Overview
Marked
AX.GHW.06.05
"I didn't sign anything. Nobody asked me. That's the part people keep missing — I didn't choose this. But here we are, and the compact is real regardless, so the question isn't whether I'm owed or owned. The question is what I'm going to do about it."
The Marked carry a contract they did not sign. Somewhere in their lineage — a generation back, three generations, occasionally further — someone made a bargain with something vast. The terms varied. The duration did not: the agreements that produce the Marked are the ones written to run forward through blood, binding descendants who had no voice in the negotiation and frequently no knowledge it occurred.
The contract's origin determines its character. Some Marked descend from compacts struck with the Hollow — beings comprehended only as shadow, cold and consuming, patient in the way that something vast and predatory is patient. Others come from covenants made with the Illuminated — beings comprehended only as light, often perceived as benevolent, but alien and costly regardless of that perception. Both produce Marked. Both leave the bloodline permanently changed. The experience of carrying a compact with the Hollow and the experience of carrying a covenant with the Illuminated are different in texture, social implication, and what the other party wants. They are not different in fundamental condition: something has a claim on the bloodline, and that claim expresses itself in the living body of the person who inherited it.
This is not a curse in the sense of a punishment. It is a lien. The contract made the bloodline something — capable in specific ways, marked in ways that other things recognize, shaped by an obligation that predates them. Whether that something is useful, dangerous, or both depends entirely on what the Marked decides to do with the inheritance and how the other party to the contract chooses to exercise their interest.
At character creation, the player chooses the contract type — Shadow-Bound or Light-Bound. This choice is permanent. It determines the specific Inherited Perks the character receives and the Power Access traditions available to them. The choice does not alter the Health Modifier, Cultural Talent, cap structure, or the fundamental fiction of the lineage.
In the World
The Marked are not common knowledge, even in communities with significant awareness of the hidden world. What they are is occasionally recognizable, to the things old enough to know what a contract bloodline looks like, to practitioners who study compacts and covenants, to other Marked who have learned to identify the signature. Recognition is not always welcome.
A bloodline with a contract obligation is a political fact in the hidden world. It means something powerful has an interest in the lineage, which makes the Marked useful to some parties and dangerous to others. Shadow-Bound and Light-Bound Marked navigate different political landscapes: the former tend to attract attention from entities interested in the compact's claim or its power; the latter from entities who regard the covenant as either a resource or an offense depending on their own allegiances.
Marked who know what they are typically invest significant effort in understanding the specific terms of their contract, insofar as those terms are recoverable. This is scholarship of a particular kind — tracking down the original agreement, translating the language it was written in, understanding what was promised and what was withheld and what the fine print actually says. The ones who find complete documentation describe the experience as alternately clarifying and deeply unwelcome. Both kinds of contracts are thorough. Both kinds have clauses that were not explained to the original party.
In professional life, the Marked's advantages manifest as exceptional pattern recognition, an instinct for identifying leverage and consequence, and a quality of presence that registers before language does. The cold or the light that runs in their blood is usually controllable in ordinary circumstances. Most Marked learn to manage it early. It becomes a problem in situations involving genuine threat, genuine conviction, or circumstances the Marked has not encountered before.
Lineage Mechanics
Health Modifier: +1 (Applied at character creation and each time Fortitude is increased through XP advancement.)
Design Note: The +1 Health Modifier reflects the contract's investment in keeping the bloodline functional. A Hollow entity with a claim on a lineage has some interest in that lineage surviving long enough to be useful — something it intends to drain doesn't benefit from dying prematurely. An Illuminated covenant has invested something of itself in those it has marked and does not discard that investment carelessly. Both parties, for different reasons, want the Marked to persist.
Cultural Talent: Tactics 1D This die is free; it does not come from the Talent generation budget. The cunning of someone who grew up — knowingly or not — adjacent to agreements that contain consequences most people never consider. Marked families that know what they are tend to raise their children with a particular awareness of leverage, the gap between apparent and actual value, and the importance of reading what something costs before accepting what it offers. Even Marked who didn't know their lineage often describe an instinct for identifying the angle in a situation that others miss.
Attribute and Talent Caps
All Marked use standard maximums regardless of contract type.
| Context | Maximum Value |
|---|---|
| Attribute (standard) | 5D |
| Attribute (with qualifying perk) | 6D |
| Talents | 5D |
| Foci | 3D |
No cap increases are granted by this Lineage.
