The Fourth Epoch
Aropria

Magic, Science & Technology · Structural Lists

The Aspects

Subject
What a person's congruence becomes when their understanding runs deep
Adept
One whose congruence turns outward, as what anyone else would call magic
Tempered
One whose congruence shows in their own body and mind instead
Fields
The Quick, The Inward, The Wrought and The Open
Scope
Not every aspect known on Aropria is named here

Everyone on Aropria is congruence-empowered. Most people never notice: it makes them a little better at what they already do. Someone who understands one thing deeply passes a point where it shows, and what it becomes is their aspect. This page names the aspects most often met. It is not an exhaustive list for Aropria, of either kind.

An Adept turns congruence outward, as fire from the hand or the dead raised to work. The act is casting, and an Adept at work is a caster. One whose ability exists but cannot be reached, usually through grief or shock, is smothered: not broken, only out of reach.

The Tempered turn it inward. Their congruence repays understanding in the body and the mind, in strength, reflexes, memory or judgement, and none of it looks like magic. It looks like someone who is very, very good. An Adept is not more congruent than a Tempered tactician, only differently pointed.

Aspects are grouped into four fields, by what was understood rather than by how it shows, so an Adept and a Tempered who understand the same thing stand in the same field.

Index

The Quick

The living body, one's own or another's: its strength, its endurance and its mending.

Vivimancer Adept

An Adept who cures injury and illness by working the body's own systems through congruence: closing wounds, clearing sickness and, at their strongest, mending bone and hastening the body's own repair. What a Healer does with splint and salve, a Vivimancer does from inside the body. The Vellidan train healers on tracks both with and without congruence, and much of that training happens in Rikjosom, home to the greatest concentration of healers in the world.

Welcome wherever there is sickness, though some feel uncomfortable with another's reach into their bodies. It is common for them to carry the Vellidan's habit of treating whoever is in front of them, friend or enemy, though some sell their skill only to those who can pay.

Necromaster Adept

Raises the dead as anima: bodies moved through congruence to do work they do not choose, without minds of their own, tireless and lasting. A weak Necromaster may hold one or two at once, a powerful one fifty, sometimes with abilities beyond the ordinary. Because the work is the body, most are passable doctors as well, and some serve as priests. Roughly a million corpses are at work across Aropria at any time, and someone in this discipline raised every one.

Few spurn them for working with death, which is common enough on Aropria to have numbed most people, and a town with a Necromaster of its own rarely lets them leave. Most treat anima as equipment. The faithful of the Dirt are the exception: to them a body must not be used after death, because a believer who is reanimated never reaches the Well of Souls.

Gifter Adept

Lends others strength, speed, agility, wit or memory for a short while, and keeps none of it for themself. A master can lend what nobody has on their own: a burst of force, a little healing. The war-standards of Garshalla, which share congruence with the warriors near them, work on something like the same principle.

Rare enough that most people have never met one, and a crew that has one keeps quiet about it. Most give freely and expect nothing back, but a few learn exactly what their help is worth.

Flux Tempered

A fighter whose congruence runs through precise, practised movement, so that their speed and power outrun what their frame should allow and a strike lands with more force than it should carry. It works only unarmed: a weapon in the hand breaks the flow, so a Flux fights with fists, feet and footing, and at close range nothing quite stops them.

Easily taken for an ordinary brawler until they move, after which nobody mistakes their empty hands for harmless ones. They tend to carry a stillness that unsettles people used to bluster, though some enjoy being underestimated.

Ravager Tempered

Congruence in bone and muscle: strength and endurance enough to break a line and wade through a battlefield as though nothing could hurt them. It wants no formal training, only years of hard use and an indomitable will. Many come from places where surviving is a matter of fitness, such as the tribes of Garshalla, but some grow up in cities as bouncers, enforcers, knights and keepers of the peace. In a fight they are always at the front, breaking formations.

Seen as barbaric by most, and as welcome on a front line as they are unwelcome at a negotiation table. Most assume a Ravager thinks with their muscles and settles things by force, which is often the case, but some are gentler than their name, and a Ravager's havoc comes from will rather than rage.

