Sage

The boy was dead enough for the mothers to start the second wail. The Sage knelt beside him and told everyone to be silent. Not quiet. Silent. Then she recited the three obligations of the Open Hand faction in a voice so plain it seemed rude to call it a ritual. On the last line the air cleared around her fingers. The boy coughed mud and river-water into her lap. She looked angry afterward, not holy. Angry that the signal had almost been lost.

-- recovered fragment, riverhold witness, spring flood

What a Sage is

A Sage channels rare miasma colors through disciplined cognition. The world has no gods to answer them and no divine realm behind their work. What they have is clarity: thought narrowed by faction practice until the mind becomes a clean instrument and the Winds can answer without collapsing into noise.

This is why a Sage's recitation matters. The words are not requests. They are structure. A tenet held in the mind, spoken by the mouth, and lived by the body can shape the channel into a reliable path. Take away the discipline and the power scatters. A Sage who abandons the faction's cognitive form does not diminish gradually; they lose the rare colors first, the signal dropping back toward the common spectrum, and then the channel narrows further still. The recitation is the engineering. Without it, the engineer is only a person standing in the Miasm with everyone else.

Sages often feel miraculous to people who do not understand the rarity of what they touch. White miasma can mend. Black miasma can unmake. Neither is common. A settlement may go generations without seeing either used cleanly. When a Sage appears and works, they leave behind them a category error in the witness: people who have seen something they cannot explain with the vocabulary they have, and must reach for older words that were not meant for what they saw.

The Sage stands between the Mage and the Sworn in the social imagination. Like the Mage, they spend Wind slots on channeled effects that fill half the day. Like the Sworn, their channel requires a cognitive frame — not an oath, but a faction discipline, a practiced intellectual posture, a way of holding the mind that the rare colors will answer. The Sage is not trying to pray. They are trying to think clearly enough, in the right trained pattern, for long enough that the channel holds. The faction structure is what makes the pattern teachable and repeatable. That is why Sages have teachers, curricula, lineages of instruction. The power was there in the Miasm before the first Sage learned to reach it. The faction discipline is the method for reaching it reliably, under pressure, in the field, when everything else is wrong.

Chassis

Class features

The Sage's class features are the load-bearing infrastructure of every Sage, regardless of subclass. They are the mechanics of faction-disciplined psionic channeling: the trick effects that cost nothing, the prepared repertoire of protocols, the channel discipline that lets the Sage focus the Winds into specific forms, and the rare ability to reach into the Substrate directly when clarity of will and the accumulated weight of faction practice are sufficient together. All of this is present before the subclass arrives at L3. The subclass sharpens and specializes what the chassis has built.

Feature ladder

Wind slots

The Sage is a full-caster. Wind slots recover on a long rest. Prepared protocols equal WIS modifier + Sage level.

