LAWHAMMER CAREERS 18 - CLERIC OF RANALD (Patreon)

Let's kick the new year off with a bang and start with a set of new Ralandan Careers for you all. These were put together for the newest addition to our LAWhammer group, Sage, who will be playing a Nipponese Envoy/Cleric of Ranald, and I'm loving how her character is shaping up around this new Career Path.

Inevitably, this Career Path will be replaced by an official Career in some future publication, but this version should stand in as a great starting point for those of you looking to create your own Career to fill that gap in the interim.

This Career Path includes 3 sub-paths that support all the primary Ranaldan orders and their many different manifestations across the Old World. As always, if you have more ideas for how these should be presented, please do post them on Discord and we can maybe develop this one further.

You'll need WFRP4 to make sense of this Career Path. You'll also need to check my post Career Paths - Extra Details for any extra stuff you may not understand. As with the other Paths I've posted here, this post is a mixture of cut&pastes from my houserules for our game.

With that all said, let's go!

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Actually, before we do, let me paste a wee box into place first, much as I did with the Priest of Sigmar Career Path. All the cleric Careers we're using assume you have no blessing or miracles, because that is the case for most holy folk in the Old World. For the few clerics who are directly blessed by their gods, there is a wee table that grants access to a bunch of extra Talents at the cost of having to adhere to their God's Strictures or... well, wrath time. And possibly worse.

So, here's that box:

And just in case you missed it, being holy comes alongside a Status boost, too!

And now we're ready! So, to the cat-faced Cult of Ranald...

CLERIC OF RANALD
Those in power like to discredit the Cult of Ranald as a disorganised, disparate mob of ill-disciplined malcontents. More a gang of greedy thieves and con-artists than a serious organised religion. And, while there may be a measure of truth to such claims, the God of Trickery, Luck, and Deception’s cultists see this as a strength, not a weakness.

Because Ranald offers hope against overwhelming odds and laughs in the face of adversity, the god’s cult is more one of the ruled rather than the ruling. It’s dominated by the poor, the downtrodden, and those desperate to enact change for the better, and has an organisation reflecting this. The cult has a loose structure with decentralised leadership, individual Ranaldans move from one order to the next as required, and the remit of local cells varies significantly.

The Crosses. The Crosses, the public-facing clerics of Ranald, are the most recognised and accepted of the Trickster God’s diverse cultists. They are responsible for administering Ranald’s overt temples across the Old World, many of which double as gambling halls where profits are donated to the poor. Although some Crosses hide their activities, most operate openly, with their clerics offering advice to those seeking Ranald’s aid, usually for a fee. The Crosses also tend to the spiritual well-being of the cult as a whole, administering the ‘Pilgrimage of Fingers’, tasks and penances that reputedly bring supplicants closer to Ranald.

The Kinship. This secretive group of Ranaldans is cloistered in business, more akin to a close-knit merchant guild than a religious order. Known variably across the Old World as ‘The Brotherhood’, ‘The Sorority’, and ‘The Guild of Crows’, most cells of the Kinship work to game the economic system, securing funds from the privileged classes to support other Ranaldan activities. Among other duties, they are also responsible for spotting potential targets for the Magpies and for safekeeping the Cult’s lore. The order maintains a handful of covert monasteries collecting a motley mix of tomes concerning Ranald’s deeds in the Mortal Realms, the most famous of which is The Great Joke.

The Magpies. The innocent-sounding Magpies are effectively Ranald’s inquisitors. They claim many names, including ‘The Givers of Coin’, ‘The Prowlers’, and ’Night’s Judgement’. The Magpies investigate and judge the prosperous, and when they find them wanting, they steal what their targets hold most dear. Their grand thefts ensure the Magpies are hated by despots, tyrants, and the greedy alike. Because their holy work is illegal and their targets invariably influential, most Magpies end their careers in prison or dancing from a gibbet.

The Crooked Fingers. When the other orders face adversity, Ranald’s protectors, the Crooked Fingers, respond. The Fingers are tasked to directly target enemies of the cult, and their methods can be devastating. They eschew open conflict and murder – after all, death is no punishment, it is a release. Instead, they tear apart the lives of their enemies by destroying reputations, breaking alliances, and bringing down those who cross them. The Crooked Fingers include some of the most notorious criminals of the Old World, many of whom are so ruthless that even other Ranaldans pause before requesting their aid.

That'll do. If you want to imagine these Ranaldans clerics in traditional 'Careers', think of the Crosses as 'Priests', the Kinship as 'Nuns', the Magpies as 'Witch Hunters', and the Crooked Fingers as 'Warrior Priests', but they stretch those traditional roles significantly.

So, what's next? Miracles for Ranald? Or more Career Paths? Videos? We'll see very soon.

If you have any opinions, suggestions, questions, or have just spotted an error, ping me over on the LAWhammer Discord and we can talk it all out there.

Chat later!