A Leap Before the Look

The automaton's fist came down like a falling boulder.

Thania twisted aside, red skin gleaming with sweat in the phosphorescent light of the Essari ruin. The construct's strike cratered the floor where she'd been standing a heartbeat before, sending cracks spiderwebbing across ancient stonework. She bared her teeth in something between a grin and a snarl, tongue flicking across one pointed canine as she felt the storm above them surge through her bones. The wild magic was alive, hungry, and she drank it in like wine—letting it reshape her, fill her, become her. When she struck back, her blade left trails of violet-white energy crackling through the stale air.

Beside her, a tawny shape blurred into motion. Keth, her bonded jaguar, circled the construct with predatory patience, golden eyes never leaving the automaton's joints.

"Just one more minute, I've almost got it!" Kessa didn't look up from the control panel embedded in the ancient stone dais, her calloused fingers dancing across alien glyphs that pulsed with faint blue light. She could feel the logic beneath them—foreign, yes, but not incomprehensible. Not quite. The ground shook as another crack of wild magic struck somewhere above, and she muttered a string of curses that would've made her guild master proud. "At least, I hope I do."

The shuddering in the ruin's foundations was twofold. Outside and above, a wild magic storm had materialized minutes after they'd descended into the buried complex, each surge of chaotic power threatening to tear apart stone that had stood for millennia. And if the storm didn't collapse the structure, the ten-foot automaton currently trying to pulverize them certainly would.

"Destroy it!" Karvin's voice was tight, his small frame pressed against a column for cover. "Before it brings this whole place down on our heads!"

"No!" Torvin's deep voice cut through the chaos. The orc's green-grey skin was slick with dust and sweat, his tusks gleaming as he shouted over the din. "We need it intact! If we can deactivate the security protocols—"

"That's a very large 'if'!" Karvin shot back.

Renna raised her hands, jeweled rings catching the strange light. "Everyone shut up and let me work!" Her blue-grey skin seemed to glow as she began weaving, chains and gemstones woven through her mass of black curls tinkling with each sharp gesture. The spell was simple in theory, just a basic holding spell her own master had managed to carve out of Thaedros' strange magical currents; but in a wild magic storm, theory and practice rarely agreed.

The moment the spell left her bejeweled fingers with a crackling of arcane discharge that stung her fingertips, reality lurched.

Ropes of pure force materialized around the construct, shimmering with colors that had no names. The automaton froze mid-stride, its massive limbs locked in place—and then the floor rippled like water disturbed by wind. Renna's eyes went wide. "Oh, dear, that's—"

Thania's foot plunged through stone turned liquid. She pitched forward with a startled bark, and Keth was there instantly, powerful jaws clamping on her leather harness. The jaguar's muscles bunched as he dragged her backward, and they both scrambled clear just as the stone solidified with a sound like breaking glass. She shot Renna a glare that could have melted steel.

"—not supposed to happen," Renna finished weakly, wincing as she rubbed singed fingers together. "Sorry, love! Karvin, I've got it held but I can't—"

"I know." The stout little gnome stepped from behind his column. His eyes had gone black from pupil to sclera. When he spoke, his voice carried an undertone that wasn't quite his own, layered with something cold and ancient. Somewhere in the distance—or perhaps very close, it was impossible to tell—there came a sound like wind hissing through cracks in stone that could have been whispers in a language never meant for mortal tongues. "Patience is a virtue, Renna. Though I suppose you wouldn't know."

His small hands traced patterns that left afterimages in the air, and shadows with no source began to coil around the automaton like serpents made of absence itself. The temperature dropped so fast that breath misted, and frost crept across its stone-and-metal frame. Fingers splayed, red skin darkening as Karvin drew on his patron's power, the gnome's jaw muscles tensed as he willed the shadows into grinding joints and the furrows Thania's blade had left.

Thania didn't need an invitation. The storm roared through her veins, and she charged with Keth at her side. Her strike was chaos given purpose, wild magic shaped by rage into a blow that might have made reality itself crack at the edges. The blade bit deep into the construct's chest. Stone exploded, and metal rent with a shriek as that wild energy tore through the automaton's outer chassis.

Karvin's shadows struck like vipers, pouring into the wound Thania had opened, then exploded outward with a silent boom that each of the party felt in their bones like thunder. The construct shuddered, sparked, its glowing eyes flickering—and toppled backward with the sound of thunder trapped in stone.

The warlock's shoulders slumped in relief, and he raked stubby fingers through his sweat laden white hair. "Good. Now, Kessa, hurry!"

"We're good!" Kessa's fingers found the final sequence of glyphs, and she snapped her notebook closed as she quickly began to move the tiny control stones through the maze-like pattern. "Now if I can just—"

The automaton's eyes flared red. Its arm twitched.

