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Timescape (Draw Steel)

Skills

Definition

Timescape is cosmological knowledge: recognizing which world a creature came from, knowing what a portal's markings mean, understanding why an artifact behaves differently away from its origin, judging what a gate will cost to open. It is a Reason skill because it is scholarship about places most heroes never visit. It comes up at portals and rifts, around time raiders and other visitors, in the study of relics with no local history, and in campaigns that travel beyond the world.

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How it works

**Characteristic**: Reason. **Skill group**: Reason skills. **Test**: 2d10 + Reason; 11 or lower is tier 1, 12 to 16 tier 2, 17 or higher tier 3. Training grants a benefit and unlocks attempts untrained heroes cannot make. **How it is used**: Tier 3 identifies the origin, its rules, and a practical implication for the party. Tier 2 places it in the right neighborhood. Tier 1 gives nothing, or a wrong assumption about how a portal works. **Edges and banes**: Notes from prior travelers, legible planar markings, or firsthand experience of a world grants an edge (+2). A place nobody has documented, an unstable rift, and reasoning from secondhand accounts impose a bane (-2).

Tips

**Best for**: Campaigns that leave the world behind, and parties who meet more visitors than natives. **Character concepts**: Sage career planar scholar, a time raider recalling their own origins, a memonek explaining where they came from. **Synergies**: Magic Lore for the workings that open a gate, Monsters for what lives on the other side, Psionics for the mind powers many otherworldly beings use.

Frequently asked questions

Does Timescape let me open a portal?

No. It tells you what a portal is, where it leads, and what it demands. Opening one takes magic, a key, or a ritual.

Is Timescape useful in a purely local campaign?

Rarely, until something arrives from elsewhere. In games with time raiders, rifts, or strange relics it becomes central.

Further Reading

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