The Touched
Magic has been leaking out of you since you were a child. The dreams started later. You're still running.
Sometimes — only sometimes — a word leaves your mouth and arrives somewhere it shouldn't. The cultist three rooms over goes quiet. He listens. He decides not to sleep that night. You don't know how you do it. You suspect it isn't, strictly speaking, you doing it.
Your Story
You are [name], and the magic was never explained. The first time it surged you were nine — every metal thing in your father's workshop sang for an hour, your nose wouldn't stop bleeding, and the dog refused to come inside for a week. Your village south of [hometown] is too small for the map. Your parents — a tinsmith and a midwife — never landed on a story they could tell the neighbors that made it look smaller than it was.
The dreams started later. An open eye in a velvet glove. A hand that wasn't a hand. You left home at sixteen with a borrowed cloak and a stolen wizard's primer, and you've been moving ever since — paying your way as a hedge-scholar, reading every book that mentioned blood-magic, marks, or the Far Realms. You've never found yourself in any of those books. You keep checking.
Lately the dreams have started saying your name. You haven't told anyone. Your notebook is in two alphabets you didn't learn, and your [focus — a glass eye on a copper chain, a polished river stone, something else?] is the one thing you don't lose, even when you mean to.
If filling in the blanks feels like homework, just play this version. Andreas will mail you a finished sheet.
Wren Ashfield, of Daggerford
The first time the magic surged, Wren was nine — every metal thing in their father's workshop sang for an hour, their nose wouldn't stop bleeding, and the dog wouldn't come inside for a week. The dreams started at thirteen: an open eye in a velvet glove, a hand that wasn't a hand. Left home at sixteen with a borrowed cloak and a stolen wizard's primer; has been moving ever since, paying their way as a hedge-scholar. Has read every book that mentioned blood-magic, marks, or the Far Realms. Has never found themselves in any of those books. Lately the dreams have started saying their name.
Hero prop a glass eye on a copper chain — Wren's arcane focus, a replacement for the original they lost at twelve.
A letter reached you last spring — no return address, no signature, just three lines in a careful hand: We have a place for someone like you. We've been watching since you were nine. The eye sees. You burned it. You think about it every week.
Click below to draft Andreas an email — you can edit it before you send, or just skip the fields you're not sure about and we'll fill them in together.
This one is me →A week before we play, a letter will arrive at your house. Open it alone. Do not compare notes with the others until you reach the Trade Way.