When a Sitrian reaches the Nascent Immortal layer of the Unbound stage, they face the nigh insurmountable barrier to the Immortal stage. By becoming a Guide, they may break through with ease.
Note: When a Sitrian at the Nascent Immortal stage becomes a Guide during session, let them use the FP from that session to buy the clan.
Hight: 5 ft. 6 + 1d6 in.
Weight: 160 + 1d6x5 in.
Environment: Sitri
Population: Medium
Base Features (1 FP)
Guide’s Metabolism (5 FP): Guides are not creatures of reality, their bodies not subject to the natural laws that restrain native organisms. They don’t need to eat or sleep, but can meditate for an hour to gain the effects of a full rest. They aren’t affected by toxins, pathogens or similar ailments. Likewise, they are immune to Features that would rely on biological reactions.
Hermaphroditic (0 FP): Beyond a lack of any form of mammary glands, Guides do have anatomy that matches the females of other humanoids.
However, their tail doubles as the male reproductive organ needed to fertilize compatible mates. They are capable of fertilizing themselves as they would another, allowing them to repopulate from a single individual.
Beloved Of Essence (0 FP): Guides progress on the path with far greater ease than mortals, but exchange their longevity for this great talent. Although they never appear to age past adulthood, they will begin to feel physically weak at some point in their late twenties.
Within a week of the first symptoms, they will die without any physical cause. Most methods of life extension are ineffective, very few Guides managing to naturally reach their thirties.
However, their lifespan can be extended by increasing the power of the influence that forms them. For each 6 FP the Guide possesses, whether in Features or free, their natural lifespan increases by one decimal point. If they have 42 or more FP in total, they do not age no matter how much time passes.
Note: The Game Master can roll 1d6 and add 25 to determine how many years a Guide will live.
Beyond Literate (0 FP): Guides have the innate ability to read, write and speak Low Voidtongue, the bastardized version of true Voidtongue.
This gives them the capacity to learn Voidtongue, but makes it almost impossible for them to process written language. Only creatures with the Unworldly Nature Feature can use or perceive Low Voidtongue, others failing to retain information about any form of it. This alters Illiterate.
Blood Of The Traveler Ahead (0 FP): When part of a Guide’s body is ingested by (or similarly enters the body of) a creature, that creature gains the Traveler’s Spark Damage Condition. For the purposes of this Feature, ingesting their blood, flesh or a Guide egg (even if cooked) qualifies as ingesting part of their body.
Over the next 12 hours, the creature will lose all Damage Conditions only affecting the physical body. Traveler’s Spark remains for one day per their Smart Ass. A creature with Traveler’s Spark cannot benefit from this Feature’s healing effect a second time.
If the creature dies with the Traveler’s Spark Damage Condition, it returns to life 1d6 hours later with all base Features of the Guide clan. Guides cannot benefit from this Feature.
Intellectual (0 FP): Guides have their Smart Ass increased by 1 and their Kick Ass reduced by 1. If their Smart Ass would be raised over 12 or their Kick Ass reduced below 1, this Feature has no effect.
Oviparous (0 FP): A Guide carries an unfertilized egg approximately the size of their heart within their body at all times. If fertilized, this egg is immediately lain, something that takes twelve actions.
Alternatively, they can choose to produce unfertilized eggs either to make more ve or to satisfy instinctual desires. They can take twelve actions to produce an unfertilized egg. If an egg remains within their body for a month, they will automatically lay it unfertilized.
A fertilized egg will hatch into a Guide infant after three months, which is hatched with development and maturity equivalent to an eight year old child, albeit much smaller, and will reach adulthood in around eight years.
This head start is inherited from the mother’s world knowledge, but does not include memories of events. Eggs can be destroyed before they hatch, killing the embryo, which is the main method of Guide birth control.
Pain Immunity (0 FP): Guides cannot feel physical pain.
Unnatural Appeal (0 FP): Any creature physically capable of producing offspring with the Guide that comes within 10 ft. per Smart Ass of them is passively altered to become sexually attracted to them. This does not otherwise change the creature’s sexual preferences, but instead adds the specific Guide to the creature’s reproductive instincts.
The creature is not compelled to act upon this attraction and the Guide does not gain any advantage beyond what would be expected from matching the creature’s sexuality. This functions through minor shapeshifting, and can effect creatures with minds and souls immune to outside tampering.
