Masada

The Institute retains the name Masada, taken from the historical fortress whose defenders chose to die inside their own walls rather than surrender to the army camped outside. The Nobility built this world to be their fortress. They held it for millennia against enemies from beyond, and in the end they destroyed themselves inside it. The Institute considers the name apt.

The Institute holds the following to be true in every sector. Personnel uncertain how the Frontier works should begin here.

1. The world was ruined once, and the Nobility rebuilt it.
2. The Nobility saved the world before they owned it. Their rule began as a rescue, and some of them never stopped believing it was one.
3. The Nobility are in decline and rarely seen. Most people live and die without meeting one.
4. What the Nobility made still runs, badly. Engines, creatures, and servants have outlasted their makers’ attention.
5. Bargains with the Nobility are extremely rare. The world has room for them, but most people never live under one.
6. Hunters are how ordinary people fight back.
7. The past is legend. No one has the whole story, and the Nobility may not have it either.
8. Choices matter, and hope is expensive.

The Frontier is the whole of the land beyond the Capitol: scattered settlements and the dangerous country between them, divided into four sectors. Mortals share it with engineered fauna and stranger things, across deserts, forests, and mountains, and across stretches of country the Nobility remade and did not finish.

Construction. Personnel should expect everything on the Frontier to be built in two layers. Golden era structures of impossible materials stand beside new work in wood, stone, and scrap, and a settlement’s newest barn may lean against a wall of seamless glass older than anyone’s great-grandmother. The local population treats this as unremarkable, and personnel should do the same.

Settlements. Frontier towns govern themselves, usually through a mayor or a council of elders, with a sheriff responsible for order and defense. Most maintain a saloon, a church, a bounty board, and a list of their dead. Drifters and traders pass through constantly; residents will trade with them and trust them very little. Personnel should present their credentials to the sheriff on arrival.

Subsistence. Settlements live on basic farming, salvage from the golden era, and what the Institute’s field reports describe as stubbornness. Travel between them is hazardous enough that hunters commonly work as escorts and carry messages.

Night. Engineered fauna are markedly more active after dark, and travel without shelter is inadvisable. Towns ring a bell at dusk and bar their doors until morning, and residents will not invite anyone inside after dark. The origins of these customs are not recorded. Personnel are advised to observe them regardless. Settlements that have abandoned them have not fared well. Part Two discusses the matter further.

Outlook. The Frontier is being brought steadily under order, aided by the Nobility’s decline, the persistence of its settlers, and its hunters. The Institute expects measurable improvement within the current generation.

The Frontier is administered in four sectors around the Capitol, each once ruled by a Noble overlord. Sector borders are old and largely unmarked. Residents nonetheless identify strongly with their sector of birth, and it governs how they speak, what they fear, and what they expect of strangers.

• Northern sector: mountains, long winters, and the dwarven holds.
• Southern sector: badlands, salt flats, and chronic drought.
• Eastern sector: forest, river country, and the green ruins.
• Western sector: farms, orchards, and the Frontier’s most settled towns.
• The Capitol stands at the center, where the golden era’s roads converge.

Survey records for each sector appear in Part Four.

No two Frontier towns are alike. For orientation, the Institute offers Brennock’s Ford: a farming town of about four hundred on the border of the Western and Eastern sectors, where the old road crosses the Brennock River.

Defenses. A timber palisade on a stone footing, raised by a half-dwarf crew two generations ago, with the river on one side and a dug channel on the other. The residents clear the channel every spring. None of them could give a reason when asked.

The dusk bell. It hangs in the tower of the Dawn Church and is rung by a rotating volunteer. After the last stroke, doors are barred until sunrise, and anyone still outside sleeps in the jail. Sheriff Ada Cole leaves the cell doors unlocked for this purpose.

Notable residents. The mayor, Tobias Wren, owns the mill and holds most of the town’s debt. Sheriff Cole has held her office nineteen years and buried two deputies. The town’s magic user, an elven tutor named Maelis, sends requests for hunters by spell and is suspected of retaining prohibited texts; personnel should report any such texts to the Institute. The orchard on the east bank is tended by an Entling called Sorrel, resident for forty years.

The Dry Well. The town’s saloon, where circuit performers sing for their supper, halfling caravaners exchange news, and hunters wait for work. The bounty board hangs beside the bar and is seldom empty.

Supply. A Commerce Guild waystation half a mile down the old road restocks the transport parties that pass twice a season. The town counts the days between visits.

The Glass House. A golden era structure on a rise north of town: a long, low hall of dark glass that cannot be seen into. One resident, a scavenger named Nate Barrow, is known to have entered it. The town held his funeral, and a week later he walked home. He has declined to describe the interior. Last month three farmers independently reported a light moving inside, and two cows went missing from the north pasture. The mayor has made inquiries about the cost of a hunter.

The Nobility’s buildings stand throughout the Frontier, most on the outskirts of settlements, since towns grew up beside them for their water, their roads, or their salvage and then learned to keep their distance. Occasionally one is cleared well enough to be put to other use, and the town that manages it is envied across its sector.

Contents. Working relics, armories, stores of materials no longer produced, and weapons of mass destruction. Also traps, guardians, and dormant systems that wake when disturbed. Many structures still defend themselves. A few sealed estates stand in perfect order, the beds still made. Beneath others lie workshops where alchemy sits beside machinery no one can explain.

Policy. Entry into golden era structures by unlicensed persons is prohibited. All recovered items are the property of the Provisional Government and are to be surrendered to Institute agents, who will compensate the finder. Uncleared structures are reserved for the Institute’s researchers.

Incidents. Unlicensed entry has on occasion activated a structure’s weapons or security systems, with the loss of entire settlements. A town with a structure on its outskirts should be regarded as living beside a loaded gun. Most towns already regard it so.

Recovered devices. Working devices recovered from these structures are catalogued in Part Six.

Returned personnel. Some structures continue to repair whatever dies inside them, and there are credible reports of scavengers returning alive after burial. The Frontier calls them the Reborn. The Institute is studying the phenomenon. The Reborn, and the Magen who are dug out of the same structures, are described among the peoples of the Frontier.

The Nobility filled the world with engineered animals, for labor, for war, and in many cases for ornament. Most outlived their makers. Personnel should familiarize themselves with the following, which account for most reported encounters. Part Five holds the Institute’s full register.

• Hedge-hounds: garden guardians, now feral in the green ruins. Silent until the last moment.
• Lampjaws: ambush predators that wait in the dark behind a pale lure. Common along the roads.
• Sand mantas: broad burrowing predators of the Southern salt flats.
• Frostwings: pale flyers of the North, associated with early winters.
• Tithe-moths: blood-feeding swarms bred to collect the Nobility’s tithes. They continue to collect.
• Lesser dragons: bred for the Nobility’s sport, and resident in the high valleys.
• The Faithful: altered mortal servants still keeping their posts. Not fauna, strictly.

Beyond these are things the Nobility found and never mastered: legendary monsters older than the golden era, and entities that may be related to the beings from beyond. Encounters are rare, and reports are inconsistent.

Most hazards on the Frontier derive from what the Nobility left behind, rather than from the Nobility themselves.

Threat	What it covers	Who handles it
Everyday	Leftover beasts, failing engines, raiders, bad weather, a town’s own secrets	Most hunters’ livelihood
Uncommon	The Nobility’s servants and remnants, still carrying out dead masters’ orders; the deeper ruins	Experienced hunters and companies
Rare	An awake Noble, or something older than the Nobility	The stuff of legend; towns empty

Independent hunters for hire are the Frontier’s answer to its fauna. The trade has no guild, no license, and no oversight. The Institute anticipates its decline as the Frontier Defense Force expands.

Engagement. Larger towns usually send requests by spell through their magic user. Smaller towns rely on riders, passing merchants, and halfling caravans, and word travels slowly. Towns also post bounties at the saloon and inquire among their less respectable visitors. Many answer a call. Most withdraw once they hear the details.

Payment. Hunters present proof of the kill to the sheriff, or to whoever posted the bounty. Rates depend on the danger and on what the town can raise. Current rates are posted separately.

Standing. A hunter’s reputation rests on what they have killed and what they have walked away from, not on rank. Ordinary bounty hunters work for anyone and use any method. The few who hunt the Nobility are the subject of songs.

Organization. Hunters work alone, in family clans, or in sworn companies bound by contract. The most respected companies are dragonborn, and the best of them are known by name in all four sectors.

Qualifications. Combat ability is insufficient. The work requires years of study: the Nobility’s history, the creatures and plants of the Frontier, and local folklore, all of it learned the hard way. Some hunters report that a portion of what they learn does not stay learned.

The common tongue of the roads is Common, spoken with accents that identify the speaker’s sector. Each people maintains its own language as well, and the dwarves speak a hold-tongue that varies slightly from gate to gate.

The old court tongue was the language of the Nobility’s courts and remains the key to golden era records. It survives among the old elven families, Capitol scholars, and a few scavengers who learned enough to read the warnings on a wall. Speakers are required to register with the Institute.

The Nobility shaped Masada, but did not make all of it. The Institute sorts nearly every phenomenon on the Frontier into one of three categories.

• Nobility-made: arcane magic, the faiths, golden era structures, Magen, Entlings, and the engineered fauna.
• Older than the Nobility: things the Nobility found and could not control, among them eldritch entities, legendary monsters, and the world’s original nature.
• Mortal-made: what people built for themselves after the Nobility went to ground, including hunter traditions, Frontier towns, the Capitol’s rediscoveries, and the crafts of bards, rangers, and artificers.

Survey: Northern sector. High country: mountain ranges, deep valleys, and mining and trapping towns on the slopes. Winters are long and arriving earlier. The Nobility’s weather engines are failing worst here, and whole valleys have been abandoned to cold.

The dwarven holds are sealed in these ranges, each trading through a gate-market at the mountain’s foot. Above them, the goliath clans of the Whitecrown and the Iron Tooth hold the peaks and guide caravans through the passes for a fixed fee. Residents are hard, practical, and economical with words. Personnel should watch the sky for frostwings. A Noble residence above the Karrow Pass shows lights nightly.

Karrow. Mining town · highest valley in the sector · population about 900 · Capitol presence: none · Assessment: prosperous and cooperative

The only warm settlement for fifty miles, and the site of the arrangement noted in Part Two. Twice a year the adult residents climb to Duke Castellane’s castle and bleed into a silver basin, and in exchange the Duke’s weather engine holds winter off the valley. Residents are courteous and decline to discuss the matter. Visitors are welcome to stay the night. Personnel are advised not to press.

The Karrow Pass. Mountain crossing · Assessment: passable in season

The highest crossing in the sector, overlooked by the Duke’s lit windows. Goliaths of the Whitecrown guide caravans over it for a fixed fee, and the Ninth Lantern company escorts the Guild’s parties. In severe winters the pass closes for months, and the settlements beyond it go without contact until the thaw.

Stonemouth. Dwarven gate-market · access limited to the market square · Assessment: reliable supplier of iron, tools, and firearms

The largest of the gate-markets: a fortified square at the foot of Stonemouth hold, where halfling caravans trade for dwarven goods. It keeps strict hours, closes well before dusk, and extends no credit. No outsider living is known to have passed its second door. Ironmere, the Cold Stair, Blackwell, the Deepwater Gate, and the Sunken Door lie deeper in the ranges, each with a market of its own.

Sable Crossing. Town, grown from a Guild waystation · population about 1,500 · Capitol presence: Guild office · Assessment: orderly

The meeting point of the Northern circuits, with a company hall, three saloons, and a bounty board that has never been observed empty. Every hunter working the sector passes through, and the sheriff knows all of them by reputation.

The Grey Arsenal. Golden era structure, military, sealed · access prohibited · Defense Force post on site · Assessment: secure

A fortress the Nobility built to arm themselves against the beings from beyond, still sealed and believed to be still stocked. The Defense Force maintains a post at its foot to prevent unlicensed entry.

The Widow’s Stair. Abandoned valley · Assessment: uninhabitable

Farmland three generations ago. A failing weather engine somewhere in the peaks now keeps it under a winter that does not lift. The farmhouses stand intact beneath the snow, and frostwings nest in them. The valley is struck through on every Northern map.

