5 MATERIALES Y MÉTODOS
5.3 Laboratorio de ensayos
5.3.1 Ensayos para evaluar las prestaciones. Curvas características
The following descriptions of each Role include milestones and breaking points as illustrations; the Storyteller is encouraged to use these as inspiration, tailoring each Role to the characters that take it.
Aes
The Roles of the Refinement of Bronze focus on the values of service, loyalty, duty, and self-sacrifice.
Bodyguard
A Bodyguard’s duty is to protect her charge, whether her charge wants protecting or not. A few choose their entire throng as a charge, but most focus on a single individual.
CHAPTER THREE: ALCHEMY
Milestones: Take a serious injury — a gunshot or similar— for your charge when you are not in danger. Follow your charge into a dangerous situation that you have warned against and protect him anyway.
Breaking point: Do significant physical harm (more than a point of lethal damage) to your charge.
Servant
The servant takes on tasks that his throng find trivial, prosaic, or otherwise distracting from their Pilgrimage. He must adapt to their changing needs and the obstacles that the world sets against them.
Milestones: Spend several days or weeks serving another character while she achieves a major or superlative milestone.
Remove an obstacle from your throng’s path without them noticing.
Breaking point: Make it impossible for another character in your throng to complete a milestone.
Seeker
The seeker acts as counselor and spiritual guide to hir throng.
Sie shares their stresses and troubles, helping them focus on the road ahead.
Milestones: Provide counseling to your throng, helping at least one of your charges to step forward. Help a member of your throng escape Torment.
Breaking point: Drive a member of your throng into Torment.
Argentum
The Refinement of Silver studies the spaces around the edges of humanity; as such, its Roles focus on dealing with other supernatural creatures.
Envoy
The most pro-active Role of Argentum makes direct contact with the supernatural. He may act as a medium or speaker with the dead, or have the unenviable task of brokering co-existence with an angry pack of werewolves.
Milestones: Broker peace with a group of supernatural creatures.
Help a ghost resolve its anchors and move on.
Breaking point: Attack a supernatural creature without provocation
Observer
The Observer watches the supernatural from far away. Sie draws her own conclusions on the supernatural by studying their actions from afar, without involving hirself directly.
Milestones: Discover a well-guarded secret — observing a mage’s ritual or a demon’s true form. Make a lasting friend of someone touched by the supernatural.
Breaking point: Directly intercede in the actions of a supernatural creature.
Warden
The Warden is concerned with her throng’s safety above all else.
Too many supernatural creatures see humanity as prey, so they focus on being ready — learning their strengths and weaknesses before the worst happens.
when supernatural creatures attack your throng.
Breaking point: Go unprepared for supernatural attack because you are convinced they are not a threat.
Aurum
Gold’s Roles, along with the rest of the Refinement, focus on integrating with humanity so that the Promethean can live among humans and develop an understanding of human nature.
Companion
The Companion wants to belong. She might focus on a single person, trying to become her friend or lover, or she might try to integrate with a group so that they accept her as an equal.
Milestones: Develop an intimate relationship with your chosen partner, or have nobody in the group challenge your inclusion. Be shunned by your partner/group for entirely human reasons (abuse, infidelity, or breaking the group’s social norms).
Breaking point: Leave your partner or group, vanishing without a trace.
Follower
By putting hir fate in the hands of others, the Follower learns to trust others. Sie may find a regular human to act as a surrogate parent or mentor, or copy another person’s looks, mannerisms, and decisions.
Milestones: Be at risk of physical or emotional trauma and survive by following your patron’s instructions. Experience a significant misfortune by disobeying your patron.
Breaking point: Put yourself into a position of leadership over your patron, and have him follow your instructions.
Leader
In contrast to the follower, the leader must earn the trust of others. He may position himself as a “big brother” to a younger person, start a self-help group, or act as a leader among her community.
Milestones: Have a group or community formally accept you as their spokesperson. Have someone under your care avoid harm because of your instructions.
Breaking point: By your actions, cause your group to reject or shun you as an outsider.
Cobalus
The Refinement of Cobalt’s focus on burning out the impurities of the Promethean condition leads to Roles that study selfishness and vice. That way, a practitioner can identify them and discover how to overcome them.
Confessor
The Confessor hunts out other people’s unsavory activities. Sie wants insight into the criminal mind so sie goes out and finds it, whether as an accomplice to a crime or as a bartender who hears everything but keeps hir mouth shut.
Milestones: Be an accomplice to a major crime (grand theft, first-degree arson, or murder). Hear confessions to heinous and sickening crimes, but keep your council.
