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Background: Sailor
The sea has its own law, and none of it is written down on land. It does not care whose flag you fly or what a magistrate decided about you in some other country: it asks only whether you can hold a course, hold your watch, and hold your nerve. You go up wet rigging in a gale and come down faster, smell weather an hour before it breaks, hear the one rope in a hundred that is about to part, and steer by stars half the world never bothered to name. You have slept soundly through a storm that had landsmen praying. You have turned back for a boat when nobody would have blamed you for sailing on, because that is the law too. In port you drink like someone with one night to live, because that is the arithmetic, and you have brawled over a card game, a song, and an insult in a language you do not speak. Let others keep their fields and their fences. Out there the sea is honest with you, and you would rather be lost on it than safe anywhere else.
You speak the language of decks and harbors, and it opens the water to you. In any port you can find a berth: work your passage, or trade on a name that some captain in the crowd will recognize, and bring your companions aboard on your word (with the understanding that they will be expected to earn it, and that a captain's mercy has limits). Dockside, you hear what sailors hear before anyone on land does: which ships came in short-crewed and why, what the harbor master is being paid to overlook, which vessel sailed for a coast that no chart shows and has not come back. And there is always a berth going on a voyage that no sensible sailor will sign for.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ability scores | STR, DEX, WIS |
| Skills | Acrobatics, Perception |
| Proficiency | Cartographer |
| Tool | Cartographer’s Tools |
| Origin feat | Tavern Brawler |