Trappings You wear a second skin of complexly woven textile strips. These trappings protect your transparent, fragile flesh. They are essential to your culture and wellbeing. They can only be removed in darkness, and never before non-ragpeople.
You start with basic linen trappings.
You have Topic: Weaving 2.
Photophobia Your uncovered skin burns in sunlight as if exposed to an intensity 1d8 flame (per area exposed.) Bright sunlight may cause 1 pain stress if your eyes are unshaded.
Night vision You have night vision like a cat. Dim light counts as bright. Darkness counts as dim. Pitch blackness is impenetrable.
Scurry Replace your Might with Scurry. You have little need for water and do not require a portion of liquids with your meals.
Small Mice rarely surpass two feet in height. A fit one will weigh just under ten kilos. A plump one may exceed fifteen (you tend towards comfortably fat.)
Your Fortitude can’t exceed 3.
You’re unable to use melee weapons heavier than S (small.) You can use 1# ranged weapons with two hands.
You take half the usual falling damage (rounded down.)
Whisking You can “see” two steps ahead with your whiskers. Your sense of touch includes them. They can sense heat and texture. If you lose your whiskers, you lose these abilities until they regrow.
Uncommon
Uncommon creature types are not recommended for new players. They may be useful in creating non-player characters.
A human in middle childhood, likely 8-12 years of age. Physically weak but rife with potential.
human You have all the traits of Human.
Underdeveloped Your Might and Fortitude are capped at level 2. After choosing a sort with Base: Child, curtail your skills appropriately. Children are easily burdened and often lag behind.
Potential At end of every session, receives 5 bonus XP. Every month after the age of 12, you have a 1 in 4 chance of becoming an adolescent. Your creature type changes to Human.
A puny youngster with bug-eyes, an over-large head, and a tenuous grasp on life.
Mousy You have the traits of creature type: Mouse.
Underdeveloped Your Scurry is capped at 4 and your Fortitude is capped at 2. You may carry only one point of burden.
Potential At end of every session, receive 5 bonus XP. Every month after the age of 12, you have a 1 in 4 chance of becoming an adolescent. Your creature type changes to Mouse.
Bark Barking, wagging, and hackle-raising are your language. You cannot speak, but you understand your companions without issue and can carry out their plans. They understand you similarly.
Bite Your jaws are a weapon (d4+1 piercing, reach 0). Roll Melee: Savage to use any action under Melee or Melee: Hand-to-Hand except Block. If you deal 3+ damage, you grab automatically.
Beast You are a midsize, 50-70 lb hound.
You cannot learn new skills. You may improve existing skills.
Replace your Intellect with Melee: Savage.
You may healthily eat raw or spoiled food.
Olfaction Your nose is a precision instrument. Succeed Perception to “see” an olfactory image of every creature and object recently present in the area. If you fail, you only get details on one subject. Roll at a penalty (2–4) to discern older scents.
BREED
Spend your 20 starting XP on breed traits. You can’t buy them later.
Large, 10XP Double your starting size (100-120 lbs.) Your jaws deal d4+2 P.
Winter Coat, 10XP Thick fur provides 4 warmth. You can’t have more than 3 Chilly stress unless affected by unnatural cold.
Digger, 5XP Gain Entrenching 4. Your paws count as a shovel.
Bloodhound Olfaction, 10XP You automatically sense a complete olfactory image of every creature and object that has recently passed through the nearby area upon entering it regardless of age. Scents over a week old may still evade you.
Antibacterial Drool, 5X Normal wounds licked by you don’t become infected.
Sighthound Speed, 10XP You do not need to roll Agility to sprint.
Retriever, 10XP If provided evidence of an object, you roll Perception at +2 to scrounge for that object.
Guardian, 5XP You’re always be keeping watch, per Perception, unless you are explicitly distracted. You can control and guide flocks of animals with strict precision.
Hardy Cur, 5XP +1 Fortitude & Immunity.
Goose, 20XP You are a hefty domestic goose (60lbs.) Your bite attack has a reach of 1 m from your lengthy neck. You do not possess Olfaction. You can fly at an altitude of up to 2 meters. You can sprint while doing so. At the end of your move action, you land safely on the ground. You gain Swimming 5.
Ram, 20XP You are a stout and wily ram (120lbs.) You speak Fleece. You have no bite attack. Instead, you have horns (1d6 B.) You don’t possess Olfaction. You have the Winter Coat trait. You resist knockdown and shove at +2.
Exotic
You have a chance of being a allowed a unusual creature type at time of character creation. Unusual types are a minute fraction of the population, though they are overrepresented in the Cutter caste.
A human affected by precocious plague. A life concurrent with the grue within.
ingravescent 1d4 of your extremities are necrotic—gruesome black bone. If a living body area contiguous one fails to resist infection or severe injury, it necrotizes: When the Wound stress “heals,” the area sloughs, revealing more black bone. Only your internal organs are inviolate—the rest cedes to plague in time.
plagued Necrotic body areas are immune to stress except Burn and Break. You burn from grisodate as if you were a grue.
haunted When knocked out, act as a grue. When sleeping, you have a 1-in-4 chance of somnambulating as a scuttling grue. Your grue is nonhostile to allies while you have 3 distress or lower.
vector You rapidly re-infect humans around you with latent plague. On death, you become a hostile grue immediately.
Corundum Core A huge ovoid gemstone—a grieb—comprises the core of your squat body. It is your central nervous system.Your organs and tissues surround it in a hairy paunch attached by bone girdles. It is impervious. Objects cannot embed in your chest or abdomen. If you die, you can be resurrected by stripping your grieb of flesh and placing it in an urn of meat, fat, and whiskey for 3 months.
Solid State Your skull houses no vital organs. It contains your sense organs and an alcohol storage sponge. Blows to your head cannot result in instant death. You may still be stunned by blows to the head due to disruption of your senses.
Fuel Alcoholic sustains you. A real meal provides its usual benefits if consumed with alcohol. Failing to imbibe causes you Hungry stress as if you had missed a meal. Without at least 1 drink per day, you will starve to death.
An artificial being of elegant device. An alloy skeleton fleshed with sculptural porcelain plates wrought like a fine marble.
Material flesh You are craftwork of incredible artifice. Your bones are steel lamina complicated by moving works. Your muscles and sinews are steel fiber and cabling. Your skin is splendid porcelain articulated like a doll or suit of armor and sculpted in loving study of the human form. Golden traces—your nerves—complicate the interior of these plates, transmitting sensation and motivation.
Artificial physiology You do not suffer injury normally. You have 13 main body plates: 1 for each body area. Each of these plates is an armor item (5|0.) When breached by damage, they break. Suffer 1 wound stress per broken plate and 1 pain stress, up to 3.
To make new plates, use Topic: Electrophysiology and the crafting skills and tools required by the armor material you’re crafting plates from (i.e. ceramics, metalworking.) You need £1 in gold per plate for your nervous traces. If you don plates heavier than porcelain, you bear the excess burden as if it were normal armor.
Your skeleton is immune to conventional weapons.
At 13 stress, become comatose until your malus is reduced to 3.
Every broken plate replaced heals 1 wound stress and 1 pain.
If your face plate is broken, you suffer 2 distress.
You are not immune to hot, chilly, or drowsy stress. You do need to sleep.
Design standard Your core skills start at 4 (with the exception of your weakness.) They can’t exceed level 6, due to your unchanging construction. You get additional starting skills: