Tir Hathar — The Sigils and the Great Houses¶
Overview¶
The Sigils are hereditary magical abilities that manifest in specific bloodlines, visible as luminescent purple veins that glow when channeling any magic. All Sigil-bearers also have purple eyes — a constant, visible identifier present from birth that cannot be hidden.
Sigils are the engine of the magitech economy. The great houses don't just hold economic monopolies — they are the monopoly, because the underlying technology requires Sigil bloodlines to function. Nations without sufficient Sigil bloodlines must import, negotiate, or steal.
There are thirteen recognized Sigils distributed among the great houses. A further, illegitimate one — the Aberrant Sigil — exists outside the house system and is considered a curse or ill omen rather than a legitimate hereditary trait. Common people don't say someone carries an Aberrant Sigil. They say someone carries the thirteenth mark — a folk name older than the current count, kept for the unlucky number rather than strict arithmetic. It is spoken of as a curse, whispered rather than named directly.
Beyond even that, three Cruel Sigils exist among Tir Hathar's monstrous peoples — Giants, Goblins, and Hobgoblins — entirely outside the mortal economy the thirteen houses run on. Nobody trades in them. See "The Cruel Sigils" below.
What the Houses Don't Know¶
The houses' understanding of their own Sigils is incomplete and may be partially incorrect. This is not widely admitted.
The complete theoretical and theological framework for how Sigils work — where they came from, what they were capable of before the Long War, and what the full progression of abilities looks like — was partially maintained through divine tradition. When the god of Teachers and Sages died, the tradition lost the means of passing itself on, and most of it died with them. What the houses know now is what survived in family practice, oral history, and fragmentary written records accumulated over 257 years of war and the 54 years of reconstruction since the Treaty of Tallas.
It is enough to function. It is not enough to be certain.
Specific implications: - The Minor/Lesser/Greater progression documented here reflects what the houses have observed and codified. It may not reflect what the Sigils were originally capable of. - Some abilities attributed to Aberrant Sigils may be pre-war Sigil expressions that surviving houses simply don't recognize — knowledge of them was lost with the god of Teachers and Sages and with the destruction of pre-war records. - The houses treat their Sigil doctrine as authoritative because they have to. Internally, the most senior house scholars know the documentation is incomplete. - A character who manifests a Sigil ability that contradicts house doctrine is simultaneously valuable and threatening — evidence that the house's understanding is wrong, which undermines centuries of carefully cultivated authority.
The Scholar Nation's locked archives contain pre-war texts about Sigil theory. They are among the most closely guarded documents in the collection. The houses know they exist and have been trying to access them for decades.
Visual Identity¶
Purple eyes: Constant. Present from birth in Sigil bloodlines even before the Sigil manifests. Immediately identifies someone as Sigil-bearing to anyone who knows what to look for.
Luminescent veins: Activate when channeling any magic — Sigil abilities, arcane spells, divine spells, anything. Glow purple; intensity scales with the power being channeled. Cannot be suppressed while actively casting. A Sigil-bearing wizard cannot hide what they are while working.
In some places, purple eyes mean privilege and status. In others, they mean a target.
The three Cruel Sigils don't share this marker — see below.
Sigils as Foci¶
A Sigil is a Focus, taken with a normal Focus pick. There's no free Sigil slot.
- Bloodline. Only someone born to a Sigil's bloodline can take it. The purple eyes are there from birth; taking the Focus is the Sigil manifesting. Each Sigil below lists the people who carry it.
- One Sigil. No one bears more than one Sigil. A character can never hold more than one Sigil Focus — house, Aberrant, or Cruel.
- Two levels. Level 1 can be taken at any character level. Level 2 requires character level 5.
- The houses' names. The houses still speak of Minor, Lesser, and Greater Sigils. Level 1 is what they call the Minor and Lesser Sigil together; Level 2 is the Greater Sigil.
- Uses. "Once per day" refreshes with a night's rest. Sigil abilities aren't spells or Arts: they cost no Effort and add no System Strain unless they say otherwise, and any class can use them. Using one lights the bearer's veins (see Visual Identity, above).
