Underway Operative
You learned that every civilization has two faces. One is visible: merchants conduct business, nobles make laws, guards patrol the streets, and respectable citizens go about their lives. The other exists beneath it. Servants trade rumors in kitchens. Dockworkers know which cargo arrived without a manifest. Beggars recognize everyone who passes their corner. Thieves know forgotten passages. Craftspeople notice unusual commissions. Innkeepers hear drunken confessions. Smugglers know roads that appear on no map. Whether you were born among these people, driven into their world by circumstance, or deliberately entered it, you learned to survive where respectable society and the underworld overlap. You became an observer, survivor, investigator, and operator. You learned whom to trust, whom to bribe, when to disappear, and—most importantly—how valuable information can be. You may be a thief, vigilante, spy, investigator, merchant, smuggler, disgraced aristocrat, bounty hunter, revolutionary, guild operative, or protector of the forgotten. Whatever your origins, you understand one fundamental truth: Those whom society overlooks often see the most.
- Ability Scores:
Hardened by Experience
Your experiences operating between respectable society and its hidden world have shaped your talents in ways unique to your circumstances. Survival may have required agility, keen observation, clever reasoning, force of personality, physical endurance, or even brute strength. Choose any three ability scores. Increase one of those scores by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three chosen scores by 1. None of these increases can raise an ability score above the maximum allowed by your campaign.
- Feat:
Hard-Learned Gift
Your unusual experiences taught you lessons and talents that cannot be represented by a single predetermined path. Perhaps hardship made you tougher, danger made you alert, fortune repeatedly favored you, years of practice broadened your skills, or necessity taught you abilities uncommon to others of your profession. Choose any one Origin Feat for which you meet the prerequisites. The feat represents a defining talent, lesson, gift, or survival instinct developed during your life before becoming an adventurer.
- Skill Proficiencies:
Underway Training
Life in the hidden spaces of civilization requires different talents from different people. You may have survived through stealth and quick hands, investigation and careful observation, charm and deception, physical prowess, knowledge, wilderness experience, or another combination of abilities. Choose any two skill proficiencies. These skills represent the particular talents you developed through your background, profession, travels, contacts, and experiences.
- Tool Proficiencies:
Tools of the Trade
Your experiences taught you that the right instrument in skilled hands can be as valuable as any weapon. Whether through a profession, criminal dealings, investigation, travel, craftsmanship, or simple necessity, you became particularly adept with one specialized set of tools. Choose one tool proficiency of your choice. This proficiency represents a practical trade or specialized talent you developed through your background and experiences.
- Equipment:
Tools of Survival
The possessions you carried into your adventuring life reflect the circumstances that shaped you. They might be remnants of a former life, tools acquired through your profession, equipment used to survive the streets, or carefully chosen items needed to operate unnoticed within society.
Choose starting equipment with a total value of up to 50 GP from the Adventuring Gear and Tools tables. Your equipment should reflect your character's history and may include clothing, a tool kit, pouches, rope, writing materials, maps, personal keepsakes, or other appropriate mundane items.
Alternatively, you may take 50 GP and purchase your own starting equipment.
You also possess one small personal item connected to your past—such as a family signet, coded journal, old key, mysterious letter, guild token, worn coin, wanted notice, or similar keepsake. This item has sentimental or narrative significance but no inherent monetary or magical benefit.
Every Underway Operative has a reason they learned to move between respectable society and the hidden world beneath it. Perhaps hardship forced you into the streets, your profession exposed you to secrets, or you deliberately entered the shadows in pursuit of knowledge, justice, wealth, or power.
Choose the path that best represents your history or roll a d12.
Your Path into the Underways does not determine your alignment or profession. A Street Survivor might become a paladin, a Merchant of Two Worlds might be completely honest, and a Vigilante might eventually become an officer of the law. The path represents how you first learned that civilization has another world hidden beneath the one everyone sees.
