Chapter 06 · Classes
Cleric of Archon
Portrait
The Cleric of Archon is a scholar of the Partage, trained to receive, stabilize, and wield the divine mana Archon grants. Clerics study religion, laws, genealogies, rites, and the countless texts describing the Partage. They work with words all day: reading, copying, interpreting, pronouncing, and negotiating with them. Clerics of Archon are therefore typically better writers and diplomats than the casters of Cerberus, though both disciplines have exceptions.
Divine magic is more stable than red mana. Its formulas require none of the complex visualizations taught in Cerberus; they take the form of precise liturgies, learned and intelligently reproduced. This ease does not give the Cleric access to every form of magic. Its catalog is narrower than the Wizard's and favors conjuration, water, and the various operations of the Partage.
The Cleric of Archon is not merely a scholar. Training includes weapons, shields, and armor. Clerics can travel with soldiers, protect consecrated ground, and survive among those to whom they administer rites. They cannot rival the martial progression of a Fighter or Ranger, but begin far better armed than a Wizard and continue to improve in combat.
The Trident-Staff
The trident-staff is the Cleric's ceremonial weapon: a two-handed, three-pronged shaft carried at rites and processions. It deals 1d8 and reaches like a spear (see 10).
Most Clerics fight with other weapons. The trident-staff is made for metamagic enchantments such as Quicken, Long, and Delay.
Its enchantments reveal how much mana its bearer receives. A heavily enchanted trident-staff publicly marks a priest whose grace is rising.
The Two Eras of the Partage
The Cleric's role changes with the infrastructure of the Partage, while the nature of divine magic remains the same.
The First Partage. A Cleric of Archon harvests mana directly from a person. The mana and some of the source's blood are trapped in water, then this bloodied water is sent to Archon. The rite requires officiants, vessels, and a way to carry the water to Archon or one of the Partage's consecrated centers.
The harvested source's ordeal. A properly performed harvest leaves its source with no spell slots and no caster level for 24 hours, along with minor damage and fatigue far beyond the blood loss. The believer rises emptied of something they cannot name, and some temperaments retain a sadness for days. The officiating Cleric knows this: it is the first act of the office, and what exiled families in Cerberus call slavery.
The Global Partage. The spell acts across the Ark. Its waters enter bodies directly, extract mana, and return on their own to Archon or the center where the Partage is maintained. Harvesting is automated; Clerics no longer need to visit each believer. They remain necessary to study doctrine, administer local rites, and stabilize the divine mana redistributed by the system.
In both eras, an ordinary Cleric of Archon uses the Partage but does not master it. Remote transformations, physical investitures, and miracles fueled by a victim are specific spells, limited by available mana, connection to the Partage, and what Archon chooses to grant.
A Catalog That Grows with the Partage
Before mastering the Partage, Archon already ranked among the Ark's greatest casters. Conjuration was his specialty, but not the limit of his personal repertoire. Formulas such as Light, along with protections and movement magic, were among his tools.
The first divine catalog nevertheless remained narrow. It contained mostly Archon's conjurations, healing formulas, and the first spells required to harvest mana. As the Global Partage developed, Archon and his Censors gradually adapted other spells to stable divine mana. Modern tradition therefore includes abjurations, evocations, transmutations, and dimensional movement absent from the original teaching.
By default, the game uses this modern catalog. A spell marked Divine can be learned by a Cleric of Archon if the GM determines that the formula exists in the campaign's era. A table strictly portraying the Partage's beginnings may limit Clerics to Conjuration and healing spells, then introduce other formulas as Archon and the Censors adapt them. This early restriction includes Dimension Door and other Conjuration movement, but excludes formulas such as Polymorph, Enchant, Dominate, Hold, and Dispel Magic. There is no need to maintain two complete lists.
Spells unique to the Partage sort themselves under this rule. Harvest and Basin are conjurations: they belong to the first teaching and an early Cleric knows them. Census is a divination and Sealed Oath an enchantment: later adaptations by the Censors that arrived with the administration of the Global Partage.
Like the Wizard, the Cleric of Archon has no maximum number of known spells. Learning an existing divine formula is faster than learning an arcane one. Transforming an arcane spell into a divine liturgy is an entirely different undertaking, potentially demanding months or years of work.
