Node Attendant

A Node Attendant is not a wage earner but a vital conduit between civilization and the planet’s raw magical currents. Their role, whether as technician, priest, or guide, is to stabilize, interpret, and harness the power that sustains Novendragos’s magi-tech infrastructure. Their compensation reflects not time spent, but the rarity of their gift and the danger it entails.

State-employed Attendants in Kendron serve the Ministry of Conduits or the Lumenarch Collegium, maintaining dragocite nodes and stabilizing dragocite flow. They earn steady pay in Drakemetal Tokens (DT), enjoy access to cutting-edge tools, and live comfortably with pensions and high status.

Those aligned with druidic orders act as Grove Keepers, preserving natural dragocite through ritual and communion. Their needs are met communally, but their true reward is spiritual: elemental boons, visions, and power gifted by the land.

Freelance Dowsers sell their services to factions outside the law, trading risk for immense, untaxed wealth—earning rare treasures, magical artifacts, or even shares of discovered dragocite motherlodes.

A Leyline Attendant serves as the critical link between civilization and the raw magical forces of Novendragos. In the cities of Kendron, they function as elite arcane technicians, maintaining the dragocite power grid and preventing elemental catastrophes through delicate calibrations and emergency containment. Without them, the engines stop, the lights go out, and entire sectors collapse into magical disarray.

Beyond the cities, their role shifts from technician to guardian. In the wilds, Attendants act as mystic custodians of natural leylines, performing ancient rites to calm volatile currents or cleanse corrupted flows. They preserve the delicate balance that prevents arcane disasters from reshaping the landscape.

Wherever magic runs deepest, they are gatekeepers of immense, untapped power. No settlement, secret outpost, or arcane extraction can begin without their guidance. Their presence determines who gains access to the leyline’s gifts—and who is consumed by them. They are essential, unseen, and irreplaceable.

A Leyline Attendant occupies a paradoxical place in Novendragos society—vital yet feared, celebrated yet shunned. To the ruling elite, especially within Kendron, a state-sanctioned Attendant is a cornerstone of civilization. These technicians are praised as guardians of the dragocite grid and treated with the respect afforded to high-ranking engineers or military officers. Securing a post within the Ministry of Conduits marks one as both talented and loyal, a valued figure in the machinery of progress.

Among common folk, however, the image darkens. Attendants who operate beyond the cities—freelance Dowsers and Grove Keepers—are met with superstition and suspicion. Their connection to raw leyline energy evokes fear, casting them more as witches than professionals. Villagers might cross themselves at their approach, wary of the arcane forces they channel. Even when their services are sought, they are kept at a distance, regarded as tools to be used, not neighbors to be welcomed.

A Leyline Attendant’s kit is a blend of arcane engineering and intuitive craft, designed not to shape the world’s magic, but to listen, attune, and stabilize it. Issued satchels from the Ministry of Conduits include essentials like resonance meters to measure leyline flow, calibrated tuning forks for detecting harmonic dissonance, and crystal-lensed goggles for spotting subtle energy distortions. Insulated gauntlets, grounding rods, and warding chalk provide protection against unpredictable surges.

Masters and wild-attuned Dowsers carry rarer tools, deeply personalized to their practice. A Celestial Harmonizer forecasts leyline fluctuations by tracking the moons. The Heartstone, unique to each user, allows direct sensory connection to a leyline’s current—at the cost of potential psychic backlash. Legendary tools like the Ley-Scribe render magical topography in shifting maps, while the elusive Stillness Stone creates a zone of perfect magical silence, enabling safe repair under volatile conditions. Such kits are not merely gear—they are lifelines between civilization and the currents that sustain it.

A Leyline Attendant lives in constant peril, managing the volatile forces that course through Novendragos’s magical arteries. Their profession carries existential risks, far beyond those of soldiers or laborers, demanding flawless focus and deep attunement—or the price is annihilation.

The arcane currents they regulate are chaotic and often sentient. A single misstep can trigger a resonant cascade, unleashing feedback that burns flesh, fractures the mind, or erases the body in a flash of elemental fury. Long-term exposure to elementally-aspected lines warps the body and psyche, while contact with corrupted leylines spreads Azhra-taint—leading to madness, mutation, or spiritual assault from the Void.

Their work environments are no safer. Wild leyline nexuses draw predatory magical creatures and twist local reality. Attendants must endure shifting gravity, warped time, and sudden elemental surges while performing delicate calibrations under threat.

Their value also makes them targets. Dowsers are kidnapped for their talents, scapegoated for disasters they didn’t cause, or hunted as rogues if they operate beyond the state’s control. Revered, feared, and exploited, Leyline Attendants walk a razor’s edge between power and destruction.