RoLEs
Deviant
The Deviant throws himself headlong into a life of vice, getting a first-hand taste of what it’s like for a human to experience sin and transgress against social norms. Whether he checks in to a psych ward or joins a hate group, his personal experience is second to none.
Milestones: Indulge in your chosen sin for a significant period of time. Perform a significant act of debasement that leaves you enlightened.
Breaking point: Refuse an opportunity to indulge your chosen sins.
Provocateur
A Provocateur doesn’t do bad things herself, but she’s happy to treat other people like experiments, spurring her target to greater excesses that indulge his dark side and push him out of his comfort zone.
Milestones: Push your target into a physical confrontation that destroys one of his relationships. Stir a community up into a fervor towards a target of your choice.
Breaking point: Talk your target down from committing a sinful act.
Cuprum
The Roles of the Refinement of Copper focus on specific actions that allow a Created to turn within herself, examining how the world reacts to her and how she can improve to better fit in with the world around her.
Hermit
The Hermit stays away from people not because he fears them, but because he needs to control his interactions. When he does interact with people, it’s strictly on his own terms.
Milestones: Have a normal person approach you for your help.
Return to a group of people you had walked away from, ready to reintegrate.
Breaking point: Give in to the fear of other people, spending a week or more without social interaction.
Sage
The Sage knows that the true worth of knowledge is what a seeker must overcome to find it. She sets herself apart and creates challenges for other people to overcome before they can reach her — challenges that teach more than the Sage herself can impart.
Milestones: Seek the assistance of another Sage and complete her challenges. Teach another to take your place.
Breaking point: Dispense your secrets freely to anyone who asks.
Watcher
The Watcher is in the world, but not of it. Sie remains hidden, tracking and following people to observe how they act when zhe is not around, to determine if sie makes a positive impact on the world.
Milestones: Observe a social situation that would have gone better had you interceded. Shadow a person for a significant period without being noticed.
Breaking point: Reveal your presence to someone you are following.
Ferrum
The Refinement of Iron focuses on purifying the body. Its Roles enable that by driving adherents to a life of self-improvement and self-sacrifice.
Exemplar
Always willing to show off, an Exemplar’s prowess in her chosen field is second only to her competitive nature. She wants people around her to be better than they are, and so she tests them against her full ability.
Milestones: Be bested in a fair contest by someone you have trained. Become acknowledged as a world-class talent in your chosen field.
Breaking point: Back down from a challenge in your chosen field where your victory is uncertain.
Martyr
The Martyr focuses on endurance rather than prowess. He wants to take on endure and survive impossible physical odds, pushing his body to greater and greater lengths to prove that the world has not conquered him.
Milestones: Survive physical injuries that would kill a normal human. Endure ongoing hardship (extreme environments, ongoing torture) for longer than a normal human could.
Breaking point: Require someone else’s help to survive physical hardship.
Soldier
The Soldier wants to protect hirself and others. Sie wants a Pilgrimage that doesn’t just enrich hir, but that makes everyone around hir that little bit safer. To that end, sie studies combat in all its forms and stands ready to do her duty.
Milestones: Face a superior foe in single combat and win. Defeat a superior foe through strategy and positioning rather than direct physical confrontation.
Breaking point: Surrender to an enemy, allowing them to harm your companions without challenge.
Mercurius
These Roles are related to the Refinement of Quicksilver. They focus on exploring the internal and external alchemies of the Promethean condition, the nature of the Divine Fire, and strange creatures and philosophies.
Craftsman
A Craftsman wants to mold the world in hir own image. Sie might be a carpenter, a mechanic, or an architect — anything that requires using hir knowledge and skills to make things. Sie studies the way things connect together to understand the inherent alchemy in all things.
Milestones: Complete a significant project (design or build a house, rebuild a car from scratch) and give it away. Become known among a group of humans as the person to go to for fixes and repairs.
Breaking point: Destroy something that you have built because you cannot bear to have anyone else use it.
CHAPTER THREE: ALCHEMY
Explorer
The Explorer moves through the world, tracking down manifestations of the Divine Fire. She looks for signs of Firestorms, follows stories of qashmallim and Sublimati, and experiences the Wasteland in order to harden herself against future manifestations.
Milestones: Experience a Firestorm and survive. Follow clues to a series of Athanors that grant Elpis visions.
Breaking point: Deliberately avoid a chance to investigate the Divine Fire’s work in order to deal with mundane concerns.
Scientist
The Scientist experiments with Pyros and the Divine Fire.
Perhaps the archetypal Mercurius Role, he often works out of an alchemical workshop, trying to master both human and Promethean alchemy.
Milestones: Successfully replicate a work of human alchemy.
Replicate an Athanor (except Jovian Athanors).