The Thirteen Houses¶
The Artisan Sigil¶
Race: Dwarf Domain: Crafting, artifice, manufactured goods
Level 1: Gain Craft as a bonus skill. - Quick Hands. You craft non-magical items in half the normal time. - First Pick. Crafting any item, magical or not, costs you 20% less. The materials aren't cheaper — the house's suppliers just get them to you first, and get you the best of them.
Level 2 — Maker's Mark: Items you craft can carry one subtle, lasting quality. It isn't a spell effect; it's a quality — a blade that never dulls, boots that never wear through, a rope that never frays. Choose one per item: - It never wears out, dulls, rusts, or breaks from ordinary use. - It grants +1 to skill checks for one narrow purpose — climbing with this rope, picking locks with these picks.
Never to hit rolls, damage, or AC. Nothing that overshadows a proper magic item; just enough to make Dwarf-made goods quietly legendary and worth a market premium.
House notes: The most economically entangled house with the Dwarven monarchy. A Sigil appearing in a non-Artisan clan creates immediate marriage negotiations from three directions.
The Healer Sigil¶
Race: Any people except Warforged — but only mothers bear it Domain: Medicine, recovery, diagnosis Formal academic term: Chirurgeon (Scholar Nation usage)
The Healer Sigil runs in bloodlines like any other, and daughters of a Healer line are born with the purple eyes and veins. It doesn't fully manifest until a woman has a child, so the Focus can't be taken before then.
Level 1: Gain Heal as a bonus skill. - Healing Touch. As a Main Action, touch a living creature to heal 2d6 plus your Heal skill level in hit points. A Mortally Wounded creature is stabilized as well. Each touch adds 1 System Strain to the patient, and someone already at their maximum can't be helped this way. - Purge Ailment. Over ten minutes of hands-on work, end one poison or disease affecting a patient. It adds 1 System Strain to the patient. You can use it once per hour, and for that hour you can't use your other Healer abilities. It can't end Frailty; only rest does that.
Level 2 — The Deeper Art: - Stronger Touch. Your Healing Touch also adds your character level to the healing. - Healer's Eye. When you activate Healer's Eye, for the next hour you can use a Main Action to visually detect diseases and poisons, diagnose creatures flawlessly, perceive their physiology, and learn their current hit point totals. As a side effect, you can detect living creatures by sight regardless of available light or obscuring mists. You can't use other Healer abilities during that hour.
House notes: No people and no single house holds this Sigil. Many bearers serve the Azure Flame's healing arm, which is why that arm holds more of the world's healing capacity than any single institution should — but the Sigil isn't the Flame's alone, and some bearers follow The Kindred instead. Because only mothers bear it, powerful healers are rare as adventurers: they have children somewhere, obligations, people who need them. Built with WWN's Healer class as a model, condensed to two levels; the class itself isn't used as written.
The Tide Sigil¶
Race: Catfolk Domain: Navigation and vessel mastery — knowing exactly where you are, where you're going, and what a ship needs, on water or in the air. Not the raw force that drives a hull forward; that's just competent captaincy. Tide is what makes a captain a legend.
Level 1: Gain Sail as a bonus skill. In Tir Hathar, Sail covers airships as well as ships. - True Heading. You always know your exact position and heading, on water or in the air, without instruments — by the stars, the swell, the wind, or (aboard an airship) the pull of the currents that keep it aloft. You read water depth and hazards beneath a hull by feel alone; a Tide-marked captain doesn't run aground on a reef they haven't charted. - Reading the Leg. Once per day, spend ten minutes reading the water, sky, or terrain ahead to learn every hazard, current, and shift in conditions along the next leg of the journey, up to a day's travel — reefs, becalmed patches, a coming squall, turbulence over a ridge. Acting on the warning is up to the captain, but nothing on that stretch catches a Tide-marked crew by surprise.
