Scholar
Your earlier life was a life of study, a life dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge. You may have attended a large university, or you may have worked with an elderly sage in a village or town somewhere - helping to research something or other in a library of collected books, scrolls, and tablets acquired over a lifetime. You may have sought knowledge in a particular field, or you may have been enriching yourself on a broad base. You may have been working with wizards seeking the secrets of magic, or priests seeking the secrets of the gods, or an alchemist or herbalist looking to unlock the secrets of materials found in the natural world.
Career
Qualifications
The qualifications to be a successful scholar are an open mind and the ability to think critically. The ability to read and write is presumed to be a pre-requisite as well. The final qualification for success is a passion for learning more about something, whether it is one particular thing or a more generalized need to learn more about anything and everything.
Career Progression
The natural progression for a scholar is to simply become a more well respected scholar. Students eventually become teachers. Those whose knowledge is widely known and respected become sages. Many of these will claim that they remain students all their lives - always in pursuit of more knowledge.
Scholars who decide to take up adventuring often do so as a way to continue that pursuit of knowledge. After reading about far-off places, there is a desire to actually go there. After reading about rumors of some long-lost skill or special tome, there is a desire to go seek it out. Most wizards and many clerics begin their lives as scholars. Those that fail as scholars typically find any of the other adventuring professions more appropriate.
Scholars who decide to take up adventuring often do so as a way to continue that pursuit of knowledge. After reading about far-off places, there is a desire to actually go there. After reading about rumors of some long-lost skill or special tome, there is a desire to go seek it out. Most wizards and many clerics begin their lives as scholars. Those that fail as scholars typically find any of the other adventuring professions more appropriate.
Perception
Social Status
Your social standing would have been very dependent on your particular situation. A younger scholar pursuing knowledge that will lead to a successful career would be thought highly of by most, but not all. Elder sages are almost universally respected, at least as long as the Folk believe their knowledge is true and helpful. But there are always members of society that, perhaps due to their own shortcomings, look down on scholars as loafers who refuse to do an honest day's work. These Folk do not hold their scholars in very high regard.
A number of far more derogatory names might be used by those who do not see the value in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
Alternative Names
Student (if younger), Sage (if older), BookwormA number of far more derogatory names might be used by those who do not see the value in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
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