Armored Tempered

Takes the blows meant for others, and congruence helps them hold. Full armour all but vanished on Aropria, where mobility counts for more than plate and the worst monsters would crumple a suit of it anyway, so the Armored are a narrow, specialised martial school, wearing heavily imbued armour made to stop what would pierce anyone else. Most serve with soldiers, guarding installations and important people, or are hired by guilds to protect travellers and explorers.

Read as confident and immovable, the one who draws trouble on purpose. Years among strangers tend to leave them steady and worldly, though some wear their armour like a challenge. The chronicler Aethel Vox once paid an Armored, Riona, three times the agreed fee for her help taking a null daemon.

Unbroken Tempered

Endurance beyond what a body should manage: load, exposure, and going on when there is no reason left to. What should sicken them rarely does, so they eat and drink what would put anyone else down. Labourers, carters and caravan hands find it in themselves long before anyone has a name for it.

Leaned on, often more than is fair, because they never seem to need to rest; in a town whose harvest is not quite what it should be, they are also the first asked to taste. Most shrug off the load as nothing; a few quietly keep count.

Also met, more rarely:

The Inward

Perception, memory, feeling and judgement: what goes on behind the eyes, one's own and other people's.

Vox Adept

Reads emotion and temperament in people and in groups, and moves them: a riler or a soother. Some work in politics and public life, as strategists, speech-makers and spymasters; others are healers of the mind; some only shape a message so that it lands. Whenever a crowd turns faster than it should, as one did in Rowlem's revolution, someone suspects a Vox.

Valued by anyone who has to move a crowd, and quietly feared by anyone who has felt their own mood turn and not known why. Many are warm and easy company, though some never quite stop working the room.

Illusionist Adept

Creates the perception of an effect rather than the effect itself. Where an Evoker makes a moment, an Illusionist makes belief: a wall that is not there, a face that is not theirs, an eye encouraged to slide past them. Caliharah's School Eos trains them, with Creationists, to steady an ally and unsettle an enemy on the battlefield, and its graduates come out remarkably unalike (see the academies).

Loved on a stage and distrusted everywhere else: once you have met one, you are never quite sure of what you see. It is common for them to enjoy the trick for its own sake, though some take it no further than a performance.

Hex Adept Adept

Lays hexes: slow, binding workings that leave a lasting mark on a person or a thing, almost always to harm or to hold, and longer-lasting the stronger the Adept. Most take too long to cast to be any use in a fight; the few who train for it learn short, sharp hexes that fade quickly but can be devastating. Rowlem's Hall of the Chosen turns out a good number, and the Slaver's Syndicate has one infuse the brands of its most valuable captives.

Feared by those who don't understand them and respected, uneasily, by those who do; the Clerks and many nobles keep one for their contracts. Patience comes with the craft and most are exacting, though some enjoy the fear more than the work.

Mnemon Adept

An Adept of memory: exact recall first, then memories passed to another by touch, and in time memory made visible, sometimes with a Creationist's help. On a continent where no document survives from before the Literary Purge, what someone remembers can be worth more than an archive, and Mnemons are recruited as chief clerks, seneschals, spymasters, strategists and investigators.

Recruited by anyone who keeps records or secrets, and handled carefully by anyone who has something they would rather be forgotten. Most assume a Mnemon is a pedant, which is sometimes fair, but many carry what they remember lightly.

Seer Adept

Envisions what lies outside their own perception, in the past or the present but never the future: a room beyond a wall, a road a day away, an event years gone. Their senses reach into places nobody else could perceive. The future belongs to reckoning, not to sight. One is said to have settled in Bello, in Karg, teaching what she can to children with congruence.

People seek them out and then wish they hadn't asked; a Seer is easier to admire from a distance. They are often private and a little elsewhere, though some are disarmingly plain about what they have seen.

Obscurus Adept

Works light and shadow to hide, or to turn attention away: light bent so that it misses them, shadow drawn close. Assassins train in it, often alongside a Vox's gift for deflecting suspicion and a fighting art, and Travelers often cross-train in it, so that where they arrive, they arrive unseen.

Their use to assassins colours how people see them, fairly or not, so an honest Obscurus learns to stand where they can be seen. Many are quiet and watchful, though some are louder in company than anyone would guess.

