COMPLETE ADVANCED CHARACTER PACKAGE: SCHOLAM BRAT
“There were millions, nay billions, of institutions like it all across the Imperium, wherever hives rose and gross poverty loomed. Many were run by the Ecclesiarchy, or tied to some scheme of work by the Departmento Munitorum or the Imperial Guard itself. Some were missionary endeavours established by zealous social reformers, some political initiatives, some just good, four-square community efforts to assist the downtrodden and underprivileged.
And some were none of these things.”
-Playing Patience, by Dan Abnett
Not all Imperial servants were raised in the rarefied intellectual and political hothouses known as the Schola Progenium. Few indeed are offered the educational stepping stone afforded by the death of a parent in Imperial service. Fewer still are those fortunate enough to be raised with private tuition, or those who go on to a higher education.
For most Imperial citizens, reaching adulthood knowing their trade, their place, their Imperial Cant and (if they’re lucky) their letters is enough for any child to aspire to. Yet on hive worlds, which invariably suffer from massive overpopulation, lawlessness and poverty, an education can be the one thing that drags a child out of the mire, and many children have fought and killed to pass through the gates of even the most meagre educational establishment.
There is no one overarching educational authority within the Imperium, though many institutions rush in to fill this vacuum with varying degrees of success. On most Imperial worlds, one or another of these august bodies usually operates a number of academies for the orphans, the poor, the dispossessed and the destitute.
These establishments are known by a variety of names, but they commonly include the word “Scholam” somewhere within their title, often hidden behind some baffling acronym.
They are often miserable places, stacked with emaciated children kept in filthy conditions, subsisting on bare gruel. The Scholam Masters mercilessly beat an education into their charges, who all wear a dismal uniform, and who spend their entire childhood within the walls of the place. There are many arrangements that keep the children within the Scholam: on some worlds desperate mothers leave newborns outside the walls, on others children compete for the honour to enter. All hope to escape the grinding poverty outside, to guarantee food, shelter, and the chance perhaps of an apprenticeship to a better adult life.
These places and their alumni are scorned by are the Imperial elite, who declaim them as poorhouse-schools, proletechnics, or scumademies. However, they have produced many Imperial heroes over the millennia. Scholam brats – as the alumni of these places are known - bear themselves with a fierce pride, determined to claw their way up into the top ranks of Imperial society. They have no time for the hypocritical backbiting of the Noble class, or the blinkered zealotry of the Progenium, and are often possessed of a fierce utopian passion to improve the human condition through charity, hard work and dedication. They are a tough, fire-hardened breed, with enough of an education to make trouble for themselves…and others.
SCHOLAM BRAT PCs
Scholam brats represent the tough minded, aspirational “middle class” of the Imperium, a tiny minority amongst the desperate poverty of the human galaxy. Raised in an Imperial institution, but perceptive, well educated and honest enough to identify its myriad flaws, they transfer this insight to the Imperium as a whole, and seek to improve mankind, to cure it of its many ills.
SCHOLAM BRAT SKILLS
Scholam characters receive a good, basic education. You begin play with Literacy (Int) and Speak language (Low Gothic) (Int.) They also receive Common Lore (Imperium) and Common Lore (Imperial Creed), a result of many tedious and draining lessons over the years.
They also receive rudimentary training in a single trade: choose one of the following Trade skills: Agri, Cook, Copyist, Embalmer, Mason, Merchant, Miner, Smith, Tanner, Technomat, Valet, Wright. They also gain the Dodge (Ag) skill, a result of years of fleeing the casual corporal punishment meted out by Scholam Masters and older children.
SCHOLAM BRAT TRAITS
You want some MORE!?
Scholam Brats have been raised in a tough environment, and are used to the privations of an institutional life. They are able to survive on half as much food as a normal PC of their size if necessary, and gain the Light Sleeper talent.
Everyman
Scholam Brats have seen life from the lowest rungs of the Imperium while at the same time enjoying some of its benefits. They are neither as blessedly ignorant as the average Imperial, nor as sheltered as their opposite numbers in the Schola Progenium. You are capable of conversing equably with scum and nobles alike, though you get on particularly well with hard working, honest folk.
Gain +3 fel, and the unique trait Peer (trader) which works on anyone you can converse socially with for more than 2 minutes who has the Trade skill.
STARTING WOUNDS
Scholam Brat characters start with d5+8 Wounds
FATE POINTS
Roll 1d10 to determine your starting Fate Points: on a 1-2 you begin with 1 Fate Point; on a 3-7 you begin with 2 Fate Points; on an 8-10 you begin with 3 Fate Points.
GENERATING CHARACTERISTICS
Characteristic Base Scholam Brat
WS 2d10+ 20
BS 2d10+ 20
S 2d10+ 20
T 2d10+ 25
Ag 2d10+ 20
Int 2d10+ 20
Per 2d10+ 15
WP 2d10+ 20
Fel 2d10+ 20
NB: This is a complete advanced character package along the lines of those that run from page 8 of the Inquisitor's Handbook.
