By Brian Leybourne and Max Trebilcock.

Players Section.

Nobody knows who the first Wildman was - whether it was truly an old hermit living with the beasts in the wilderness, or merely a competent vet or cowpoke. Regardless, it seems that anyone who is very close to animals in his day-to-day existence is liable to receive visions from the nature and animal spirits of the Sioux.

Having received this visitation, the newly created Wildman finds two main benefits have resulted with his brush with the animal spirits. Firstly, he gains the ability to form a friendship bond with animals he has come to know and who trust him. Secondly, he finds that he can call upon those same animal spirits to grant him powers, although they extract a price.

Some of these "Wildmen" continue with their lives, revelling in their newly discovered affinity with the beasts around them. Others however, have taken the gifts given them and travel the west, battling the Reckoners with the praise and gifts of the animal and nature spirits.

Character Creation.

To create a Wildman character, the player must first fill a few statistic requirements, as shown below:

Next, the character must purchase the 5 point Arcane Background: Wildman, and at least one point in the new Spirit: Wildman trait. Each point in this trait costs two character points to purchase (so to buy level 3 will cost six points), and later, it costs double the new level to increase the trait with experience points. Note that the AB is a little pricier than most other AB's, but the character gains a free bonded animal companion for their extra two points, as you will see a little later on.

Unlike many other Arcane Backgrounds, all of the Wildman powers are available to the Wildman immediately - there is no need to purchase them like Hexes or Miracles. However, using these powers extracts a cost - the Nature Spirits demand compensation for the use of their powers. This compensation takes the form of animal traits the character will exhibit for a time after he has successfully used one of the Wildman powers.

Your Marshal has the full details as to how this compensation works. All you need to know for now is that the higher the compensation cost of a power (from one to nine), the more severe a trait you may exhibit, and the longer you may exhibit it for. A minor compensation might be to have reflective eyes (like a cats), while a major compensation might take the form of steer's horns, clawed hands, or maybe a thick all-over covering of fur. The Severity and Duration of a trait work against each other, so the more severe Traits generally vanish faster, while the more minor ones may last longer.

The only other thing to keep in mind is that if you generate compensation while you are still exhibiting an animal trait from a previous compensation cost, it will occasionally extend the period of the new compensation, or make it a little more visible to onlookers. A wise Wildman conserves his or her powers and does not use them willy-nilly.

A Wildman may reduce the duration of compensation traits by spending fate chips.  Your Marshall knows exactly how this works, but be aware that spending fate chips will reduce the duration of all current compensations.           A white chip will reduce all trait durations one step, a red two and a blue three steps.  There are only five steps to trait durations (from one minute to 1d4 days) so spending chips will greatly reduce the time you exhibit animal traits.  A legend chip will remove all current compensation traits.

The Animal Bond.

At character creation, the player may select any one animal for the character to already be bonded to. The animal chosen may be any type of beast, from mammals to birds to reptiles. The only restriction is that no animal created or altered by the reckoning may be selected as a bonded animal (no Mohave Rattlers).

During play, the character may bond other animals. The maximum number of animals that may be bonded is equal to the characters Spirit: Wildman trait. To bond a new animal costs five bounty points, and a week or so of game time while the character gets to know the animal, gaining its trust and forming a friendship with it. After the week is over (and the bounty points spent), the character makes a Foolproof (3) Spirit: Wildman roll. If unsuccessful, the Nature and Animal spirits have found the creature unworthy of the bond, but the character has still lost the bounty points. A botch means that the character herself has been found unworthy, and she loses one level in the Spirit: Wildman trait as well as losing the five bounty points.

If successful, the bond is formed. Although there is no outward change in the animal, its intelligence increases to the level of a (slightly slow) human, and it gains an immense love and trust for the character. The Wildman is able to mentally talk with any bonded animal when within one mile per level in the Spirit: Wildman trait. Within this same range of each other, bonded animals may mentally communicate with each other, and even with bonded animals of another Wildman (so two Wildman characters could talk at a great distance using their Bonded animals via a relay system).