"Oh, you have got to be—"

Light blazed from the control panel, and Kessa slammed her palm down on the central glyph. The ruin's ancient mechanisms responded with a deep thrumming that she felt in her teeth, and the automaton went still. Truly, completely still. Even the hum of whatever powered it faded to blessed silence.

For a moment, no one moved. The only sounds were heavy breathing and the distant rumble of the storm above.

Torvin was already crossing to Thania, his large hands glowing with soft golden light—sheer conviction shaped into healing through force of will and the cleric's steadfast belief that his people had not been truly orphaned by the old gods of Encara. "Hold still. This is going to hurt."

"It already hurts," Thania muttered, pressing one hand to her ribs. Keth pressed against her leg, rumbling concern. The wounded elf glanced down at her companion and scratched behind one ear. "I'll be fine, ketesh."

Kessa stepped back from the control panel, still holding her breath. She knelt and flipped open her pack to pull an eldrite core from its depths with careful reverence. It was wrapped in protective cloth, and worth more than everything else they carried combined, the prize of weeks of careful excavation from a smaller ruin nearby. "Let's hope our friend here isn't too badly damaged." She approached the fallen automaton and located the socket at the base of its skull—a cavity designed for exactly this purpose. "And that this core doesn't send it into an even worse frenzy than the security system," she murmured as she pried open the back of the gedrival's chassis to reveal an empty half-spherical socket set into the warforged's inner mechanisms. The core fit perfectly, and when she twisted it into place, she heard the soft click of ancient mechanisms engaging.

Nothing happened.

Renna sighed, her shoulders wilting. "Well, that's a lot of work for nothing—"

The gedrival's eyes flickered red, then amber, then settled to steady blue. Its head turned with the grating of damaged stone across twisted metal, scanning the chamber. It looked at each of them in turn: the elven warrior still catching her breath, blade lifted in preparation for another fight, her great cat crouched beside her with wary golden eyes; the gnome whose shadows were just beginning to dissipate; the dwarf wizard scribbling frantically in her notebook; the orc cleric whose hands still glowed faintly with healing light; the human rogue who stood with cautious hope written across her face.

Then it looked past them all. To the massive vault door that stood open, its ancient seals broken and dark.

When it spoke, its voice was like millstones grinding. "Alert. Breach detected. Unauthorized release of... of..." The warforged's head tilted, and for a moment its eyes flickered uncertainly. "There should be a designation here. There is not. Corruption detected in memory architecture."

The entire party froze.

Thania lowered her blade slowly. Keth's ears flattened. "The... what?"

The newly conscious warforged rose to its feet with ponderous grace despite the groaning and squealing of its damaged body. "The vault. Its seals were intact when I was last active. When I was given... purpose." The word came slowly, as if pulled from deep within the mysterious circuits of the eldrite core. "I know I had purpose. I know there were... others. Those who gave the commands. But their names..." It reached up with one massive hand, touching its own head as if that might help. "The names are missing. The faces are missing. Only the imperative remains: Nothing contained within may leave."

"Well," Kessa said quietly, exchanging glances with the others. "About that. The door was already open when we got here. We were tracking missing settlers. They broke through from above about two weeks back, fell into these ruins. We've been searching for them." She gestured toward the vault. "Found their gear scattered near the entrance. And... other things."

The warforged turned its glowing gaze on her. "Then they opened it. Or it was already open when they arrived."

"We don't know yet," Torvin said, stepping forward. His voice was steady, measured; the tone he used when interviewing witnesses. "The doors to this chamber were sealed when we found them. But they'd been forced from the inside. You activated when we tried to enter."

"Security protocol," the warforged said. Its voice had gone distant, automatic. "Protect the seal. Prevent breach. If breach occurs..." It stopped. Looked at its hands. "If breach occurs, I should... I should know what to do. The instructions should be here. But there is only absence where knowledge should be."

Renna had been studying the walls while they spoke, running her fingers over worn carvings barely visible in the phosphorescent light. "There's writing all over this place. Warnings, I think. But it's so degraded I can barely make out one glyph in ten." She looked at the warforged. "Can you read Essari?"

"Essari? I..." The construct paused. "I should be able to. I feel that I should. But when I look at the glyphs, they are... almost familiar. Like a word on the tip of the vocal emitters that refuses to come." Its voice carried something that might have been frustration, or grief. "Whatever gave me purpose also took the means to fully understand it."

Kessa turned back to the vault, her face pale. At the scorch marks on the floor leading out of it, black against grey stone. At the disturbed dust that told a story of something large passing through. The tracks were still sharp-edged, recent. Far more recent than two weeks.

"So something was in there," she said slowly. "Something dangerous enough to lock away and post a guardian. And either our missing settlers let it out, or..." She trailed off, not wanting to finish that thought.