Design Note: The Marked's breadth — moderate Health, typed damage Resistance, a Presence effect, and strong built-in Power Access pathways — is its mechanical identity. A cap increase would weight either variant toward a single Attribute expression and undermine that breadth. If playtesting suggests a variant underperforms at high levels, a narrow Wit increase (the contract sharpens the mind as well as the blood, in both directions) is the correct first adjustment.
Roleplaying the Marked
The Inheritance That Wasn't Asked For
The central question of the Marked is not "how do I use my powers." It is "what do I owe, to whom, and what am I going to do about it." Players who engage with this question will find more material than they can use. The contract type shapes the texture: Shadow-Bound Marked navigate an obligation that is transactional — the Hollow entity wants something useful from the bloodline, and usefulness is the primary currency. Light-Bound Marked navigate an obligation that is evaluative — the Illuminated has expectations of what the bloodline should be, and falling short of those expectations has its own kind of cost. Neither is obviously preferable. Both are interesting.
The Shadow and the Light
The energy in the Marked's blood — cold shadow for Shadow-Bound, searing light for Light-Bound — is an atmospheric and tonal element as much as a mechanical one. GMs and players should establish what it looks like in practice: does it manifest visibly in moments of stress? Is it entirely internal until deliberately expressed? Does it have a subjective quality the Marked experiences that others don't see? The answer shapes how NPCs react to the Marked before any explanation is offered.
The Two Parties
The Hollow and the Illuminated are not mirror images with swapped aesthetics. They want different things from the bloodlines they hold.
The Hollow are patient and transactional. They made an investment and expect a return on a timeline that may not align with a human lifespan. What they have seeded in the bloodline is not a gift — it is a claim. A Shadow-Bound Marked may rarely hear from their compact's source directly; the Hollow's interest is in the accounting, not the relationship. When they do make contact, it is purposeful and cold. They want something specific, and they have been patient about wanting it.
The Illuminated are active and demanding. The covenant was made because the Illuminated wanted something from this bloodline — not just any bloodline, but one shaped toward a particular purpose. They have not stopped wanting it. A Light-Bound Marked may find their covenant's source uncomfortably present, with clear opinions about their choices. The warmth of the Illuminated's attention is real. So is the cost of disappointing it.
Both parties, it is worth noting, are perceived differently than they function. Lay communities call the Hollow "demons" and the Illuminated "angels." Practitioners who work directly with these entities know that neither name is accurate or wrong. The Hollow are not evil in any simple sense — they are consuming. The Illuminated are not benevolent in any comfortable sense — they are demanding.
Tactics and Leverage
The free Tactics die applies equally to combat and social situations, and equally to both contract types. Both kinds of contracts are written in language designed to obscure what they actually contain, and both kinds of Marked have a lifetime of practice — conscious or not — reading that kind of language everywhere.
GM Notes
The Presence exemptions as narrative tools: Both Hollow's Gaze and Searing Presence have immunity carve-outs for same-type entities. These are your primary tool for making the respective contract sources feel like genuine presences. When the Shadow-Bound Marked encounters something immune to Hollow's Gaze, or the Light-Bound Marked encounters something that shrugs off Searing Presence, it tells the party something — and reminds the Marked that the power in their blood has a chain of custody. Use this deliberately, not as a gotcha.
Both variants in the same party: If your table includes both a Shadow-Bound and a Light-Bound Marked, the political implications in the hidden world are significant. Entities affiliated with one contract type will have opinions about the other. The Hollow and the Illuminated may have opinions about each other. This is a feature; it creates organic inter-party texture without requiring the players to generate conflict artificially.
The contract as campaign architecture: Both variants support long-form engagement with the contract's source as a campaign element. Three modes are available — Background Element, Recurring Pressure, and Active Participant — and the Hollow-patient/Illuminated-demanding dynamic is the default, not the rule. See AX.GHW.14.03 (Creditor Framework) for the full treatment.
Light-Bound Searing Presence in low-damage parties: The defensive redirect is most valuable when removing a threat from the Marked frees up another party member to act. In parties with only one significant damage dealer, the redirect's value may feel low relative to Hollow's Gaze's offensive condition. Apply the Radiant damage rider design note before considering structural changes to the perk.
The perception gap: Both the Hollow and the Illuminated are understood by outsiders through the lens of familiar categories — demons and angels. Marked who know better navigate this gap constantly. The Order of the Warden's Flame has a more sophisticated understanding of the Illuminated than most; the Sovereign Circle has a more sophisticated understanding of the Hollow than most. Neither organization fully escapes the weight of the older framing.