Unworldly Nature (0 FP): Guides do not exist within any reality, but can be drawn into any reality because of it. Even when they have no presence within a reality, they can be manifested through the use of the Traveler Ahead’s influence.
This can happen as a byproduct of large accumulations of the Traveler Ahead’s influence, growing to the point they can manifest.
Alternatively, the influence of the Traveler Ahead can be manipulated to deliberately call a Guide into reality. The method used to achieve this varies, and is mostly up to Game Master discretion.
If they enter a reality through any method, the point they enter counts as the start of their lifespan, although they may manifest as an adult, and they age from that point. They will still die when their influence dissipates if they are to weak to perpetuate themselves.
This Feature allows them to return after being burned from existence by Creation’s Light, even if at a lower level.
Symbiotic Reproduction (0 FP): If a Guide egg is not fertilized, it hatches into a serpent like creature known as a ve a month after being lain. A ve has a Speed of 10 ft., Kick Ass of 8, Bad Ass of 3 and Smart Ass of 1 and the Timeless and Guide’s Metabolism Features.
Ve are friendly to Guides, but otherwise behave like wild animals with an animalistic level of intelligence. However, if a ve detects a creature without the Guide clan, it unrelentingly attempts to attach itself to the creature (1d12 + Kick Ass), and the creature may attempt to resist (1d12 + Bad Ass).
If the ve’s Check is higher, it attaches itself to the creature spine, or similar anatomy, fusing with the end and weaving tendrils into the creature’s spinal cord. This results in the ve becoming or replacing the creature’s tail, being a prehensile limb that cannot be removed without paralyzing the creature.
Over the next 2d6 hours, the be becomes indistinguishable from the creature’s anatomy, and the creature metamorphoses into a Guide. The creature gains all base Features of the Guide clan. At this point, removing the tail has no effect, the creature being the same as any other Guide.
Note: The paralysis caused by removing the ve before the creature gains the Guide clan can be cured by any effect that restores lost limbs.
Versatile Genetics (0 FP): Guides are capable of reproducing with any creature they can physically mate with. The offspring will always be of the same species as the mother.
However, any offspring of a Guide that is not a Guide has Unworldly Corruption and a zero FP Feature that causes it to go to the Traveler Ahead upon death, as if it was a Guide, both of which are passed down to its descendants.
Form Of Essence (-1 FP): When a Sitrian becomes a Guide, the essence within scenes to manipulate their anatomy or biology. They lose the Environmental Adaptation Feature and regain any additional FP spent on Environmental Adaptation. This Feature negates Environmental Adaptation.
No Limiting-Factor (-1 FP): Guides have few negative repercussions to breeding, it putting no strain on their bodies. Due to this, their reproductive instincts are innately stronger than that of creatures with limited physical resources.
Any Check made to play on a Guide’s sexual instincts, such as attempts to arouse or seduce, has its result increased by 1d4.
Survival Instincts (-2 FP): Being deeply connected to essence and the Traveler Ahead, new Guides have an inbuilt instinct to ally themselves with other Guides and the interests of Guides as a species.
This does not stop them from socializing or allying themselves with non-Guides, but they cannot act to harm the interests or spread of the Guide species. For example, they may work in an army or organization that is controlled by non-Guides and works on the behalf of non-Guides. However, they cannot help an organization that wants to persecute or destroy the Guide species.
If the Game Master rules that the player is failing to follow this behavior, the Game Master takes control of the character until this has been corrected. Creatures immune to mental tampering cannot have this Feature.
Optional Features
True Guide (24 FP): Some Guides become voices of the Traveler, although not always directly or knowingly. As a result, the Traveler Ahead allows them to return to life upon death.
If their body is killed, via the usual rules for killing a creature, they return to the Traveler Ahead as normal. However, an hour after being killed, they may return to life within the reality they died in.
In addition, Their thoughts, memories or emotions cannot be perceived by other creatures. Their mind is treated as non-existent for the purposes of mind reading effects. They cannot have Damage Conditions affecting their mind. They are immune to mental tampering.
Guides with this Feature do not age no matter how much time passes. This negates the negative effects of the Beloved Of Essence Feature. This Feature is treated as an Immortality Feature.
Innate Fabricate (4 FP): The Guide can use their reproductive systems to fabricate any object within themselves that is smaller than their heart.
Every item has an Essence Point (EP) cost determined by the Game Master. Mundane items are normally 1 EP, but complex or magical items are more expensive based on value.
