Shadower

While most shadowcasts prefer not to contemplate their counterpart, you are deeply curious about them, even going as far as finding a portal to the Material Plane, planning to find and observ e them—perhaps not unlike a naturalist studying a rare animal. However, something happened along the way that led you to adventure.

How do you feel about your counterpart? Have you been able to see them yet? Would or have you introduced yourself if you have? Did you choose to stay of the Material Plane, or do you wish to return to the Bleak Gate? Are your adventures a way to find your counterpart, surpass them, or a choice all your own?

Ability Score Increases: +1 to Dexterity and one other ability score.

Skill Proficiencies: Stealth and either Culture, Insight, or Investigation.

Tool Proficiencies: Disguise kit.

Suggested Equipment (Cost 39 gold): bottle of ink, 10 sheets of parchment, ink pen, disguise kit, traveler’s clothes..

Feature: Other Side of the Coin. Your interest in your counterpart has made your bond— and thus your shared inclinations—stronger, even if you do not walk the same path. Choose a feature from a different background, to reflect the abilities and tendencies of your counterpart.

Adventures and Advancement. If you choose to lean into the tendencies of your counterpart, you gain the advancements detailed in that background. Alternately, your knack for subtlety, research, and observation come to the attention of those with matters that require investigation, whether on the streets as a detective, in the stacks as a scholar, or some similar pursuit. Once you have taken on several of these jobs, you gain admission to esoteric libraries (containing information to answer questions that require a DC 25 Arcana, Culture, Engineering, History, Nature, or Religion check) or are sponsored as a member of a secret society or exclusive social club, enabling you to learn relevant information of the same DC. It is up to the discretion of the narrator whether such connections allow you to find specific information.

Connection and Memento. Due to the nature of this background, the Narrator may allow you to choose a connection from a different background, potentially one with someone who mistook you for your counterpart. Otherwise, roll 1d10, choose, or make up your own.

Shadower Connections

1. The kindly innkeeper who let you do odd jobs for free room and board.
2. A fellow shadowcast who found and protected you after your formation.
3. Your counterpart, who accepted you as family.
4. The charlatan who took advantage of your naivete and used you as a dupe in their swindle.
5. A fellow shadowcast, thus far unable to return home.
6. Your best friend, who always warned against finding your counterpart.
7. Your counterpart, who was horrified and attempted to harm you.
8. The mage who found your nature fascinating and wanted to study you.
9. The cleric who thinks you a foul abomination.
10. The family of your now-dead counterpart, eager to have you with them—for good or ill?

Shadower Mementos

1. A personal effect of your counterpart; a comb or accessory.
2. A strange pocket mirror that always shows your reflection in the black and white of the Bleak Gate.
3. A book related to your counterpart’s area of expertise.
4. A philosophy text related to the nature of the self.
5. A small, brilliantly colored landscape painting.
6. A shard of glass in which a wailing ghost can sometimes be seen.
7. A lantern given to you by a shadowcast soul shepherd.
8. A monogrammed locket given to you by a dying adventurer in the Bleak Gate, begging you to return it to their family.
9. Strange, shimmering scars from a near-deadly encounter with an incorporeal undead.
10. A spider pendant you found lying in the open, with no one about to have dropped it.