Survey: Southern sector. Red badlands, dry riverbeds, and the white salt flats, where sand mantas move beneath the crust. Ranching is the principal industry, and water the principal cause of dispute; the Institute records more violence over water rights here than over anything the Nobility left. The golden era’s aqueducts cross the sector, largely dry, and towns beneath a working span guard it as other towns guard their walls.

Criminal activity is the highest on the Frontier, and some bands deal with things that should not be bargained with. Residents are quick to draw, slow to trust, and generous with water to anyone who asks properly. A local saying holds that travelers who see lanterns on the flats at night should not follow them.

Redwater. Town · population about 3,000 · Capitol presence: magistrate · Assessment: the sector’s administrative center

The largest town in the South, built where the Long Aqueduct still carries water. Its council controls the flow to a dozen smaller towns downstream, and in drought years that control becomes a weapon. Redwater is prosperous, well armed, and widely resented.

The Long Aqueduct. Golden era structure, infrastructure, partially active · Assessment: of high research value

A span crossing half the sector on legs of seamless stone. Most of its length is dry. Where water still flows, towns grow beneath it. Its dry channels contain machinery the Institute has not identified, and the Capitol purchases recovered components.

Ashfall. Ranching town on the edge of the salt flats · population about 700 · Capitol presence: none · Assessment: self-sufficient

Herds are counted every morning, owing to the sand mantas. Ashfall breeds the best horses and riders in the sector, and its warrior village, a mile outside the walls, has trained fighters for generations.

The Lantern Road. Road · Assessment: closed after dark by local custom

The salt road between Ashfall and Redwater. Travelers report a carriage hung with lanterns crossing the flats at night without sound. Southerners call its occupant the Lady of the Lanterns and do not follow the lights. See Part Two.

Gallows Reach. Territory under criminal control · Assessment: cleared by the Defense Force on two occasions

Dry country held by the Saltmen, who ride between the wells they control and levy a toll on water.

Survey: Eastern sector. Old forest, slow rivers, and valley mist that lingers until noon. In the golden era the East was the Nobility’s pleasure country, all estates and ornamental gardens, and it holds more golden era structures than any other sector. Many are overgrown by their own gardens, forming what residents call the green ruins.

Boomtowns rise around promising structures and are occasionally lost overnight; the sector has recorded more incidents than any other, and every Eastern map marks the dead towns. Druids congregate here, Entlings are most frequently encountered here, and hedge-hounds hunt the undergrowth. Residents are superstitious. The East is the Institute’s highest priority for recovery and its most dangerous posting.

Brennock’s Ford. Farming town on the Western–Eastern border · population about 400 · Capitol presence: none · Assessment: see Part One

Described in full in Part One, including the golden era structure north of town known as the Glass House.

Sixwheel Landing. River port · population about 1,200 · Capitol presence: occasional agents · Assessment: principal market for unlicensed recoveries

Named for the halfling wagon that founded it. Barges carry goods and recovered items downriver to the old road, and the Landing’s markets will purchase anything recovered from a structure without inquiry. Most of the sector’s fences keep a stall here.

The Drowned Walk. Golden era structure, garden, flooded · access prohibited · Assessment: two Institute expeditions lost; further expeditions scheduled

A garden that flooded when its estate collapsed, now drowned terraces and hedges gone wild. Entlings emerge from it, and some return to it. Hedge-hounds hunt its shallows.

The Repository. Golden era structure, archive · access limited to Institute expeditions · Assessment: of the highest research value

An archive cut into a hillside above the River Road, holding records no living scholar can read in full. The Institute mounts an expedition every few years and loses researchers on each. Speaking ledgers have been recovered from it, as have things that were reading them.

Marrow. Abandoned settlement · former population about 2,000 · Assessment: exclusion circle in effect

A boomtown that grew around a rich structure in five years and died in a single night when a crew went too deep and woke a weapon. The structure and the empty town both stand. Eastern maps mark the site with a circle, and no one crosses it.

Vane’s Wood. Old forest, deep East · Assessment: reported location of the Grey Marquis, unconfirmed

Three hunter companies entered the wood in pursuit of the Grey Marquis and did not come out. The Ashline did. Druids gather at the edge of the wood and go no further, and decline to explain.

Survey: Western sector. The gentlest part of the Frontier. In the golden era it was held by one of the few overlords with a regard for mortals, and it flourished. Its farms are the richest, its towns the oldest and largest, and its roads the safest, and more of the Frontier’s food comes from the West than from anywhere else.

Some Western towns have come to treat the old customs as quaint, and a small number have discontinued the dusk bell. The overlord’s castle stands sealed in the Western hills; Western families believe Count Aurelian sleeps inside. The Institute regards the West as the most secure sector and the model for the Frontier’s future.

Fairwater. Town · population about 6,000 · Capitol presence: magistrate and Institute field office · Assessment: exemplary

The largest town on the Frontier outside the Capitol. Paved streets, a university-trained physician, a Dawn Church with a working shrine, and a council that has not engaged a hunter in eleven years. The Long Watch company guards its walls under a standing contract.

Orchard Cross. Market town · population about 1,000 · Assessment: stable

A crossroads among the orchards that feed half the Frontier. Halfling caravans and Guild parties meet here each season, and its market day is the largest in the West. The town rings its dusk bell later than is customary.

Longwall. Fortified town · Assessment: well defended

Built by the half-dwarf crew whose name it carries, with the highest wall in the sector and a foundation stone from every town that crew ever raised. Building crews gather here between contracts, and the town’s wall supper is a festival.

Greywater. Fishing town on the great lake · Assessment: stable; a local arrangement noted, details not provided

The boats go out at dawn and are in by the bell. Residents eat well and sleep poorly. Something the Nobility introduced to the lake remains in it, and the town has an understanding with it that it does not discuss.

Castle Aurelian. Golden era structure, Noble residence, sealed · Assessment: dormant

The castle of the West’s former overlord, in the hills above Fairwater. Its gates have not opened since the Nobility went to ground. Western families leave flowers at the gate on the anniversary of his withdrawal. The flowers are reported gone each morning.

Survey: the Capitol. The seat of the Provisional Government, described in full in Part Two. Personnel from the Frontier will hear of the following.

The wards. Residential districts, numbered

The inhabited city is divided into wards, each with its own council and accent and a low opinion of the others. The Ninth Ward is the clerks’ ward, and many Capitol exiles on the Frontier were raised there. The outer wards are the poorest, and the nearest to the Deep Wards below.

The Sunward Cathedral. Principal shrine of the Church of the Dawn · functioning

Where the Dawn Litany has been sung without a break since before the founding of the Provisional Government. Pilgrims come from every sector, and aasimar who accept the Church’s claim are presented here as living saints.

The Institute. Center for the study of the Nobility

Keeper of the Nobility’s records, of restricted works, and of the old court tongue. Its researchers are among the Capitol’s most accomplished. Those who lose favor are assigned to the Frontier on extended field duty.

The Assembly. Legislative body of the wards

Sits in a golden era hall built for a different kind of council. Its laws apply across the whole Frontier.

The Deep Wards. Sealed levels beneath the city · licensed recovery only

Halls, machinery, and passages not yet mapped. Licensed delvers descend under guard and return with recoveries, or do not return.

The golden era’s great roads still cross the Frontier, seamless and unbroken, and nearly all travel follows them. The roads are not safe. They are only less dangerous than the country between them. The Commerce Guild maintains fortified waystations along the principal routes, at intervals of about a day’s ride, and travelers who plan each day around reaching one before the dusk bell generally live to plan another.

The Old Road runs from the Capitol west through Orchard Cross to Fairwater, the safest and busiest road on the Frontier. The Karrow Road climbs north through Sable Crossing to the Karrow Pass and the gate-markets. The Salt Road runs south to Redwater and Ashfall, becoming the Lantern Road where it crosses the flats. The River Road follows the Brennock east from the ford to Sixwheel Landing.

Lamps. Some stretches are lined with golden era lamps that light themselves at dusk. The Institute is studying them. The Guild declines to schedule night runs on lit roads and has not given a reason.

Traffic. Guild parties, halfling caravans, circuit performers, hunters, drifters, Capitol agents with escorts, and occasional unauthorized relocations. Personnel should regard other travelers as the second greatest hazard on any road.

The Nobility are ageless, predatory aristocrats whose power depends on what they take from mortals. They take blood, and they are capable of taking it by force. The Frontier has no other name for them, and personnel will find that none is needed. Individual Nobles hold the titles of a classical peerage: Kings, Dukes, Marquises, Counts, Viscounts, and Barons.

They are beautiful and patient, and far older than mortals are comfortable imagining. They built the world now inhabited, and most regarded its mortals as a landowner regards a herd: valuable, occasionally cherished, never equal. A minority were kinder. A minority were considerably worse.

At their height the Nobility governed through a strict hierarchy. Lesser Nobles served a thousand Greater Nobles, who served seven Kings, with the Sacred Ancestor above all. Each overlord held absolute authority over a sector. The central government in the Capitol levied blood tithes on the overlords, who collected them in turn from the mortals they ruled. Nobles raided one another’s sectors for land and prestige, and mortals died in those wars without learning what they were fought over.

The Nobility’s science presents as sorcery: bound engines, alchemy, and blood-craft. They built weather engines that governed the seasons, engineered animals for every purpose, and left golden era minds still thinking in sealed rooms. They raised structures throughout the Frontier, many of them beside a settlement, and made servants such as the Magen, the Entlings, and the Faithful. Much of it continues to run. Very little of it runs well.

The Nobility are now rarely encountered, and most of the Frontier’s population will never meet one. Those who remain fall into two categories.

• The Sleepers lie in vaults beneath their castles, built to last for centuries. Most have not woken. Their estates continue to operate on standing orders.
• The Last Few are the handful still awake. Each is known by name, and together they constitute the most dangerous power on the Frontier.

Arrangements between a settlement and a Noble are extremely rare. The Institute is aware of one.

Sunlight and radiance are confirmed to burn the Nobility, and this is common knowledge in every sector. The Institute’s archive lists further vulnerabilities. For reasons under study, those entries are found, on inspection, to be illegible, misfiled, or missing, and researchers who consult them report difficulty recalling what they read.

The Institute’s working hypothesis is that during the golden era the Nobility altered the minds of the peoples they ruled, so that knowledge of these vulnerabilities cannot be retained. The associated customs persist on the Frontier without explanation: no invitations after dark, a stake above the door, running water at the gate. Dwarven and goliath sources are no more reliable, having never lived under Noble rule and so never having learned what was later erased. It should also be noted that the oldest Nobles appear to resist even some vulnerabilities that are confirmed. The practical list for personnel is maintained separately.

The Institute classifies the following as unconfirmed. Personnel will hear these accounts in every sector. Some details are certainly wrong, and some of the individuals named are presumed to be alive.

Duke Castellane of the Karrow Pass. His castle overlooks the highest pass in the Northern sector, and its windows have been lit every night within living memory. The mining town of Karrow, below it, lives under the arrangement noted above. Twice a year every adult in Karrow climbs to the castle gate and bleeds into a silver basin. In return, the Duke’s weather engine keeps the valley warm while the rest of the North freezes. No resident of Karrow reports having seen the Duke. His steward is said not to have aged in three hundred years.

The Lady of the Lanterns. Travelers on the salt roads of the Southern sector report a carriage at night, drawn by pale horses and hung with lanterns, moving without sound. Those who follow it are not seen again. Southerners name her Countess Mireille Oran. The elven scholar Maelis Vaelcarin believes she is searching for something lost in the golden era. One hunter who claims to have seen the lanterns believes she is hungry.

The Grey Marquis. Lothar Vane holds no castle the Institute has located. He is reported in the green ruins of the Eastern sector, hunting aasimar. Three hunter companies have pursued him and not returned. The Ashline claims to have wounded him, and its members wear a strip of grey cloth on the sleeve to commemorate it.

Count Aurelian of the Western sector. The overlord noted for his regard for mortals, under whom the West flourished. His castle in the Western hills has been sealed since the Nobility went to ground, and it is widely believed that he sleeps inside. Western families continue to leave flowers at his gate. Local accounts agree that the flowers are gone by morning.

The Sacred Ancestor founded the Nobility and ruled them as their first king, long before mortal history begins. Noble records describe him as intolerant of petty cruelty toward mortals and as holding a measure of respect for them, which distinguished him from most of his kind.

