Biblicist

Followers of the Bible of the House of Ellis, or surviving sects of traditional Christians.

Apocryphist

Followers of the Mysteries of the House of Ellis.

Magic

There are three commonly accepted sources of magic:

  • Blood: Suffuses the flesh and change and manipulate things you can touch, or your body itself.
  • Ether: An omnipresent and invisible force some manipulate to touch others' minds from afar and sense the unsensed.
  • Gnosis: Working the magic itself, the ability to cause other spells to behave differently or conjure effects.

This power comes from your ancestors, and the purity of your bloodline. Powerful parents tend to have powerful children, but this is not a necessity, and many prodigies are born to surprised parents, while as many once-proud lines are no more. Though the family plants the seed of power, each must grow it to find its full potential.

Many have some instinctual magic. Perhaps one in twelve are touched in a fundamental way, allowing them to heal quickly, churn figures, or talk with those unseen. Those of the first type provide a measure of deterrence against outright war.

Journeymen

A guild of explorers, guides, mercenaries, adventurers, and body-guards. They are headed by a council of varying size, consisting of anyone who can convince the others they deserve a voice. Numerous lieutenants and guild-houses operate with impressive autonomy in most major cities, and at any time one or two borderlands are heavily populated with Journeymen as the result of some border dispute or threat from the wilderness.

Journeymen enjoy a rough-and-tumble reputation, but they are reliable and competent if not expensive company. A member who reneges on an agreement places herself at odds with the whole of the guild, a fact which tarnishes even the most lucrative sounding double-deals. A band of Journeymen will push back a bandit raid from a beleaguered settlement, escort a caravan through a haunted wood, or patrol an unfriendly crowd during an unpopular demonstration.

Chimera

The advance of technology in the years before the burn allowed for life to be manipulated at many levels, and the definition of life itself to be stretched and explored. Some artists of independent means and dubious ethics began to combine aspects of different creatures into fanciful and bizarre configurations. Sometimes they added mechanical or holographic aspects to give the creations an otherworldly appearance. Their behaviors were similarly shaped to be intriguing and startling. They drew from myth, cryptozoology, dreams, and nightmares. On the whole, these creations were known as chimeras.

Most chimeras perished with their creators, but a few have weathered the fall of man. They exist in the wildest regions; howling, thrashing, glowing, time-mad visions of the past. They have strange ways, some fascinated by tortuous riddles, others adorning their lairs in the wings of dragonflies.

Prisgeon

A prisgeon generally resembles a small bird, like a pigeon. However, its wings are larger than would be expected and slightly membranous, and the creature's feathers have a distinctly scaly appearance. Their faces are flatter than most birds, and their eyes more forward-facing.

The most notable trait of the prisgeon, however, is their amazing chameleon-like abilities. A prisgeon can rapidly make each of its feathers into a different color, sending bright patterns rippling across its body. An individual prisgeon is startling and beautiful, but a flock of them works together to make huge, moving images.

Prisgeons were created from small, flocking birds as living, self-reproducing, aerial billboards. Aspects of bats, chameleons, and octopi were added in, plus light-producing modifications. The flocking behavior was modified so the birds instinctually know where to go and what colors to change.

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