Die Hintergründe von Almega

You passed the entrance examination of the Mage Guild of Klein Cre and were admitted as a novice of the First Circle. You kept ingredient lists, scrubbed the circle chambers, and assisted the scholars in their studies while learning the fundamentals common to every school of magic. You have not yet chosen a school of your own. A small familiar was your constant companion through the long hours in the guild's library.

You joined the Adventurers' Guild of Klein Cre and carry the bronze badge of its lowest rank. The guild sent you into the hinterland on errands: escorting traders, driving off creatures drawn by the region's magic, and charting paths through unmapped terrain. You learned to read tracks and weather, to set a snare, and to sleep lightly in any season. A tenth of every reward goes to the guild; in return, it keeps the contracts coming.

You served as an apprentice in Klein Cre's House of Healing, where clerics of many different gods work side by side with healers who command no magic at all. No single deity presides over the house; what binds its members is the care of the sick and wounded. You learned the craft that magic cannot replace: cleaning wounds with herbal washes, setting bones, and cutting out what has lodged too deep for any prayer to reach. You have seen enough to know that a spell can close a wound, but not every illness answers to it.

You were trained by the assassins of Klein Cre, a guild whose existence the city watch has never been able to prove. You learned to move unseen through crowded markets, to open locks without leaving a trace, and to strike from a distance when getting close was not an option. Contracts reached you through intermediaries; you rarely knew the name of the person who paid. Whether you left the guild or still answer to it is your own secret.

You were accepted into the Order of the Rune Blades as a Novice of the Blade. The order gathers and locks away dangerous arcane knowledge to protect society from itself, and every one of its knights is both a warrior and a wielder of magic. You spent your training at the forge as much as on the practice yard, learning the craft behind the rune-swords you hope to carry one day. You have not yet faced the Rune Trial, in which a knight's personal rune is burned into the blade, or the blade breaks.

You wrote for the Klein-Cresche Morgenstimme, the city's newspaper. You chased rumors through the markets, sat in on court hearings, and learned that a sharp sentence can wound a reputation as surely as a blade. Your reports have covered everything from Stormian scouts on the roads to the less dignified mishaps of local merchants. People talk to you, sometimes because they want to be heard and sometimes because they fear what you will write if they don't.

You studied among the druids of Liadon's Treff, an elven settlement where the forest and its people have grown together over generations and where no outsider is ever taken in. Your teachers showed you how to listen to the woods, how to tend wounded animals, and which plants heal and which ones kill. You learned that a druid's power comes with an obligation, and you have heard what becomes of those who forget it. Whatever brought you onto the roads of ZanCre, the forest still feels more like home than any town.

You grew up in Fischerruh, a fishing town on the east coast of the continent, mending nets and hauling in the catch until the Stormian fleet appeared on the horizon. The landing came fast, and the town fell after a short fight. You escaped with whatever you could carry and whatever you found along the way, including a sword taken from a soldier who no longer needed it, while others did not escape at all. Since then you sleep lightly, wake at every unfamiliar sound, and keep one eye on the sea.

You kept the graves of the goddess Lik in Zan'Tasian. Lik guards the rest of the dead and stands against all undead, and her servants are no dark sorcerers: they calm restless souls and help them pass on. You dug graves, carved headstones, and sat with the dying and the grieving alike. You have spoken with spirits that did not want to leave, and you know that most of them only needed someone to listen.

You served as an envoy of the Council of Divine Representatives in Zan'Tasian, the assembly through which the servants of eight gods advise the royal family. You carried sealed letters between temples, delivered the council's decisions to provincial lords, and learned to speak for gods who do not always agree with one another. The council taught you its rites so that you could perform them wherever you were sent. You know how to read a room full of priests, and how quickly a careless word can turn into a theological dispute.

You were born in the Stormian Empire, where children with a talent for magic are trained for war. Your instructors taught you to channel fire and force with discipline and to see the enemy as a target rather than a person. At some point you decided you would not become what they intended, and you fled across the sea to the continent the Empire is trying to conquer. Not everyone in Cre trusts a Stormian-trained mage, and you cannot entirely blame them.