| d12 | Path into the Underways |
|---|---|
| 1 | Fallen Station - You once belonged to a noble family, wealthy household, respected guild, temple, military order, or other influential organization. Betrayal, scandal, war, or political maneuvering stripped away your former life and forced you to survive elsewhere. |
| 2 | Street Survivor - Poverty, abandonment, tragedy, or simple circumstance forced you to survive among crowded streets, markets, docks, alleys, and forgotten districts. You learned quickly who could be trusted and where danger lived. |
| 3 | Guild Initiate - A thieves' guild, smugglers' ring, intelligence service, assassins' order, or other clandestine organization trained you in the ways of the hidden world. Whether you still belong to them is another matter. |
| 4 | Keeper of Secrets - You discovered early that information could be more valuable than coin. You became skilled at gathering, protecting, trading, or exploiting secrets others would prefer remained hidden. |
| 5 | Vigilante - The authorities failed you, someone you loved, or your community. You entered the shadows because you decided that if justice would not come through lawful channels, you would find another way to deliver it. |
| 6 | Smuggler - You transported people, goods, messages, or contraband through places authorities were never meant to discover. You learned hidden roads, secret tunnels, forgotten waterways, concealed compartments, and ways around checkpoints. |
| 7 | Merchant of Two Worlds - Legitimate trade introduced you to less legitimate opportunities. You became comfortable negotiating with merchants and officials by day while dealing with smugglers, fences, adventurers, or black-market traders after dark. |
| 8 | Investigator - You always noticed things others missed. That talent eventually drew you toward mysteries, missing people, hidden crimes, strange occurrences, and secrets someone desperately wanted buried. |
| 9 | Disgraced Agent - You once served a government, noble house, military, temple, guild, or powerful patron. Betrayal, failure, politics, or discovering something you weren't supposed to know drove you underground. |
| 10 | Protector of the Forgotten - You deliberately entered society's hidden places to defend people ignored by those with wealth and authority. The poor, displaced, persecuted, or unwanted became your community—and often your eyes and ears. |
| 11 | Underway Native - You were raised among tunnels, hidden districts, subterranean settlements, sewers, ruins, mines, or another community existing beneath or beyond ordinary society. What outsiders consider secret is simply home to you. |
| 12 | Double Life - You maintain, or once maintained, two identities. One belongs to respectable society; the other operates in places where your true name would be dangerous. Perhaps both identities are genuine parts of who you are. |
The Unseen Network
You have learned that the people society overlooks are often those who see and hear the most. Through friendship, favors, business dealings, shared hardships, or carefully cultivated relationships, you have developed a loose network of contacts among the ordinary inhabitants of civilization.
When you enter a settlement, you know how to identify the people and places through which information naturally flows. Given sufficient time, you can seek out local rumors, learn about recent unusual events, locate potential contacts, or discover who might possess information concerning a person, place, organization, or activity you are investigating.
Your contacts might include servants, laborers, craftspeople, merchants, innkeepers, sailors, guards, entertainers, travelers, beggars, street children, criminals, smugglers, or others appropriate to the settlement.
These individuals are not automatically your agents and will not knowingly place themselves in unreasonable danger for you. They may expect payment, assistance, information, protection, or a favor in return. However, when you treat people well and earn their trust, they are more inclined to share what they know.
As your adventures continue, people you help, employ, protect, befriend, or conduct business with may become additional members of your network at the DM's discretion.
The powerful command armies. The wealthy command coin. You have learned how to listen to everyone else.
Spell List
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|
Suggested Characteristics
| d8 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I instinctively notice exits, unfamiliar faces, concealed weapons, and anything that seems out of place. |
| 2 | I treat servants, laborers, and street folk with the same attention I give nobles and wealthy merchants. |
| 3 | I collect rumors and seemingly useless information because I've learned that everything becomes valuable eventually. |
| 4 | I rarely tell anyone everything I know, even when I trust them. |
| 5 | I prefer solving problems through wit, preparation, and misdirection rather than direct confrontation. |
| 6 | I can comfortably move between a noble's banquet, a merchant's counting house, and a back-alley tavern. |
| 7 | I remember faces, names, favors, and betrayals for a very long time. |
| 8 | Whenever I enter somewhere unfamiliar, I immediately begin figuring out how I would escape it. |
| d6 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | Freedom - No institution or ruler should possess absolute control over another person's life. (Chaotic) |
| 2 | Community - The people society overlooks are often the ones holding it together. (Good) |
| 3 | Order - Civilization needs rules, even in the places where ordinary laws cannot reach. (Lawful) |
| 4 | Opportunity - Knowledge, influence, and wealth belong to those clever enough to acquire them. (Neutral) |
| 5 | Power - Information is power, and I intend to know more than the people standing against me. (Any) |
| 6 | Justice - When institutions fail to protect people, someone must be willing to act. (Good) |
| d6 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | Someone protected me when I had nowhere else to turn. I will never forget what I owe them. |
| 2 | My family, companions, or chosen family are the most important people in my life. |
| 3 | I built a network of people who trust me, and I will not casually endanger them. |
| 4 | Someone powerful destroyed something I loved, and someday I will uncover the truth. |
| 5 | A neighborhood, guild, community, business, ship, or organization became my home when I had none. |
| 6 | I possess a secret that could change someone's life, and I have sworn to protect it. |
| d6 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | I have difficulty trusting authority, even when it has done nothing to earn my suspicion. |
| 2 | I keep secrets from people close to me because I convince myself that ignorance protects them. |
| 3 | I remember betrayals far longer than is healthy and rarely give someone another opportunity to betray me. |
| 4 | I sometimes justify questionable actions by convincing myself that the outcome will make them worthwhile. |
| 5 | Knowing people's secrets tempts me to manipulate them rather than simply trusting them. |
| 6 | I have survived so many dangerous situations that I sometimes believe I can outthink consequences themselves. |
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