Overview
Unaffiliated Templates
AX.GM.07.12
Most professions in this catalog are tied to organizations, institutions that provide structure, resources, backing, and the social context of a role. The Bureau trains its Agents. The Network connects its Hunters. The Order shapes its Wardens. These relationships define what a character has access to and who they answer to.
Some characters have none of that. They operate without institutional affiliation, by choice, by circumstance, or because no institution would have them. The four templates here cover these characters.
Unaffiliated templates are not lesser professions. They lack organizational authority and institutional resources, but they substitute personal autonomy, adaptability, and capabilities that only develop outside institutional structures. A Solo Hunter has no Network Pull, but also no Network politics, no verification protocols, and no one who can compromise their operation by leaking to the wrong contact.
When to use these templates:
- The character's concept does not fit any existing organizational dossier
- The character is a Faeborn with no institutional pathway (flagged gap: org index)
- The character is a Shadow-Bound Marked whose only institutional options (Vanguard, Hollow Market) do not fit the concept
- The character came to the hidden world through personal experience rather than institutional recruitment
- The character actively avoids organizational entanglement as a defining trait
Mechanical note: Unaffiliated templates do not include Faction Authority perks. Stage 1 and 2 progression perks reflect personal development rather than institutional standing. Stage 3 perks reflect the character having become significant enough that the hidden world has noticed them, independently, not through an organization.
Using Unaffiliated Templates Together
These four templates cover distinct conceptual ground and can coexist in the same group without mechanical overlap:
| Template | Core Identity | Mechanical Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo Hunter | Survivor; self-reliant operator | Physical resilience; accumulated threat knowledge; Threat Sense | No institutional backing; no tradition access by default |
| Civilian Drawn In | Ordinary person with extraordinary knowledge | Civilian access; broad adaptability; Perspective ability | Starts weaker; no threat-specific training at creation |
| Reformed Threat | Insider knowledge of threat communities | Tradition at 1D from start; Threat Communication; Bridge role | Social complexity; not trusted by default; history follows them |
| Freelance Occultist | Independent researcher-practitioner | Tradition access; cross-domain knowledge; Eclectic Approach | Less tradition depth than specialists; no organizational standing |
A group built entirely from unaffiliated templates has no organizational backing, no faction authority, and no institutional resources, and is completely off every organization's books. This creates a specific campaign texture: the characters are genuinely independent, owe nothing, and are beholden to no one's agenda. They also have no safety net.
Mixed groups (some unaffiliated, some organizationally affiliated) reflect the most common hidden-world team structure: people from different backgrounds who ended up working together because the work required it.