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Sinful Origins for Mörk Borg Bastards

by Clayton Notestine

Rot rides the wind with a stench of curdled blood. Over the cities, and the fields, and the valleys of the cursed. A dying world, a bitter world, as damned and tortured as the hells below. So cursed is the land of Galgenbeck, that hell rests just beneath its dust—cast aside on the wind.

From the mass burial pits these bastards are stirred awake, dragging themselves from a sea of cold limbs. They are not unlike other Mörk Borg bastards, ranging from gutterborn scum to wretched royalty. Roll up their stats and class like any other—except instead of omens, you are the omen.

You lived once, died once, and were judged. Now, as the world unravels, Hell sends you back. Who are these wretched sinners, these unwelcome saviors, that even the Basilisk forgot?

Wrath

  • 1. The Butcher of Condras. Before there were people, there was Death. The first god waiting for the final prophet. You are this prophet. Those you kill die forever. Even the paltry gods.
  • 2. Kingdrinker. This greatsword was once an usurper king—a revolutionary. You are its comrade. It whispers its experience in power, politics, and intrigue for only you to hear. Go forth. Conquer.
  • 3. Twice-Born. You itch with love, hope, and grief, but you’ve become a master at hiding it. Under your hood, robes, and scars, your previous life—when you were a horror—remains hidden.
  • 4. Tardruff Addiction. These loyal black bishops sit in your pocket like a choir in pews. Ready to be burned on your lips to tangle reality. Inanimate objects you hallucinate are real to you.
  • 5. Murderer’s Shackles. The chains from the church’s incarceration still clink on your wrists and ankles. They should have known they armed you when they forged them into your flesh.
  • 6. Hound’s Curse. The moment you pressed your thumbs into their eyes, you smelled it. Ripe fruit. Satiating blood. No one can hide it. The sweet elixir of adrenaline and fear. You hunger.

Treachery

  • 1. Spider’s Immunity. Lies are your webs. You can see them as if you spun them yourself. Treachery is yours to weave. Not get caught in. You always know a lie when you hear one.
  • 2. Plotters Cascade. You’ve fractured your mind into many. Now, every secret is hidden. Every plot is isolated. You are a sleeper cell to yourself, a stranger in the crowd behind your eyes.
  • 3. Corpse Sleep Extract. They say the soul weighs 21 grams when it leaves the body. If you distill it down, you get what's inside your poisoner’s kit. Pale. Flavorless. Cold. Deadly.
  • 4. Seal of the Doge. Doors open with reverential bows, bent over fear, or begrudging surrender. The nickel seal of Luca Imperiale, the Counter, gives you the right to an audience. It looks real.
  • 5. Bastard’s Flesh. You’ve been assassinated before. Hanged, poisoned, stabbed, burned, and drowned. Trying is common practice, succeeding isn’t. You’re a roach. Hard to kill.
  • 6. Signet Rings. Your hands clink like gauntlets. There isn’t a guild, town, or secret society you don’t have back channels to. When someone says they have a contact, it’s usually you.

Heresy

  • 1. Iron Mask. They tried to cage your visions with this mask, but your consciousness still reaches out from its iron like cold glares. Who needs eyes and ears when you have prejudice?
  • 2. Flamecourter. All fire is young. Listen closely and you can hear its childlike laughter. You are its jester. You can groom, feed, and corrupt any flame with a smile and a whisper.
  • 3. Stygian Chronicler. Lashed to your back is a massive tome with the true history of all things. On the first page, it says it cannot be destroyed. On the second page, it names you its reader.
  • 4. Virgil the Black Lark. An oversized black bird rides your shoulder and heckles your colleagues. He loves to solve puzzles, craft insults, and switch places with his shadow. He is a god.
  • 5. Dead Tom. Your affection for this skull is returned. He can’t speak, but the two of you have history. When you hold him, you talk to the dead, and the dead talk to you. You are popular.
  • 6. Caster’s Ring. An ancient silver band rides a dirty finger. Many have sought it: the power to bring a corpse to heel. None have surmised it: the ring is you—and your body a rotting saddle.

Gluttony

  • 1. Duke Feast Robes. Ripe from wine and grease, your exotic furs, satin, and goosedown mask a gossamer-thin chain mail. Invulnerable. All the better for gorging unmolested.
  • 2. Mountain Stature. Hulking, brooding, and bear-like. When you were young, you grew like the serpent, desirous of anything warm and good. Plenty worry you might still be growing. You are.
  • 3. Amalgam Priest. You never felt like enough. So you stole the power and form of others. You grafted their choice parts to yours. Under your monk robes, is a writhing mosaic of victims.
  • 4. Apothos Doctor. Wrinkled leather cradles your medicinal garrison of salts, balms, tubes, and forceps. Enough to save a life, or in your case, keep it going past unusual bouts of exertion.
  • 5. Calder the Hound. He stands at your belly. The largest wolf hound anyone’s ever seen. He’s never stopped growing. Even wounds can’t keep up. They say he will eat the world. He’s yours.
  • 6. Shapeshifter’s Gullet. Every time you eat, you are born anew. A babe in new flesh, just between meals, long enough to feel them, be them, to shiver in their flesh with exaltation.

