Tome V · Origin Compendium
An origin is what a character did before the campaign began. It grants two skill proficiencies, a language or tool, a starting equipment kit, an ability score increase, and one feature covering what that life still gets them. Each is written to work at any tech tier.
You make things, and the things work. A Tier I smith and a Tier V fabricator argue about almost everything except tolerance, and both of them can tell at a glance when a piece was made by someone in a hurry.
Skills · Technology, Investigation
You made your living against the law, whatever the law happened to be that decade. Tier I called it banditry, Tier III calls it organised crime, and Tier V calls it a jurisdictional dispute. The work is the same: take the thing, be elsewhere.
Skills · Stealth, Deception
You gave yourself to a doctrine and it gave you a structure. The rites differ by tier and by faith, and the shape does not: something larger than you, a schedule you keep, and other people who keep it too.
Skills · Religion, Insight
You never stayed. Some of that was choice. You know the roads, the rails, the shipping lanes, and which of them are watched, and you have slept somewhere worse than wherever the party is complaining about tonight.
Skills · Survival, Perception
You held authority over other people, and it was not always yours. Watch, guard, marshal, corporate security. The badge changes by tier and by employer, and every version of it works the same way: most people comply because you look like you expect them to.
Skills · Intimidation, Perception
You held a room. Tavern, theatre, broadcast feed, the room changes and the problem does not: give them something, then give them a reason to come back. You know exactly how long you have before you lose them.
Skills · Performance, Acrobatics
You learned to keep people alive with what was available. A Tier I herbalist and a Tier IV trauma surgeon reach for different things and make the same decision: this one first, that one can wait, that one cannot be helped.
Skills · Medicine, Insight
You were raised by people with a name worth protecting. The estate might be a hall, a spire apartment, or a controlling share. You were taught which fork, which title, and which silences to leave alone.
Skills · Persuasion, History
You took your living off the land, and the land did not make it easy. What you tracked depends on where you were born and what tier it was. The reading of ground, weather, and sign does not change nearly as much as people expect.
Skills · Survival, Nature
You worked with your hands for people who counted the hours. On a Tier I world that means a field, a quarry, or somebody else's wall. By Tier IV it means a cargo deck or a hull crew, and the hours are still counted. The work changes shape across the tiers; the arrangement does not.
Skills · Athletics, Technology
You bought low somewhere and sold high somewhere else, and you learned the difference between a price and a value. Tier I hauled it by cart. Tier IV hauls it by freighter. The margin is still the margin.
Skills · Persuasion, Insight
Something removed you from the rolls. Exile, ruin, a war, a name that stopped being safe to use. You have lived outside whatever counted as inside, and you have got good at the part where nobody is coming to help.
Skills · Survival, Stealth
You were trained to find things out and to write down what you found. The archive might be a scriptorium, a university, or a corporate data-vault; the discipline is the same, and so is the frustration of a source that will not confirm.
Skills · History, Lore
You were issued equipment and told where to stand. Tier I put a spear in your hands and a hundred people beside you; Tier IV issued powered plate and told you the line was somewhere over the horizon. Every tier has an army, and every army needs someone who does not run.
Skills · Athletics, Intimidation
You worked a vessel. Sail, steam, or sublight, the job is watches, weather, and a captain whose mood is the weather that matters. You have been further from home than most people's maps go.
Skills · Piloting, Athletics
