Living Archive

You have spent much of your life gathering, preserving, and organizing knowledge that others have forgotten, abandoned, or never understood. Whether through disciplined study, unusual experiences, psychic contact, magical discovery, or direct exposure to the memories and teachings of others, you have become a living repository of information.

You instinctively catalog patterns, languages, histories, magical principles, and fragments of seemingly unrelated knowledge. To you, information is more than something recorded on a page. Knowledge is meant to be retained, connected, and understood.

Ability Scores: Choose Intelligence, Dexterity, and Constitution as your background ability scores. Increase one of these scores by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1.

Feat: You gain the Magic Initiate (Wizard) Origin feat, representing arcane techniques and magical principles you have collected, preserved, and incorporated into your living archive.

Skill Proficiencies: You gain proficiency in the Arcana and Investigation skills.

Tool Proficiencies: You gain proficiency with Calligrapher’s Supplies.

Equipment: You begin with Calligrapher’s Supplies, writing materials, a book or collection of notes used to preserve accumulated knowledge, and 50 GP to purchase additional equipment.

Suggested Characteristics

Living Archives tend to be curious, observant, and difficult to surprise with unfamiliar information. Some collect knowledge out of fascination, others from necessity, and some because forgetting feels like losing part of themselves. They may treat memories, books, stories, magical discoveries, and even seemingly trivial facts as pieces of a much larger pattern waiting to be understood.

 

d8	Personality Trait
1	I instinctively catalogue anything unusual I encounter.
2	I become absorbed in new information and sometimes forget what is happening around me.
3	I rarely forget a name, fact, symbol, or story once I have learned it.
4	I ask questions others consider unnecessary because small details often matter later.
5	I prefer evidence and careful observation over assumption.
6	I enjoy discovering connections between things that appear unrelated.
7	I preserve even seemingly trivial information because its importance may not yet be apparent.
8	I become noticeably animated when someone knows something I do not.

d6	Ideal
1	Knowledge. Information should be preserved rather than allowed to disappear.
2	Truth. Understanding what actually happened matters more than maintaining a comfortable story.
3	Discovery. The unknown exists to be investigated.
4	Preservation. Memories, histories, and discoveries deserve to survive those who first possessed them.
5	Understanding. Knowledge has little value unless its meaning and connections are understood.
6	Freedom. No person or institution should control all access to knowledge.

d6	Bond
1	I carry knowledge entrusted to me that I have sworn never to let disappear.
2	An archive, library, mentor, or collection shaped who I became.
3	I am searching for a piece of information that has eluded me for years.
4	I preserve the memory or work of someone who can no longer do so themselves.
5	There is a lost place, text, or body of knowledge I am determined to recover.
6	I consider my accumulated knowledge part of my identity and will defend it accordingly.

d6	Flaw
1	I have difficulty letting go of information, even when keeping it is dangerous.
2	I sometimes treat people as sources of information before treating them as people.
3	I can become obsessed with an unanswered question.
4	I am reluctant to admit when something lies beyond my knowledge.
5	I preserve secrets that might be better forgotten.
6	Curiosity can override my sense of caution.

Contacts

Living Archives often maintain connections with scholars, librarians, scribes, historians, mages, collectors, archivists, and others who value unusual knowledge. You may know people who can help locate obscure texts, identify strange symbols, authenticate records, or point you toward someone with expertise you do not possess.

These contacts do not automatically provide restricted information or services, but they can provide a reasonable starting point when you are searching for specialized knowledge.

d6	Contact
1	An elderly archivist who remembers where obscure records are buried.
2	A traveling antiquarian who trades in rare books, maps, and forgotten manuscripts.
3	A temple recordkeeper with access to genealogies, burial records, and old local histories.
4	An arcane librarian who specializes in identifying unusual spells, symbols, and magical texts.
5	A professional scribe and translator skilled with damaged documents, ciphers, and dead languages.
6	A private collector who knows where unusual or forbidden pieces of knowledge can sometimes be found.