The Gilded Key

Somebody trained you for this, and somebody paid for it. You mark a person and you become the last thing that happens to them. You are also the crew member who looks at a locked, guarded, impossible building and simply knows a way in — a service entrance, a shift change, a window nobody thinks about.

The question worth sitting with is whether you think what you do is a job, a calling, or a sin you've stopped apologizing for.

A performer, a storyteller, a liar with excellent timing. You are the one who holds a duchess in conversation for twenty minutes while everyone else is upstairs, and the one who can make five tired, frightened people believe they're going to pull this off.

Bards in this world are famously arrogant. Whether yours has earned it is up to you.

You made your body the weapon, which means you never walk into a room unarmed and you never get searched at a door. Somewhere behind that is a gym, a pit, a temple, a bad neighborhood, or a very patient teacher.

Brawlers tend to be people who need someone to test themselves against. Find out who yours has been chasing.

You answered a calling to protect wild places, and the wild answered back. You can become a fox, a wolf, a hawk — and larger, stranger things as time goes on. A crew member who can turn into a housecat solves a startling number of security problems.

Worth deciding: what does someone who belongs to forests and rivers want in a city of stone canals and countinghouses?

Not a soldier necessarily — a bodyguard, a bouncer, a temple defender, an older sibling who never stopped. What defines a guardian isn't the armor, it's the moral compass and the fact that you have decided these people are yours to keep alive.

You will be the reason at least two people at this table still have characters by session six.

A tracker and a hunter, more comfortable outside walls than inside them. You choose a quarry and you do not lose it — you always know which direction they're in, and they feel it. Rangers rarely work for armies; they work for themselves, or for something they lost.

If you want an animal at your side rather than a bow in your hands, this is the class for that too.

A scoundrel — a thief, a grifter, a forger, somebody's least favorite former employee. You move through a room without being counted, and you know the sort of people who can get things. Rogues in this world usually come out of guilds, which means somebody taught you, and somebody may still feel owed.

In a campaign about stealing things, you're not going to be short of work.

A divine fighter and healer, appointed by one of the realms' many gods — and you get to invent that god. What do they stand for? What do they ask of you? What would make them turn away? Your ethos and theirs are supposed to line up, and the interesting stories start when they don't.

You're the closest thing the crew has to someone who can put them back together.

Your power came down through your family, and nobody handed you a manual. You feel magic in a room before you see it, you can throw a small convincing illusion whenever you like, and every so often you can let something enormous out.

Sorcerers are often feared by the people who raised them. That's worth thinking about — the fear usually came from a specific incident.

You traded something — your life, your afterlife, your name — to an otherworldly patron in exchange for power. You invent that patron: a god, a fae thing, a demon, a dead king, a drowned city. You decide what they hold sway over, and you pay tribute to keep the arrangement warm.

This is the best backstory hook on the list, because your patron is a character too, and they want things.

Armies, mercenary companies, royal guards, arena circuits — warriors come out of institutions, and most of them left one. You're known for a particular weapon, and that weapon usually has a story attached to it.

Simple to play and quietly one of the most effective people in any room. If you want to spend the night paying attention to the story rather than your sheet, this is the one.

You commune with things most people would rather not acknowledge — ancestors, spirits, entities from further out — and you can ask them questions and get answers back as a taste, a vision, or a scene lived as though you were standing in it. You can also lay a hex on someone from across a room and watch their evening go wrong.

Witches are usually feared and usually misunderstood. Yours has almost certainly had a rumor spread about them, and it's more interesting if part of it was true.

Years of study — books, stones, herbs, arguments in cold libraries. Wizards become advisors, healers, war-council fixtures, and they fight bitterly among themselves about which secrets get shared. You know things, and knowing things is a form of power in a city like this one.

The most options of anyone at the table, which is either the appeal or the warning depending on the person.