Roguewrights

 

Qualifications

Becoming a Roguewright requires more curiosity than caution, more imagination than discipline. Prospective members must demonstrate basic engineering skill and a willingness to engage with volatile prototypes without flinching. Unlike the Fabrication Guild, formal training or precision is optional. What matters is the spark of insight and the bravery to pursue ideas that others would call impossible or irresponsible. The Roguewrights favor the bold, the unconventional, and the slightly unhinged; anyone who shows passion for discovery over safety quickly catches their attention.

 

Career Progression

As Roguewrights advance, they evolve from helpers and parts-runners to fully autonomous experimenters. Tinker’s Hands begin by observing and surviving, while Labwrights gain small workspaces and a trickle of faction resources. Achieving Labwright status marks a shift from supervised invention to total freedom: your lab, your rules, your risks. Higher ranks develop reputations for brilliance or madness (often both), accumulating credits, advanced equipment, and followers who hope to witness or survive their next breakthrough. At the pinnacle, Savants live almost entirely outside faction norms, envied for their genius and feared for their unpredictability.

 

Social Status

Roguewrights occupy a strange social space in Camp Hope: admired for their genius, avoided for their penchant for explosions. Within the Engineers, they are respected as visionary pioneers, even if they cause sleepless nights for safety officers. Outside the faction, they are seen as fascinating, intimidating, and occasionally catastrophic, folk legends with scorch marks to prove their legacy. While not as institutionally powerful as the Fabrication Guild, they enjoy a kind of cult prestige: the mystique of those who dare to reshape the world one hazardous experiment at a time.

 

Goals of the Profession

The Roguewrights pursue one overriding goal: discovery. Every experiment, no matter how risky, is an attempt to uncover a new principle, rediscover forgotten tech, or push pre-Fall knowledge into uncharted territory. Secondary goals include personal innovation, refining unstable prototypes into usable inventions, and cultivating a legacy of insight that outlives the experimenter; assuming the experimenter survives. They also support Camp Hope in crises, but always on their own terms; when the situation demands brilliance over caution, the Roguewrights are the ones who step forward.

Rank 1: Tinker’s Hand

• Prerequisite: Renown 1 with the Engineers.

A Tinker’s Hand is the extra set of fingers every inventor wishes they had. Quick, curious, and usually singed at the edges. You haul scrap, stabilize trembling machinery, and dive for cover when a prototype gives off that ominous hum. Most of what you learn comes from watching your mentors survive their own brilliance. You’re not yet trusted with volatile experiments, but you’re close enough to feel the heat when they go wrong, which is exactly where every future Roguewright begins.

• You are given an Engineer Insignia.
• You are given an Engineering Kit TL0.
• You become proficient in the Engineering Kit if you are not already.

Rank 2: Tinker

• Prerequisite: rank 1, Renown 3 with the Engineers.

As a Tinker, you’ve proven you can handle yourself around unstable ideas and partially stable mentors. You run a tiny lab space of your own. Little more than a desk, a bench, and a fire bucket and you finally get to blow things up by choice rather than accident. Your experiments are small, unsafe, and wonderfully yours. Other Engineers start to notice you, whether because of your ingenuity… or the smoke occasionally drifting from your workspace.

• You gain a contact from one of the tables in the background section. You choose if it is an ally or a rival.
• You are given an Engineering Kit TL1.
• In most areas, you will be able to recover $20 worth during a short rest and $30 worth during a long rest for your widget bag.
• When using the Engineering Kit to craft an item, your result modifier is now -9 instead of -10.
• During downtime: you have the option of attempting to run your shop as a business.

Rank 3: Labwright

• Prerequisite: Rank 2, Renown 10 with the Engineers.

A Labwright has earned full experimental independence, claiming a proper workshop outfitted with scavenged tech, half-functioning devices, and a growing pile of “necessary spare parts.” You choose your own projects, your own risks, and your own definition of “acceptable levels of combustion.” Fellow Engineers visit your shop seeking solutions or entertainment. You’re no longer a student of chaos; you’re an active contributor to it.

• You gain a contact from one of the tables in the background section. You choose if it is an ally or a rival.
• You are given an Engineering Kit TL2.
• In most areas, you will be able to recover $30 worth during a short rest and $40 worth during a long rest for your widget bag.
• When using the Engineering Kit to craft an item, your result modifier is now -8 instead of -10.
• During downtime: you have the option of attempting to run your shop as a business.

Rank 4: Freewright

• Prerequisite: Rank 3, Renown 15 with the Engineers.

A Freewright is a proven master of controlled creation. At this rank, consistency and precision are second nature; a Freewright can look at a failing system and intuit exactly where its hidden weaknesses lie. Their work shapes Camp Hope in visible, lasting ways: stabilizing power grids, restoring ancient machines, and drafting the blueprints that other Engineers follow for decades. A Freewright embodies the principle that true innovation flourishes within well-drawn boundaries, turning raw possibility into safe, functional reality through discipline and technical artistry.

• You gain a contact from one of the tables in the background section. You choose if it is an ally or a rival.
• You are given an Engineering Kit TL3.
• In most areas, you will be able to recover $40 worth during a short rest and $50 worth during a long rest for your widget bag.
• When using the Engineering Kit to craft an item, your result modifier is now -7 instead of -10
• During downtime: you have the option of attempting to run your shop as a business.

Rank 5: Roguewright

• Prerequisite: Rank 4, Renown 25 with the Engineers.

Now considered one of the great experimenters of your generation, you have a well-stocked laboratory and the freedom to attempt nearly anything your imagination conjures. Your breakthroughs push the boundaries of science, and your eccentricities push the patience of anyone living nearby. Engineers whisper your name with admiration, fear, or both. You are a rogue mind unchained, creating wonders no council would ever approve, and no rulebook could ever contain.

• You gain a contact from one of the tables in the background section. You choose if it is an ally or a rival.
• You are given an Engineering Kit TL4.
• In most areas, you will be able to recover $50 worth during a short rest and $60 worth during a long rest for your widget bag.
• When using the Engineering Kit to craft an item, your result modifier is now -6 instead of -10
• During downtime: you have the option of attempting to run your shop as a business.

Rank 6: Savant

• Prerequisite: Rank 5, Renown 50 with the Engineers.

A Savant stands at the pinnacle of discovery. An elite, elusive, and slightly mythic figure within the Engineers. Your laboratory is envied, your rivals are numerous, and your ideas are so far beyond conventional practice that they often resemble prophecy or madness. The faction treats you with awe and caution, knowing that your next invention could change Camp Hope forever… or change it into a crater. You are the living embodiment of unrestrained genius, the final expression of what a Roguewright can become.

• You gain a contact from one of the tables in the background section. This contact is a rival.
• You are given an Engineering Kit TL5.
• In most areas, you will be able to recover $60 worth during a short rest and $70 worth during a long rest for your widget bag.
• When using the Engineering Kit to craft an item, your result modifier is now -5 instead of -10
• During downtime: you have the option of attempting to run your shop as a business.