Marshal Tempered

Congruence in judgement: quick decisions, the whole field held in mind, several lines of thought at once. Commanders, banner carriers, officers, lords and knights, bards and scribes, advisers and tacticians; most spend years in other roles on the way to leading, and keep a fighting skill that always comes second to command. Garshalla's Master of the Night tribes, who win by cunning rather than strength, are reckoned the finest tacticians on their island.

Seen as noble, shrewd and born to lead, and followed even by people who fight better than they do. Most expect a Marshal to be cool and calculating, and many are, but some lead by warmth.

Reckoner Tempered

Number, measure and consequence, worked several steps further ahead than anyone else at the table. While a Seer may peer into the past, predicting the future falls squarely under the Reckoner's purview, by reasoning rather than sight: where a harvest, a price or a battle is going, and when. They keep accounts for merchants and houses, plan works, and advise anyone with something to lose.

Trusted with money and plans, and avoided by anyone who would rather not know how things will turn out. They tend to be patient and exact, though few can resist saying they said so.

Also met, more rarely:

The Wrought

Materials, and what can be made of them or made from nothing.

Truehand Adept

Crafts things with properties no ordinary making gives, such as edge, strength or pliancy, worked in while the thing is made. A Truehand knows what a material will do, has the exactness to make it do more, and can make a thing work with whatever is actually to hand. Even common magic items are rare anywhere without a master artisan, and Alvania's fashion for imbued jewellery and ornaments keeps a few of them rich.

Anything a Truehand made is worth more for it, and buyers learn to ask whose hands it passed through. It is common to find them exacting about their work and careless of everything else, though some are as generous with a quick repair as with a masterpiece.

Alchemist Adept

Converts one property into another, moving a material's qualities somewhere they were not: a fog made by redistributing the water already in the air rather than conjured from nothing. All-rounders whose workings carry side effects, because what they borrow comes from somewhere. No Adepts are more widely schooled: Curath's Royal Academy trains them to make weapons for its army, Rikjosom to build, the Vellidan to heal, and Alvania's House of Shepherds to command the wind for its navy.

Respected as chemists and naturalists, and kept at arm's length while they work, because the side effects are not always where anyone expected. Curiosity is the usual temperament, though some are careful enough to be dull company.

Evoker Adept

Makes definite, short-lived effects from elements that do not exist: fire from the hand, a wall of ice, a fog. An Evoker who throws fire has studied combustion; one who has not done the work throws nothing. Curath's Royal Academy trains them by the score for the Royal Military, which is why its army so rarely bothers with siege engines.

What people picture when they hear the word Adept, so an Evoker is watched in a crowded room and asked to light every fire everywhere else. Many enjoy the attention, though some grow tired of being a spectacle.

Creationist Adept

Brings things from imagination into being for a while, creatures and objects alike, limited only by what they can picture. Unlike a Necromaster's anima their creations are temporary: a weak Creationist's fades in seconds, a strong one's may last hours or days and carry gifts no anima has. Most work as jacks of all trades, handymen and performers, or in the higher arts and sciences.

Others find them easy-going and oddly child-like, and call on them to settle disputes because nothing seems beyond them. Most people take them for carefree and worldly, which is often the case, but some keep an inner life far more serious than their manner.

Weapon Specialist Tempered

Congruence that grows into one chosen weapon, adding the muscle and reflex its use demands. Most learn one on one, or in small groups, at a master's side for years. When armour gave way to speed on Aropria, fighting followed it, and today's specialists favour weapons that reward movement, like the spinning avlan of the Ion'cavar. The best make names as mercenaries, duellists, knights and rogues.

Known by the weapon they never set down, and more intimidating the better known they become. It is common to see them wear their skill openly, since it is how they find work, though some prefer to be underestimated.

Trap Master Tempered

Congruence in foresight and fingertips: the next few moments foreseen, and fine work done in them. A single string, a careful cut or a prepared device turns a fight their way. Nearly all work for guilds and nearly all have gone into ancient ruins, where their real trade is keeping old traps from killing the party; architecture and the higher sciences claim the rest.