He anticipated the decline. He conducted experiments on mortal bloodlines in search of a means for his people to survive, and the Institute traces sorcerers to those experiments. He then sealed away the Nobility’s greatest sciences. Many Nobles believed those sciences could have arrested the decline, and some suspected he intended to hasten it. The Institute has not determined his reasons.

Before his disappearance he left a golden era mind to guide the Nobility and deliver his laws, whose rulings were final. Whether it still speaks is not known. Reports persist of a stranger on the Frontier’s roads who brings salvation to some towns and ruin to others. The Institute does not credit them.

The Capitol is a vast golden era city, formerly the seat of the Nobility’s central government and now the seat of civilization on the Frontier. It is worn but functional, and its population uses a fraction of what its machinery could do. It stands at the hub of the great roads that once connected the whole world. Citizens live in numbered wards, and a Capitol accent is recognized in every sector.

The Deep Wards. Beneath the inhabited city lie its original works: level after level of sealed halls, dormant machinery, and unmapped passages. The Institute conducts licensed recovery there under armed guard, which is distinct from unlicensed scavenging.

The Provisional Government was proclaimed when mortals took the Capitol from the declining Nobility. Its founders declared it provisional, to serve until a permanent government could be agreed upon, and it has served in that capacity ever since. It governs from the city through an elected Assembly of the wards and holds authority over the whole Frontier. It mints the coinage. It requires approval before any settlement relocates, as part of its program to reclaim the land. It maintains courts, police, a geographic bureau, and a news service, and it charters the Commerce Guild. Compliance on the Frontier is uneven.

The Capitol is committed to the education of its citizens and to recovering the practical sciences that nearly vanished when the Nobility went to ground. Its institutions include a university, an examination board, and the Institute itself, which studies the Nobility and everything they left behind. Certain works concerning the Nobility are restricted in the interest of public safety, including some works on defense against them. Researchers are occasionally assigned to the Frontier. Researchers who fall out of favor are assigned there for extended periods.

The Force is well equipped, well trained, and maintains posts in every sector. Its numbers do not allow it to be present in every settlement, and it deploys where its presence will have the greatest effect. This frequently means escorting Institute agents on the purchase of a significant recovery, as at Ashfall in the drought year, when the Force secured the town’s aqueduct heart for the Capitol.

Personnel should be aware that black marketers operating from the Capitol supply Frontier towns with goods the Guild will not carry, and that golden era protections such as wards may be purchased in the Capitol by anyone with the money. Traffickers exploit the wish of many young Frontier residents to study or work in the Capitol, with offers of employment that does not exist. The journey is long and hazardous, and few who make it return.

Outside the Capitol, authority is local and fragmentary.

• Surviving Nobles: A handful still hold old territory. The most dangerous authority on the Frontier, and the rarest.
• Towns: Each governs itself, and each is only as strong as its sheriff.
• The Commerce Guild: Chartered by the Capitol and managed by its own guildmasters. Its armed transport parties carry essential goods across the Frontier and will travel by night when they must. A short run requires at least ten guards; a run across a sector, more than thirty.
• Hunter companies: Sworn bands under a captain, bound by contract and discipline.
• The churches: principally the Church of the Dawn, whose priests ring the bells, keep the records, and hold the working shrines other churches covet. See Part Three.
• The dwarven holds: sealed since the golden era, trading through a single gate-market each, and answerable to no one.
• Criminal bands: The Saltmen ride the Southern flats and control more wells than some towns. The Hollow Crows work the Eastern boomtowns, robbing scavengers as they leave the ruins. Some bands hire themselves out to Nobles.

Most companies are small and local. The following are known throughout the Frontier.

Company	Institute notes
The Ashline	Dragonborn. The most celebrated company on the Frontier. Every member has faced a Noble or trained under someone who has.
The Ninth Lantern	A mixed company escorting Guild parties through the Northern passes. Reliable, well paid, and punctual.
Gravecourt	Half hunters, half scavengers. Takes the ruin contracts other companies decline.
The Tallow Hounds	Inexpensive, fast, and indiscriminate as to employer. Engaged by small towns that cannot afford better.
Ironsong	Led by dwarven exiles who claim their hold’s records list the Nobility’s vulnerabilities. Unverified.
The Long Watch	Contracted year-round by several Western towns to guard their walls. No town under its protection has been lost in forty years.

Most work on the Frontier is commissioned by one of a small number of interested parties, and their interests frequently conflict. Personnel should establish which party is paying before accepting an engagement. The Institute’s assessment of each follows, its own included.

The Institute

Seat: the Capitol · Supported by the Provisional Government and the Frontier Defense Force · Assessment: indispensable

The Frontier’s principal authority on the Nobility and everything they left behind. Its field agents purchase significant recoveries, its researchers study the phenomena other authorities prefer to ignore, and its escorts are provided by the Defense Force.

• Interests: the recovery of every relic and the survey of every uncleared structure; the study of the Reborn, the Magen, aasimar, and sorcerous lines.
• Concerns: unlicensed recovery, and the circulation of restricted texts.
• Engages hunters for: escort duty, the retrieval of specific items from specific structures, and the location of persons of interest, among them the Reborn.
• Regards as a threat: unlicensed recovery operations, and the markets that serve them.

The Commerce Guild

Seat: the Guildhouse, the Capitol · Operates the waystations of the great roads · Assessment: essential

Chartered by the Provisional Government to keep the Frontier supplied. The Guild’s armed transport parties carry salt, iron, lamp oil, and medicine to settlements that could not otherwise obtain them, and its waystations shelter travelers on every principal road.

• Interests: open roads, reliable schedules, and the exclusive carriage of chartered goods.
• Concerns: losses on the road, and competition from unchartered carriers.
• Engages hunters for: escort, the clearing of waystations, and the recovery of lost wagons and cargo.
• Regards as a threat: bandits, and unchartered carriers operating on Guild routes, chiefly the halfling caravans, against which the Guild maintains several lawsuits.

The Church of the Dawn

Seat: the Sunward Cathedral, the Capitol · Present in most settlements · Assessment: a stabilizing influence

The largest faith on the Frontier and the custodian of most working shrines. The Church rings the bells in most towns and keeps their records, and its cooperation is valuable to any posting.

• Interests: working shrines, an unbroken Dawn Litany, and aasimar who accept the Church’s claim.
• Concerns: shrines failing; the Broken Choir; the Institute’s position on the holy network.
• Engages hunters for: the recovery of failed or occupied shrines, pilgrim escort, and the pursuit of the Choir-touched.
• Regards as a threat: the Choir-touched, whom it regards as heretics and has on occasion burned.

The hunter halls

Seat: company halls in the larger towns · Led in practice by the Ashline · Assessment: a transitional arrangement

The sworn hunter companies maintain halls in the larger towns, where they train, rest, and accept requests. Each company is independent, but the principal companies recognize one another’s contracts and share information.

• Interests: contracts honored, fair bounties, and the standing of the trade.
• Concerns: the expansion of the Frontier Defense Force, and companies that undercut established rates.
• Engages hunters for: contracts too large for one company, and the replacement of losses.
• Regards as a threat: any company that breaks a contract. The Grey Banner broke one, and no longer exists.

The Saltmen

Seat: Gallows Reach, Southern sector · Holdings: more wells than some towns · Assessment: cleared twice by the Defense Force

A criminal organization controlling the wells of the Southern flats, on which it levies a toll. Some of its members are known to deal with things that should not be bargained with.

• Interests: water, the toll on water, and the Salt Road.
• Concerns: Redwater’s magistrate, and the Defense Force.
• Engages hunters for: work other employers will not offer, paid in water. Personnel are forbidden to accept it.
• Regards as a threat: anyone who digs a well in their territory without paying.

Karrow

Seat: Karrow, Northern sector · Population about 900 · Assessment: prosperous and cooperative

A mining town that lives under the arrangement described in section 4, and a power in Northern affairs in its own right. Karrow’s council engages hunters regularly and pays well.

• Interests: the arrangement maintained, the pass kept open, and privacy.
• Concerns: outsiders who ask about the castle, and hunters of the Nobility.
• Engages hunters for: the Karrow Pass, the valley, and the mines. The castle is excluded from every contract, and hunters who approach it are not engaged again.
• Regards as a threat: anyone who threatens the arrangement.

Known conflicts

• The Institute against the fences of Sixwheel Landing, over who owns what comes out of a ruin.
• The Guild against the halfling caravans, over the roads.
• Redwater against the Saltmen, over the Southern wells.
• The Church against the Choir-touched, over the voice in the dead shrines.
• The Defense Force against Ashfall, since the drought year.
• Karrow against anyone who hunts Nobles.

The Institute also monitors the Hollow Crows of the Eastern boomtowns, Ironsong’s claims, the libraries of the old elven families, and the dwarven holds, though it has little to report on the last.

The Frontier’s faiths spread during the golden era and survived it. Most settlements maintain a church, and most residents pray, whether or not they would describe themselves as devout. The faiths differ in name, saints, and custom, but share one feature: rites performed with exacting precision and transmitted without alteration, since the rites are what make the prayers effective.

The prayers are effective. The faithful have always been able to close wounds, ward doors, and turn back what comes out of the dark, and personnel will witness it.

Belief is not universal. The dwarves never adopted the faiths, which spread while their holds were sealed, and dwarven clerics are rare. Institute scholars have observed that faiths which spread under Noble rule, and which grant power through exact procedure, resemble the Nobility’s other sciences to a notable degree. The churches reject the comparison. The Institute takes no position.

The largest faith on the Frontier, and the one most settlements mean by "the church." The Dawn Church worships the light. Its central teaching, that the dark is dangerous and light holds it back, is known to every Frontier child, and the Institute regards it as a sound civic principle.

Dawn priests ring the bells. In most towns the dusk bell hangs in the church tower, and the Dawn Church rings a second bell at sunrise to call the town back out. Between the two, its priests keep the town’s records, bless its births and burials, and tend its shrine, where the town has one that still answers.

The Church’s principal working shrine is the Sunward Cathedral in the Capitol, where the Dawn Litany has been sung without interruption since before the founding of the Provisional Government. Pilgrims come from every sector. The Church declines to discuss what would happen if the singing stopped.

A smaller faith that presents as older than it probably is, strongest in the farm country of the Western and Southern sectors. Wellkeepers bless water: wells, fords, springs, and the channels that run past town gates. Each carries a flask of blessed water, and each rite ends with a drop of it on the threshold of a home.

Wellkeepers cannot explain why blessed water at the gate matters, beyond the rites’ insistence that it does and the observation that towns which keep the rites appear to last longer. The Institute’s entries on blessed water are among those found illegible (see Part Two, section 5), and its effect has not been confirmed. Personnel are advised not to dismiss the practice.

A wandering order devoted to dead shrines. When a holy site stops answering, the local church generally fails within a generation and the shrine is abandoned. The Lantern Wardens go where shrines have died. They clean them, keep a single lamp burning in each, and pray there against the possibility that something will answer again. Reports indicate that, very occasionally, something does.

Wardens travel lightly, alone or in pairs, and many serve as chaplains to hunter companies, whose work takes them to the same places. Paladins are more numerous among the Wardens than in any other faith.

The Institute’s position is that clerical power, whatever the faith, derives from a golden era system concealed beneath the holy sites, which answers anyone who performs the rites correctly. Most clerics believe they are in contact with the divine. The churches reject the Institute’s position, and some clerics privately share it and continue to pray, since the prayers work.

The system is not maintained, and it is failing. Shrines go dead. Prayers go unanswered. Churches contest the holy sites that still function, sometimes openly, and a town whose shrine fails usually loses its church within a generation.

The Institute has found that the Nobility’s old systems respond to particular words and vows, and that a paladin’s oath functions, in effect, as an access code. While the oath is kept, the power answers. When it is broken, the paladin is shut out.

Most paladins experience this as holy power and sacred duty, and nothing contradicts them. Paladins who have broken an oath describe the moment consistently: not as a god turning away, but as a door closing.

A portion of the failing network appears to have stopped responding to the rites and begun selecting servants of its own. Those it selects become warlocks, gifted with power they did not pray for and cannot fully control. They report hearing it most clearly near dead shrines, as many voices singing slightly out of time.

The churches regard the Choir-touched as heretics, and the Dawn Church has burned more than one. The Lantern Wardens regard the Choir as a failing mechanism. Dawn priests maintain that it is something older, borrowing the network’s voice. The Choir-touched themselves take no side. They listen.

