Craft
Craft
What your character is known for in Wizard City…
You may be asking yourself, what in the realms is a Scribner? Nobody truly knows where they came from, only that one day the quills started scratching and the stamps started stamping. A Scribner is a writer, promoter, notary, philosopher, artist, publisher, designer, engineer, and when pressed, a general paper-pusher.
In Wizard City, anything that must be sanctioned, documented, advertised, notarized, canonized, or otherwise made “official” falls under a Scribner’s control. Somehow, without anyone noticing, they’ve cornered the market on legitimacy itself. Nothing counts until a Scribner writes it down.
Scribner
Resourceful and skillful, Trash Bandits are always on the lookout for a good hunk of metal to tinker with. They hold down the standard as part of Wizard City’s working class and caste. With a little magick and some junk, they can make almost anything work in their favor. Scrappy and always ready for a good meal. They’re not poor, just resourceful, making things happen their own way.
Trash Bandits are well-connected and highly organized. They’re known for sneak attacks and, when times get tough, for stealing to make ends meet. Many rise to become assassins, masters of deception, and tricksters who outwit even the sharpest enemy.
Trash Bandit
The Wizards aren’t the shining, robe-draped sages the stories promise. In Wizard City, a “Wizard” is anyone who can bend reality just enough to get away with it. Some were born with talent, others bought schooling, woke and learned, or simply faked it until the magick started faking back. They are both the backbone and the problem of the City: its citizens, its labor, and the authors of every Council edict and draconic law.
Despite the high talk and pointy-hat branding, Wizards are squishy and fragile. They rely on the City and each other more than they’ll admit. They duel for pride, gossip endlessly, and live in quiet terror that one day the City will realize anyone with enough junk and willpower could do what they do. In short, Wizards run Wizard City, but Wizard City also runs them.
Wizard
In Wizard City, food that won’t kill you is rarer than Gobbos. A good Personal Chef isn’t just someone who can sear a steak, they’re the difference between a hearty feast and an unfortunate case of death. These chefs know which mushrooms sing and which ones bite back, which cuts of meat came from a beast and which came from something better left uneaten.
Please don’t mistake them for simple cooks. A Personal Chef is equal parts alchemist, butcher, and entrepreneur. They season with magick, balance flavors with survival instincts, and somehow keep the books straight while doing it. They’ll cater your banquet, then vanish before the poison testers even sit down.
A trustworthy chef is the foundation of any crew and in Wizard City, trust is worth more than the meal itself.
Professional Chef
The Brewsters are alchemists who treat the craft like a back alley bar. Every potion is a cocktail experiment gone slightly wrong, or delightfully right. Part mad scientist, part bartender, and all moxie, they stir flasks instead of shaking fists and fiddle with vials like DJs spinning glass records.
In Wizard City, alchemy is half chemistry, half charisma. A true Brewster knows how to work the room as well as the recipe, riding the line between balance and disaster. Their glowing shots might heal you, hex you, or make you dance until your skeleton falls out, but if you survive the night, you’ll be back for another round.
Alchemist
Wizard City has a beat, and the Bohemians swear they can hear it. Bards, musicians, and poets chase their “most authentic song,” busking on corners with half-broken lutes or boomboxes to scrape together rent. They dream of Crystal Vision and Wizard City Media, telling themselves the City called to them.
Most are broke and desperate, but under pressure they shine like diamonds in the gutter. The Stray chews through dreamers, coaxing out their art, their pain, and sometimes their souls. Some trade anguish for coin, some for applause, and legends say a few sell their soul for a taste of magick. Their job is simple: make you feel something, even if the song outlives its muse.
Bohemian
Warrior of Whatever
Times are tough in Wizard City, and sometimes you just gotta punch a clock or somebody’s face. The Hired Goon takes work where it comes: guarding a castle gate, escorting a half-drunk Diplomat, or running a night watch on some wizard’s vault.
Sometimes the job is a bloodbath. Other times, it’s staring at a Crystal Vision security feed in a cushy office chair, making an honest gobbo while scrolling until your thumbs go numb. Either way, it pays… eventually.
These Goons aren’t in it for glory they’re in it for gritty gobbo, mostly survival, and maybe the occasional chance to crack heads legally. Wizard City chews up heroes, but it always has room for another warm body willing to swing a club for rent.
In the dark echoes of Crystal Vision, behind every cracked black mirror, lurks the Influencer. They grip the City’s social ladders tight; every Wizard knows their names, catchphrases, and carefully curated “authentic” styles. Influence is the game, and they wield it with frightening ease.