Found endearing or annoying in about equal measure, and indispensable to anyone going into ruins. As a rule they are inquisitive to a fault, though some are as careful with people as with traps.

Also met, more rarely:

The Open

Earth, water, growing things, beasts and distance: the world outside the walls.

Terramancer Adept

Shapes earth and stone, and sometimes other parts of the natural world, and usually builds with what they shape. They read rock, and what lies under it, closer than any survey. In a fight they raise bulwarks and harden themselves, and some call up creatures of earth for a while. Stone shaped smooth by congruence, like the bright white walls of the Library of Kaas, is their kind of work.

Revered as the builders and architects of the world. They are often competitive, driven and impatient, with little time for philosophy, though some find in stone all the philosophy they need.

Surger Adept

Works fluids, water and air alike: currents, wind, and what moves inside the earth. Every Alvanian ship carries someone who can turn the wind and calm the waves, and in Vas'tek the whole congruence tradition is the shaping of air and water, from guiding sand-laden wind around a caravan to the rumoured making of oases, the height of Vas'n ambition. Subsurgers, a branch, work beneath the water, breathing and moving under it as others do above.

On any coast they are worth a crew's wages; inland, they tend to move from stream to lake to river and on. Restlessness is common among them, though the Vas'n are famously close about what they teach.

Bloomcaller Adept

Channels congruence into plants, working with their own wish to grow and be beautiful. Often combat is not the focus of a Bloomcaller, as it takes time for the full effects of their workings to be known, though some can be creative in a pinch. The Followers of the Trees in Garshalla bend that island's strange vegetation to their will, and the Vas'n grow vines that drink congruence and sunlight and carry water through their streets.

Prized on farms and in noble gardens alike, and the one Adept nobody is afraid of. Patience comes with the work, though some never forgive a trampled seedling.

Bridler Adept

Handles and tames animals through congruence, winning a beast over rather than breaking it. They are wanted wherever animals would rather not be kept, from a farm child's first peesh to a pack of Arak. Some believe their craft gives them a particular understanding of the Kin, the animals a quickenbloom has woken into people; most Kin would say they understand nothing of the sort.

Herders and drovers want one; anyone whose dog has turned to follow a stranger is less sure. Plenty are more at ease with animals than with people, but some are good with both.

Traveler Adept

Wills themself across short distances within sight, a step that skips the ground between. The gift makes exceptional messengers and deadly assassins, and many cross-train as Obscurus, so that where they arrive, they arrive unseen.

Prized as messengers and feared as assassins, so a guarded house watches the empty corners of a room as closely as its doors. Most are impatient with walls and doors of every kind; a few are the most punctual people you will meet.

Reacher Tempered

Congruence in the nerves: reflexes, sight and hearing sharpened for striking from a distance, with bow, crossbow, sling, spear or knife. Range is their safety, so mobility and stealth matter almost as much as aim. Most have years or decades of precise training, often in a military unit, and work as scouts, archers, hunters and, now and then, assassins. Among the Garshallan tribes of Zingare, it is the women who specialise in ranged weapons, and so in hunting, scouting and the protection of children.

Thought cunning, flighty and a little misanthropic. Many keep their distance in company as in a fight, though some are easier company than their name, and the view is mostly held by people who have never stood where a Reacher stands.

Lightfoot Tempered

Ground, footing and reach: distances jumped that ought not to be possible, holds found where there are none, and a passage so light it goes unnoticed. Some of what a rare item like the Afterflash gives its wearer, a Lightfoot has in their own legs.

Hard to keep track of, which makes them welcome on a scouting party and suspected whenever something goes missing. A closed room tends to make them restless, though some can sit so still that nobody remembers they were there.

Also met, more rarely:

Levels of mastery

Anyone taught congruence through a system of education, whether a school, private tutelage or family rites, meets a measure of mastery that marks and compares their progress. Its three levels are Apprentice, Journeyman and Master. About six in ten of those taught are Apprentices, nearly four in ten Journeymen, and one in a hundred a Master. Hermits and witches who learned alone stand outside it, and a title such as Ravager or Necromaster names what a master of that aspect would be, not the ordinary practitioner.