Professions of Ostelliach

Ostelliach is a wide and varied land with many unique, incredible places and experiences that need equally unique, incredible people to enable, protect, educate, explore, chronicle, defeat, or understand them. Below are some interesting ideas for professions people may consider instead of the usual fare (all of which still exist, of course!). Some of these are specific to Ostelliach, while some are just fun ideas that tend to be neglected in cmapaigns and are a good way to get creative.

Support

• Translator: Every settlement in Ostelliach boasts a wide variety of different people, including refugees and travelers, with no guarantee that they speak the same language as anyone around them. Many organizations, governments, nonprofits, and private individuals hire translators to streamline interactions between different groups of people. In Ostelliach, "common" is not so common after all.

• Message Deliverer/Courier: The settlements of Ostelliach are distributed across the land, sometimes with hundreds of miles to the next major outpost, and travel is not particularly accessible. People willing to deliver messages or packages are always highly sought after, and some adventurers find taking letters or boxes is a lot more profitable than dangerous dungeon diving. Sometimes this is hand delivery, but enterprising mages or artificers are also highly sought after for finding ways to get things there by other means.

• Diplomat/Ambassador/Emissary: With the settlements of Ostelliach so far removed from each other, there will always be a need for connections to be made between them, people keeping the alliances vibrant and alive. Diplomats and the like have good reason to travel, talk to people, and stick their nose in all kinds of things that would keep a person busy and never bored.

• Gravedigger/Undertaker/Funerary Rites: The sad truth of Ostelliach is that people tend to die here quite a lot more often than people would prefer. The bright side is that means there is always a booming business for people willing to assist with the end of life yuckiness. A person could educate themself about the different types of bodies out there, or about the proper ways to say "goodbye" in different cultures, and be a welcome source of comfort in a sad time in people's lives. Whether it's moving dirt, embalming a corpse, or saying a prayer, there's always someone in need of an extra set of hands when someone kicks the bucket. Clients could be families and loved ones or city staff with an unclaimed body on their hands, with an enterprising individual willing to learn about the rarer rites and biologies certainly more likely to find coin in the work.

Combat

• Sparring Partner: Training and practice are what make good fighters great, whether it's magic or physical weaponry. The problem is, sometimes people don't have a good combatant to practice with and a mannequin or dummy can only do so much. A person dedicated to traveling about letting people practice their techniques, spells, or weaponry in a controlled environment would likely find good money in it...so long as they had a good healer and good judgement about who to trust slinging spells at them.

• Competitive Brawler: Whether it's a bar fight, an arm wrestling competition, a fight ring, or a gladiator match, there will always be people willing to stake their money on entertainment fighting.

Exploration

• Detective/Private Eye/Investigator: In a land as fraught with peril as Ostelliach, there's always someone going missing, someone in peril, someone running away. There's also your standard drama that occurs when people exist together--political or business snooping, affairs, accusations etc. There's always someone needing a keen mind and perceptive eye to sleuth things out.

• Cartographer: There are more ruins in Ostelliach than there will ever be of actively inhabited settlements, and people willing to chart and map these ruins are paid well for their work. In addition, when your landscape is constantly changing from cataclysmic storms, earthquakes, and rampaging monsters, it's good to update your maps regularly.

• Archivist/Chronicler: Someone has to document all of that history happening, capture the state of the world, retain the tales of its people. Scholarly types suited to documentation would have much reason to go adventuring, because sitting in a sequestered room can only do so much when the uncaptured stories are waiting outside the walls. See also: skald/bard capturing the tales of the people.

• Acquisitions/Scavenger: Those merchant stalls don't fill by accident or waiting around; someone has to find the stock for them. Sometimes it's made, but depending on the type of business, perhaps it's found. Raw materials, goods from afar delivered consignment-style, or perhaps even dumpster diving...after all, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Creation

• Artist: Being such a widely diverse place with so many different cultures and materials at your fingertips, there is a huge market for different types of art, whether it's using Iridite glass, special pigments found only in The Netherwell fungal region, or canvases and textiles from the special silks of the Softscale and Sundered Gifts. The average person typically does not get to travel the entire continent, so different locations are hungry for art from places they'll never see, and there could always be a private collector or city official looking to commission a painting or bust.

• Traveling Craftsmith: Not every hamlet and town will have a dedicated smith, let alone one that knows how to perfectly sharpen that special blade or polish a magical acid spear. Similarly, you can't always count on finding an armorer who knows mithril chain or how to score dragon scales. And an artificer that can attune rare runes or fix the tiny clockwork of a miniature construct? Rarer than gold! Which, incidentally, people are willing to spend a lot of for specialized crafting. (Bonus points: the people who have gear in need of special craftsmiths usually can afford the special fees they require.)

Performance & Entertainment

• Card Shark/Gambler/Gamer: Every town has an inn or tavern and every inn or tavern has at least one drunkard who is happy to part with his coin over a good game. Whether you're a hustler playing innocent or oozing confidence from the start, being good at games enough to do them professionally will net good coin and, assuming you enjoy the game you play, a fun job too.

• Creature Comforts Consignment: Life should be about living, not just surviving, and sometimes a really cushy pillow or nice perfume is all someone needs to remember that. Your average general store likely doesn't have the room, demand, or supplier to stock the things that really make life comfy, so a traveling salesperson that specialized in such things would find a lot of eager clients willing to splurge on some self-care or a gift for a lover. Bubble baths, toys for children, spices and sweets, baubles and jewelry: if it makes someone smile, there's someone that'll buy it.

• Event Planner: Project management isn't for everyone. Maybe it's for nobles and other hoity-toity business types, or maybe you go town to town helping local festivals get that certain je ne sais quoi it needs to really get everyone through the harsh winter; either way, some people will pay good money to have someone creative yet detail-oriented handle organizing the party for them. As a nice bonus, event planning tends to put you in contact with all kinds of people, so you end up being the person-who-knows-a-guy as a part of the job.

Arcana

• Oracle/Diviner/Fortune Teller: No matter the general public's opinion on magic, there will always be a hunger to plan for the future, to sidestep future calamity, to be reassured a person is on the right path. Thus, as long as people have been thinking of the future, there's been someone to tell them about it. Politicians and peasants alike will pay good coin for a credible source to read their future...or at least, someone who is good enough at seeming credible. (Those without an actual gift for oracular work, take heed that there are plenty of actual divination practicioners in the world, and they don't tend to take kindly to frauds.)

• Curse Placer/Dispeller: A skilled hand for either placing or removing curses will always come in handy in a land where you never know what nasty traps lurk in random ruins...or who might push you too far in business negotiations and need to be taken down a peg. The savvy business arcanist could likely fulfill both roles should they so desire...so long as they are careful to never let their two ventures intersect.

• Test Subject: Those with a hale and hearty fortitude (and fair amount of bravery) could volunteer their body to science, which here means "testing new spells, scrolls, foods, and potions" of the magical or mundane variety. Maybe today it's nibbling tasty bread, maybe tomorrow it's reporting how a void arrow feels if shot straight through your foot. The good news is, the higher the risk, the higher the reward...usually.