For years you passed information to the Stormian Empire: troop movements, merchant convoys, gossip from the taverns of Cre and Zan'Tasian. Whether you did it for coin, out of fear, or out of conviction, at some point you changed sides, and now the information flows the other way. You are skilled at telling people what they want to hear and at slipping away before they think twice. Your former handlers have not forgotten you, and your new employers have not entirely forgiven you.

You were born in the Protectorate of Eibencalu, the kingdom that fell to the Stormian Empire three centuries ago and now supplies it with soldiers. You were conscripted, drilled, and shipped off to the war against Zan'Tasian and Cre. You fought hard enough to survive, and then you ran. Deserters are hanged in the Empire, and few people on this side of the sea trust a former enemy soldier, so you have learned to keep your head down and your weapon close.

You worked the forges of the Grautiefe, the dwarven city whose iron mines supply nearly all the steel on the continent. The Feuerschild clan, the most powerful of the city's noble families, took you on as a forgehand, and you spent years at the anvil turning ore into tools, weapons, and armor. You learned to judge metal by its color in the fire and a bargain by the look on a merchant's face. The Grautiefe's traditions are bound to stone and steel, and some of that stubbornness has rubbed off on you.

You lived in Abgrundblick, the Underdark city built around the Abyss, a bottomless chasm discovered five centuries ago. Deep gnomes and outcast drow fill its streets, and skeletons enforce its laws. You signed on with the Society of Fortune, which is devoted to exploring the Abyss, and mapped what you could of its layers, where shadow, frost, and stranger forces bleed into the world. What you saw down there changed you, and you have learned to step through places where the world grows thin.

You come from Eismeertal, the only village on the frozen Kraken Coast in the wild lands south of the Mondbergkamm. Its people live from the sea and the ice, and you learned early to row through freezing spray and to hurl a harpoon at prey many times your size. The tundra kills the careless and the weak, so you became neither. Few in the north have even heard of your home, and fewer still believe the stories you tell about it.

You once served with a Silver-rank party of the Adventurers' Guild, a seasoned group that had earned access to the guild's armory and shared quarters. On what should have been a routine contract, everything went wrong, and you were the only one who came back. You still do not know whether it was skill, chance, or something else that spared you. You carry your companions' badges with you, and you have stopped tempting fate by asking why.

You sang in the choir of the princely court of Cre, the house that rules the southern half of the continent. You performed at banquets, ceremonies, and receptions for foreign envoys, and learned that a well-chosen song can soften a negotiation before a single word is spoken. Life at court taught you its etiquette and its intrigues, and you have overheard more secrets from behind a music stand than most courtiers learn in a lifetime. Though you no longer sing in the court's halls, you still know the right tune for every occasion.

You kept order at the Resting Nag, a trading post where goods, coin, and questions of legality changed hands without much fuss. There was no city watch to call, so the owners paid people like you to break up fights, throw out troublemakers, and look the other way when it was good for business. You know how to end a brawl with a chair, a fist, or a well-placed glare. You also know more than is healthy about who traded what at the Nag, and some of those people would prefer you forgot.

You made your living on the market square of Mittelhain, conjuring illusions for the crowds that gathered between the stalls. Dancing lights, phantom birds, and a merchant's face suddenly sprouting a beard brought in coins, laughter, and the occasional angry customer. You learned that magic is half technique and half showmanship, and that an audience sees what it expects to see. Your tricks have opened doors, distracted guards, and lifted the spirits of friends when they needed it most.

You were taken from your home and sold to renegade spellcasters who used living people for their experiments. In their hidden halls, runes of control and transformation were carved into the walls and into the prisoners themselves. You survived what killed most of the others, and your body still bears the marks: something in you was changed, and it has not changed back. Those responsible escaped and have never been found, but you would recognize their work anywhere.

You served with the army of Cre as a battle augur, reading the omens before marches and engagements. You watched the stars, the flight of birds, and the smoke of the morning fires, and told commanders what the signs foretold. Some officers swore by your counsel; others mocked it until it saved their lives. You have stood at the edge of enough battlefields to know that omens do not decide a fight, but they can warn you which way it is about to turn.