Your Marshal will generate statistics for your bonded animals (or may allow you to do it) - we recommend using the system from the Rascals, Varmints and Critters book. Your Marshal will role-play the animals, but you should feel encouraged to assist in this task by preparing a description of each animals quirks and personality. Your Marshal should also allow you to spend bounty points on improving your bonded animal, and we suggest that each bonded animal be given one fate chip per session which it can spend to prevent wounds or improve die rolls. If not used by the end of the session, the animal loses the chip (it cannot horde chips between sessions like a character can). Your Wildman can give his bonded animals fate chips, by spending a similarly coloured fate chip to be allowed to do so (in the same manner as giving chips to other characters.)

Finally, should a Wildmans bonded animal ever die, the Wildman will feel the loss greatly. The mental backlash from the death will knock out the character for 1D10 minutes, and she will have a -3 to all actions for the next three days (reducing by 1 per day, so the second day is -2 to all actions and the third -1) due to the grief and feeling of loss generated by the death of the animal.

Character Advancement.

With ongoing practice and experience in the use of the Wildman abilities, the Wildman character can petition the animal spirits to grant that power a little more freely.  Put simply, during play the player can spend bounty points to reduce the compensation cost of abilities.  Every two bounty points spent on an ability will reduce that ability’s compensation cost by 1 point, permanently.  The cost can never fall below 1, however.

The Powers.

This ability allows the Wildman to draw pain out of an animal. Although it does not heal the animal, it will allow it to act without the usual wound level penalties, even though it may in fact be badly wounded.

The Wildman must be able to touch the animal to be affected. If he uses it on a bonded animal, the difficulty is reduced by 1 to 4. The ability lasts ten minutes plus a further ten minutes per raise on the activation roll.

The compensation cost is 1 per level of wound penalty negated.  Note that if the roll is successful, all wound penalties are negated - the Wildman cannot elect to remove only 'some' of the pain.

This ability allows the Wildman to 'borrow' a characteristic of any animal he can see. Thus the Wildman may decide to grow bear claws, or to be covered with a heavy layer of fur for insulation, or perhaps to grow the wings of an eagle and fly. The exact abilities and bonuses gained are up to the Marshal, and are linked to how drastic a change has to occur in your body to accommodate the characteristic. Cats claws are very small, and would be barely visible extending from the tips of characters fingers, but might have a damage rating of only Str+1D4.        Bear claws on the other hand, might be Str+1D10, but would cause the characters hands to elongate and stretch, possibly gaining a thick covering of coarse hair and fleshy pads rather than fingers.

Compensation for this ability is handled slightly differently than usual. Your Marshal has details in his section...      no cheating and looking, Wildman. The changes last for ten minutes, plus an additional ten minutes per success on the activation roll.

If the character borrows a characteristic from a bonded animal, he gets a -1 bonus to the Target Number required, and the compensation cost is lower.

By calling to the nature spirits, and gently touching a wounded animal, the Wildman can cause some of its wounds to close and heal. As usual, the difficulty to heal a bonded animal is reduced by one.

Succeeding in the activation roll will allow the Wildman to heal one wound level on the animal. Each raise will also heal a further level. The wounds will begin to knit almost instantly, and will be closed (and in game turns, gone) within minutes.

The Compensation cost is one point per wound level healed. The Wildman cannot elect to leave some wounds untended if his roll indicates he could heal them (In other words, if a character rolls 3 raises, and the animal has four wounds, he must heal all of them, he cannot elect to heal only two or three).

Wildmen are by nature finely attuned to the wild, and as such some of them can sense the presence of that which is un- or supernatural and therefore does not fit into Natures balance.  Balance of Nature works a little differently from many of the other Wildman powers.  The Wildman rolls his Spirit: Wildman Aptitude, and checks on the table below what information he has gathered from his usage of this ability.

The Wildman has no control over what he finds, so if for example he was attempting to locate a nearby coven of witches and rolled a 13 he would pick up everything within the surrounding area and have to pay the full Compensation (Its an all or nothing deal), however, if there is nothing to be detected above a certain level, the power (and thus cost) will cap at that level.

In other words, if the above mentioned Coven of Witches (a Medium or Large source depending on the marshals discretion) was the only un-natural/supernatural presence in the area, the Wildman would only pay the 2 or 3 compensation for that information, rather than the full compensation for the roll of 13.