Major class features

• Psionic Channeling (L1). The Sage has learned to channel through faction-disciplined cognition. WIS governs the channel — clarity of will, purity of signal, the mind trained by faction practice until the rare miasma colors answer without scatter. You know three trick effects (trivial channels requiring no Wind slot) from the Sage trick list; Guidance, Signal-Flame, and Atmosphere are recommended. You gain an additional trick at L4 and L10. You may replace one known trick whenever you gain a Sage level. Prepared protocols equal your WIS modifier + your Sage level; you may prepare a new list following each long rest, spending one minute of recitation per protocol tier prepared. Channel save DC: 8 + proficiency bonus + WIS modifier. Attack modifier: proficiency bonus + WIS modifier. A resonance focus — a faction emblem, a recitation-carved focus rod, a compact-token of the order — serves as the channel focus. The Sage's protocols are Substrate-powered: they do not function in dead zones or Antimagic Fields. The channel requires the ambient Winds; take the Miasm away and the rare colors are the first to go.
• Factional Order (L1). Faction practice has given the Sage a secondary trained role. Choose one of the following:
  • Protector. Trained for combat alongside the faction's defense operations. You gain proficiency with martial weapons and training with heavy armor.
  • Thaumaturge. Trained in the faction's deep theory. You know one additional trick from the Sage trick list. In addition, your faction-disciplined cognition gives you a bonus to your Intelligence (Lore or History) checks equal to your WIS modifier (minimum +1).
• Channel Discipline (L2). The faction has taught the Sage to focus the channel through a specific disciplined technique. At L2 you gain two Channel Discipline uses. You regain one use on a short rest and all uses on a long rest. You gain additional uses as shown in the feature ladder (3 uses at L11, 4 uses at L18). Channel Discipline effects are chosen at subclass selection at L3; the base class grants two effects from L2: Disciplined Spark and Repel the Misaligned (described below). When you use Channel Discipline, expend one use and choose which effect to invoke. The subclass adds further options.
  • Disciplined Spark. As an action, point your resonance focus at a creature you can see within 30 ft. Roll 1d8 + your WIS modifier. Either restore that many Hit Points to the creature, or force it to make a CON save against your channel save DC; on a failure it takes necrotic or force damage equal to the roll (your choice); on a success it takes half. You roll an additional d8 at L7 (2d8), L13 (3d8), and L18 (4d8).
  • Repel the Misaligned. As an action, project the faction's signal outward. Each animated husk, phantasm, and misaligned substrate-resident entity within 30 ft that can see or hear you must succeed on a WIS save or be turned for 1 minute or until it takes damage. A turned creature must spend its turns moving as far from you as possible, cannot willingly approach within 30 ft of you, cannot take reactions, and may only Dash or attempt to escape effects preventing movement.
• Signal Sear (L5). Whenever you use Repel the Misaligned, you may roll a number of d8s equal to your WIS modifier (minimum 1d8) and add the rolls together. Each animated husk or phantasm that fails its saving throw against that use takes force damage equal to the roll's total. This damage does not end the turning effect.
• Faction-Discipline Strikes (L7). Faction-channeled discipline infuses your combat action. Choose one of the following options (once chosen, permanent):
  • Faction-Strike. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an additional 1d8 force damage.
  • Amplified Trick. Add your WIS modifier to the damage you deal with any Sage trick effect.
• Substrate Reach (L10). You can call on the full depth of your faction's discipline to reach the Substrate directly. As an action, choose any Sage protocol of tier 5 or lower that does not require a reaction. You may channel that protocol without expending a Wind slot and without needing a material focus. One use per long rest. The channel does not require more power than usual; it requires more clarity. At L10 the Sage has enough of both.
• Cascade Censure (L13). Whenever you use Repel the Misaligned, the cascade of faction-directed signal carries farther and hits harder. Animated husks and phantasms that fail the saving throw are also Paralyzed for 1 minute (save at end of each turn to end early). Those that succeed on the save are still briefly disrupted: their speed is halved until the start of your next turn.
• Improved Faction-Discipline Strikes (L14). The option chosen at L7 grows.
  • Faction-Strike. The extra damage increases to 2d8.
  • Amplified Trick. When you channel a Sage trick and deal damage with it, you can give temporary Hit Points to yourself or another creature within 60 ft equal to twice your WIS modifier.
• Epic Boon (L19). Choose one Epic Boon from Book 4 (sec. 4.4). Boon of Fate is recommended. The Sage at this level has not simply deepened the channel; they have spent enough time in faction-disciplined clarity that the world's probability structure registers the mind they bring to bear.
• Greater Substrate Reach (L20). When you use Substrate Reach, you may choose any Sage protocol regardless of tier. In addition, if you select a protocol that would normally require a reaction to cast, you may cast it as an action instead. One use per long rest (the same use as Substrate Reach; this replaces that feature's tier limitation). The Miasm does not change what it will give a sufficiently clear channel. At L20 the Sage has run out of questions about whether they are sufficiently clear.

Subclasses

At L3 a Sage's faction-disciplined channel settles into a rare specialization. The shipped subclass is the Healer, who works the white line of nanite-mediated restoration through the protocols of the Open Hand. Two further paths are in design: the Black-Tongue, who studies entropy and negation without fearing what they touch, and the Lawspeaker, who disciplines cognition through The Law itself and makes the shared compact a stabilizing instrument in the channel.

Healer

She did not say the wound was small. It was not. She said the body had not yet forgotten the shape it wanted to be. Then she set both hands around the torn place and recited until the blood brightened pale under the skin. I watched the flesh remember itself.

-- recovered fragment, militia surgeon's account, Low Orchard raid

Identity

The Healer is the Sage most settlements understand first. They stabilize, mend, cleanse, restore, and stand at the edge where the body is deciding whether to remain a body. Their work is white miasma guided by a mind trained not to waste signal on panic.

A Healer is not kind by requirement, though many are. The discipline demands steadiness more than softness. Some of the greatest Healers in the known roads are severe people who have learned that mercy performed badly is just another wound.

Many Healers trace their practice to Project Challenger, the organized effort during the period known as the Mending, to redirect white miasma into reliable healing under field conditions. Some who participated passed the knowledge to students. Some passed only fragments. But the Mending demonstrated what had been theoretical for generations: that white miasma, guided by a trained mind, could mend living tissue with precision and repeatability. The mechanism is nanite-mediated cellular repair, channeled through psionic focus trained to the white spectrum. The nanites do the biology. The channel delivers them. The faction discipline keeps the channel from wandering into noise. Most Healers working today can trace their lineage, through teachers or recovered texts, to someone who was there.

The Healer's combat presence is quieter than some Sages but not absent. They have learned, of necessity, that mending works best when the thing causing wounds has stopped. The white channel can be redirected when it must be. The damage it does in that direction is a side effect of running the same line through the wrong architecture, and most Healers are mildly annoyed when they have to do it.

Subclass features

L3: Restoration Protocols. The Healer's faction connection ensures certain protocols are always prepared and do not count against the prepared limit.