With a single phrase, an Influencer can ignite a movement, ruin a reputation, or plant a doubt that festers for years. No one is immune to their charm or wordplay, sharp enough to cut diamonds. They are the spell slingers of the social mind, rivaled only by the Diplomat, and a single careless post can topple an institution as easily as it crowns the next big thing.
Influencer
The Diplomats rise and fall on a single obsession. They wake and sleep with the same thought: “How do I win the next election?”
Their plight for power and the endless fight to keep it. Diplomats understand all good things come with cost. Diplomats pet familiars they’re allergic to, shake hands weighed down with jewels, and kiss asses polished to a mirror shine. They make backdoor deals in smoke filled chambers, trading favors like currency. They hoard secrets not meant to be known, each one another card in their stacked deck.
For all their etiquette, the Diplomat could be a nightmare wrapped in gold and silk. They know every smile hides a blade, every ally has an angle, and every victory only buys them time until the next campaign.
Diplomat
Adventurers have a gleam in their eyes that never quite fades. They are the ones who “just happen” to find lost relics, misplaced tomes, and historical items by total chance, usually while looking for something else entirely. Jack-of-all-trades by necessity, they pick up skills the way others collect debts, adapting on the fly and surviving on instinct, curiosity, and bad ideas that somehow work out.
In Wizard City, adventuring isn’t about glory or combat, at least not primarily. Adventurers thrive on momentum, coincidence, and being in the wrong place at the right time. They negotiate, sneak, barter, puzzle-solve, and occasionally fight, but blades and spells are tools, not the point. Their real talent is discovery, and Wizard City has learned to quietly rely on them to uncover what everyone else missed.
H.E.R.D. stands for the Habitat Education & Research Division. They are an alphabet-soup institution that helps preserve the wildlife and land of Wizard City. H.E.R.D. operatives cover a variety of missions, including land preservation efforts, familiar and loreling initiatives, as well as managing the food network for the City. They hold a lot of ground as the massive heart system that helps keep the City from starving or from overgrowing herbs that could become invasive.
H.E.R.D. is a force to be reckoned with, as they hold high-level clearance. As officials for the City, they are expected to maintain a professional atmosphere.
H.E.R.D. (Agriculture Dept)
Adventurer
Daimyo in Wizard City are equal parts wandering samurai and feared mercenaries, shaped by contracts, favors, and long-forgotten agreements. They acquire land, weapons, and influence almost by accident, often ending up with far more than they ever intended. Their holdings sprawl: armories they barely catalog, estates they rarely visit, and titles they’re not entirely sure how they earned.
Unlike adventurers or wizards, Daimyo are defined by ownership rather than ambition. They sit on piles of power without a clear desire to rule, bound by old codes, personal honor, and obligations they can’t easily escape. In Wizard City, the Daimyo's greatest struggle isn’t gaining more, but figuring out what to do with everything they already have.
Daimyo
Gardeners are full-time plant lovers and lifelong listeners. Part farmer, part biologist, part tree-whisperer, they keep Wizard City alive from the roots up. Every meal, potion, spell component, and breathing street begins in their care. Old sayings follow them through Wizard City, the kind whispered over soil and blood: they thought they were burying them, not realizing they were seeds. Gardeners are the unseen backbone, the most important cog, quietly feeding everything that believes it stands alone.
Gardeners don’t force things to grow, they negotiate. They know which vines crave sunlight, which herbs remember old wars, and which seeds should never be planted twice. Because their work reshapes the future faster than law or spellcraft, H.E.R.D. keeps a close watch, monitoring every plot and graft. In Wizard City, nothing grows by accident, and nothing grows without a Gardener knowing why.
Gardner
High Wizards are not simply powerful Wizards; they are survivors of the system that made Wizards necessary. They have outlasted rivals, reforms, Councils, and trends in Magick, accumulating authority as much through endurance as through spellcraft. Their power is rarely flashy. Instead, it is structural, embedded in policy, precedent, and the quiet ability to say no.
A High Wizard understands that Wizard City is not ruled by spells alone, but by timing, influence, and restraint. They sit above duels and street-level heroics, shaping outcomes from a distance while others exhaust themselves chasing glory. In Wizard City, becoming a High Wizard is less about ascension and more about remaining standing long after everyone else has burned out. Be careful not to get in the way of their smoke, many whom cross the High Wizard become ash and dust.
High Wizard
Illustrations by Ian Chamberlin @doodle_goblin
Color by Hannah Salim @artby_hssalim