The Anekletos
Diogenes in his tub, lamp lit at midday, answering no summons and owing no one: self-possessed entirely on his own terms, exactly as the Anekletos are. Diogenes, Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1860. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (37.131). Public domain.
Ἀνέκλητος:“uncalled,” “unblameable,” “not summoned.” A word with a deliberate double meaning: one who has not been called, but also one who is blameless. The Anekletos arrived without being invited. They are here on their own terms.
Also called: the Uncalled, the Unbargained, the Present. Common parlance: Mortal, the Clean, the Unbound.
The Anekletos are the ones Hecate has not summoned.
Not because they are insufficient. Not because they lack for capability or courage or the particular kind of attention that draws the supernatural world’s notice. Simply: they have not crossed. They have made no bargain. They carry no geas. They are here — in the Sanctuary, in the world the Marked inhabit — without having paid the price of passage. They brought themselves.
Other traditions would call them mortals, or sleepers, or mundane, or fully human. The Sanctuary prefers the Hecate vocabulary: anekletos, uncalled, unblameable. The double meaning is deliberate. They carry no geas because they have made no bargain. This is not an oversight. This is its own condition.
What the Anekletos have, that the Marked do not, is full presence. They are entirely here. There is no between-space pulling them away. No force pressing for release. No debt accumulating in the background. No revelation they cannot stop seeing. They are managing nothing supernatural. They are only managing themselves.
In practice, this is an extraordinary thing to be.
Some Anekletos have been adjacent to the Marked world for years; grew up alongside it, were pulled into it by relationship or circumstance or the shape of their professional life, or woke one day to find it had always been there, and they had simply lacked the vocabulary for what they were seeing. Others have no such history of proximity. They are exceptional people who move through the world with uncommon capability, and the Sanctuary found them, or they found it. The difference between these two kinds of Anekletos lives in the descriptor and the background, where differences of personal history belong. The type is the same: uncalled, present, clean.
There is no Geas track for the Anekletos. Abilities, entities, or effects that reference the geas mark have no purchase here. This is not immunity; it is an absence. The Anekletos simply has not agreed to anything.
Yet is a word some residents add. The Anekletos, as a rule, do not.
Background Options
- You have always known the world was larger than people said. You were not surprised when you found the Sanctuary. You were only surprised it took this long.
- You grew up alongside someone who was Marked: a parent, a sibling, a close friend. You never crossed the threshold yourself. You learned almost everything from proximity, and from watching what the bargains cost.
- You came close to crossing once. You chose not to. You are not certain this was a mistake. You are not certain it wasn’t.
- Something found you and couldn’t do what it intended. You are still not sure why the attempt failed. Whatever it was has not tried again, but you have not stopped wondering what it saw when it looked at you.
- You are very good at your work. Your work put you in proximity to the Marked world repeatedly, and you adapted. Adaptability is, in the end, what you are for.
- You came to the Sanctuary because someone sent you here, or because a sequence of events left no other reasonable direction. You did not seek this. You are uncertain how long you intend to stay.
- You know more about the Marked than most Marked know about themselves. This is a result of study, or terrible experience, or both. You understand, better than anyone, that knowledge is not the same as power.
- You are here for specific, practical reasons you intend to resolve and then leave. You have been saying this for longer than you initially planned.
Anekletos Abilities
You gain all of the following benefits:
- Able to take two more minor wounds and one more moderate wound
- Add a total of +4 points to your stat Pools, distributed in any combination you choose
- Add +1 Edge in Pool of your choice
- Cypher limit increased by 1 (to 3 total)
- Freely use light and medium weapons
- Freely use light armor
- You carry no Geas. Effects and entities that target the geas mark have no purchase in you.
- At tier 3 and tier 6, choose an ability from the Sanctuary Genre Abilities list
Practised and Prepared: You gain training in one skill of your choice from the Sanctuary skill list, reflecting your professional background, personal history, or the specific nature of how you came to be here. This is in addition to the skills you chose as a core character. Enabler.
Steel Nerve: You are trained in tasks to resist fear, unease, or mental disturbance arising from supernatural sources. You have seen what the bargains cost. You are not unmoved. You are simply still functioning. Additionally, when you use an action to help a Marked ally manage or resist the mechanical effects of their Geas, providing an asset on a Geas-related task, that assistance is eased. At tier 3, you are specialised in resisting supernatural fear and unease. Enabler.
Kit on Your Person: Once per session, you may declare that you have a relevant inexpensive or moderately priced item on your person that you packed without specifically knowing you would need it. The item must be plausible given your background, current context, and what you could reasonably have been carrying. The GM may ask you to account for how it fits in what you’re carrying. At tier 3, this extends to expensive items. Enabler.
Anekletos Equipment Bundle
What you have depends entirely on who you are, which is the point. An appropriate set of tools for your background, clothing suited to your context, something that reflects how you came to be here, and currency enough to operate independently for a reasonable stretch of time.
Or assemble your own: appropriate clothing, one expensive item, five moderately priced items, six inexpensive items, and currency equivalent to a moderately priced item.
No Geas
The Anekletos carries no geas and maintains no Geas track. This section exists to make that absence explicit, because in a setting where every Marked type is defined partly by their obligation, the absence of obligation is itself a statement.
You are not incomplete. You are not waiting to cross. You are not pre-Marked. You are the Anekletos: the one who arrived without being called, who is here without having paid, who is managing exactly one condition: the human one.
That condition has its own costs. They are, at least, entirely yours.
Cypher Manifestation Styling
The Anekletos has no natural styling. Their relationship to manifestation is learned, not innate. This is either a significant limitation or a significant freedom, depending on the practitioner. See the Sanctuary Manifestation Guide when available.
See also: The Axiomata, Character Foci, Character Types