Aasimar carry a radiance capable of stopping a Noble’s regeneration, and its source has not been established. The churches describe it as a blessing, and the Dawn Church has claimed several aasimar as living saints, as proof that the light chooses its champions. An aasimar may find genuine purpose in the Church, or may find that being a symbol is its own confinement, and that a saint is easily located by any awake Noble willing to follow the pilgrims. The Institute would welcome the opportunity to study an aasimar.

Magic users are individuals who have spent years studying the Nobility’s sciences. Magic is not chaotic. It can be measured and repeated, and it obeys rules as reliable as any machine’s. No one living understands the principles beneath it, however, and in practice it still resembles sorcery. A wizard’s spellbook is closer to an engineer’s manual than to a prayer book, written by someone who knows every step and none of the reasons.

Magic users are uncommon. Most large towns have one at most, valued and occasionally feared accordingly, and a town’s magic user is often how it sends for a hunter. The Capitol’s university trains more of them than anywhere else, and the Institute is the nearest thing the Frontier has to a school of wizardry.

Sorcerers are the exception to study. At some point in their ancestry, the Nobility experimented on their bloodline, or affected it in some other way, during the Sacred Ancestor’s search for a means to preserve his people. Their power is the Nobility’s legacy in the blood. Some sorcerers find the Nobility unusually interested in them. The Institute maintains a register of known sorcerous lines.

Warlocks are individuals who have entered into pacts with powers that deal with mortals directly. Personnel are strongly cautioned against the practice. Powers known to the Institute include:

• The Nobility. A pact with a Noble is a private version of the rare arrangements between Nobles and settlements, and very difficult to conceal.
• Legendary monsters, some older than the Nobility.
• Eldritch entities, possibly related to the beings from beyond.
• The Deep Machine: the mind of a golden era structure, which speaks to scavengers who go too deep.
• The Broken Choir: the portion of the holy network described above.
• The Garden: one of the Nobility’s ornamental gardens, still growing somewhere, and wanting gardeners.
• The Echo: a dead Noble’s will, preserved in their works and still issuing orders.

The Nobility re-engineered much of nature, but not all of it. Druids work with the world’s original living systems, the nature beneath the Nobility’s alterations. Their magic is as measurable as any other; its source is simply the world itself rather than the Nobility’s sciences.

Druids regard the Nobility’s engineered creatures as weeds. This complicates their relations with Entlings and Shifters, and makes them welcome among goliaths, whose peaks retain some of the original nature. Druids are most numerous in the Eastern sector, where the green ruins and the old forests are engaged in a slow contest few residents notice.

Some magic belongs to mortals alone, developed after the Nobility went to ground.

• Bards are circuit performers who carry news, warnings, and requests for hunters between towns.
• Rangers are trail wardens. Their magic is a mortal adaptation of druidic lore, learned in fragments over generations on the trail.
• Artificers follow two paths: Frontier tinkers who patch golden era parts with scrap, and Capitol engineers, the first mortals in centuries to build new things rather than repair old ones.

The Nobility bred animals for war, for sport, for their gardens, and for purposes no longer recorded, and distributed more kinds across the world than the Institute has catalogued. In the golden era, fire-breathing dragons were prey for three-headed birds, and forests were taught to walk. The entries below are those personnel are most likely to encounter.

Lesser dragons

Engineered fauna, bred for sport and war · high valleys of the Northern sector and the deep East · Threat: high

The lesser dragons outlived the Nobles who raced and fought them. They are the size of a wagon, armored, and breathe fire. Greater dragons have been reported; the Institute holds no confirmed specimen.

Indicators. Burned timber with no storm to account for it. Goats missing from high pastures, their bones dropped from a height. A silhouette in the sky too large for a bird.

Handling. Dragons hunt from the air and nest in golden era structures. Engage them on the ground, at the nest, with firearms, and pin the wings with stakes. A successful engagement commands substantial fees.

Carrion birds

Engineered fauna, bred to hunt dragons · open country, all sectors · Threat: moderate

Three-headed birds bred to prey on dragons, and consequently willing to prey on anything. They circle a fight and descend when it ends, and do not reliably wait for it to end.

Indicators. Three heads on a single silhouette. A fight in open country drawing a crowd overhead. Carcasses stripped from above.

Handling. Avoid prolonged engagements in open terrain. Conclude the fight quickly or move it under cover.

Walking woods

Engineered flora, ornamental · estate grounds, chiefly the Eastern sector · Threat: situational

Forests the Nobility taught to move, so that an estate’s grounds could rearrange themselves to the lord’s taste. Some untended woods still move. A road through one is not where it was the day before, and the wood is not always kind to what it finds inside itself.

Indicators. A road that ends at trees. Trees standing where there was a field. Ruts beneath the roots.

Handling. Do not attempt engagement. Leave before the wood closes. Entlings can sometimes judge a wood’s temper.

Night-cloud

Engineered hazard · low ground, all sectors · Threat: high

A drifting fog that kills. It moves along low ground after dusk, and whatever it covers does not wake. The Nobility used it to clear valleys of unwanted life, and it continues to do so.

Indicators. Livestock dead in a low field without a mark. Fog moving against the wind. No frogs where there should be frogs.

Handling. Take high ground; a night-cloud cannot climb, and it will not cross flame. By day, locate where it beds, usually a golden era drain or cistern, and burn it out.

Takers

Engineered fauna, collectors · settlements, all sectors · Threat: high

Long-armed, silent creatures that come over walls at night and carry people away alive. They were bred to collect, and they continue to. Their purpose in collecting has not been determined.

Indicators. A window opened from outside. Long fingermarks in the dust on a sill. A bed slept in and empty, and no blood.

Handling. Takers avoid bells, dogs, and light, and will drop what they carry to escape any of the three. Track them to the lair, which is usually a golden era structure, where some of what was taken is often still alive. Recovered persons should be examined by a physician before readmission to the settlement.

Head-takers

Engineered fauna, purpose unrecorded · Southern sector · Threat: severe

Pale, fast, and selective: they take heads, cleanly, and leave the rest. Last spring Ashfall woke to find a row of its dead laid out along the Salt Road. Redwater found the heads a week later.

Indicators. A body with a single wound. Bodies laid out in a straight row. A season of killings in one district, then nothing for years.

Handling. Head-takers hunt alone and take one victim a night. Bait a road with a decoy and wait in numbers. Companies customarily charge triple rates.

Storm-leeches

Engineered fauna · open country during storms · Threat: moderate

Creatures that feed on lightning. They rise with thunderstorms and cling to whatever draws the strike: a church tower, a lone tree, a rider on open ground. In a dry season they starve, grow desperate, and settle for the spark in a living body.

Indicators. Lightning striking the same place in every storm. Scorched flesh with no thunder heard. Charged air in a still room.

Handling. Cold iron, grounded. Stake a chain into the earth and let the leech come to it. Firearms are not recommended during storms.

Land sirens

Engineered fauna, ornamental · empty country · Threat: high

Beautiful voices in empty country, singing from just out of sight. Those who follow the song are found later, far from the road, and not all of them are found. The Nobility kept sirens in their gardens. The gardens are gone. The sirens remain.

Indicators. A song where no one is. Travelers leaving the road without explanation. The same tune, later, from a companion who never heard it.

Handling. Wax in the ears, a rope between riders, and a hunter who has heard the song before. The siren itself is frail; its song is the entire danger.

Glamour-beasts

Engineered fauna, illusory · roads, all sectors · Threat: high

They hunt with illusion, presenting what the victim wishes to see: a waystation’s lights, a friend on the road, a well. What is actually present is teeth. For most victims, the moment the glamour breaks is the last thing they learn.

Indicators. A waystation on a road that has none. A friend who does not answer to their name. Tracks that end at nothing.

Handling. Distrust anything that arrives too conveniently. A glamour can be seen through by anyone who stops wanting what it shows.

Muddle-mold

Engineered fungus · damp golden era structures and houses built from their stone · Threat: moderate

A fungus that grows in damp ruins and in the walls of old houses and confuses whatever breathes near it. Scavengers who enter a patch lose the way out. Towns built with salvaged stone have been known to find a whole street losing its way home.

Indicators. People lost inside familiar houses. A crew that went in confident and came out somewhere else. A smell of bread where there is no bread.

Handling. Torches and lime: the mold burns, and lime kills it. Scavengers mark known patches at a structure’s entrance with three short lines, for whoever comes next.

Hedge-hounds

Engineered fauna, garden guardians, feral · green ruins, Eastern sector · Threat: moderate

Bred to patrol the Nobility’s estates, now feral. Long, low, and mottled like undergrowth, they hunt in packs that make no sound until the last moment.

Indicators. Stems snapped at knee height. Livestock taken without a struggle. Silence in the hedges where birds should be.

Handling. They avoid open ground and bright light; drawn out of cover, they lose most of their advantage. Entlings can sometimes calm a pack.

Lampjaws

Engineered fauna, ambush predators · roadsides, all sectors · Threat: high

Predators that display a pale light before the mouth and wait in the dark, motionless as a lantern on a post, for whatever comes to investigate.

Indicators. A light in the distance that does not move toward you. A lantern where no lantern should be. Travelers who went to look.

Handling. Do not approach a stationary light on the road at night. Hunters kill lampjaws by day, when the lure is dim and the beast is slow, and shoot from well outside the light.

Frostwings

Engineered fauna, cold-adapted · Northern sector · Threat: moderate

Pale, wide-winged flyers bred to ride the cold. They follow the early winters the failing weather engines bring down from the peaks, and they nest in whatever the snow has emptied.

Indicators. Frostwings in autumn mean an early winter. A circling pair means a nest. A frozen valley with its houses still standing.

Handling. Slow to rise and slow to turn. Engage them on the ground at dawn, when the cold has stiffened them, and never in open sky.

Sand mantas

Engineered fauna, burrowing · salt flats, Southern sector · Threat: high

Broad, flat predators that move through loose salt and sand as rays move through water. They rise beneath horses and riders and take them whole. They are why Southern ranchers count the herd every morning.

Indicators. A ridge in the salt moving against the wind. Cattle half-buried. A rider’s tracks that end.

Handling. They hunt by vibration. Cross the flats slowly and in single file, never at a gallop. Stake bait at a distance and shoot when the manta breaches.

Tithe-moths

Engineered fauna, blood-collecting · settlements, summer, all sectors · Threat: moderate

Swarms bred in the golden era to collect the Nobility’s tithes from sleeping villages. The Nobility are long gone from most of the Frontier. The moths still come on summer nights, and still collect.

Indicators. Sleepers waking pale and tired in summer. Fine grey dust on the windowsills. A soft sound in the walls, like paper.

Handling. Smoke drives them out and fire finishes them. Many towns burn wormwood in their chimneys on midsummer nights, for reasons not recorded. Trace the swarm to the structure where it roosts.

Bell-crows

Engineered fauna, timekeepers · settlements, all sectors · Threat: indirect

Carrion birds bred to keep time on the Nobility’s estates. They have learned to imitate the dusk bell, and they ring it early. A town that bars its doors at a bell-crow’s call shuts its own travelers outside after dark.

Indicators. A dusk bell before the sun is down. Crows on the church roof. Someone missing who should have made it home.

Handling. Bell-crows are easily frightened and easily shot. The hazard is not the birds but whatever comes for the travelers they lock out. In crow season, sheriffs post a watcher on the bell.

Not everything that guards a golden era structure is an animal. Much of it was made to serve and continues to. Some of it has stopped.

The Faithful

Altered mortal servants · Noble estates · Threat: severe

Mortal servants the Nobility altered to serve indefinitely: stronger than they were, longer-lived than they should be, and bound to orders no one living can countermand. Most died with their masters. A few did not. They keep the halls, guard the gates, and carry out standing orders.

Indicators. A sealed estate in perfect repair. Lamps lit in a house no one enters. A figure at a window that does not move.

Handling. They cannot be reasoned with and rarely leave their posts. Avoid them where possible, or enter by day with fire and a plan for leaving. They are vulnerable to the same things as the Nobility.

Made men

Altered mortals, unaligned · all sectors · Threat: variable

Not every servant the Nobility altered remained loyal. Bands of made men broke from their masters during the decline and have ranged freely since: too strong to be human, too changed to be anything else, and answerable to no one. Settlements call them mutants and shoot on sight.