Level 2 — Become the Ship: Once per week, become the ship for up to a day. Your reflexes are its rudder, your judgment is its trim, and it answers to intention as fluidly as your own limbs. A vessel under your command makes maneuvers that shouldn't be possible for something its size, and crosses open water or sky in half the normal time. Ship and crew arrive spent but unharmed; the crew needs a full day's rest before another hard push. Works for ships and airships alike — the sensation is the same, whatever the ship is actually moving through.
House notes: Catfolk have always been Tir Hathar's finest shipwrights and captains — a reputation that predates the Long War and traces back to the sea they lost, when their fleets crossed a coastline no longer on any map. They're widely credited as the ones who worked out how to build the first airships, and every nation that fields one wants a Catfolk hand on the wheel when it can get one. What other houses call "Catfolk seamanship," they mean literally: put a Tide-marked captain on anything with a rudder or a set of control lines and it performs like a different vessel. A stateless people whose most reliable export is "the captain who gets there first, and gets there in one piece" is not a coincidence, and the elders steering the Catfolk long game know exactly what a monopoly on that is worth. (Some master Catfolk shipwrights are rumored to go further still — building hulls with something like a spark of their own awareness. Not a standard Sigil tier; see Catfolk document.)
The Tempest Sigil¶
Race: Jinn-touched (Nasrin) — Jann-bonded branches only; see Patron Drift in the Nasrin document Domain: Weather, lightning
Level 1: - Weather-Eye. You always know the current weather, and can predict it accurately up to 24 hours ahead. - Storm-Born. Lightning deals you half damage. Roll twice and take the better on saves and checks against wind, lightning, and hot or cold weather.
Level 2 — Call the Weather: Reshape the weather, with no components beyond the Sigil itself. Only one working can hold at a time. - Quick working. Over two hours, shift the weather within about a mile by one step — clear to overcast, rain to storm, a breeze to a gale, or back — for a few hours. - Full working. Over a full day, reshape the weather across several miles as you like, within what the season and land could produce — call a storm out of a clear sky, or break one. It lasts until the next dawn.
House notes: The Jinn-touched relationship with storms is inherited rather than learned — passive awareness first, then resistance, then command. Pairs thematically with the Hearth Sigil: shelter versus storm, comfort versus fury. Formerly listed "navigation" as part of its domain; that's fully Tide's territory now — Tempest reads and endures the sky and sea from the outside, Tide is inside the hull.
The Hearth Sigil¶
Race: Borderless — the one house with no racial home nation Domain: Shelter, neutral ground, safe passage through social spaces
Level 1: Gain Connect as a bonus skill. - Hearth-Sense. You always know the direction and rough distance to the nearest safe shelter, food, and water within a day's travel. - The Open Door. Once per day, over ten minutes, raise a small cabin of Sigil-work — sound walls, a latching door, and a fire that needs no fuel — with room for you and up to eight others. It keeps out weather and natural heat or cold, and lasts until the next dawn or until you leave it.
Level 2 — Neutral Ground: Once per day, declare a location — a building, a hall, or a camp up to about 100 feet across — neutral ground until the next dawn. Nothing prevents violence there, but something in the air makes aggression feel wrong and costly. Anyone who wants to start a fight inside must first make a Mental save; on a failure, they find themselves wanting to talk instead, and won't start one that scene unless attacked. Once blood is drawn, the effect breaks for everyone involved. It's subtle enough that most people never realize it's happening.
House notes: The House of Hearth operates the Blue Boar inn network. Every Blue Boar location maintains something close to a standing Neutral Ground. Every nation has agreed, formally or informally, that this house is untouchable — attacking them would be like burning the post office during wartime. Their borderless nature and universal necessity makes them the most politically neutral major power in Tir Hathar.
The Scholar Sigil¶
Race: Human (Scholar Nation) Domain: Communication, language, written records Formerly: Scribing
Level 1: - Patient Translation. Translate any non-magical written document in an unknown language, without magic and without a check — only time. A page or short document takes a day; a full, lengthy document takes a week. Magically obscured or enchanted documents take twice as long. - Sent Word. Once per day, send a written message to any recipient you know, at any distance. You need something to write on (paper, papyrus, bark, skin, leaves) and something to write with (ink, blood, charcoal, grease). The message arrives as if physically delivered.
