---
# System prepended metadata

title: Knacks

---

# Knacks

This is where we'll collect knacks as they're drafted.

## Format

Knacks follow this format:

> ```markdown
> ### Knack Name
>
> > Leading paragraph/short description
>
> Effects:
>
> 1. Notes about the effect(s). Every knack has at least one.
>
> ```

For example:

### Pearl-Seeker's Eyes

> Long years diving into murky depths for treasure have given their eyes an unnatural sheen. When they focus, they can sense hidden treasure and are drawn inexorably toward it.

Effect:

1. Know the location of up to M hidden treasures nearby, from least to most valuable.
1. Instantaneous. When appraising treasure, -M from difficulty.

## Effects

The effects are not mandatory during drafting. Skipping them initially may give a better sense of how to mechanize them later as we have a larger corpus of knacks to work with.

Previous notes on the effect of knacks:

- Knacks always have a magnitude (M) from 1--6.
- Knacks may have passive, active, or instantaneous effects.
- Using knacks with active or instantaneous effects is referred to as "exercising" the knack.
- Characters can exercise a knack at _up to_ its magnitude. If their knack is M3, they can't exercise it at M4.
- Exercising a knack costs tephra equal to magnitude.
- Active effects last for 10 minutes by default.
- To affect others, the knack must be active or instantaneous.
- If it doesn't involve a contested roll and effects someone other than the character, the magntidue applies to either the duration or the effect.
- If it involves a contested roll, the magnitude either applies to the effect or the target's difficulty for resisting it.
- Knacks should be written so they're open to alternate (and especially clever) uses. They're like innate spells.

We're not beholden to these old guidelines.

## Vocations

The initial focus for knacks is on writing at least one per vocation to help with character creation. The setting is broadly a hyper-magic Aegean bronze age megalopolis in the midst of a rennaissance of arts, crafts, learning, and intrigue. The citizens live in the aftermath of someone else's apocalypse, but move through and build upon those ruins.

The vocations listed below are a non-exhaustive list, enumerating some of the ones that might be less obvious or are specific to the city itself.