Lust

  • 1. Star-Scarred. You fornicated with the shadows of constellations. You can manipulate the firmament of iron. Its gravity can be reduced or increased at will. All you need to do is touch it.
  • 2. Serpent’s Gaze. To others, your eyes are pit traps. One wink and the trapdoor opens. Some call this ensnarement domination. You call it persuasion. Even you believe the things.
  • 3. Dante’s Stead. The stock is carved from a hanging tree. The string is woven from a lover’s sideward glances. This slender crossbow is a concubine to murder. Its bolts always find blood.
  • 4. Elmsoul. You laid under the elm and watered the roots with your soul. You are no longer human but a bark-skin and sap-blood. Your bones are gone. Lost in the roots that bore you.
  • 5. Knight of Mourning. Your lover killed you but the love didn’t end, it clung to you in the safety of your bones. A skeleton and his armor. Where is your lover now? How long must you wander?
  • 6. Vainling Mind. Your consciousness skims the surface of others; drinking in their surface-level thoughts, delicate enough to go unnoticed, vain enough to intrude with a few words if desired.

Fraud

  • 1. Slighter’s Melody. It’s a dirge. A song only you can play. It steals seconds from your future to fill in your present. Time moves slower this way. Slow enough for you to manipulate.
  • 2. The Coin Trick. You can teleport any palm-sized object from your hand to anywhere near you and back. It can be a coin, a key, a note, or a dagger. It’s as fast as your wrists can flick.
  • 3. Fool of Veni. You’re infamous. Everyone knows you are a fool who outlives disaster, stumbles through success, and always plays the pawn. You’re underestimated by default. It’s all a lie.
  • 4. The Tinkerer. The distinctions between a trick and a marvel are expert hands. You’re an engineer. Your final metal tools can fix, break, or disassemble whatever suits you.
  • 5. Dramadus magi. What is a lie if you believe it? Illusions, seen or heard, can be projected from your mind onto the world. All it takes is concentration.
  • 6. The Great Con. You’ve sold mountains and cities. Dined with kings and queens. Lived as a lord, an explorer, and a diplomat. Criminals call you The Badger. Your secret: it’s all true.

Pride

  • 1. Vetruvian God. Your body is a temple and you are its priest. You’ve sculpted a monument that could stand beside any statue or beast made by man and god. Athletic. Beautiful. Impervious.
  • 2. Dearest Mattalock. Bowed, oozing with compliments, reeking of potpourri. Mattalock is your ingratiating servant with a shit-eating grin. They’ll do anything to please you. Anything but die.
  • 3. Magnus Barda. You carry a tacky lute and a swollen head of prose. Your ballads and speeches can soothe the soul and boil the blood. The people love you. Almost as much as you do.
  • 4. The Vulpine Defense. All the world’s a stage, and you think it deserves a one-man play. When you act with flair and brazenness, ideal conditions erupt in freak bouts of luck.
  • 5. Immortal Beauty. Somewhere, a statue of the world’s most beautiful person crumbles, it’s curdling with blood and maggots in the cracks. It’s you. It takes your mutilations for you.
  • 6. Devil’s Mirror. You see flashes of them everywhere. A different you. All your obsession and self-serving evils in a reflection. It watches over you, like a mute shepherd.

Cowardice

  • 1. Pillory Punishment. Clamped to your neck is a torturously heavy wooden stock etched with curses. You cannot be perceived directly. Only by glances. It can never be removed or damaged.
  • 2. Shadeborn. You hid in the shadows until it eclipsed you. Your identity is mostly gone. An afterimage in the dark. In daylight, you scurry under muffled robes like a leper. A walking sunspot.
  • 3. Rhondelet Ooze. Your inaction soured from vice into pestilence. Your body jellied. Your skin whirled with bioluminescent plankton. You are like a jellyfish. An ooze in a suit of armor.
  • 4. Grave’s leap. When the Wolfshead Army slew your countrymen, you found it. The gift to teleport exactly 6 feet. You can do it with a half-second’s breath. You always leave behind something.
  • 5. Dullard’s General. You’re a vainglorious chickenhawk with a tiled breastplate of medals. You carry an overpriced parade saber and a first-of-its-kind Arquebus. You’ve never seen combat.
  • 6. Body Politic. There isn’t an atrocity you didn’t endorse with abstention. You’re the worst kind of coward; you’re a politician. A roaming liability. If you die. Soldiers come to avenge you.