Necromancy is never converted. An undead produces no mana, so the Censors treat each raised corpse as theft from the Partage and send paladins after necromancers such as Scipion. Clerics instead wield positive energy: a high-level Heal burns every undead in its radius (see 3).
Liturgies of the Partage
Some formulas belong directly to the Cleric's profession and institutions. Harvest performs the manual mana harvest; Census lets Censors recognize believers and distributed powers; Sealed Oath gives deadly force to consensual contracts. Basin consecrates the place where all this occurs: the temple, its trenches, and the water that protects and serves the faithful.
In motion, Transfer moves slots voluntarily between believers, while I Take for My Master tears them from a wounded enemy. Well Teleport links the Ark's consecrated wells, fountains, and waystations.
Water Telekinesis
Every Cleric of Archon learns to use Telekinesis on existing water only. Use the highest Telekinesis version no higher than the Cleric's class level, or choose a lower version. It takes the normal two spell actions but spends no spell slot.
The highest available version can be used once per day. Lower versions share a pool of half Intelligence uses per day, rounded down, minimum one. The Cleric uses their divine caster level and Spell DC.
The feature never creates water. Controlled water can take any shape—wall, bridge, rope, hand, weapon, or another temporary form—and collapses when Telekinesis ends. A Water Blade remains water and can be controlled by this feature.
Action Reserves
| Level | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attacks | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Spells | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| General Actions | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Dedicated Dodges | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
Weapons open the Cleric's board for most of the class's career. At Level 1, three attacks grant one slot per tick, so pronouncing a liturgy directly replaces a blow. At Levels 7 and 9, the magical reserve gradually catches up with martial training. Four spell actions at Level 9 can finance two Standard spells in one round, or several Swift liturgies when their descriptions allow it.
Divine magic is not Swift by default. Every spell states its timing. Archon's simple formulas may be faster than their red-mana equivalents, while great conjurations and operations of the Partage still demand a full casting, a source of water, or a prolonged rite.
Hit Points
Base 8 per point of Strength, like the Rogue and Ranger.
| Level | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP per Strength Point | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 128 | 256 |
Saves, Speed, and caster level
- Good Saves: Will and Fortitude. A Cleric of Archon trains the mind through study and the body through rites, fasting, travel, and repeated contact with consecrated water.
- Standard Save: Reflex. Stable magic and prepared protections leave the Cleric less able to answer an immediate surprise.
- Speed: Measured. 30 ft per tick through Level 3, then 35, 40, 45, and 90 at Level 10. The Cleric travels with soldiers; it does not outrun them.
- Divine caster level is granted by the Partage, not drawn from an attribute. This is not a personal mana reserve. It measures how much power received from the Partage the Cleric can stabilize and use correctly.
The Partage increases this caster level according to study, religious rank, and Archon's favor. The Cleric still has an absolute personal limit:
Maximum divine caster level = 7 × CHA.
A Cleric of Archon with +5 Charisma can therefore never stabilize a divine caster level above 35, even if the Partage tries to grant more. Intelligence opens access and enables the gift; Charisma determines how much power the Cleric's mind can bear without ceasing to be itself.
Ranks of the Partage
A Cleric's rank does not state their worth, but what they answer for. Each step is an entrusted office and can therefore be withdrawn.
| Rank | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Bearer | Carries bloodied water to the center. Does not yet officiate; only transports. |
| Pourer | Conducts the rite: their hand pours and their voice pronounces. |
| Fountaineer | Keeps a well, fountain, or waystation—a network node and its dependent faithful. |
| Curator of Waters | Answers for a basin, its trenches, and the officiants who serve there. |
| Network Steward | Answers for an entire city's waters and everything they carry back. |
| Censor | Administers the Partage in Archon's name, grants distributions, and adapts liturgies. |
Censor is the only title the cult took from the Republic. The office predates the god: it counted citizens and judged their morals. Today it does the same to a population that surrenders its blood.
Rank determines office, office determines proximity to the central basin, and proximity determines the density of received mana. This is how divine caster level rises. A Bearer receives almost nothing; a Curator of Waters lives beside dense water and receives much. None of this is a chart: rank is earned in play, and the personal ceiling of 7 × CHA always remains.
Common speech. Among themselves, believers do not speak of offices. A priest is thirsty while the Partage grants nothing, watered upon receiving a portion, irrigated when it is comfortable, a confluence when redistributing it nearby, and a source when the network feeds them densely enough that others come as they would to a well. These words appear in no document, are readily spoken behind people's backs, and often describe a temple's reality better than its list of offices.
