The Barbarians · The Paths
The Headtaker
Barbarian · Path of the Gravewake
✦ Name pending — what should we call them?
The names in the book aren’t final — we’ll announce the chosen ones before launch. Yours could be it.
STR
17
+3
DEX
12
+1
CON
16
+3
INT
12
+1
WIS
16
+3
CHA
8
-1
Affinity the Cold Between
Ward the Undertow
Bane Vigil
Proficiencies Survival · Keeping · Athletics · Intimidation · Medicine
Barbarian · Path of the Gravewake
Fury harvested from the fallen. Each drop within sight feeds a storm that won't fade till the battle ends — and he counts every one.
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The Ladder
What they learn
LV 1
Battlefield Tally A running count of casualties, distances, and rounds; the party always knows the true score.
LV 3
The Bend, Read From Inside Immune to eye-bend effects; perceive who else is being unseen.
LV 6
Steer the Beast Convert a fight against a frightened creature into a steering problem — redirect, don't trade.
LV 10
Hold the Fold Interpose against a Binding effect and hold it open by main strength — 'I was rearmost.'
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For the Guide
How to run The Headtaker
VoicePlain, patient, tally-keeping. Never blames the town for not seeing him.
WantsTo keep one fact alive, alone, against a whole machinery of forgetting. To be a witness instead of evidence.
Do this nowThe Headtaker reads the battlefield and steers it — 'you're not fighting it, you're steering it'; counts everything; holds the line nobody else can.
“They were being introduced.”
The mouse who has been right, and unseen, for years. He killed a monster at the barrier once and carries its head as proof the outside is real — and the town's eyes bend around him. His gift is a tally-keeper's clarity: in battle he diagnoses and steers rather than swings. He holds the folding world open with his shoulders so the party can pass. Title stays dominant — his un-seeing is the point.
Fights best beside — The Laughing Maul — the tally and the telling; the book's theory of friendship has these two names on it.
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