"Or it was already stirring," Karvin said. His voice had returned fully to normal now, but he looked shaken. "The patron showed me... hunger. Ancient and awful hunger, waking up."

A shudder ran through them all, but it was Thania whose breath caught audibly. She had been a child during the diaspora. She had seen the old world, Encara, and the Hungering Multitude that had destroyed it. The memory was a scar across her soul.

"How long?" Thania asked the warforged, the normally unshakable warrior forcing herself to speak. "How long were you dormant?"

"I do not know. There are no time markers in my memory. Only sleep, and then activation." It looked toward the open vault again, and its massive frame seemed to sag. "I have failed in my duty. I was built to prevent this. That much, at least, remains clear."

"You were shut down," Torvin said quietly. "Can't fail at a job you were forced to abandon." He paused, studying the warforged's damaged frame—the rent metal, the cracked stone plating, the way its left shoulder ground with each movement. "You'll need repairs before we go anywhere. What's your name?"

"Model Gedrival, Defense Configuration. Serial designation: Vault-Warden-Seventh-Spindle-Dawn-Iteration-Four-Two-Seven." The words came automatically, precisely, like reading from a list.

Kessa blinked. "That's... not a name."

The warforged's head tilted. "Is it not?"

"It's a designation code," Renna said, looking up from her notebook. "But you're conscious now. Aware. If you want a proper name, you'll need to choose one for yourself." She considered the damaged construct thoughtfully. "And Torvin's right about repairs. You're in rough shape. I know an artificer who works out of Bandor's Junction—not far from here. She's good with old mechanisms, and she's repaired a few warforged before."

The warforged was silent for a long moment, its blue eyes dim as if processing. When it spoke again, its voice was quieter. "A name. Something... mine." Another pause. "Warden. I will be Warden. It is what I was, and what I failed to be. Perhaps now I can be it again."

"Warden it is, then," Torvin said with a nod, something that might have been approval in his voice. "Welcome to consciousness."

Warden's glowing eyes dimmed slightly, then brightened again. "Thank you. I... am uncertain what comes next."

"Well," Kessa said, managing to sound both terrified and pragmatic at once, "first we get you to Bandor's Junction for repairs. Then we report this mess to the Guild. Then we figure out what was just let loose on the world and try very, very hard not to die fixing it." She looked around at the others—at their battered armor, their exhausted faces, their newest companion who was literally falling apart at the seams. "Anyone want to bet we're getting a promotion for this?"

"Or executed," Karvin offered, his voice carrying the weight of someone who'd already accepted the worst possible outcome.

"Could go either way, really," Thania said, wincing as she shifted her weight. Keth pressed closer against her leg, and she rested a hand on his head for comfort. "Depends on whether they blame us for the breach or credit us for finding it."

"We'll worry about that later," Torvin said, already moving toward the passage they'd come through. His practical nature reasserted itself like an anchor in choppy water. "For now, we document everything, get Warden stabilized, and send word back to headquarters. Whatever was in that vault, it has a two-week head start on us at minimum."

Warden turned toward the vault entrance, servos grinding in protest with every movement. Despite the damage, despite the corruption in its memories, it moved with purpose. "I will guide you through the complex. My internal mapping systems remain functional. And when you pursue what was imprisoned here..." It paused, looking back at them with those steady blue eyes. "I will accompany you. It is my responsibility to correct this failure."

"Perfect," Kessa said with a laugh that was equal parts exhaustion and disbelief. "Another party member who thinks everything is their fault. You'll fit right in."

Outside, the wild magic storm continued its assault on the ancient stones, violet lightning splitting the darkened sky. And somewhere ahead in the depths of the ruin—or perhaps already escaped into the wider world—something that had been locked away for millennia was now free.

Just another day with the Yldanian Surveyor's Guild.

Forged in the Frontier

The world of Thaedros is not kind to those who rely on tradition alone. The magic here is wild, untamed, and deeply unpredictable. The ruins of the Essari hold secrets and dangers in equal measure. The frontier stretches endlessly in every direction, filled with mysteries no one from Encara could have imagined.

This world demands more. It demands innovation. Adaptation. New ways of thinking, fighting, and surviving. And so, in the 150 years since the Diaspora, new disciplines have emerged—some born from necessity, others from the unique opportunities this strange world presents.

The subclasses you'll find here are not just mechanical options. They are reflections of how the people of Thaedros have changed to meet the challenges of their new home. Whether you're channeling the raw chaos of wild magic storms, forging pacts with entities that dwell between worlds, or mastering the arcane properties of eldrite, you are part of a living tradition still being written.

These are the tools and techniques of a generation that refuses to be broken by this world. They are proof that survival is not enough—that those who dare to thrive can reshape even the most hostile frontier into something extraordinary.

Available Subclasses