Rogues

A Rogue trades toughness for access, and counts it the better bargain. Where a Warrior stands its ground and trades blow for blow, a Rogue climbs the wall at your back, slips into the dark, and is gone with your coin purse before you have marked that they were ever there at all. No door is truly closed, no wall truly a wall, to one who has learned to read them rightly. Five Circles stand between a fresh Rogue and the finished article - fewer than any other calling asks, and faster climbed, though the ceiling waiting at the top is lower for it. What comes early is very nearly all you will ever have.

Fragile, and Meant to Be

A Rogue carries among the thinnest constitutions of any calling from the very outset, and little of that changes as the Circles climb. This is not a calling that wins its fights through raw endurance - it wins by never once standing where the fight expected to find it.

The Climbing of Walls

Sneak, and right-click a solid wall before you with an empty hand, and you will cling to it fast. Look upward to climb, downward to descend, straight ahead to simply hold your place - and no fall claims you the whole while you remain fixed there. Any solid surface answers, no tool required, and no clock runs out beneath you; only releasing the sneak, running out of wall, or stepping into water breaks the grip.

Caught mid-fall with no time to aim a careful right-click? Sneaking alone will serve. A falling Rogue reaches instinctively for the nearest wall the instant the sneak begins, with no need to be looking straight at it first. Answer quickly and it is very nearly certain; hesitate, and your chances fall away fast the longer you hang in open air, down to a real chance of missing your grip entirely and riding the fall out unaided. Leap, then sneak at once - not after the fall is already underway.

Hiding in Shadow

Hold still in sneaking, in light dim enough, for a few breaths, and you will fade from every player’s sight entirely. A handful of sharper-nosed creatures may yet catch your scent if you stand close enough beside them, though nothing that walks in undeath - no zombie, no skeleton, none of their kin - can ever sense you at all, no matter how near you come. Rise from the sneak, wander into brighter light, or raise a hand in a fight - throwing or taking a blow both count - and you are seen again at once. This is a gift for watching and for waiting, not for striking unseen from within it.

A Softer Landing

Sneak the instant you strike the ground from a fall, and you stand a real chance of shrugging off a portion of the harm - the same odds whether this is your very first life or your hundredth, worth trusting from the moment you take up the calling.

The Picking of Pockets

Hold a length of string, right-click another soul, and you stand a chance of lifting something from what they carry - usually some random thing, now and again whatever rests in their very hand. It answers on Iron Notes exactly as it would anything else, a note being no more than an item resting in a pocket. Your odds sharpen a little as you climb, though never to anything dramatic. A short rest stands between one attempt and the next, and a failed reach sometimes tips your mark that a hand brushed past them - nothing more revealing than that.

The Picking of Locks

Craft a set of Thieve’s Lockpicks - two Copper Ingots and a Tripwire Hook - take them in hand, and sneak-right-click a chest that isn’t yours to begin working the lock. The work takes several breaths, and breaks at once should you move, rise, or let the picks fall from your grip. Success grows a little more likely with every Circle climbed, and rewards you with whatever rests in one random slot of that container - an empty container simply tells you plainly that it was empty, still a job completed, only an unlucky one. Fail, and the lock snaps back hard enough to sting - a little less cruelly at higher Circles - before another attempt may be made. The same picks answer to region-warded doors, trapdoors, fence gates, and chests bearing no physical lock at all, though such work is harder and riskier still, since it is a ward you bypass there, not a mechanism.

The Grappling Hook (Third Circle and Beyond)

Craft one from a fishing rod and three Iron or Copper Ingots, and cast it forth just as you would the rod itself. Hook a living soul and you will draw them toward you; hook the earth instead and you will draw yourself to it. Either way, a true pull earns a short rest before the hook may fly again.

The Shuriken (Fourth Circle and Beyond)

A single batch of flint and Iron or Copper Ingots yields a handful of these at once. Thrown, they offer a fast and light answer at range - strike a foe for quick harm, or strike a block and simply reclaim the shuriken to throw again.

Armor, Brewing, and Enchantment

A Rogue is bound to leather until the Third Circle, when chainmail opens to them - anything heavier still may be worn, should you claim it, and nobody will strip it from you, but it fights you the whole while you wear it, a nagging weakness settling into your hands until you return to something lighter. Brewing, too, knows its limits: a Rogue’s brewing stand serves poison, and poison’s close cousins, and little else besides - a potion of Strength or Healing is beyond your reach there, though poison was always going to serve a Rogue better regardless. Enchantment is closed to a Rogue entirely - no enchantment table answers your hand, full stop.