Deep Roots are Not Reached by the Frost (GLOG Ranger)

 

You are first and foremost a scribe. Before teaching you the bow and the gun, the sword and the knife and the hunting spear, medicine and woodcraft, the secret ways to smell and hear and taste, before any of those things, your master taught you to write. You crouch in the hollows of thorny black woods, listening to the terrorbirds screech and the stirges buzz, and scribble down your observations with ink-stained fingers. You analyze, dissect, and taxonomize, in service of your God, your king, your order, your employer, or just your own quixotic obsession. 

 

You are a Ranger, and your field of study is the hunting, capturing, and killing of living things. 

 

The Message, Roman Kupriianov

Ranger 

 

Starting Equipment: A heavy jezzail, a pair of twinned oxtail machetes (can be wielded together as a medium sword or unlocked into two light swords), a thick woolen chokha and bashlyk, eight bullets—seven leaden, one silver—stored in goblin-bone gazyrs, a red-tinted candle lantern, a tinderbox, a bag of saddle jerky, a tea-brick, a writing kit, and a battered tin kettle and mug.

 

A: Monster Manual, Strider

B: Situational Awareness, +1 Attack/Round

C: Dogged Pursuit

D: Monster Master

A: Monster Manual

You have possession of a Monster Manual, a folio of yellowed vellum bound in the hide of a forest demigod, passed down to you by your predecessor. It is a (mostly) true and honest copy of the bestiary that the GM is using. It is weatherproof, waterproof, fireproof, acid-proof, even stab-proof enough to be used as an improvised shield. You are sworn on pain of death to never allow a non-Ranger to read it, nor to reveal its secrets to the uninitiated.

It isn't perfectly accurate—when encountering a new monster, the GM is allowed to change one thing. If you can successfully correct the monster entry, you gain a permanent +[Templates] to Hit against it and its ilk.

A: Strider

You can free-climb any natural surface as fast as you can crawl, or make an assisted climb as fast as you can walk. You can move silently while outdoors, and leave as much trace in mud, gravel, or deep snow as you do on bare stone. So long as you can see the sun or stars you always know what direction you're facing, and can travel at twice the ordinary rate while alone or in the company of fellow Rangers.

 

(Hint: the hides of colossal beasts count as "natural surfaces")

B: Situational Awareness

By tasting the soil, putting your ear to the ground, etc... you can tell if the hex or room you're standing in would be classified as Monster, Empty, Trap, or Special. If you attain a commanding position from which to survey, you can make this determination for adjacent areas as well.

C: Dogged Pursuit

If you make eye contact with someone or something, you can place your hunter's mark on them. They will experience this as paranoia, chills, and bouts of night terrors—eventually, a black spot will develop on their palm, growing as you approach, a literal mark of your pursuit. So long as they're marked, you always know exactly where they are.

You can only have one person marked at a time, and the only way to lift the mark is to kill the target. If you die while you have someone marked, you will return as a revenant, to continue your pursuit 'till the end of time.

D: Monster Master

Upon amending your Monster Manual, you are allowed to make one additional change of your own choice. The change must be reasonable, reflecting a weakness or property that could be discovered from studying it during and after your encounter. This change is now true, and the GM must update their own bestiary to reflect it.

 

 

d6 random fancy shit if you want cool ranger-type treasures out in the world:

1. An elf-hair bowstring, spun from the locks of an elder maiden. Ranger legend claims that a bowstaff of living yew strung with elf-hair can fire Magic Missiles.

2. A light dagger made from the stinger of a giant wasp, still dripping venom. Inflicts local paralysis, vomiting, mild psychosis.

3. The severed head of a forest-deity, eyes still rolling madly in their sockets. Kept double-bagged in a satchel of thick canvas—when unveiled, its gaze inflicts poison, uncontrolled blooming of poison ivy and hemlock, fits of weeping despair.

4. The shards of a heavy sword +2, the remnants of the hereditary regalia-sword of a dynasty of austere splendor. Marks one as the bloodline heir to a fading kingdom in the grips of a noble but misguided regent and their 1d4 heirs.

5. A genuine thunderstone, about the size of a fist and webbed with delicate veins of opalescence. While you carry it on your person you will never be struck by lightning and gain a +2 to all Saves; kept in a building or camp, it wards against natural calumny. If fashioned into an ax or hammer, it unleashes all the ill fortune it has ever averted on a hit, causing the target to be hit with a bajillion lightning bolts for like 100d6 damage and probably permanently blinding and deafening everyone present, at minimum.

6. A 20' length of indestructible adamant chain. Comes affixed to a barbed lead pilum meant to stick into the hides of colossi and facilitate climbing and grappling. 

   
   

 

The concept for a Ranger who gets actual access to a diegetic Monster Manual has been bouncing around in my head for a while. The A-Template Strider ability took vague cues from Deus' Fighter, who has a similar A-Template mobility feature. The C-Template Dogged Pursuit I borrowed from Phlox's Captain, a neat culturally-specific Acmori take on the Ranger archetype.