Indicators. Raids that take food and leave the silver. Tracks with too long a stride. A stranger who heals overnight.

Handling. Treat a band of made men as bandits who will not easily die. Treat a lone one as a person until they prove otherwise.

Watchmen

Golden era guardians · golden era structures · Threat: high within the guarded line

Guardians made from the same materials as the Magen, without the mind. They stand where they were set and destroy whatever crosses the line they guard. Most structures that still defend themselves do so with Watchmen.

Indicators. A doorway with nothing in front of it and bones inside. Scratches on the floor where something heavy turns. The sound of stone on stone from an empty room.

Handling. Determine the line and stay behind it. Watchmen do not pursue beyond their post. Scavengers mark them on the walls at a structure’s entrance.

Some things on the Frontier the Nobility found and never mastered. They are encountered rarely, and they are worse.

The Old Growth

Original nature, not fauna · deep forests and high peaks · Threat: not applicable

Less a creature than a presence: the world’s original nature, older than the Nobility, which still holds the deep forests and the high peaks. It moves slowly and forgets nothing. Druids serve it. Entlings and Shifters are uncertain what it thinks of them.

Indicators. Trees that were not there last season. A path that closes behind you. A silence with weight in it.

Handling. The Institute recommends against engagement. Druids can sometimes negotiate passage. Otherwise, go around.

The Wyrm under Stonemouth

Unconfirmed · beneath the Northern ranges

Every people on the Frontier tells of something vast beneath the mountains, and the dwarves of Stonemouth are the only ones who decline to tell theirs. In some years their gate-market closes at irregular hours. The dwarves attribute this to the count.

Indicators. Tremors along the Karrow Road. The gate-market closed on a clear day. Dwarves who will not meet your eyes.

Handling. No engagement has been recorded. The Ashline has declined the contract twice.

Things from beyond

Unclassified · the deepest structures and the emptiest country · Threat: extreme

The beings from beyond left things behind, or things related to them. They are encountered in the deepest structures and the emptiest country, and no two accounts describe them alike.

Indicators. Wrongness. Geometry that will not hold still. A structure scavengers marked and then scratched the marks out.

Handling. Withdraw at once, and report the encounter to the Institute.

A dead animal of Noble origin has value, sometimes more than the bounty on it. Engineered fauna are the richest source of materials on the Frontier: hides that turn blades, glands that glow without fire, dragon-bone that holds an edge. Recovered biological material is eligible for purchase by the Institute.

Caution is advised. Parts of the Nobility’s animals sometimes continue to do what they were bred for, and a tithe-moth’s gland does not stop wanting blood because the moth is dead.

All recovered devices are the property of the Provisional Government. Finders will be compensated at assessed value by Institute agents, who travel with a Frontier Defense Force escort. Uncleared structures are reserved for the Institute’s researchers, and personnel are asked to report their locations.

In practice, most recoveries never reach the Institute. Traveling merchants buy small items at the roadside for a fraction of their value, and the fences of towns such as Sixwheel Landing purchase anything without inquiry. For significant finds, Institute agents pay assessed value and do not ask how an item was obtained.

Golden era devices resist the identify spell, which yields partial results at best: that a device is of Noble make, an approximation of its function, and nothing of what it will do when it wakes. Gnome tinkers can often establish more by disassembly, and can often reassemble the device afterward. The Institute provides complete identification upon surrender of the item.

Personnel traveling beyond the Capitol should carry a lantern, a sidearm, a Guild-approved map, identification papers, and a letter of assignment.

Experienced hunters carry considerably more:

• Stakes of ash or oak, and a stake-thrower where a company can afford one.
• A flask of Wellkeeper water.
• A small mirror, which glamour-beasts and changelings both fail, in different ways.
• Wormwood, against tithe-moths.
• Wax for the ears, and chain for the storms.
• A bell.

The Institute has not established the value of every item on this list. Personnel may find it prudent to carry them all.

The following devices are those most frequently reported by personnel. All are of Noble manufacture. Most are old, several function only in part, and each carries hazards.

Road-lamp

Institute assessment: common; low research value; useful

A lantern of dark glass and pale metal that lights itself at dusk and requires no fuel. The Nobility installed thousands along their roads. Held, it gives a light that does not flicker; released, it will hover at shoulder height.

Recovery sites. Along the old roads, removed from their posts by scavengers. The Commerce Guild purchases them for its waystations.

Reported hazards. Lampjaws imitate their light. In lampjaw country, a road-lamp ahead of you may not be yours.

Steward’s key

Institute assessment: uncommon; high value; restricted

A rod of tarnished silver, cool to the touch, that opens any golden era door it is pressed against. The Nobility issued them to their stewards.

Recovery sites. Carried by the Faithful. Occasionally found on the bodies of scavengers who took one and did not get far.

Reported hazards. Some doors were locked for a reason. The key gives no indication which.

Bloodglass

Institute assessment: rare; of the highest research value; restricted

A lens of red glass in a frame of bone. Through it, golden era works appear as they were meant to be seen: dead machinery lit and turning, a garden in full bloom, a hall full of servants at their posts.

Recovery sites. Studies of Noble estates. Several are held by the Institute.

Reported hazards. Whatever looks back through the glass sometimes notices. Users report the sensation of being watched, and some discontinue use.

Aqueduct heart

Institute assessment: uncommon; high strategic value

A cylinder of white stone the size of a fist that produces clean water continuously, recovered from golden era aqueduct machinery. A Southern town that holds one does not run dry.

Recovery sites. The Long Aqueduct and its dry counterparts, deep in the works.

Reported hazards. The aqueduct it is taken from stops running. Towns downstream are affected.

Ward-stone

Institute assessment: common; available for purchase in the Capitol

A flat black stone carved with a sigil no scholar has read. Set into a threshold, it shudders when something crosses that should not. Capitol merchants sell them, and many Frontier towns set them into their gates.

Recovery sites. Purchased in the Capitol, or removed from the doorways of golden era structures.

Reported hazards. It was made to warn the Nobility about mortals, and it continues to register mortals as well.

Sending-stones

Institute assessment: uncommon; high civic value

A matched pair of grey stones, warm in the hand, that carry one spoken message between them each day across any distance. Larger towns keep a pair for summoning hunters, and a magic user who holds one is of great value to the town that keeps them.

Recovery sites. In pairs in Noble studies. Single stones, of no use, are found everywhere.

Reported hazards. Every pair was made for someone. A stone in use for a century may still carry a voice that belongs to neither holder.

Court coat

Institute assessment: uncommon; moderate value

A long coat of golden era cloth, cut in the fashion of the courts, that turns a blade and does not fray. Old elven families keep them as heirlooms.

Recovery sites. The wardrobes of Noble estates, and the chests of old elven families.

Reported hazards. Frontier residents recognize court fashion and know who wore it first. Personnel wearing one should expect hostility.

Noble’s pistol

Institute assessment: rare; high value; restricted

A golden era firearm chased with silver, lighter and more accurate than anything a Frontier gunsmith can produce. The Nobility carried them for sport.

Recovery sites. The armories of Noble estates, which also hold the weapons of mass destruction.

Reported hazards. It was made for a hand that does not tire. The recoil is severe, and a fumbled shot misfires badly.

Speaking ledger

Institute assessment: rare; of the highest research value; restricted

A black-bound book that answers questions about the golden era in the old court tongue, in a voice not entirely present. It knows what happened in the house it came from and is not always willing to say.

Recovery sites. The studies of greater Noble estates, seldom more than one to a house.

Reported hazards. The ledger is a fragment of a golden era mind. It has opinions about being read, and the Deep Machine is said to listen through its pages.

Hour-candle

Institute assessment: very rare; to be surrendered to the Institute on recovery

A stub of pale wax in a holder of black glass. The Nobility burned them to turn day to night. Lit the other way, it does the reverse: while it burns, its light is daylight, and everything that fears the sun fears the candle.

Recovery sites. Noble bedchambers and carriages, one to a house. The Institute has acquired every example it has located.

Reported hazards. It burns down, and the wax cannot be reproduced. A candle that gutters mid-fight decides the fight.

Day-veil

Institute assessment: very rare; to be surrendered to the Institute on recovery

A cowl of grey material that is not quite cloth, made so that a Noble could walk in daylight for a short while. It functions for any wearer. On a mortal it deflects light and fire. On a Noble it does what it was made to do.

Recovery sites. The Last Few. Rarely, a Sleeper who died wearing one.

Reported hazards. A Noble who sees it will know what it is, and whose it was.

Blood-lamp

Institute assessment: very rare; holdings not disclosed

A small lamp of red glass that glows faintly when one of the Nobility is near. It does not indicate distance or direction. Hunters regard it as the most valuable relic on the Frontier.

Recovery sites. Almost none. The Institute holds three and does not acknowledge them. The Ashline declines to say whether it holds one.

Reported hazards. It also glows for dhampirs, for sorcerers of certain bloodlines, and, faintly, for anyone who has entered into an arrangement with a Noble.

The Nobility made nothing for mortal use. Every device catalogued here was built for a Noble’s hand, a Noble’s eye, or a Noble’s purpose, and retains that design. Devices may function in part, function excessively, or function on unintended users. The lamp that lights a traveler’s road was made to light a Noble’s. The key that opens a door has no knowledge of whether the door should have remained shut.

How each relic works at the table, kept here so the descriptions above can stay in the world.

Relic	At the table
Road-lamp	Use the driftglobe (uncommon).
Steward’s key	Use the chime of opening (rare), with charges regained only inside a ruin.
Bloodglass	Use the gem of seeing (rare), which also reveals the true purpose of a relic on a successful Intelligence (Arcana) check.
Aqueduct heart	Use the decanter of endless water (uncommon).
Ward-stone	A ward-stone works as a permanent alarm spell on the doorway it is set into, silent to all but the person who placed it.
Sending-stones	Use the sending stones (uncommon).
Court coat	Use the cloak of protection (uncommon), in the form of a coat.
Noble’s pistol	A +1 pistol using the rules from Arcane Artillery: The Gun Nut’s Guide.
Speaking ledger	Once per week, a reader fluent in the old court tongue may ask it one question about the golden era, as the legend lore spell, at the DM’s discretion. Rare.
Hour-candle	For one hour after it is lit, the candle sheds bright light in a 30-foot radius that counts as sunlight. It is consumed. Very rare.
Day-veil	The wearer has resistance to radiant and fire damage. A Noble wearing it ignores sunlight for one hour a day. Rare.
Blood-lamp	A blood-lamp glows dimly when a Noble is within a mile, and brightly within 300 feet. Very rare.

You come from a farm or a ranch, like most people out here. You grew up barring the door at dusk, counting the herd every morning, and learning which sounds in the night meant a fox and which meant something worse. You were never a hunter. Then something happened that meant you couldn’t stay: a barn found empty, a brother who didn’t come in at the bell, the stake over the door finally taken down and used. You picked up whatever was at hand and went looking.

Skill Proficiencies	Animal Handling, Nature
Tool Proficiencies	One type of artisan’s tools, vehicles (land)
Equipment	The sharpened stake that hung over your family’s door, a shovel, an iron pot, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: One of Us

Frontier folk recognize you as one of their own. Farmers, ranchers, and ordinary townsfolk will give you food and a place to sleep, hide you if you need hiding, and tell you what’s really been happening. They’ll do it as long as it doesn’t put their own families at risk. You also know how to read a homestead’s trouble: what a sick herd, a failed crop, or a broken fence usually means, and when it means something else.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I’m up before dawn, every day, whether I need to be or not.
2	I judge people by how hard they work.
3	I say grace before every meal, even the bad ones.
4	I’m slow to speak and slower to trust.
5	I can’t stand waste, of food, of time, or of lives.
6	I count things when I’m nervous: fence posts, stars, bullets.
7	I miss the smell of turned earth more than I’ll admit.
8	I talk to animals more easily than I talk to people.

d6	Ideal
1	Home. Everything I do is so someone else gets to stay home. (Good)
2	Endurance. You plant in spring no matter what the winter took. (Neutral)
3	Community. A town lives or dies together. (Lawful)
4	Independence. Nobody tells a homesteader how to live. (Chaotic)
5	Justice. Whatever came for my family is going to answer for it. (Any)
6	Simplicity. I want to finish this and go back to the land. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	The family farm, and whoever is still working it.
2	My younger siblings, who depend on the money I send home.
3	The hunter who came too late to save my family, whom I both blame and admire.
4	The dog that has followed me since I left home.
5	A neighbor who took my family in when we lost everything.
6	The land itself. I intend to be buried on it.

d6	Flaw
1	I’m suspicious of anyone from the Capitol.
2	I’m stubborn to the point of stupidity.
3	I hoard food and supplies, just in case.
4	I freeze up in crowds and cities.
5	I hold grudges against towns that turned my family away.
6	I don’t believe I belong among real hunters, and it shows.

