Riven Mind

Once you were drawn deeply into a hivemind, such that you lost your sense of self entirely. When the hivemind ended, you had to rebuild your identity, and even now decades later you sometimes feel like nothing mattered as much as when you were bonded so fully with the minds of others. You have a knack for understanding people’s thoughts, but likely have drifted through life, perpetually disappointed by the shallowness of all your relationships, accomplishing little of note. Consider what has shaken you out of this long fog to begin adventuring. What do the people who were part of the same hivemind think about you, and do you keep in touch?

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

Skill Proficiencies: Insight, and either Culture or Persuasion. 

Tool Proficiencies: Two of your choice.

Suggested Equipment (Cost 1 gold): Common clothes, a winter blanket.

Feature: Whispers of the Many. Some lingering telepathic potential causes the emotions of those around you to bleed into your own, and it took a long time to learn how to keep them at bay (or perhaps you are still afflicted in the presence of crowds). You find it easy to blend into crowds and not appear out of place, regardless of your attire, as long as you don’t draw attention to yourself. You can extend this same inconspicuous sense of conformity to creatures traveling with you.

Sometimes you can sense who in a large gathering feels out of place. You can focus and try to deliberately receive these epiphanies, but there is no guarantee you’ll learn anything.

Adventures and Advancement. When you encounter creatures which were once part of your hive mind, you gain a bit of your old sense of purpose. Once you have met several such beings, you may gain a special form of telepathy which works at any distance, but only with your former hive mates.  

Riven Mind Connection

1. A strong-willed member of your former hive who pushed the group to commit cruel acts.
2. A mysterious telepathic voice which sometimes speaks to you.
3. A valued and talented friend, once a member of your hive, now mired in despair.
4. A person seeking vengeance for an act your hivemind committed.
5. A former boss who feels responsibility for you.
6. The scholar who nursed you to health in the difficult months after your severing.
7. A sage, once a member of your hive, who provides you information.
8. The beautiful mind which you loved but never met in person.
9. A person who was only a child when they were caught in your hivemind, and whom you took care of because all their family shunned them.
10. Someone who claims to be a close friend from before you were in the hive mind; you have no memory of them from that time.

Riven Mind Memento

1. A collection of trinkets that seem to be made of flesh but never need to eat, which respond somehow to your thoughts.
2. Several sets of artisans’ tools from various failed careers.
3. Scrawled notes of hivemind memories which are now vanished like dreams.
4. A vivid memory of a murder, with no clue of where it occurred or to whom.
5. A news clipping about the rampage your hivemind undertook.
6. A hoop skirt or broad-brimmed hat, part of a failed social distancing scheme.
7. An ant farm (strangely soothing!).
8. A sketchbook in which you draw the faces you see in your dreams.
9. A piece of someone else’s flesh that remains merged into yours and sometimes feels alien sensations.
10. Two syringes filled with silvery fluid. You used to have a third one, and when you injected yourself with it, someone else took over your body for a few minutes.