L3: Restoration Resonance. When you channel a restorative protocol using a Wind slot that restores Hit Points to a creature, the target regains additional Hit Points equal to 2 + the slot's tier. The white channel, guided by a trained and faction-narrowed mind, carries more than its nominal signal. The nanite payload is amplified by the precision of the delivery. The body receives the full intention of the protocol, not merely the fractional result the untrained channel manages.

L3: Channel Discipline -- Field Triage. As an action, expend one use of Channel Discipline. Restore Hit Points totaling up to five times your Sage level, divided however you choose among any Bloodied creatures within 30 ft of you. The Healer does not wait for a body to be a convenient patient. The faction-discipline focus turns the channel outward into a radial distribution, seeding restoration across multiple bodies at once. In a field situation, the choice of who receives how much is made in the same moment as the channeling. The recitation does not slow for it.

L6: Feedback Current. When you channel a restorative protocol using a Wind slot that restores Hit Points to one or more creatures other than yourself, you regain Hit Points equal to 2 + the slot's tier. The white channel runs both directions when the practitioner is well-tuned. The nanites that pass outward through the channel leave a small rouse-response in the Healer's own tissue as they go. This is not a choice or a technique. It is a consequence of running the white line cleanly through a body that has been doing this long enough.

L9: Substrate Discharge. Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can cause the attack to deal an additional 1d8 force damage. This is the Healer's reluctant combatant feature. The white channel redirected through a weapon does not heal the target; it disrupts the tissue at the contact point, because the nanite delivery system was designed for repair and what it finds on arrival in a hostile body is something to repair against. Most Healers describe the feeling as aesthetically wrong. They do it when they must.

L17: Maximum Expression. When you would roll one or more dice to restore Hit Points to a creature with a protocol or Channel Discipline, do not roll those dice; instead use the highest number possible for each die. For example, instead of restoring 2d8 Hit Points, restore 16. The Healer at this depth of training does not guess at what the white channel can carry. The protocol's full potential is what the channel delivers. The body on the receiving end gets everything. This is the Mending, still running, in the hands of the clearest signal anyone working has managed to maintain.

Black-Tongue

The carcass would not rot. The flies died on it. The Black-Tongue walked around it twice and said the colony inside had been told to preserve a soldier that no longer existed. Then he spoke a sentence none of us could repeat. The carcass sagged. The smell arrived all at once. He looked satisfied and washed his mouth with ash-water.

-- recovered fragment, road-clearing report, East Fen

Identity

The Black-Tongue studies black miasma: entropy, negation, deletion, corruption, and the clean ending of processes that should have stopped already. Outsiders fear them because their work looks like a curse or a death. The trained know the distinction. A stopped infection, a disabled animated husk, a severed hostile protocol, and a mercy-end may all require the same rare color. The Black-Tongue is not the enemy of life. They are the specialist called when something is running that should not be running, and the Healer's white line will only make it stronger.

Black-Tongues are watched closely in lawful settlements. The wise settlements still make room for them. Not everything dangerous should be healed. Some things must be ended without hatred, by a practitioner who understands what they are ending and does not enjoy it unduly. The Black-Tongue's discipline requires the same narrowed clarity as any Sage's channel. The rare color they work answers coldly, without ceremony, and only when the mind holding it is precise.

Subclass features

The Black-Tongue subclass mechanics are in active design. The identity above and the vignette describe the faction role and channel character. Full subclass features will be added in a future update.

Lawspeaker

The two captains had already drawn steel when the Lawspeaker asked one question: are you of the Law? Both answered yes, because both wanted witnesses. She made them say it again. The second time the room changed. Not in the walls. In the hands. The men remembered what their own mouths had done.

-- recovered fragment, market arbitration, Stoneford

Identity

The Lawspeaker is the Sage who disciplines cognition through The Law itself. They are not Sworn; they do not make an oath into a warrior's channel. Instead they use the shared compact as a stabilizing form, a cognitive architecture every lawful mind in the room already recognizes. The faction for a Lawspeaker is not a closed order with private tenets; it is the public structure that makes mixed-settlement life possible. The Lawspeaker does not draw power from their own conviction alone. They draw it from the fact that the compact is already in the room, already in the minds of the people there, already shaping what they believe the world permits.

A Lawspeaker can be mediator, judge, witness, counselor, or battlefield restraint. Their power rests on the unsettling fact that recitation is not symbolic in the Lethean Age. To say you are of the Law is to make yourself legible to the compact. A Lawspeaker knows how to hold that legibility open long enough for the channel to find it and use it. This is both useful and alarming to people who have never seen the effect from outside. Inside the compact's range, the cognitive architecture is not decoration. It is a structural fact. The Lawspeaker can read it the way a builder reads a stressed wall.

Subclass features

The Lawspeaker subclass mechanics are in active design. The identity above and the vignette describe the faction role and channel character. Full subclass features will be added in a future update.

Subclasses in design

The Black-Tongue and Lawspeaker subclasses have identity and vignettes in place. Full subclass feature mechanics are in active design and will be added in a future update.