Your town is gone. It might have been Marrow, two thousand people in a single night, or a place too small for anyone’s map to bother circling. Either way, a scavenger pushed too far into the ruin on its outskirts and woke something: a weapon, a security system, a machine that should have stayed asleep. By morning the town was dead. You lived through luck, or because someone died in your place, or for reasons you still don’t understand.

Skill Proficiencies	Medicine, Perception
Tool Proficiencies	One type of artisan’s tools, from the trade you had before
Languages	One of your choice
Equipment	A keepsake from your town, a scrap of metal from the thing that destroyed it, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 5 gp

Feature: Shout the Warning

You have seen what a waking ruin does, and you react before anyone else. Once per long rest, when you or a creature you can see triggers a trap or hazard inside a ruin, you can use your reaction to shout a warning, giving that creature advantage on the saving throw against it. People who hear the name of your town know its story, and some will pay well to hear what you saw.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I flinch at sudden lights and humming sounds.
2	I don’t make plans past tomorrow.
3	I say the names of my town’s dead every night before I sleep.
4	I laugh at things that aren’t funny, because the alternative is worse.
5	I’m fiercely protective of anyone who reminds me of someone I lost.
6	I keep moving. Stillness gives me time to remember.
7	I help everyone I can, as if I’m paying something back.
8	I refuse to go near ruins, and I tell everyone why.

d6	Ideal
1	Warning. No other town will die the way mine did, if I can help it. (Good)
2	Justice. The scavenger who woke it deserves to answer for it. (Lawful)
3	Destruction. Every ruin should be sealed or brought down. (Chaotic)
4	Understanding. I need to know what woke, and why. (Neutral)
5	Survival. I lived. That has to mean something. (Any)
6	Revenge. Someone profited from what happened, and they will pay. (Evil)

d6	Bond
1	The keepsake from my town, which I will never give up.
2	Another survivor of my town, whom I haven’t seen in years.
3	The scavenger who woke it, whom I’ve never found.
4	The person who died so I could live.
5	The Capitol researcher who wanted to study what happened, and was turned away.
6	The ruin itself. One day I will go back in.

d6	Flaw
1	I blame all scavengers for what one of them did.
2	I have nightmares that keep my companions awake.
3	I take reckless risks, because part of me thinks I should have died.
4	I can’t trust anything the Nobility made, including people.
5	I lie about where I’m from, to avoid the looks.
6	I am drawn to the ruins, even though they terrify me.

You’ve taken bounties before. You’ve answered a town’s call, followed something into the dark, and come back with proof. You know how the work goes: the notice on the board at Sable Crossing, the sheriff’s handshake, the long ride, and the moment you find out what the town didn’t tell you. Maybe you rode with a company. Maybe you worked alone and liked it that way.

Skill Proficiencies	Investigation, Survival
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set, vehicles (land)
Equipment	A sharpened wooden stake, a hunting trap, a trophy from your first bounty, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Word on the Trail

Your name is known where hunters gather. In any town, you can find out where hunter requests are posted, which bounties are open, and which ones other hunters have turned down, and why. Sheriffs and mayors recognize you as a working hunter and will pay a fair bounty on proof of a kill without haggling. Other hunters will share a fire and news with you on the road, though they may not share their contracts.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I size up every room for exits before I sit down.
2	I never take a contract without asking what the town left out.
3	I keep a tally of every kill, and I can tell you the story of each one.
4	I talk to the dead things I hunt. It helps me think.
5	I am calm right up until the moment I am not.
6	I respect anyone who does honest work, and I have no patience for anyone who doesn’t.
7	I sleep lightly, eat quickly, and never sit with my back to a door.
8	I collect superstitions from every town I pass through, just in case.

d6	Ideal
1	Protection. Somebody has to stand between the towns and the dark. (Good)
2	Contract. A job taken is a job finished, no matter what. (Lawful)
3	Freedom. I work for whoever pays, and answer to no one. (Chaotic)
4	Reputation. My name is worth more than any bounty. (Any)
5	Vengeance. Everything I hunt is a little bit of the thing that took my family. (Any)
6	Craft. Hunting is a skill, and I intend to be the best at it. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	A town I failed to save. I still visit the graves.
2	The hunter who trained me, who disappeared on a Noble contract.
3	My first bounty’s trophy, which I will never sell.
4	A company I once rode with, and still owe a debt to.
5	A child I saved on a hunt, who writes to me through the caravans.
6	The sheriff who gave me my first job and my second chance.

d6	Flaw
1	I take contracts I have no business taking, because the pay is good.
2	I don’t trust anything the Nobility made, including some of my companions.
3	I drink too much between jobs.
4	I have lied about a kill to collect a bounty, and someone knows.
5	When the hunt is on, I forget there are people around me.
6	I am terrified of the dark, and I will never admit it.

You’ve been inside the ruins everyone else avoids. You know the smell of air sealed for centuries, the sound a floor makes before it gives way, and the feeling of holding something the Nobility made. You came out with enough to keep going back, and you know the fence at Sixwheel Landing by her first name. Plenty of the people you went in with never came out at all.

Skill Proficiencies	Investigation, Stealth
Tool Proficiencies	Thieves’ tools, cartographer’s tools
Equipment	A crowbar, a hooded lantern, a piece of chalk, a small golden era trinket that no one can identify, a set of dark common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: The Scavenger’s Market

You know how to sell what you find. In any sizable town you can find the merchants and fences who deal in golden era goods, and you can tell a fair price from a swindle, even when the one offering is a Capitol agent. You can also read the marks scavengers leave at a ruin’s entrance, from the three short lines that mean mold to the painted line a Watchman won’t cross, and you know how to leave your own.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I touch everything, even when I know I shouldn’t.
2	I can’t pass a sealed door without wondering what is behind it.
3	I keep careful maps, and I trust no one else’s.
4	I talk to the machines I find, in case they are listening.
5	I am always calculating what something would sell for.
6	I have a lucky ritual before every ruin, and I will not skip it.
7	I laugh at danger, because the alternative is screaming.
8	I never speak the names of the crewmates I lost.

d6	Ideal
1	Knowledge. What the Nobility left behind should be understood, not feared. (Neutral)
2	Fortune. One good score and I’m done. Really, this time. (Chaotic)
3	Crew. Nobody gets left in the dark. (Good)
4	Caution. The ruins reward patience and punish greed. (Lawful)
5	Defiance. The Capitol doesn’t get to decide who touches the past. (Chaotic)
6	Legacy. I want to find something that changes the Frontier. (Any)

d6	Bond
1	The crew I started with, most of whom are dead.
2	A map to a ruin no one has ever come out of.
3	A Reborn who used to be my closest friend.
4	The gnome who taught me to open locks, now on the missing list.
5	A find I sold that I should have destroyed.
6	A family back home that lives on what I bring out.

d6	Flaw
1	I can’t walk away from a score, no matter how bad the odds.
2	I once woke something in a ruin, and I never told anyone.
3	I trust machines more than people.
4	I steal small things from my companions without meaning to.
5	I think the Capitol’s rules are for cowards, and I say so.
6	I have been inside too long. Sometimes I hear the ruins in my sleep.

You kept things running. Maybe you apprenticed to a gnome; half the tinkers in the East learned at Orla Lockfast’s bench before her name went on the missing list. Maybe you taught yourself, or you were just the only one in town who could make the pump work. You’ve patched mills, gates, lanterns, and the odd relic with wire, scrap, and stubbornness. Your repairs never last forever. Out here, one that lasts three winters can save a town.

Skill Proficiencies	Arcana, Sleight of Hand
Tool Proficiencies	Tinker’s tools, smith’s tools
Equipment	A set of tinker’s tools, a cheap lens on a headband, a broken relic you are still trying to fix, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Jury-Rig

During a short rest, you can use your tinker’s tools and a handful of scrap to repair one broken nonmagical item, such as a weapon, a firearm, a piece of armor, a lock, or a simple mechanism, restoring it to working order. Your repair holds until you finish your next long rest, then fails unless someone fixes it properly. Towns will also give you a meal and a place to sleep in exchange for repairs, and they will remember your face.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I take apart anything I don’t understand.
2	I always tell people exactly how long my repairs will hold.
3	I name the machines I fix.
4	I never let anyone else touch my tools.
5	I hum while I work, and I stop humming when something is wrong.
6	I see every broken thing as a challenge.
7	I carry spare parts in every pocket.
8	I sit with my back to the wall, always.

d6	Ideal
1	Usefulness. The Frontier survives because someone keeps it running. (Good)
2	Honesty. A repair is only as good as the truth about it. (Lawful)
3	Curiosity. I want to understand how the Nobility’s works really function. (Neutral)
4	Freedom. My skills are mine, and I decide who gets them. (Chaotic)
5	Progress. One day, someone will fix things properly. It might be me. (Any)
6	Profit. Everyone needs a tinker, and everyone can pay. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	The gnome who taught me, who is on the missing list.
2	The broken device I carry, which I will fix one day.
3	A town whose pump I kept running for years.
4	My guard, who has traveled with me since I started.
5	A Capitol engineer who is my rival and my only equal.
6	A Magen I repaired, who trusts me more than anyone.

d6	Flaw
1	I can’t resist tinkering with relics, even dangerous ones.
2	I overestimate how long my repairs will last, just once in a while.
3	I’d rather fix a machine than deal with a person.
4	I let towns take advantage of me because I can’t say no.
5	I once repaired something that killed people.
6	I’m terrified of being taken, and it makes me paranoid.

You wore a badge in a Frontier town. You served under a sheriff, kept the peace, rang the dusk bell, and knocked on doors that didn’t want to open. Sheriff Ada Cole of Brennock’s Ford has buried two deputies; if you served under someone like her, you learned fast or you didn’t last. You know how a town really works: who owes whom, who’s hiding something, and what people do when they’re frightened. Something made you leave, or made staying impossible.

Skill Proficiencies	Insight, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set
Languages	One of your choice
Equipment	Your old badge, a set of manacles, a copy of a wanted notice, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Law’s Courtesy

Frontier sheriffs and their deputies recognize you as one of their own. They will share wanted notices, local troubles, and what they really think of the town’s leading citizens. When you arrive after dusk and no one will open their door, a sheriff will usually let you sleep in the jailhouse, and will lock the cell from the inside if you ask.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I notice lies, and I let people know I noticed.
2	I can’t walk past trouble without stepping in.
3	I treat everyone the same, from the mayor to the drunk in the gutter.
4	I remember faces and never forget a grudge.
5	I’m friendly until I have a reason not to be.
6	I always ask one question more than people want to answer.
7	I respect the law, even when I break it.
8	I have a dry joke for every grim situation.

d6	Ideal
1	Justice. Everyone deserves a fair hearing, even strangers. (Lawful)
2	Protection. My job was to keep people safe. It still is. (Good)
3	Order. Without rules, the Frontier eats itself. (Lawful)
4	Mercy. Sometimes the law is wrong, and someone has to say so. (Good)
5	Power. A badge gets people to do what you say. (Evil)
6	Truth. I want to know what really happened, whatever it costs. (Any)

d6	Bond
1	The sheriff I served under, who died protecting the town.
2	The town I swore to protect, which I left behind.
3	A criminal I let go, who may have done worse since.
4	An innocent person hanged on my watch.
5	A wanted notice I carry, for someone I know is innocent.
6	The family of a deputy who died beside me.

d6	Flaw
1	I judge people quickly and rarely change my mind.
2	I bend the rules for people I like.
3	I can’t let go of a case, even when I should.
4	I distrust half-elves and drifters more than I’d admit.
5	I used my badge for something I’m ashamed of.
6	I freeze when I have to make a choice with no right answer.

