■ Background · No. 06Disposition · Skeptic / surveilledOrigin · Frontier or Wild
Surveyor Class · Personnel
Field Reference · Backgrounds · No. 06

The Mystic

Leans toward spirit and heart.

Disposition
Skeptic / surveilled
Origin
Frontier or Wild
Tier mod
+1 spirit · −1 body · may start Expert

You feel things others don't. Worlds have textures. Paths have voices. Reality whispers, sometimes. Most of your life, you assumed everyone could feel these things and were just better at not mentioning them; it took you an embarrassingly long time to realize they couldn't. Solace calls your kind "sensitives" in their official files. They find you very useful — the only person on most teams who can read the Path before stepping through, who can sense a world's hidden rules, who can feel the difference between a place that wants you and a place that doesn't. They also keep their notes on you in a separate filing cabinet, in a different building, with a different access protocol. You've never seen those notes. You've wondered.

Tier modifier

+1 Spirit, −1 Body. The +1 may push Proficient Spirit to Expert — Mystic is one of the three Backgrounds permitted to start at Expert tier. Doing so invokes the Cost of Expertise. You spent your formative years attuning to the unseen, not the seen. Your body has been a slightly distant negotiation since you were young.

Perk · Resonance

Your attunement gives you usable instincts beyond standard Spirit abilities. Once per world, you may ask the GM one question about the world's metaphysical nature — what wants something here, what was here before, what is hidden here, what does this place fear. The GM gives you a true and useful answer, narrated as a sensation, not a fact.

Additionally, the Mystic begins play with three standard Spirit abilities instead of the standard two — Push a Spirit Roll plus two of the player's choice.

Signature item options

3 options
  1. Opt 01A divination tool — cards, bones, beads, a pendulum, a marked stick — that helps you focus your attunement
  2. Opt 02A worn journal of recorded sensations, premonitions, and pattern observations from places you've been
  3. Opt 03A Stabilizer Coil (issued by Solace to "regulate your gift") that you sometimes wear and sometimes don't

Hooks

4 prompts
  1. H01I want to learn what I am — and whether others like me exist.
  2. H02I want to find the source of the dreams I've been having since Solace recruited me.
  3. H03I want to read what's written in my Solace file, even if it costs me my career.
  4. H04I want to follow a particular voice, hum, or pull I've sensed from a Path — and find out what's at the other end.
End of entry · Background No. 06 · Filed by Surveyor Class Personnel