Slots of the Partage
The Partage grants a Cleric of Archon an especially stable reserve of divine mana:
Slots = 6 per spell level + ½ INT.
Each mastered spell level has its own reserve. Minimum caster level remains necessary but never teaches a formula by itself. A Cleric created directly at Level N can normally be assumed to have learned spells through Level N, but not the next level. Their history may leave them behind this progression.
Unless a spell of the Partage says otherwise, these slots recover under ordinary rest rules. The larger reserve reflects divine mana's stability: a Cleric of Archon need not constantly prevent this power from dispersing or changing form like red mana.
Working with Words
Clerics of Archon devote much of their training to texts, laws, and rites. When a prescribed chance roll concerns drafting a document, formal negotiation, interpreting law, conducting a ceremony, or religious debate, the GM treats Intelligence, Charisma, and Cleric level as favorable factors. This experience neither ensures success nor replaces roleplay; it describes a field in which the Cleric truly works every day.
The Office
The Cleric of Archon is the Partage's agent among the population: the person people see and through whom the network touches them. Clerics heal the faithful, carry Archon's word, conduct neighborhood rites, and return what they harvest to the network. A believer meets their priest far more often than a soldier.
The Cleric also holds a legal role. Important transactions pass before the priest, who states their terms, ensures both parties understand them, and attests what was agreed. For the gravest affairs—an inheritance, an alliance between houses, a treaty—the Cleric seals the agreement with a Sealed Oath, whose breach attempts to tear water and blood from the offender. In a society where perjury carries such punishment, a lie is not a fault but a monstrosity.
In practice, priests almost never need to go that far. People do not lie to them. Respect does most of the work, while the oath remains a solemn exception reserved for what truly matters.
Finally, the Cleric celebrates marriages, which take place in temples. A temple of Archon is a Basin: a place to speak of difficulties, entrust secrets to the water, and leave lighter. Many faithful eventually venerate this listening water in itself—it is what they see of Archon; it heals, carries, protects, and takes their blood.
Martial Experience
A character of this class becomes substantially more effective in martial combat through experience. They should develop a fighting style appropriate to their weapons, body, and history through organic progression. Basic Fighting Style provides a reliable benchmark when designing that style; it is not granted automatically.
Predilection Feats
Water, the heart of the profession: Water Affinity
Rite and liturgy: Cooperative Caster · Spell Focus · Evocation Damage
Metamagic, supported by its slots: Quicken Spell · Long Spell · Delay Spell · Suspend Spell · Mobile Caster
The armored priest: Magus Casting · Shield Guard · Iron Will · Greater Fortitude
Playing a Cleric of Archon
- Your power is not yours. It is lent, rises through favor, and can be severed by abjuration, isolation, destruction of the water accompanying you, or an aqueduct broken three countries away. Prepare for the day you are disconnected: sealed vials, a weapon at your side, and warned allies.
- Set defenses before the danger, not during it. Reflex is your poor Save; you are among the slowest to answer what suddenly appears. This is why a Basin's Barrier is programmed, protections are prepared, and rites conducted in advance. You do not win the instant; you win the terrain before it arrives.
- Repeat. Half as many formulas as a Wizard, half again as many slots. Your strength is not an answer to everything, but casting the same answer long after others empty their reserves. The fight you win is the one that lasts.
- Choose wet ground. Your profession assumes water within reach. A prudent priest carries it as an archer carries arrows and arranges encounters near a bridge, cistern, or flooded cellar.
- Arm others. One water blade per caster level, a Barrier placed on an ally, vials distributed before departure. Redistribution is more than the Partage's theme; it is how you play a round. A Cleric trying to win alone plays a poor Wizard.
- Target the flow, not the bearer. You do not stop an invested person by striking them, but by isolating the one they are draining. Against a harvest or a believer fed from afar, a Barrier on the right person beats any attack.
- Weapons open your board. Three attacks at Level 1, armor, shield, and only two spell actions. You begin as a soldier who prays and end as a priest who still fights. Do not be ashamed of early levels: striking is your first liturgy.
- You carry a political order. Outside the Ark, your identity is evidence. A blessed vial in your bag, a Basin you maintain, a rite you administer: in Cerberus, all are judged before a council of mages. Away from home, a Cleric is a spy or heretic, never merely a healer.