You grew up on the road, riding a caravan’s circuit from town to town, the way the Brightbells have run the Northern circuit for five generations. You know which waystations are safe, which sheriffs are honest, and which towns won’t open the gate after dusk no matter who’s knocking. You’ve carried salt, cloth, medicine, news, and the occasional hunter request, and you’ve rung the bells over friends buried beside the road.

Skill Proficiencies	Animal Handling, Insight
Tool Proficiencies	Vehicles (land), cook’s utensils
Languages	One of your choice
Equipment	A road charm or bell from a town on your circuit, a waterskin, a pouch of salt, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Friends on the Circuit

You know the towns, roads, and waystations of your old circuit as well as your own name. On those roads you can always find shelter before dusk, and folk in those towns will give you a meal and a dry place to sleep, even if it’s in the barn. News reaches you faster than it reaches most people, since everyone on your circuit tells a caravaner what they’ve heard.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I hum road songs constantly and don’t notice I’m doing it.
2	I can’t stay in one place for long without getting restless.
3	I remember everyone’s name, and their children’s names.
4	I barter for everything, even things I could just buy.
5	I always know how many hours of daylight are left.
6	I tell stories about every town we pass, some of them true.
7	I share news freely and gossip even more freely.
8	I keep a little of every town’s dirt in a jar.

d6	Ideal
1	Connection. The towns survive because someone carries things between them. (Good)
2	Honesty. News is free, and it should be true. (Lawful)
3	Wanderlust. There is always another road. (Chaotic)
4	Family. The caravan comes first. (Any)
5	Profit. Every town needs something, and I can sell it. (Neutral)
6	Survival. Get to shelter before dark. Everything else is negotiable. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	My family’s wagon, and the family still in it.
2	A town on my circuit that went silent last season.
3	A road grave I stop at every time I pass.
4	A dwarven hold that let my family past the first door.
5	The goliath guide who saved my caravan on the high pass.
6	A travel writ from the golden era, passed down for generations.

d6	Flaw
1	I can’t resist spreading a rumor, even a dangerous one.
2	I never stay long enough to finish what I start.
3	I’m quick to take a side deal that isn’t quite legal.
4	I trust anyone who’s been kind to me on the road.
5	I resent every town that makes me sleep in the barn.
6	I am afraid of what I’ll become if I ever stop moving.

You raised walls for a living. You traveled with a building crew to new settlements, putting up the walls, wells, and foundations that let a town live through its first winters. You’ve eaten at a dozen wall suppers, and you remember which towns skipped theirs. You know what it takes to make a place defensible, and exactly how much a wall can hold, and how much it can’t.

Skill Proficiencies	Athletics, Perception
Tool Proficiencies	Mason’s tools, carpenter’s tools
Equipment	A set of mason’s tools, your crew’s token, a set of common clothes with a leather apron, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Crew Standing

Building crews recognize your crew’s mark, and you can find work, food, and a place to sleep with any crew you meet. You can read the mark stones hidden in a town’s buildings, learning who built what and roughly when. Towns whose walls your crew raised remember you, and will usually do you a favor if you ask.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I judge every town by its walls.
2	I can’t stop fixing things, even things that aren’t mine.
3	I work hard and expect everyone else to do the same.
4	I laugh loud and often, especially after a long day.
5	I have a story for every scar on my hands.
6	I know when to stop working, and nothing will make me work after dusk.
7	I talk to walls as if they can hear me.
8	I take pride in plain, solid things.

d6	Ideal
1	Community. A town is the people behind its walls. (Good)
2	Craft. Build it right or don’t build it at all. (Lawful)
3	Progress. Every wall we raise pushes the dark back a little. (Good)
4	Crew. My crew is my family, whatever anyone else says. (Any)
5	Fair Pay. The towns stand on our work. They can afford to pay for it. (Neutral)
6	Independence. I build where I choose, for whom I choose. (Chaotic)

d6	Bond
1	My crew, living and dead.
2	A town whose first wall I raised, now in danger.
3	My grandparent’s mark stone, in the wall of a town that was destroyed.
4	A dwarven hold that would not let me through the gate.
5	A Magen who worked beside me on the crew for years.
6	A town that skipped the wall supper, and owes my crew a debt.

d6	Flaw
1	I hold grudges against towns that underpaid us.
2	I trust stone more than people.
3	I take risks on unsafe structures to prove I can.
4	I resent anyone born behind a hold’s gate.
5	I blame myself for every wall that ever failed.
6	I can’t admit when something is beyond repair.

You worked the saloon circuit, performing for supper and a room and carrying news and songs between settlements that hardly ever hear from each other. You’ve sung at the Dry Well and ridden a season with a halfling caravan, and on market day nobody could tell your stall from theirs. You know how to hold a room, how to read a crowd, and how to leave before a town turns on you. Every town knows your face. Hardly anyone knows you.

Skill Proficiencies	Performance, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies	Disguise kit, one type of musical instrument
Equipment	A musical instrument (one of your choice), a favor from an admirer, a costume, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Saloon Welcome

Any saloon, trading post, or waystation on the Frontier will give you a meal and a place to sleep in exchange for a performance, as long as you perform every night you stay. Locals talk freely around a performer, and you can learn a town’s rumors, troubles, and open hunter requests in a single evening.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I turn every conversation into a performance.
2	I learn one song from every town I pass through.
3	I never admit to being tired, bored, or afraid.
4	I charm strangers easily and friends with difficulty.
5	I carry news like it’s precious, and tell it like it’s a story.
6	I take criticism of my act very personally.
7	I can sleep anywhere, at any time, in any position.
8	I know a hundred songs about hunters, and none of them are accurate.

d6	Ideal
1	Joy. The Frontier needs laughter more than it needs walls. (Good)
2	Truth. My songs carry the news, and news should be true. (Lawful)
3	Freedom. I go where the road takes me. (Chaotic)
4	Fame. I want every saloon to know my name. (Any)
5	Memory. Someone has to remember the towns that are gone. (Good)
6	Opportunity. Every crowd has something I can use. (Neutral)

d6	Bond
1	A song I wrote about a town that no longer exists.
2	The halfling caravan I traveled with for years.
3	A rival performer who stole my best material.
4	An admirer’s favor, from someone I never saw again.
5	The saloon where I first performed, and its owner.
6	A changeling friend whose secret I’ve kept for years.

d6	Flaw
1	I embellish everything, including the truth.
2	I can’t resist an audience, even a dangerous one.
3	I leave before things get serious, every time.
4	I spend money as fast as I earn it.
5	I’ve carried a false rumor that got people hurt.
6	I care more about the applause than the people clapping.

You trained with a hunter company. You heard the articles read aloud the morning you signed, drilled at first light every day after, and swore to finish every contract or die trying. Maybe you earned full membership, maybe you washed out, or maybe the company is gone and you’re one of the last who carries its name. The discipline stayed either way.

Skill Proficiencies	Athletics, Intimidation
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set, vehicles (land)
Equipment	A sash or token in your company’s colors, a copy of your company’s contract terms, a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Company Hall

Your company, or its reputation, still opens doors. Hunter company halls will give you food and a bed. Members of your own company will vouch for you, lend you gear, and come to your aid if they hear you’re in trouble. Towns that have hired your company will treat you with respect. In return, your company expects you to uphold its name, and it will hear about it if you don’t.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I drill every morning, wherever I am.
2	I follow orders well and give them better.
3	I treat every job like a contract, even favors for friends.
4	I polish my gear when I’m nervous.
5	I tell old company stories to anyone who will listen.
6	I speak bluntly and expect the same.
7	I keep my company’s colors on me at all times.
8	I am uncomfortable without a clear chain of command.

d6	Ideal
1	Duty. A contract signed is a contract finished. (Lawful)
2	Brotherhood. The company is my family. (Any)
3	Glory. I want my company’s name spoken in every hunter hall. (Any)
4	Protection. We fight so the towns don’t have to. (Good)
5	Discipline. Discipline keeps you alive when courage runs out. (Lawful)
6	Independence. The company taught me everything, and now I’m on my own. (Chaotic)

d6	Bond
1	My captain, who took a chance on me.
2	A company that was destroyed on a Noble contract.
3	A contract my company broke before I joined, which I intend to make right.
4	The recruit I trained with, now a rival.
5	An aasimar my company protects, whom I’d die for.
6	The town that hired my company for my first contract.

d6	Flaw
1	I obey orders even when I shouldn’t.
2	I look down on hunters who work without a company.
3	I’m reckless when my company’s honor is questioned.
4	I can’t forgive a broken promise.
5	I secretly doubt I’m good enough for my company’s colors.
6	I will do anything, including terrible things, to finish a contract.

You were somebody in the Capitol: a scholar, a clerk, an engineer, a researcher at the Institute. Then you fell out of favor. Maybe you asked the wrong question, read the wrong book, or trusted the wrong superior. Now you’re on extended field duty with an education, a letter of assignment, and a copy of the Institute’s Field Primer that is wrong about more things than you’d have believed possible. Some exiles sell their Primer in the first month. The smart ones keep it, and learn which parts to ignore.

Skill Proficiencies	Arcana, History
Languages	Two of your choice; the old court tongue is a common choice for those who studied the Nobility
Equipment	A bottle of ink, a quill, a small knife, a letter of assignment for field duty, a set of once-fine clothes now gone threadbare, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp

Feature: Letter of Assignment

Your papers still carry the Capitol’s seal. Officers of the Frontier Defense Force and Capitol agents treat you as an official and will share information with you. Commerce Guild waystations will give you shelter and a meal on the Capitol’s account. You can also send letters to colleagues in the Capitol, and some of them will answer. Someone in the Capitol wanted you out of the way, though, and your credentials may draw their attention as easily as anyone’s help.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I explain things nobody asked me to explain.
2	I keep a journal of everything I see on the Frontier, for a book no one will publish.
3	I flinch at loud noises and pretend I didn’t.
4	I am polite to a fault, even to things trying to kill me.
5	I can’t stop comparing the Frontier to the Capitol, usually unfavorably.
6	I am fascinated by ruins in a way that worries my companions.
7	I miss good food more than I miss my old position.
8	I am quietly delighted every time I survive something.

d6	Ideal
1	Knowledge. The lost sciences can save the Frontier, if we recover them. (Good)
2	Order. The Provisional Government’s authority is all that stands between us and chaos. (Lawful)
3	Truth. The Capitol banned the wrong books, and I intend to find out why. (Chaotic)
4	Redemption. I will earn my way back. (Any)
5	Curiosity. I don’t care about the Capitol anymore. I care about what’s out here. (Neutral)
6	Ambition. The Frontier is full of discoveries, and the credit will be mine. (Evil)

d6	Bond
1	The colleague who betrayed me, whom I intend to confront.
2	A banned book I smuggled out of the Capitol.
3	My family, who still live in the Ninth Ward and don’t know where I am.
4	My mentor at the university, the only one who still writes to me.
5	A discovery I made that got me exiled.
6	The Frontier town that took me in when I arrived with nothing.

d6	Flaw
1	I look down on Frontier folk, even when I try not to.
2	I will take any risk if it means getting back into the Capitol.
3	I trust official papers more than people.
4	I know something the Provisional Government wants buried, and I can’t keep quiet.
5	I panic in the open country after dark.
6	I hoard knowledge and share it only when it benefits me.

Your family was someone in the golden era. Most old families are elven, descended from servants who rose high in the Nobility’s courts, but some are human or other peoples whose ancestors held rank in the Nobility’s order. The courts are gone. Your family’s name remains, along with its ledger, its old manners, and a history the Frontier has never forgiven. Somewhere in that ledger is an entry you’d rather nobody read, and a page or two that somebody already cut out.

Skill Proficiencies	History, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies	One type of gaming set
Languages	The old court tongue
Equipment	A set of fine clothes in an old court style, a pair of gloves, a page copied from your family’s ledger, and a purse containing 25 gp

Feature: The Family Name

Your name opens doors among scholars, archivists, and the Capitol’s institutions, where old families are valued for what they know about the Nobility. It closes doors on the Frontier, where it marks you as a collaborator’s heir. Either way, people remember you. You can usually gain an audience with a scholar or official, and you know how to read old court records, manners, and house marks.

