Roleplaying

Roleplaying Faeborn

AX.GHW.06.02.02

The Glamour Problem

The Faeborn doesn't choose the effect they have on people. The unease, the attention, the way conversations in a room shift when they enter: this is not something they project and it is not something they can turn off. Players should think about how their character has learned to manage this. Do they lean into it, use the attention deliberately, treat it as a professional tool? Do they find it exhausting and work to minimize it, dressing down and speaking quietly and doing everything they can to read as ordinary? Have they made peace with the fact that they never quite will?

The answer shapes everything from how the character enters a scene to how NPCs respond to them in ways the character may find familiar or frustrating.

Language and Truth

Faeborn players who engage with the precision language aspect of the lineage will find it most rewarding when it creates interesting problems as often as it creates solutions. A Faeborn who always knows the true statement that functions as misdirection is useful; a Faeborn who occasionally chooses the precise true statement when a comfortable imprecision would have served everyone better, including themselves, is interesting. The Cultural Talent is Persuade, not Deceive. The Faeborn's instinct is toward real influence, not manipulation for its own sake.

The Obligation

Every Faeborn has a background obligation question: what does the in-between place still want from them, if anything? This doesn't need to be a ticking clock or an active antagonist. It can be as quiet as a recurring dream, a name that surfaces in unexpected places, a sense that certain doors open more easily than they should. GMs and players should agree on whether the obligation is active, dormant or resolved, and if resolved, how, before play begins.

Social Play

The Faeborn is the lineage most naturally suited to investigative and social play in this catalog. Their mechanics, True Seeing, Enhanced Hearing and a free Persuade die, are almost entirely oriented toward gathering accurate information and then doing something effective with it. Players who chose this lineage for combat should supplement heavily with Profession and Talent choices; the lineage itself will not carry them there.