<details>
    <summary>Vocation List</summary>

- Aesthetician: Fashion and beauty in the city is broadly a big deal, not least of all because a skilled aesthetician's work is also often magical - a strongly styled makeup might genuinely be the equivalent of a magic item, though in danger of being cleaned off.
- Archivist: Most of the people are broadly illiterate, but have ready access to magic to obviate the problem for them. Archivists, as keepers of records, lore, and research, operate at the same level as other powerful factions.
- Barrister: There's no real unified law in the city. Barristers may specialize in a single neighborhood or faction, or they might be researchers to help you navigate whatever laws you've violated. There's a lot of places and groups with extremely weird practices, like requiring testimony to be given in verse, or allowing a defendant to race their accuser to prove innocence.
- Canal cleanser: The canals are extremely dangerous and provide duty as fast travel, cargo lanes, sewage, and burial location in the city. They're haunted by wakemakers, which are functionally body horror demons. Canal cleansers are gestalt sanitation engineers and abjuration magic specialists who cycle through the city to keep things from being even more horrid than they would otherwise become.
- Corpseanter: The city is plagued by a native species of giant ant that occasionally breaks into the surface from the catacombs and the undercity. The first sign is usually dogs or vulnerable people going missing, or gardens being destroyed. Left too long and a Corpseant colony will devour everything. Corpseanters are the orkin man if his job was to fight giant ants that eat people and innate magic.
- Drakeracer: Drakeracing is big entertainment and bigger money. Racing drakes are like semi-domesticated riding crocodiles, bred for speed. They're fast as hell on land and in water, but too heavy to walk on walls.
- Draketrainer: Aside from training racing drakes, there are guard drakes, hunting drakes, fishing drakes, surfing drakes, war drakes, etc. If you could train a dog or horse to do it, people have tried to train drakes to do it.
- Dreamspeaker: A profession of those who record and manipulate dreams by ritual or art. In vogue in the city right now for the wealthy, in demand for trauma amelioration and religious services always.
- Eelsurfer: Another city sport, eelsurfers come in two broad flavors, similar to skiers and snowboarders - an eel strapped to either foot or one massive eel. Many surfers acquire their eels through bonding rituals, but the very best raise their eels from birth.
- Falconer: Largely needed for pest control, some specialize in intercepting messages or use against other people.
- Glyphclammer: An alternate way of recording knowledge, glypclams are specially raised to be living vinyl records (for playing back information) or scrolls (if raised to generate the pattern required for a dweomer). They have to be fed and raised specifically for their purpose.
- Gondolier: Keeping the Wakemakers away requires abjuring songs. The gondolieri are a power block in the city unto themselves, a sort of gestalt gang of demon hunting songwriters. While one voice singing an abjuring song will keep the wakemakers away, two voices singing the same song seems to summon them. Becoming a gondolieri requires getting made---pretenders are dealt with viciously.
- Graffitist: With art being inseparable from magic, guerilla art as proxy war has emerged as a fact of life in the city. Powerful patrons and factions alike pay for folks to sneak into places and deface or enhance them with art. The artists are often regarded as something like adventurers or mercenaries, though often known only by their work (since more direct agents are not unlikely to be sent to kill them).
- Husbander: Amongst the many magics of the world, those who raise animals with specific magical traits are highly sought after. Birds that can detect strangers or lies, geckos that taste like strawberries and cream, silk worms that spin specifically colored threads---these folk work their magic through the bodies of other creatures, though extremely taboo to venture anywhere near doing this to even semi-sapient creatures.
- Kelpfarmer: Aquaculture is big business in the city - grown for food, textiles, chemical extraction (especially agar and careegeenans), fuel, and anything else a clever kelpfarmer can think of.
- Lapidarist: There's heavy trade in worked stone. Lapidarists often specialize in a particular stone, especially one formed by volcanic means. Obsidian is the most highly prized, as it is inherently magical and particularly effective against demons.
- Matrixer: Using dweomers is something akin to reprogramming reality in real time. The dangers, difficulties, and time required to do so can be cut down significantly by the use of matrices, custom magical implements akin to wands (though not restricted by that shape). They're magical machinery, more like calculators or time pieces than anything. The city is particularly famed for their works in this area.
- Shadowpainter: A specific sort of performer, shadowpainters work spell and imagery together by manipulating shadows cast from various light sources. Shadowpainting is relatively new, taking the place of film in the city - the very cutting edge of this work is in pushing the format to cast shadows with sound and color.
- Spire Agent: Professionals in service to a specific spire, the megalithic structures that break from the ground of the city and stretch hundreds of meters overhead. They might specialize in a particular field but all spire agents are something like special operatives.
- Spireglider: One means of fast transport in the city is to be carried from a spire to another place in the basket of a glider piloted by a specialist. Training to become a spireglider has a high mortality rate.
- Spirescrubber: Highly paid work to scale and clean the city's spires, especially of work done by grafittists. Often skilled in counter magic as much as climbing or chemistry.
- Stormravener: Specialist falconers who bond with stormravens and accompany ships. Stormravens are used both for ship combat and to deal with inclement weather.
- Trebucheter: A very unsafe method of travel for those who can't afford the gondolieri or a spireglider is to rent and don a wingsuit and be lobbed from one plaza towards another. The operators of these trebuchet are engineers, constantly working to improve their machines, suits, and aim.
- Undercity guide: Beneath the city lies the ruins of the old people, their partially collapsed megastructures and the catacombs beneath them. Navigating the undercity is difficult and dangerous, haunted by monsters and underground factions. Because the undercity is in disrepair, travelling it often means crossing sections of the catacombs, which are literally impossible to map -- not a single attempt has been successful. Undercity guides commit paths to memory and are in high demand.
- Windcaller: In the last several decades the citizens have learned to harness wind for powered machinery, driving bellows and gears and all sorts of ingenious applications. Windcallers specialize in magic and engineering to ensure smooth and continuous operation of these endeavors, mitigating external factors and shaping the wind currents as needed.

</details>

## List

The list of written knacks.