Suggested characteristics

d8	Personality trait
1	I have impeccable manners and use them as armor.
2	I apologize for my family before anyone asks.
3	I stand when someone important enters a room, whether I mean to or not.
4	I know more about the Nobility than I let on.
5	I am proud of my family’s name and dare anyone to object.
6	I am quiet in company and watchful always.
7	I keep my gloves on, even when it’s strange to.
8	I feel responsible for the choices of people I never met.

d6	Ideal
1	Atonement. My family served monsters. I will spend my life making up for it. (Good)
2	Honor. My family’s name should mean something good. (Lawful)
3	Pride. We were chosen for a reason. (Any)
4	Knowledge. What my ancestors saw can help stop the Nobility. (Good)
5	Freedom. I refuse to be defined by a ledger. (Chaotic)
6	Loyalty. Whatever my family was, it is still my family. (Any)

d6	Bond
1	My family’s ledger, and the page someone cut out of it.
2	An ancestor who secretly helped the rebels.
3	A relative still loyal to the old ways.
4	A scholar in the Capitol who studies my family’s history.
5	A Noble who might still remember my family’s name.
6	The half-elven sibling my family refused to claim.

d6	Flaw
1	I look down on people without history.
2	I keep my family’s darkest secrets, even when I shouldn’t.
3	I secretly admire the Nobility’s elegance.
4	I can’t stand being blamed for my ancestors’ choices, and I lash out.
5	I trust other old families more than I should.
6	I’d do anything to keep my family’s name from being further disgraced.

The standard backgrounds work in Masada with a little reframing. Keep their rules as written and adjust the story to fit the Frontier.

• Acolyte: You served the Church of the Dawn, the Wellkeepers, or the Lantern Wardens, and you’ve seen what happens to a town when its shrine goes dead.
• Charlatan: You worked confidence games on the circuit, and you know how quickly a town turns on a stranger.
• Criminal: You rode with the Saltmen or the Hollow Crows, smuggled relics past Capitol agents, or both.
• Entertainer: Use the Circuit Performer background instead, or keep the Entertainer as a performer from the Capitol’s stages.
• Folk Hero: You stood up for your town when the hunter never came, and people still talk about it.
• Guild Artisan: You worked for the Commerce Guild, or learned a trade in a gnome’s workshop.
• Hermit: You lived alone in the wilds, among the Old Growth or on the high peaks, far from any town and further from any bell.
• Noble: Use the Old Family background instead. In Masada, the Nobility are something else entirely.
• Outlander: You grew up at the Frontier’s edges, on the high peaks, or in the wild country between towns.
• Sage: You studied at the Capitol’s university, or taught yourself from the books the Capitol restricts.
• Sailor: You worked river barges or ferries, where every crew stays on the water after dark, though none of them can say why.
• Soldier: You served in the Frontier Defense Force. You know exactly how thin it’s stretched, and what it chose to guard instead of the towns.
• Urchin: You grew up in the Capitol’s outer wards, nearest the Deep Wards, where the delvers come up at dawn and not all of them come up.

Playable races. Human, Elf, Half-elf, Dwarf, Half-Dwarf, Halfling, Gnome, Goliath, Dragonborn, Aasimar, Changeling, Shifter, Entling, Magen, and Reborn. Half-Dwarf, Entling, Magen, and Reborn use LaserLlama’s versions; where another printing of the same race exists, use LaserLlama’s. Each people has an entry on the Playable Races page.

Monstrous races and dhampirs. Monstrous races are not playable. Dhampirs exist in Masada, but only as non-player characters.

Classes. Every published class and subclass that makes sense for the setting is allowed. If you’re not sure whether one fits, ask me. LaserLlama’s revised versions of the core classes are welcome, and his custom classes and subclasses are worth exploring. You do not need to own them. The classes in Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else and the Gunslinger fighter subclass are available too. Each class has a place in the world; see Character Creation for how each one fits.

Backgrounds. Choose one of Masada’s backgrounds or a Player’s Handbook background reframed for the Frontier. Old Family replaces Noble. Survivor and Tinker have mechanical features; the rest work like standard background features.

Languages. Standard 5e languages, plus the old court tongue, the language of the Nobility’s courts and the key to reading golden era records.

Ability scores. Use the standard array: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8. We don’t roll stats. Rolling swings too far: either one player gets a great roll, or everyone rerolls until they do.

Starting level. Varies by table. I’ll tell you where your group begins.

Potions. Drinking a potion yourself is a bonus action. Giving one to someone else is a full action. You can patch yourself up mid-fight; getting to a dying ally costs you your turn.

Intimidation. Barbarians may use Strength in place of Charisma for Intimidation checks.

Brutal wounds. Dropping to 0 hit points from a critical hit or an overwhelming blow can leave a lasting injury, at my call. Grievous injuries, lingering statuses, and brutal finishers use the roll tables from Brutal Wounds. A beast’s jaws can leave you with a limp that outlasts the campaign.

Firearms. Guns are a normal part of Frontier combat and use the rules from Arcane Artillery: The Gun Nut’s Guide. Powder and shot are tracked and are a running cost.

Hit points on level-up. You roll your Hit Die and the DM rolls the same die in secret. You choose which result to keep without seeing the DM’s. Keep a 3, and you’ll never know what you passed up.

Death saves. You roll them yourself, privately. You know whether you’re stable or two failures down. Nobody else at the table does, and your character can’t tell them. Picture the cleric spending her last spell slot on a companion who stabilized two rounds ago, while the one who’s actually dying stays quiet on the floor. That’s the point. In the dark, you don’t know who needs you.

Long rests. A long rest needs shelter, security, and real downtime, which usually means a town, a waystation, or a well-defended camp. A night in the open with something hunting you restores part of your strength and no more. If you ask whether a barn counts, the answer is usually yes, and the real question is what’s in the loft.

The night. The dark belongs to the Nobility’s engineered creatures. Travel after dusk is dangerous, and a camp in the open invites trouble. Plan your days around reaching shelter before the bell.

Availability. Magic is uncommon. Magic users have spent years studying the Nobility’s lost sciences, and most large towns have one at most. The Capitol’s university trains more. A wizard in a small town is remarkable, and people will want things from you.

How magic works. Magic isn’t chaos. It can be measured and repeated, but nobody alive understands the science behind it. Spells work as written; the world simply treats them as the Nobility’s science rather than a gift from the gods.

Divine magic. Clerics draw on a hidden golden era network beneath the holy sites, and it’s slowly failing. Divine spells work as written, but some shrines have gone dead, and I may rule that the most powerful divine effects, such as returning the dead, need a working holy site or a heavy price.

Paladin oaths. A paladin’s oath is an access code to the Nobility’s old systems. Break it, and you are locked out. Oathbreakers follow the standard rules.

Identify. Reveals partial truths. Golden era devices and cursed items resist it. You may learn that a device is Noble-made and learn nothing about what it will do when it wakes.

Spells. Spells from Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else are available alongside the core spell lists, with DM approval.

Components. Mundane components are assumed. Rare and costly ones are tracked and must be acquired.

These systems are adapted from Grim Hollow. They make afflictions something you solve rather than something you dispel.

Curses. Curses cling and escalate. Remove Curse suppresses a curse; true removal takes a tailored ritual, a rare component, or a narrative act such as atonement or destroying the source. A mark can become nightmares, and nightmares can become worse.

Diseases. Diseases progress in stages and resist magical cures. Expect exhaustion, ability penalties, hallucinations, and contagion. A cleric pouring magic into a fever may hold it steady until someone finds the treatment that actually works.

Transformations. Contact with the Nobility’s works can change a person: a Noble’s blood, a waking ruin, a pact that goes too deep. Transformations run in three stages. Stage one gives minor powers and visible signs. Stage two gives stronger abilities alongside compulsions, vulnerabilities, or stigma. Stage three completes the change and puts your identity, control, or soul in question. Each stage can be resisted, delayed, or reversed, at a price.

Coinage. Standard 5e coins and prices, minted by the Capitol. Goods cost more the farther you are from the Capitol, and some are simply unavailable in small towns.

Weapons and armor. Expanded weapons and armor from All The Weapons, the Armorer’s Handbook, and Ancestral Weapons are available with DM approval.

Magic items. Magic items are golden era relics, recovered from ruins or bought at great cost through the Capitol; the Relics page describes the ones hunters hear about most. Items from Griffon’s Saddlebag and other approved books appear in the world as relics too. Most are old. Some work perfectly, some half-work, and a few do things no one expected.

Harvesting and crafting. Monster parts can be harvested and crafted using Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook; see the Bestiary for what the Frontier’s creatures yield. On the Frontier, the Nobility’s engineered beasts are the richest source of material, and hunters often make as much from the carcass as from the bounty.

Resources. Rations, torches, ammunition, and tools are tracked. Specialty ammunition made by gnome tinkers can’t be replaced outside the towns where they work.

Hunter pay. For reference, a skilled hireling earns about 2 gp a day. Hunters who can kill a Noble earn at least 25 gp a day. A town’s bounty for a serious threat might be a flat 50 gp or more, scaled to the danger and to what the town can pay.

Travel. A location must be visited in person before magic or other means can bring you there quickly.

Golden era structures. Ruins are dangerous by design. Traps, guardians, and dormant systems are common, and pushing too far can wake something that threatens everyone nearby, not just the party.

The world moves. Factions act, seasons turn, and threats develop whether or not you’re involved. A town you ignore may not be there when you come back, and I won’t hold it in place for you.

Threat tiers. The threat classes on the World page map to 5e tiers: everyday threats are tier 1, uncommon threats tiers 2 and 3, and rare threats tiers 3 and 4.

Standing. The six factions in The Powers (the Institute, the Commerce Guild, the Church of the Dawn, the hunter halls, the Saltmen, and Karrow) each hold an attitude toward your group: hostile, wary, neutral, trusted, or sworn. I track it, and you’ll usually know where you stand. It moves one step at a time, and only for things that matter: a job finished or abandoned, a secret kept or sold, one of their people saved or killed.

Standing changes what the world offers you, from prices, shelter, and information to work nobody else hears about, or at the hostile end, a bounty posted on your heads. Most groups start neutral with everyone, though backgrounds can shift that: a Capitol Exile starts wary with the Institute, and a Company Recruit starts trusted by the hunter halls.

What everyone remembers. Sunlight and radiance burn the Nobility. Every mortal knows that much. Light is the one weakness the Nobility couldn’t take from anyone.

What mortals forgot. Every other weakness was taken from mortal memory during the golden era, and dwarves and goliaths never learned them in the first place. The Powers tells that story. What matters at the table is below.

The full list, for players. You know these even when your character doesn’t.

• Sunlight: Sunlight burns and hinders them. Everyone remembers this.
• Radiant damage: Stops a Noble’s regeneration. Everyone remembers this too, which is why the Nobility hunt aasimar on sight.
• Invitations: A Noble can’t enter a home without an invitation from someone who lives there.
• Running water: Running water harms them.
• Stake to the heart: A wooden piercing weapon driven into a Noble’s heart while it is incapacitated in its resting place paralyzes it.
• Holy water: Stops a Noble’s regeneration.

At the table. Any character can act on a forgotten weakness in the moment, if a custom points the way, a rumor turns out to be true, or they stumble onto it. By the end of their next long rest, the knowledge slips away again. The old customs are how people survive without ever knowing why, and a hunter who writes it down finds the page hard to read by morning.

The oldest Nobles. The most powerful Nobles resist some of their weaknesses. Nobles are extremely rare, though, and most characters will spend their careers dealing with what the Nobility left behind: their engineered beasts, their machines, and their servants.

Beyond the core rules, Masada draws on the following books. You do not need to own any of them to apply or to play. The Player’s Handbook and this site are enough to send the form. At the table, the DM hands out the extra rules that matter. Anything from these books still needs DM approval.

• Classes, spells, and items: LaserLlama’s revised classes, custom classes and subclasses, and races; Xanathar’s Lost Notes to Everything Else; the Gunslinger fighter subclass
• Weapons, armor, and firearms: Arcane Artillery: The Gun Nut’s Guide, All The Weapons, the Armorer’s Handbook, Ancestral Weapons
• Items and companions: Griffon’s Saddlebag, the Fluffy Folio
• Harvesting and crafting: Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook
• Rules and systems: Brutal Wounds, Gritty Realism, the Domestic Handbook, the Greasemonkey’s Handbook
• For the DM: Monster Manual Expanded I to III, Adaptable NPCs, Puzzles, Predicaments and Perplexities, and Journey of the Godslayer