Elemental Mongers

Those who use elemental magic to trade, buy, sell, or engage in commerce.

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Setacont

Type: Silkmonger

Setaconti are silkmongers who have a special connection to worms via elemental magic. They are not worm farmers nor silk farmers, but they use their magic over silkworms (and moths) to protect, refine, and enhance silks for sale.

Silkmoths and -worms are all imported to the region from other parts of the world, but setaconti connect with all kinds of worms. While "worm" is not a specific scientific category, it is a mystical one. Anything ranging from certain kinds of larvae to annelids to nematodes to anything adequately worm-like can work (snakes, however, and certain legless lizards are excluded). They learn to connect to them, speak to them, learn how they work, what they do, what their lives are like, and spend a year and a day living among any kind of worm they have around. However, they specifically spend time with silkmoth larvae, imported and kept specially for them by other setaconti.

After years of learning commerce, haggling, negotiation, and about the properties of silk, trading markets, and more, as well as the fragile balance of nature and its importance to their magic, they eventually must spend a week entirely living amongst silkworms, literally sleeping covered in them. During this week, they will be tested by them, and forced to vow to protect them and nature.

Once this happens, they gain special abilities that they must restore by sleeping amongst silkworms once a week and always serving nature:

• Wormspeech: anything that fits the mystic category of worm, they can speak to. They can also speak specifically to adult silkmoths.
• Shimmerthread: they may touch a piece of silk and make it shimmer, making it glossy and attractive, if they have fed their silkworms within the last four hours.
• Cocooning sleep: they may, once per year, allow silkworms to cocoon them as they sleep, transforming their bodies overnight and giving them a long-term bonus to one stat at the expense of a little bit of their mortal consciousness, becoming a little more mothlike each time.
• Moth dust: they can gather dust from the wings of silkmoths and apply them to silks to repair them.
• Kinetic sense: they can touch silk or other fabrics and sense subtle variations within them, any microscopic movement within it.

Setaconti never work for any industrial powers, but they are often involved in imperial or fey business, selling to them or dealing with them. But they make up for it by spending their money helping nature.

PRO / ATH -1 STR +1 AWA +2 WIL +1 PRS +1 STH -1

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Tosatore

Type: Woolmonger

Tosatori sell wool magically enhanced by their connection to sheep. Because they wield magic from the power of their elemental connection to sheep, the wool they sell may never be from sheep who are slaughtered or killed as part of the process. Shepherds who work with them know to sell the sheep to someone else if they wish for them to be slaughtered to give distance between themselves and the tosatori, preserving their magic.

Tosatori began as a member of ancient, elemental shepherding communities. They were not shepherds nor shearers, but people who would take the wool to market. They learned to bond with the sheep to gain insights and magical powes over the wool itself to make it more salable. They then brought the money or goods they gathered back to support hteir communities.

To become a tosatore, they had to spend much time with the sheep. They bond with them not as an animal as a whole, however, but as fellow prey. They live among them and wait for dangerous animals to come near, then act in tandem with the sheep, ultimately helping them survive such an encounter. Doing this many times over would create an elemental bond with the animals, which would allow them to speak to them and influence them. Eventually, like all elemental magic users, an elemental would test them, usually a magical prey animal (not always in the form of a sheep - in fact, more often, a rabbit) would come, speak to them, and test them and their devotion to nature. If they pass, they get special abilities derived from their relationship with the sheep:

• Ramshead refusal: the tosatore can invoke the magic of the ram to stubbornly refuse to break in a haggling exchange or other dealmaking situation. To do this, they must be wearing a pair of rams' horns gathered from a ram who died of old age.
• Roughened wool: the tosatore can make wool rougher and stronger, turning a piece of it into something hard as steel or rasping as a scouring brush. To do this, they must run their hands through the wool.
• Ewesmilk wash: with a dash of milk from a mother ewe, they can make wool or any wool-made material cleaner and brighter, more palatable for sale.
• Lambsheart warmth: if they play with a lamb for an hour, they can invoke its warmth for a week thereafter for bonuses to PRS. For crowds of 50 or more, half of the crowd or more must be able to hear them for this to work.
• Herd mentality: when speaking to a crowd of ten or more, they can read the crowd and find its commonalities to guide them into a joint action.
• Safety in numbers: if they are in a group of allied people of four or more, they may amplify the perceptions of everyone in the group when checking for danger, provide extra warmth among them, and instinctively direct them into a more defensive positioning if possible.

Tosatori find themselves instinctively responsive to dogs.

Tosatori have become common in markets throughout the region, and they are disliked for their trading skills - even though the wool is good, it's usually sold at a higher price than those they sell it to like. There are no rules against their magic, but there's always talk of it, and sometimes, they can be accused of witchcraft or other forbidden arts out of spite.

PRO / ATH / STR +1 AWA +2 WIL +2 PRS +1 STH /