Level 2 — The Witnessed Scroll: Once per week, scribe a single-use scroll of any spell you watched being cast in full, as long as its level is no higher than half your character level, rounded up (5th at most). You need standard scribing materials, and you must supply any costly components the spell itself calls for.
The Sentinel Sigil¶
Race: Human (Imperium) Domain: Protection of persons, bodyguarding, personal defense
Level 1: Gain Notice as a bonus skill. - Watchful. Name a ward. Roll twice and take the better on Notice checks to spot threats to them, and you can't be surprised while you're actively guarding them. - Intercept. Once per day, as an Instant action, step in front of an attack aimed at a creature next to you and take the hit yourself, reducing its damage by your character level.
Level 2 — The Ward-Mark: Mark a willing creature with your personal Sigil symbol. While they carry a specially prepared gem, reduce the damage of every hit they take, based on the gem's quality: 1 point (10 sp per day), 2 points (50 sp per day), or 3 points (200 sp per day). The gem dissolves when its time runs out, or you can shatter it at will to end the protection at once. You can keep a number of marks active equal to twice your Wisdom modifier (at least 1). Otherwise, removing a mark takes your consent or a successful dispelling.
House notes: Was the Emperor's house. Now politically complicated in a republic that resents everything they represent. Some Sentinel-marked nobles are genuine republicans adapting to the new order. Others are quietly working to restore the throne.
The Warder Sigil¶
Race: Human (Imperium) Domain: Security, locks, alarms, keeping things contained or excluded Formerly: Warding
Level 1: - Unwatched. Within a Lodge, you sense any magical surveillance or scrying aimed at you. At all times, gain +1 to saves against magic that would read, sway, or control your mind. - Warding Lodge. You can establish a Warding Lodge in any enclosed space. See the Lodge table below for ratings, costs, and setup times. A Lodge is permanent until dismantled, and belongs to the location, not the Warder.
Level 2 — Turn the Spell: Once per day, as an Instant action, reflect a spell aimed directly at you back at its caster. It only works on spells that target you specifically; areas, emanations, and untargeted effects don't qualify.
House notes: Has successfully placed multiple senators in the Imperium Republic and is better positioned for the new government than anyone expected. Several senators hold the Warder Sigil, though it is not the "Sigil of the senate" — the house simply plays politics well.
Warding Lodges¶
A Lodge is a prepared magical space established by a Warder Sigil-bearer. It requires an enclosed space — a room, a tent, a cave with a covered entrance. An open field does not qualify.
| Rating | Radius | Area | Fast Setup | Fast Cost | Slow Setup | Slow Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9ft | ~254 sqft | 1 hour | 300 sp | 5 days | 60 sp |
| 2 | 18ft | ~1,017 sqft | 8 hours | 5,000 sp | 20 days | 1,000 sp |
| 3 | 27ft | ~2,290 sqft | 27 hours | 45,000 sp | 45 days | 9,000 sp |
Detection (within Lodge only) - R1 — +1 to Notice checks against intrusion. A Magic check identifies magical effects targeting the Lodge. - R2 — +2 to Notice checks against intrusion. A Magic check identifies and partially suppresses detected effects. - R3 — +3 to Notice checks against intrusion. A Magic check fully identifies the source of magical effects targeting the Lodge, and tracks it.
Exclusion - R1 — Totally prevents possession of Lodge occupants. - R2 — As R1, plus occupants get a Mental save against any mind-influencing or compelling magic, even magic that wouldn't normally allow one. - R3 — As R2, plus totally prevents summoning any creature within the Lodge's boundaries.
Teleportation Interference (added to any existing imprecision) - R1 — Adds imprecision equivalent to teleporting from 10 miles away. - R2 — Adds imprecision equivalent to teleporting from 100 miles away. - R3 — Adds imprecision equivalent to teleporting from 1000 miles away. - At every rating, the teleporting caster may make a Mental save to halve the added imprecision.
Save Bonus - R1 — +1 to saves vs hostile magic cast within Lodge. - R2 — +2 to saves vs hostile magic cast within Lodge. - R3 — +3 to saves vs hostile magic cast within Lodge.
