Marks Of The Ancients

The world of Hawkmoon is old beyond reckoning, and the blood of mankind has not passed through those ages unchanged. Some mutations arise naturally in isolated populations or long-blighted regions. Others are inflicted deliberately through the arts of Granbretan, the handling of forbidden devices, or the lingering poisons of ancient wars.

These changes are known by many names: mutations, blood-signs, warping, elder marks, witch-flesh, beast-blood, or the Marks of the Ancients.

In game terms, mutations may be taken as Edges or Hindrances, depending on whether they chiefly aid or burden the character.

A mutation should always be visible, tangible, or socially meaningful. It is not just a bonus. It changes how the world sees you.

Mutation Guidelines

A character may take one beneficial mutation Edge at character creation.

A character may also take one mutation Hindrance, if desired.

Paired Cost: Any character who takes a Mutation Edge must also take an appropriate Hindrance reflecting the visible, social, or physical consequences of that change. This Hindrance may be a Mutation Hindrance or another thematically appropriate Hindrance approved by the GM.

Mutations may be:

natural bloodline traits
regional adaptations
relic-scars caused by forbidden science
the results of deliberate experimentation
signs of ancient contamination

At the GM’s option, especially strange or dramatic mutations may impose additional complications.

Mutation Edges

Beast-Blooded

Requirements: Novice, Vigor d6+

Your body carries visible animalistic traits: fur, unusual musculature, slit pupils, vestigial claws, heavy bones, or some other stable alteration.

Gain a +1 bonus to Athletics rolls and a +1 bonus to Toughness against unarmed attacks, falls, and environmental scrapes and battering.

Typical Hindrance: Bestial Appearance (Minor or Major) The same traits that harden your body mark you as something not entirely human.

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Giant Blood

Requirements: Novice, Strength d8+, Vigor d6+

Somewhere in your lineage, something larger than common humanity entered the line. You are broad-boned, long-limbed, and unusually powerful.

Gain +1 die step to your lifting and carrying capacity and +1 to rolls to resist being pushed, grappled, or knocked prone.

Typical Hindrance: Monstrous Build (Minor or Major) Your great size makes ordinary life inconvenient and often costly.

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Keen Scent

Requirements: Novice, Notice d6+

Your senses are subtly inhuman. You can smell blood, smoke, fear, wet stone, and spoor better than ordinary folk.

Gain a +2 bonus to Notice or Survival rolls when tracking by scent or detecting hidden creatures, blood, smoke, poison, or nearby animals.

Typical Hindrance: Relic-Tainted (Minor) or Bestial Appearance (Minor) Your senses betray your unnatural nature to others.

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Night Eyes

Requirements: Novice, Notice d6+

Your pupils are strange, reflective, or over-large, and you see far better in darkness than other men.

Ignore up to 2 points of penalties from Dim or Dark Illumination.

Typical Hindrance: Light-Sick (Minor) What serves you in darkness betrays you in the light.

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Redundant Vigor

Requirements: Novice, Vigor d8+

Your flesh is oddly resilient, your organs displaced, doubled, or simply harder to fail.

Gain a +2 bonus to rolls to resist disease and poison.

Typical Hindrance: Unstable Mutation (Major) Your resilience is unnatural and not wholly reliable.

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Spring-Heeled

Requirements: Novice, Agility d8+

Your joints and musculature are subtly unnatural.

Gain a +2 bonus to Athletics rolls for leaping, climbing, and keeping balance.

Typical Hindrance: Fragile Frame (Minor) Your unnatural agility comes at the cost of structural weakness.

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Mutation Hindrances

Bestial Appearance (Minor or Major)

You are visibly altered in ways that ordinary folk find unsettling: fur, tusks, elongated ears, strange skin, mismatched eyes, a muzzle-like face, or other obvious traits.

Minor: –1 to Persuasion rolls with those unsettled by mutation. Major: –2 to Persuasion rolls, and the reaction penalty applies almost everywhere outside mutant-tolerant regions.

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Fragile Frame (Minor)

Your mutation brought distortion rather than strength. Your bones, joints, or flesh are unreliable.

Reduce your Pace by 1 or suffer a –1 penalty to Athletics rolls, chosen when this Hindrance is taken.

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Light-Sick (Minor)

Your altered eyes or skin react poorly to bright glare, open sunlight, or certain strange radiances.

You suffer a –1 penalty to Notice and ranged attack rolls in bright sunlight or harsh reflected glare.

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Monstrous Build (Minor or Major)

You are too large, too broad, too oddly proportioned, or too physically irregular for ordinary spaces, armor, and mounts.

Minor: Clothing, armor, saddles, and equipment cost double for you. Major: As Minor, and you suffer a –1 penalty on Stealth rolls in cramped or civilized environments.

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Relic-Tainted (Minor)

Your mutation is clearly the result of forbidden science or ancient contamination.

Those who recognize such signs react with fear or disgust. You suffer a –1 penalty to Persuasion rolls with clergy, healers, scholars, and commoners who fear relic corruption.

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Unstable Mutation (Major)

Your altered body is not wholly stable. It swells, aches, spasms, sheds, discolors, or reacts to stress.

At the start of any session in which you are Exhausted, irradiated, poisoned, or wounded, make a Vigor roll. On a failure, you suffer Fatigue from the strain. This Fatigue may be recovered normally.

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Mixed Mutations

Some mutations may be taken either as Edges or Hindrances depending on emphasis.

Fur, giant blood, strange eyes, claws, unusual skin, heightened senses, or heavy bones might be mostly useful in one character and mostly burdensome in another.

For example:

a giant-blooded archer like Oladahn might take Giant Blood and Monstrous Build
a relic-scarred experiment might take Night Eyes and Light-Sick
a beast-blooded wanderer might take Beast-Blooded and Bestial Appearance

Final Note

Mutation in Hawkmoon should feel old, eerie, and half-normalized. It is not a carnival of random powers. It is part of the tragic strangeness of the world.

Some mutants are feared. Some are merely uncommon. Some are the work of tyrants. Some are the living remnants of ancient ages no one remembers clearly.

Hawkmoon Codex Home • Character Creation • Edges • Hindrances • Marks of the Ancients • Granbretan • Tragic Millenium Europe • Science and Sorcery • Arms and Equipment