Breaking point: Refuse to perform an experiment on ethical grounds.
Phosphorum
Death is a part of life, and the Roles of the Refinement of Phosphorus study human attitudes and reactions to death.
Daredevil
Pushing hirself beyond hir limits, a Daredevil takes joy in risk and the proximity of death. Sie is deliberately reckless, throwing hirself into foolhardy stunts in order to understand the thrill humans get from the proximity of death.
Milestones: Take a risk with a significant (but not overwhelming) chance of death and survive. Take a series of non-fatal but generally self-destructive risks and don’t fail.
Breaking point: Back down from a challenge with a significant chance of death because you are scared.
Psychopomp
A Psychopomp watches those intimate moments around death, looking at the moment when the soul escapes. She also studies the people who try to prevent — or cause — death, including surgeons, EMTs, and assassins.
Milestones: Watch someone you have a relationship with die when you could have done something. Pull someone back from the brink of death.
Breaking point: Ignore someone who is close to death in favor of dealing with the living.
Whip
The Whip sees what others could do if they only let go of their inhibitions. He pushes other people to take that chance — quit their job, marry their partner, or move halfway across the world.
By understanding how to convince humans to accept risk, he understands risk itself.
Milestones: Have someone take a life-changing physical, financial, or social risk, whether it pays off or not. Help many people take smaller risks that may improve their lives.
Breaking point: Talk someone out of taking a risk that may
MiLEsTonEs
Plumbum
The Refinement of Lead studies the Created state itself. Its Roles focus on what the Promethean is, and what she could become.
Ascetic
An Ascetic sequesters hirself from humanity, reflecting on what sie can do and what that says about hirself. Sie is often happy to share that information, but knows that any answers must come from within.
Milestones: Have another Promethean who has studied with you take up this Role. Observe other Prometheans and understand how they differ from humans on a fundamental level.
Breaking point: Reconnect with human society before understanding yourself.
Chronicler
A Chronicler talks to other Prometheans, learning whatever they will tell him about their path towards the Great Work. In doing so, he often must travel and stands a good chance of discovering clues to Athanors and new impressions in the Azothic memory.
Milestones: Discover a hidden or lost Athanor. Discover enough of other Created’s Pilgrimages to discover underlying commonalities.
Breaking point: Discard the information you have gathered as inapplicable to your Pilgrimage.
Pilgrim
The Pilgrim focuses on the road in front of him — not physical travel, but the alchemical journey between Created and human.
She can’t directly influence or predict much of another Created’s journey, but if she can help, she will.
Milestones: Assist another Promethean in achieving a major or superlative milestone. Share stories with other Created of the milestones your throng has encountered.
Breaking point: Steer another Promethean away from completing a milestone.
Stannum
Each of the Refinement of Tin’s Roles focuses on a way that a Promethean can work through her built-up angst and Torment.
Outcast
The Outcast tries to find the diamonds among the shit of his life. Surrounding herself with people that society has discarded, she tries to work out her issues by understanding why humans choose to ignore some of their own.
Milestones: Make a tangible improvement in the lives of those dispossessed around you. Lash out at those who offer acceptance and be accepted anyway.
Breaking point: Become firm friends with a number of humans.
Savage
The Savage lashes out at everything around hir. Being nice, fitting in, all of that shit is too much work. The world hates hir, wants hir to be a monster? Bring it on. Sie revels in breaking things for the sake of hearing them snap.
Milestones: Injure or permanently drive off a close friend or loved one. Terrorize a community.
Breaking point: Offer non-violent help to people without expecting any reward.
Vigilante
She may understand the desire to destroy, but the Vigilante can hold it together — just. She might have a specific location or group of people that she protects, or maybe she likes finding bad people and breaking heads. As long as she sticks to bad people, where’s the problem?
Milestones: Kill or drive off a criminal element threatening your throng or community. Strike out against something you believe in because “justice” demands it.
Breaking point: Let your target go because you cannot bring yourself to hurt them.
Milestones
The key points on a Created’s journey from her genesis to her final transformation come in the form of milestones. While the Pilgrimage trait measures how close she is to having the metaphysical reagents in place to undergo the New Dawn, a milestone is a specific moment when she learns something about the human condition.
That momentary rush of understanding also brings with it an element of supernatural power called Vitriol.
Milestones come in three distinct kinds. Universal milestones are, as their name implies, milestones that all of the Created must go through before performing the Great Work. Prescribed milestones reflect the Role that the Promethean has taken, as well as specific moments unique to her ongoing story. Instinctive milestones are those that come about soon after the Promethean’s creation, moments that answer questions or otherwise define the Promethean’s basic nature.