The Shade Sigil¶
Race: Human (Confederacy) Domain: Stealth, deception, disguise Formerly: Shadow
Level 1: Gain Sneak or Convince as a bonus skill. - Unseen. Once per day, become invisible for 1 minute (10 rounds). Your footsteps make no sound while you're invisible. It ends if you make an attack.
Level 2 — The Planted Thought: Once per week, spend a minute in conversation with a creature to plant a suggestion they follow as if it were their own idea. The target resists with a Mental save. It isn't magic: magic can't detect it, and nothing can dispel it. The suggestion must be plausible and can't directly endanger the target. It lasts until carried out or until a week passes. The memory feels entirely genuine and self-motivated at the time, though the target may eventually realize they were influenced through natural reflection.
House notes: An open secret that nobody raises at diplomatic functions. The Confederacy calls it "information gathering." The Imperium calls it what it is.
The Wayfarer Sigil¶
Race: Human (Confederacy) Domain: Movement, travel, transportation
Level 1: - Long Stride. Natural terrain never slows you, and your movement rate is 5 feet faster. - Step Between. Once per day, as a Main Action, teleport yourself and what you carry to a point you can see within 100 feet.
Level 2 — The Marked Door: Once per week, as a Main Action, open a stable portal between any two doorways you've personally marked with your Sigil. A mark can be as small as a coin, and can be hidden. The portal stays open for up to one minute (10 rounds), and anyone can pass through it in either direction while it's open. You can close it as an On Turn action at any time.
The Diviner Sigil¶
Race: Elf Domain: Sensing magic, awareness, detection of supernatural phenomena Formerly: Detection
Level 1: Gain Notice as a bonus skill. - Magic-Sense. At will, sense whether magic is present within 30 feet, and roughly where. - Locate. Once per scene, learn the direction of the nearest object of a general type within 500 feet — the nearest sword, the nearest fire, the nearest living creature — never a specific named object or individual. - Scry-Sense. Once per scene, learn whether any scrying is aimed at you or at anything within 30 feet of you.
Level 2 — The Distant Eye: Once per week, cast The Distant Eye (see General Spell List), whatever your class.
House notes: One of the few points where Elven isolationism intersects with the broader economy. An Elven house commercially entangled with other nations creates internal Elven political tension.
The Tracker Sigil¶
Race: Changeling Domain: Tracking specific individuals, locating people, navigation Formerly: Finding
Level 1: - North-Sense. You always know which way is north, and you can perfectly retrace any path you've personally traveled. - The Trail. You can follow the trail of any creature or object you've personally encountered; no mundane concealment or trail-hiding hides it from you. Magical transport (teleportation, gates, and the like) breaks the trail but leaves traces. A Magic check — or Pray, for divine magic — identifies which kind of magic carried them off.
Level 2 — Find the One: Once per day, sense the direction of a specific creature or object you know, if it's within 10 miles. Within 500 feet, you know exactly where it is. Running water doesn't block it. Warding Lodges and strong enough magical concealment can still block or mislead it.
House notes: A shapeshifter who can locate anyone is genuinely frightening. The Tracker Sigil makes Changelings simultaneously the most valuable intelligence asset and the most feared individual in any room once their nature is known.
The Handler Sigil¶
Race: Wayfolk Domain: Animal handling and beastcraft — training, calming, and reading any creature that can be tamed at all.
Level 1: Gain Ride as a bonus skill. - Beast-Reader. On sight, you know any animal's temperament, health, and trainability. - Soothe or Rouse. Once per day, calm or rouse an animal completely, whatever its natural temperament. For the rest of the scene, a spooked warhorse or a half-wild beast responds as if perfectly trained.
Level 2 — The Season Bond: Once per week, forge a working bond with an animal that lasts a season. While the bond holds, the animal reliably follows complex, multi-step instructions, gains +1 to its hit rolls and saves when you ask it to push past its limits, and never fails a Morale check out of fear.
