[emberlight] Pasts, Professions and Small Precious Things

Even in the remains of the world, people have something — someone — that they are, or were, or claimed to be.

Or want to be.

And everyone has a place they came from, even if they don’t want to stay there; and bits of that get carried forward as they forge ahead with a warm glimmer of hope in their hands.

Those things don’t just leave a mark on thoughts and beliefs, name and looks and outlook.
They’re often something literally carried along.


So who are you?

Roll d20 or choose from the following:

01. Briarsmith: ancient shears, collection of thorn-knives, cache of hips and haws
02. Brigand: tattered leather jack, tally-stick spear, bolas
03. Faithful: relic symbol, prayer knots, partial liturgy
04. Messenger: carry-bag, curved knife, passage writ
05. Farmer: sickle, dry rations, bolt of cloth or hide
06. Errant: leather scale cuirass, bow and quiver, painted emblem
07. Nightmare Cultist: morion razor, hymn runes, horn trumpet
08. Hedge-Healer: needles and nettle-thread, poultices, secret hoard of honey
09. Ancestor Warden: knife and cup, pouch of salts, favoured trinkets
10. Scavenger: packs and sacks, old dagger, patchwork coat
11. Wordscrap: homemade ink, bits of tomes, rag-paper and bark and hide
12. Hired Blade: maille mantle, sword or axe, pouch of trade goods
13. Dreamridden: scrap of glassy bone, jack of strong spirits, painted dream-map
14. Minstrel: bone flute, carefully mended instrument, feather-and-glass charm
15. Hunter: collection of snares, bow and quiver, smoked meat or pelt
16. Forager: willow-withe backpack, sharpened trowel, bundles of forbs and fungi
17. Scion: house or family badge, half-plate or furred greatcoat, provisions (or diary)
18. Witch: ritual knives and ribbons, briar paint, lucky charms
19. Craftwright: hammer and traveling anvil (or other tools of the trade), leather apron with runemark
20. Lost: tattered cloak or coat, handful of morion fragments, bloodstained relic of Empire


Some things cross one’s path and are picked up along the way, however, no matter from whence one sprang —

Roll d66 or choose, twice, on this second table.

How did you come by these things? Are they part and parcel of your life until now, something you stumbled upon, something gifted or cursed you, or odder still?

11. Leather mantle, enveloping and hooded
12. Letter or request inscribed in wax on a folding wooden tablet
13. Crow companion (attracted to shining things, carries messages)
14. Wooden knife edged with morion bladelets
15. 30′ of sturdy hempen rope
16. Stoneware, polychrome goblet
21. Rough morion mass, crystalline and thumb-sized
22. Woolen cloak, deeply hooded with two large inner pockets
23. Wooden token, oval and palm-sized, carved with insignia filled with pigment; a town-token
24. Shattered smoky, translucent metal plating — a fragment of armour from a Silent Knight
25. Billet of verdigrised copper the size of two fists
26. Four brindled hare-skins, tanned and trimmed
31. Cat companion (sees spirits, hunts dreams and vermin)
32. String of glass eye-beads, white and blue and turquoise
33. Leather pouch of dried mushrooms
34. A signet ring of tarnished silver once from a lordling’s hand
35. Horn jack with briarwood stopper; filled with cider, weak wine or blood
36. A sword, slim with re-sharpening
41. Tattered book of days with a number of pages missing around mid-autumn
42. Birch-paper map to a dream-ruin
43. Parchment disc declaring protection of the bearer by a specific lordling, with seal; unverified
44. A tiny lock of translucent silver-gold hair in a smooth steel locket
45. The twisting, blackwork key to a temple’s sanctum
46. Fist-sized wax-sealed pot of sticky resin
51. Round lens the size of a walnut, tinted faintly blue
52. Withered heart of some long-dead soul, trimmed and stitched with golden filigree
53. Dog companion (guardianship, pack animal, hunter)
54. An Imperial cavalier’s skull, or so you believe
55. A long rake of hardwood all of one branch; its curving tines further fire-hardened
56. Hollow gourd in a grass-woven carry net
61. Palm-sized, smooth jet stone engraved with strange patterns
62. A tattered battle-banner, wool and old satin, and bloodstained
63. 100′ of nettle-twine coiled in a tight ball
64. A sheep’s fleece
65. A small leather pouch of morion-dust
66. Two fistfuls of grey salt in a wooden box