As twelve actions, they can spend the needed EP and lay an egg. This egg will not hatch, but can be broken open and contains the chosen item.
They can store 1 EP per Smart Ass. For each 6 total FP they possess, they gain 1 EP an hour. In addition, they passively gain 1 EP an hour per EP in the environment.
Clarity (2 FP): When the Guide lays an egg, the act removes stress, provides clarity of thought and heightens their ability to focus and process information. The first Smart Ass based Check made within 10 minutes of laying an egg has its result increased by 1.
Devils’ End (1 FP): Essence dies when all potential is crushed from it, but even dead essence can be restored. As an action while touching a creature with the Unconscious Damage Condition that lacks the Essence Cultivator Feature, the Guide may make a Restoration Check (1d12 + Smart Ass). The DC is equal to the creature’s Bad Ass + 6.
If they succeed, the creature’s soul becomes essence and returns to the Traveler Ahead. An hour later, they lay an egg as if fertilized, and the creature will hatch from the egg three months later.
The creature gains all base Features of the Guide clan and loses all of its previous memories. The creature is for all intents and purposes a newly hatched Guide, but retains its base personality traits.
Creatures with souls immune to outside tampering can be affected by this Feature, but do not loose their memories. Since the creature need not die for this Feature to affect it, creatures with Immortality can be affected.
Hidden Guide (1 FP): As unsettling as it may be, the Guide can take on a form that hides their true nature. As an action, they can take a specific second form or return to their true form.
Each full rest, they may change their second form to a new appearance, Height and Weight. In their second form, they cannot be detected as a Guide.
Literacy (1 FP): Very rarely, a determined Guide manages to learn a written language from another species. However, it remains extremely difficult.
After reading more than 100 per Smart Ass words in one sitting, they must take a turn doing nothing but recuperating. Attempts to impress creatures in a way that requires reading are rolled twice, and they use the lower roll. This partially negates Illiterate.
Oath Maker (0 FP): The Guide must always uphold their word as they understand it. This only applies to the meaning and contents of the oath that they were aware of at the giving of the oath, not possible reinterpretations of wording.
Likewise, situations that involve agreeing without knowing all implied details, such as signing a contract without reading the fine print, do not enforce anything but what they thought they were agreeing to.
Any creature they make a deal with is compelled to uphold its side of the deal, being affected as they are. This cannot affect creatures immune to mental tampering. However, if the creature does not uphold its side of the deal, they do not need to uphold their end.
For -2 additional FP, any creature they make a deal with is not bound to uphold its end of the deal nor are they freed if it does not.
Voidtongue (0 FP): In truth, Voidtongue is not a language, but the underlying foundations of the Beyond that shape reality being drawn into reality in order to be shaped directly. As a result, Voidtongue can be used to alter reality, revising existence directly or augmenting other methods of doing so.
Speaking or inscribing Voidtongue, the Guide define what they want to happen and how long it will take to make it happen. The Game Master determines the DC, which they must beat with a Warping Check (1d12 + Smart Ass). The DC can be lowered by increasing the casting time or reducing the power of the effect.
For a number of feet equal to the result of the Warping Check around them, reality is distorted and transfigured. The exact nature of such side effects is at Game Master discretion, but intrinsically damages the affected areas natural laws.
Any creature in this area must make a Bad Ass Check (1d12 + Bad Ass) and Smart Ass Check (1d12 + Smart Ass) against the result of the Warping Check. If the Bad Ass Check fails, the creature suffers physical alterations, similar to those affecting the environment. If the Smart Ass Check fails, its mind is slightly fractured, allowing in influence from beyond. The effects of such influence is at Game Master discretion.
If they use Voidtongue to augment a Casting or Warping Check made available by another Feature, the result of the Check is increased by 2. The environmental effects still apply as normal.
Note: The side effects of using this Feature should be proportional to its cost.
Will Of The Traveler Ahead (-4 FP): Having struck a deal with the Traveler Ahead, the Guide must dedicate itself to furthering essence, essence use, the interest of life based on essence, freeing the barbarian lands from the demon lords and bringing the Traveler Ahead into the world.
If the Game Master rules that the player is failing to follow this behavior, the Game Master takes control of the character until this has been corrected.
For 4 additional FP, the Guide becomes one and the same with the Traveler Ahead, becoming an avatar. As a fragment of the Traveler Ahead’s unexistence, they can make their own choices and are not bound to any goal.