House notes: Wayfolk caravans are legendary for exactly this reason — their stock is always healthier, better-trained, and more capable than anyone else's, and every exotic beast worth owning has probably passed through Wayfolk hands at some point. Like Hearth, Handler doesn't map to a single nation; it travels with a people who belong to the road rather than to any one border, which makes it about as close to universally welcome as a Sigil gets.
The Aberrant Sigil — The Thirteenth Mark¶
The Aberrant Sigil is not a house. There was a house once — destroyed in a historical purge when the legitimate houses united to eliminate it. Now Aberrant Sigils appear randomly across any race in no predictable pattern, with no family consistency. Two Aberrant-bearing individuals may have completely different abilities.
Common people don't say someone carries an Aberrant Sigil. They say someone carries the thirteenth mark. It is spoken of as a curse, an omen — something whispered rather than named directly.
The legitimate houses consider Aberrant Sigils dangerous and illegitimate. Underground networks of Aberrant-bearing individuals exist — people who found each other out of necessity — but it is not a house in any formal sense and has no economic infrastructure. Ssyrathis (the Monster Kingdom) is the one place Aberrant bearers have an actual homeland rather than existing only as scattered, hunted individuals or underground networks — see Ssyrathis document.
Building an Aberrant Sigil Focus¶
Each Aberrant Sigil is built one at a time, by the GM with the player, as a Focus on the same template as the house Sigils:
- Level 1: A constant edge — a sense, a knack, a resistance — plus one once-per-day ability. Add a bonus skill only if that's light.
- Level 2: One signature ability, used once per day or once per week depending on its strength. Requires character level 5, like any Sigil.
- Domain: Anything no house holds — or a twisted or unfamiliar take on a house's domain. Some Aberrant Sigils may be pre-war Sigil expressions the houses no longer recognize (see What the Houses Don't Know).
- Power: Measured against the house Sigils, not above them. What makes an Aberrant Sigil dangerous is that it's unpredictable and unregulated, not that it's stronger.
- The usual limits apply: the bearer can't also hold a house or Cruel Sigil.
The Cruel Sigils¶
Three more Sigils exist entirely outside the Great House economy — held by monstrous, non-player peoples rather than any of the thirteen recognized houses, and outside the Aberrant category too. They don't glow the familiar purple; bearers' veins run a duller red-black, and their eyes carry a corresponding cast rather than the houses' violet. Nobody in the mortal economy trades in them, negotiates for them, or wants them. They come from evil outsiders, and they are corrupted — so they don't follow the rules the house Sigils follow, starting with the color.
Design principle: these are intentionally flawed. Evil corrupts rather than creates — when it copies or mocks something the Sigils represent (power, purpose, legitimate authority), the copy can't come out clean. Every Cruel Sigil should cost its bearer something the thirteen house Sigils don't ask for: Cinder burns the goblin who uses it, Yoke enforces obedience without ever earning it, and Bone's power is built directly on Giant cannibalism rather than sitting apart from it. This isn't a balance afterthought — it's the point, and it should hold for any future Cruel Sigil too.
They're written as Foci on the same two-level template, so a GM can build Giant, Goblin, and Hobgoblin NPCs the same way as everyone else. They aren't available to player characters.
The Bone Sigil¶
Race: Giants Domain: Necromancy, tied directly to Giant feasting culture — the skeletons of the honored dead they eat are kept and raised rather than discarded.
Level 1: - Bone-Lord. As an On Turn action, command any animated skeleton within sight. Skeletons you raised never act against your orders. One raised by someone else obeys you unless its creator is present to countermand you. Gain +1 to skill checks made to identify or work with the recently dead. - Raise the Honored. Once per day, raise a skeleton from a fresh set of bones you possess. The bones must come from a feast you ate at — the power is the cannibalism, not something apart from it. It serves until destroyed or dismissed. You can keep a number of raised skeletons at once equal to your level.
Level 2 — The Bone Cadre: Once per week, raise a cadre of skeletons at once — up to your level in number, from feast-bones you possess — bound to your will as a group. A cadre fights as a disciplined unit, capable of coordinated action rather than simple mob behavior, and doesn't count against your Raise the Honored limit.
