Clerics

A Cleric is Irrupt’s healer and its supplicant both, prayer standing where a Mystic would place spellcraft - offered up rather than seized, though both draw upon the very same current, bent here to gentler ends. Seven Circles mark the road from a novice’s first prayer to the finished article, a steadier climb than a Rogue ever walks, and shy of the long road a Mystic must travel to mastery.

• The Goddesses of Irrupt
  • Bilile, Goddess of Death
  • Krathk, Goddess of War
  • Voppe, Goddess of Life
• Prayers listed by name, circle
• Cleric Staffs

Praying, Not Casting

Speak /pray <name> to offer a prayer - tab-completion will suggest only what you already know. Take stock of what you know, and how many prayers remain to you today, with /myprayers, or by consulting /stats.

The Staff

Every Cleric sets out on the road with a staff already in hand - a physical thing that helps channel the energy of the goddess they will one day pledge to. Grip it, right-click to choose the prayer that waits ready upon it, left-click to let that prayer loose.

More is written of the staff on the page of the Cleric Staffs.

Bind and Unbind - The Making of a Wand

Five prayers answer to no Circle at all. Every Cleric knows Bind, Unbind, Curecurse, Curedisease, and Cureblight from the very first day of their vows, and none of them ever draw upon the day’s strength. /pray bind <prayername>, spoken while holding any object, turns that object into a vessel for a prayer you already hold - a right-click thereafter calls it forth without a word needing to be spoken. /pray unbind frees whatever was bound to the object in your hand, that it might be bound anew to something else. Binding teaches nothing new; the prayer must already be yours before an object can be made to carry it.

Worth doing, if only to keep certain prayers close at hand on certain objects, ready the instant they’re needed.

What a Prayer Asks of You

Here a Cleric parts ways with a Mystic: a prayer draws not upon hunger, but upon a sliver of your own life - capped so that it can never alone be the death of you, though real all the same. To heal another is, quite literally, to draw it from your own vitality, conjured from nowhere else. Budget for it as you would budget for hunger in any other calling.

Like a Mystic, you may call upon each known prayer twice in a day, drawn from one shared well across your whole list - with a handful of especially potent prayers capped tighter still, above and beyond that well. The only way to see it restored is to sleep through the whole of a night, not merely lie down and rise again early.

The Circle System

Each new Circle grants a random handful of that Circle’s prayer pool - permanently, and never the whole of what waits there at once, exactly as a Mystic’s own progression unfolds. No two Clerics standing at the same Circle need know a single prayer in common. For a fuller accounting, see Cleric Prayers.

Each Circle strengthens the body as well as the spirit - eight hearts at the First Circle, rising to thirteen by the Seventh - sturdier than a Rogue or a Mystic ever grows, though short of a Warrior’s full measure of toughness.

The Pledging of a Goddess (Third Circle and Beyond)

Here lies the one road no other calling walks. Reach the Third Circle, and your prayers cease to grow until you choose a patron with /pledge - Voppe, Bilile, or Krathk. From that moment on, every prayer must belong both to your current Circle’s pool and to your chosen goddess’s domain - your pledge narrows, permanently, which of each Circle’s prayers you are even eligible to learn. There is no changing goddesses once chosen, not in the whole of that life, so weigh carefully which one matches how you truly mean to play before you commit yourself to her.

Healing Feeds Your Own Growth

Prayer is not the only road to a Cleric’s advancement - landing a healing splash potion on another soul counts toward it too, and rewards you the more generously the more people you catch within the splash at once. Between the two, playing a Cleric as a Cleric is meant to be played is, quite naturally, how the Circles are climbed.

No Restriction Binds You

Unlike a Rogue or a Mystic, a Cleric carries no limit on armor, no ban on enchantment or on brewing. Wear what you can afford, enchant what you can find, brew whatever the moment calls for - nothing of the craft holds you back there. Your limits come from your pool of life and your daily measure of prayer, never from your gear.

Healing Cures More Than the Flesh

Heal does more than restore what was lost - it clears a broken bone, bleeding, or dizziness outright, exactly as a Bandage would. A Cleric who keeps Heal ready never needs to carry one at all.

Your Presence Alone Is a Kindness

A Cleric need not lift a hand to be of use. Simply standing nearby - present, within a few paces - hastens how quickly anyone hurt around you mends from a broken bone or a bleeding wound. No prayer is spoken, only proximity given. One more reason a party wants a Cleric close at hand, and one more reason to become one yourself.

Setting Out

A new Cleric’s life begins with a staff, a simple weapon, a fair chance at a healing potion, and something to eat - modest, but exactly enough to set the first prayers rolling.