Meeting of Four Lives (GLoG Class: Archer)

In certain uncertain times, the archer was a strange talisman. They enjoyed a sort of elite status in wartime, but were often drawn from the remote and lonely parts of the land, where to hunt was the lifeway. To kill from a distance is a powerful thing, and some say that our species became fully human in developing our brains to calculate the subtleties of throwing projectiles. To kill from a distance is a powerful thing, for that is what kings fear and what is murmured in the pubs and meeting halls of discontented yeomen.

As they say, the highest head may fall to the man who wields the bow.

art by Ernst Stückelberg

Class: Archer

+1 to-hit per level

Starting Items: 7' yew bow stored in a linen bow bag, jerkin of dusty lincoln green, quiver of twenty-four bodkin arrows with your signature crest and fletching (d6 damage), pen knife (d4 damage), a kettle helmet (AC 12), a dozen bowstrings squirreled away in the rest of your pack

• A: Four Lives, The Telling
• B: Air Time, Heavy Draw
• C: Grip Strength, Twenty Brothers
• D: Split Shot, Border Broken

Four Lives
You are not like other soldiers. You are the boundary stone between two fraternities— the world and its enemies. There are rites no one taught you, that no one else will ever see. You dispatch Death, and he reports on you. While in good standing, you can hear hollow spaces and always find good game. If you lose your good standing, someone will come to take your bow and middle fingers.

The Telling
Specify a dime-sized spot in space. Aim for one turn, then release on the next turn. Your projectile goes unerringly towards that spot.

Air Time
By firing at extreme arcs, you can fire off attacks delayed by up to three rounds. With good planning, you can fire off three shots that all strike the same spot in the same round.

Heavy Draw
No one can draw your bow except archers of your level or better. You can fire arrows weighed down with ropes, bombs, or other things that normally wouldn’t fly.

Grip Strength
Your hands count as steel when it would be convenient to you.

Twenty Brothers
You know the slanders to mutter to your arrowheads to make them quarrelsome. They stick in your target, giving -1 to AC and saves per arrow sticking in them. Each arrow they may tear out in the midst of battle costs 1 hp.

Split Shot
By spending an extra 1d6 arrows, turn your normal shot into a 60’ line attack or 40’ cone of arrows

Border Broken
When the sun rises and before it falls below the horizon, you have twelve Judo Points. As you gain this ability, choose one of the Four Lives:

Cat: spend Points to add to rolls to sneak, to climb, or to snap.

Branch: spend Points to add to rolls to resist sunder attempts, to remain rooted, to navigate, or to bend without breaking.

Quarry: spend Points to add to rolls to throw someone, to dress a wound, or to slip out of grasp.

Man: spend Points to add to rolls to hit a target. One of the two fraternities embraces you and one rejects you. You are now like other soldiers.

Items Known to Archers

1. Sheath of 24 Broadhead Arrows- deal 1d8 damage. Dames don't like it when you call em broadheads.
2. 8 Cruelly Barbed Arrowheads- if you use these to hunt, lose your good standing. Causes constant bleeding, cannot be easily removed
3. Thick Quarterstaff- 1d10 damage, but slow.
4. 4' Horn Shortbow- fires less far, but better suited to riding. Allows for a Parthian shot as you retreat.
5. Caltraps- strung together in an irregular web for swiftness of deployment and removal. Called by hand-to-handers and cavaliers "caltrops."
6. Soldier's Rosary- shortened, to allow for quicker prayers.
7. Ring Bow- a bow with a small ring in the bowstring where an arrow would normally be nocked. This bow is paired with nockless, tapered-back arrows so that foes cannot collect the arrows to fire them back.
8. Flip Brassard- a hand tab designed to protect the hand from being hit by the string, equipped with a hinged buckler that can slot into place when the bow is set aside.
9. 5' Ash Recurve Bow- you could talk all night about relative draw strengths and so on, but for game purposes this is just as good as your yew bow, just a bit shorter. 
10. Trollhair Drawstring- never needs to be replaced and cannot be cut, except by a red-hot knife.
11. Homemade Flute- if you could make this, you know how make an arrow that screams.
12. Horn Armguard- works no better than a leather one, but swaggalicious.