a d4 on the weapons table and d2 on the armor table.

Eldritch Origins (d6)

1. Awakening, adult, in a ritual circle underneath the northern bridge to Grift.
2. Wandered, memoryless, from the mouth of a cavern at the Cliffs of Terion.
3. Single child survivor of an incident in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead.
4. Dying of plague in a Bergen Chrypt hovel, you touched something from outside.
5. An average individual until you encountered something in a dim glade in Sarkash.
6. Raised on a lonely island in Lake Onda. No one else has ever heard of this island and you can't return.

You Also Begin With One of the Following (d6)

1. Master of fate: What use are maps when the substance of causality itself is open to you? You know the right way with a dr8 Presence test.
2. Book of Boiling Blood: You may open and read from this book once a day. Your enemy must make a dr12 test to prevent this. If they fail, d2 Berserker-Slayers appear from the depths of a forgotten dimension of blood. Roll a d6. On a 1–4 these creatures fight alongside you. On a 5–6 they turn on you, attempting to kill you and destroy the book. After the battle they return to their imprisonment.
3. Speaker of truths: Twice per day, use your wisdom, knowledge, advice, and inner calm to bring clarity to a creature of your choice. The dr of the next test they undertake is lowered by 4.
4. Initiate of the Invisible College: Once per day you may summon d2 scrolls, whose power can be used only once. Roll a d4 — on a 1–2 the scrolls are sacred, on a 3–4, unclean. If the scrolls are not used before sunrise they turn to ash.
5. Bard of the undying: You learnt your melodies in the Otherworld. The music of your harp gives +d4 on reaction rolls.
6. Hawk as weapon: Your crafty almost-intelligent hawk is loyal only to you. Even without shared language, you understand its cries as it keeps watch, scouts, and swoops to attack foes. Attacks/defence dr10 (claws/bite d4), HP 8.

Gaps/Expansion Notes:

• Lake Onda is named only on this spread — a lonely, half-mythic body of water with islands no map records. Strong location seed.
• Cliffs of Terion are distinct from the wider Terion fragments scattered through the Miseries. Could be coastal, could be inland; canon does not say.
• The "incident" in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead is unexplained — a single child crawled out. Adventure seed.
• Forgotten dimension of blood (Origin Gift 2) — never elaborated; the Berserker-Slayers come from there.
• The Otherworld where Origin Gift 5's melodies are learned — also undescribed.