Notes: Ties directly to Giant honor-feasting — see Giant Kingdoms document. Not something Giants discuss with dinner guests, even though most human diplomats who've done their homework already know.
The Cinder Sigil¶
Race: Goblins Domain: Fire and lava, drawn from the volcanoes of Azlotl that goblins worship.
Level 1: - Heat-Hardened. Ordinary heat and open flame don't harm you — not magical fire, and not lava. Gain +1 to skill checks made around fire, forges, or volcanic terrain. - Gout of Fire. Once per day, as a Main Action, hurl volcanic fire at a target within 60 feet. They take 1d6 fire damage per two levels you have (rounded up), halved on an Evasion save. You take half the rolled damage yourself, with no save. Cinder never comes free.
Level 2 — Wreathed in Fire: Once per week, as a Main Action, wreathe yourself in volcanic fire for up to a scene; you can end it early. Anything that starts its turn within 10 feet of you, or hits you in melee, takes 2d6 fire damage. You take 1d6 fire damage at the start of each of your turns while it lasts, with no save.
Notes: The self-harm is the point, not an oversight — Cinder is meant to read as a cruel gift, powerful and costly in the same breath. See Goblins document.
The Yoke Sigil¶
Race: Hobgoblins Domain: Law without justice — command, caste, and compliance, enforced rather than earned.
Level 1: Gain Lead as a bonus skill. - The Command. At will, give a simple command to a creature of lower caste or rank in your own hierarchy. They obey unless the order would get them killed outright. - Compel. Once per day, compel a specific subordinate for a scene. They follow your orders even against strong personal inclination, but not against their most basic survival instinct. - Obedience, Not Loyalty. Anyone you've ever Compelled or Yoked never does more than the order requires, never volunteers what they know, and abandons you the moment your hold slips — when you're out of sight, or out of the hierarchy.
Level 2 — The Yoke: Once per week, bind an entire group within your command structure to a single directive for a day. No one within it can meaningfully act against the order, however much they might want to.
Notes: Meant to be ugly rather than aspirational — the mechanical expression of Ssyrathis's caste system, wielded by a caste that is itself ruled from above. See Ssyrathis document.
The Cruel Sigils get developed case by case, as they come up in play; the Foci above are a starting point.
A Fourth Category — Unknown to the Houses¶
Beyond the thirteen, the Aberrant Sigil, and the three Cruel Sigils, one more exists that isn't catalogued here at all: the Kuwaffri carry an inherited-memory Sigil of their own, but no house scholar has ever verified it, because Kuwaffri Sigil-bearers essentially never leave their homeland to be studied. It isn't a fourteenth recognized house, it isn't Aberrant, and it isn't Cruel — the Sigil Houses simply don't know it exists. See Kuwaffri document for the full write-up.
Sorcerer Bloodlines and Sigils¶
Draconic, fey, and demonic sorcerer bloodlines have no obvious home in Tir Hathar's cosmology. Sorcerer bloodlines in Tir Hathar are tied to Sigil heritage instead. Sorcerers are a partial school — see Spells and Arts, Sorcerer.
A Sigil bloodline in a sorcerer manifests differently than in a properly marked individual — the power is present but unstructured, coming out sideways as sorcery rather than as the clean focused ability of a Sigil-bearer. This explains sorcerers cosmologically without importing dragon ancestors or demonic taint.
A sorcerer with Artisan-adjacent powers who doesn't carry the Artisan Sigil is viewed very differently by the House of Artisan than a properly marked member. Are they a diluted bloodline? A failed manifestation? Something the house wants to monitor, recruit, or suppress?
The Aberrant Sigil bloodline as a sorcerer option is a natural fit.
Warforged and the Sigils¶
Warforged are intentionally excluded from the Sigil system. They have no Sigil bloodlines and no house affiliation. This is part of what makes them politically complicated — they exist outside the economic infrastructure that the houses control, which is simultaneously a disadvantage (no house backing, no Sigil abilities) and a freedom (no house obligations, no house politics).