Part Two: The Rules
Chapter Fifteen: Origins
Part Two: The Rules
I f Species is what you were born as, Origin is what the world did to you after you took your first breath.
A Goblin raised in the grinding, claustrophobic Deep Gloom of Kael-Morath is a fundamentally different creature than a Goblin born in a surface Sanctuary. Origin is geography, trauma, and formation. It dictates the first language you spoke, the first violent death you witnessed, and the first skill you were forced to learn.
Fifteen Origins are recognized by the Codex, sorted into five categories. Each grants a fixed bonus to your Skill Score, folded in at character creation per the formula in Chapter Eighteen. The bonus is the mechanical anchor. The story behind it is yours to build with your Conductor.
High Society
Born into wealth, influence, or visibility.
Old Money (+1 Knowledge, +1 Will) You were born into wealth, access, and secrets. Whether Human aristocracy or High-Born Fae, you grew up in penthouses and private schools. You understand history because your family wrote it.
Company Shark (+1 Logic, +1 Will) You live for the quarterly kill. Board rooms, hostile acquisitions, contracts written to draw blood. You understand that the real weapons are clauses, leverage, and the willingness to push further than anyone at the table expected.
Influencer (+1 Grace, +1 Sense) You earn your living in front of a camera, a feed, or a crowd. The Awake feed knows your name before you enter a room. You understand that attention is the actual currency, and you know exactly how to spend it.
Specialist
Defined by a specific intellectual, artistic, or technical pursuit.
Academic (+2 Knowledge) You chose archives over parties and footnotes over small talk. Ancient languages, forgotten histories, the kind of lore most people dismiss as fiction. When the world reveals something old and strange, you already have a citation for it.
Tech-Head (+2 Logic) You grew up inside machines. Code, circuits, cracked firmware, salvaged hardware. You took them apart and put them back together better. If it runs on logic, you can bend it.
Artist (+2 Sense) You see what other people walk past. Painter, musician, writer, dancer, the craft does not matter. What matters is that you were taught to notice, and you have spent your life getting better at it.
Laborer
Built by hard work, physical risk, or service.
Ironworker (+2 Might) You built the skyline. Heavy lifting, dangerous machinery, and long hours. You solve problems with your hands and your back. Common among Giants and Ogres.
Athlete (+1 Might, +1 Grace) You trained your body into a weapon, an instrument, or both. Competitive fighting, gymnastics, track, circuit, whichever arena claimed you, you came up in it. Your edge is the ten thousand hours nobody saw.
Enforcer (+1 Might, +1 Sense) You were always the person relied upon to face down danger. You know how to spot trouble before it starts, and how to end it when it does.
The Streets
Came up in the cracks, without institutional support.
Hustler (+1 Logic, +1 Sense) You learned young that the game is rigged, and the only move is to play better than the ones who rigged it. You can read a mark in a glance. You can talk your way into or out of almost anything.
Drifter (+1 Knowledge, +1 Grace) You never stayed in one place. A gig worker, a courier, a nomad. You know the map better than the GPS does, and you know how to exit a situation fast.
Line-Watcher (+1 Sense, +1 Will) You grew up on the threshold, the strip of dark where a Sanctuary's light gives out and the Gloom begins. No one paid you to watch that line. You watched it anyway, because someone in your family always had, and because you learned exactly how long you can keep watching after everyone else would have looked away.
Fringe
Outside the mainstream by belief, condition, or inheritance.
True Believer (+2 Will) Something demanded your faith and you gave it. A god, a cause, a covenant, a prophecy, which one does not matter. What matters is that you did not waver.
Morvakar Orphan (+1 Grace, +1 Will) Morvakar fell before you were old enough to understand what that meant, and you got out on nothing but instinct and someone else's grip on your wrist. You have been moving since. Grief that specific either breaks a person or teaches them exactly how to keep their feet under them no matter what the ground does next.
Dissonance-Marked (+1 Knowledge, +1 Logic) You spent your early years somewhere the frequency spectrum does not sit still, deep enough that Dissonance stopped being a rule and started being a headache you never lost. You learned to read the pressure behind your own eyes before you learned to read anything else. Doctors up top have no name for what you are. You have several, and you know exactly which ones are true.