Limner (5e Background)

Limner

Lorenzo Costa

While much rarer than portraiture or sculpture, the illustration of manuscripts for no purpose other than beautification is an art form all its own, and you were one of the artists specializing in it. You can take a wall of simple text and turn it into a picture, or series of pictures, worth far more than thousand words. Given enough space, you can even tell a story legible in any language out of the smallest margins of text. In any case, your job was only really desired for luxury books and scrolls of great import like religious texts and legal documents, limiting your job opportunities as utility has overtaken artistry. Perhaps now it’s time to create your epic to inscribe in your autumn years.

Skill Proficiencies: Perception, Religion

Tool Proficiencies: Calligrapher’s supplies, Painter’s supplies

Equipment: A blank book, A bottle of ink, an ink pen, 10 sheets of parchment, calligrapher’s supplies or painter’s supplies (choose one), a set of fine clothes, and a pouch containing 6gp.

Feature: Archive Antiquarian

Your familiarity with the world of high end texts means you are familiar with the collectors and archives of ancient texts and manuscripts. Whenever you need to find a particularly rare or ancient book or scroll, you have at least an idea of who would be able to connect you to a copy, if not own one themselves. This doesn’t mean they will necessarily allow you access to it, but at least you will have some idea where to look. This also means you know who all the collectors who will pay the biggest piles of platinum for any rare reads you find are and how to get in touch with them.

Alternate Feature: Pictionary

When you can’t communicate with words, you can try art instead. With something to draw with and something to draw on, you can create a picture, or multiple drawings in the case of more complicated messages, able to covey your statements, questions, or commands, to some intelligent beings capable of seeing them and puzzling out the meaning, regardless of any language barriers. It will generally take you more time to draw the greater the quantity and precision of the information you wish to convey. You also have an easier time discerning meaning out of the illustrations of others, especially talented artists with a clear vision.

Suggested Characteristics

d8	Personality Trait
1	I sometimes think I am channeling the divine into my art.
2	My respect for a person rises with their back account, especially If they are paying me.
3	I refuse to freestyle. Every action must be planned and executed to the smallest detail.
4	My knowledge concerning different kinds of ink far exceeds my knowledge of more useful minutia.
5	The smallest flaws can reveal the greatest mistakes.
6	Every stroke of pen or brush is made with intention, even if the artist is unaware of it at the time.
7	I try to use big… I mean large words to sound smar… more intelligent than I am.
8	I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing right. I can't help it – I'm a perfectionist.

d6	Ideal
1	Art. Expression is as important to the soul as food and drink is to the body. (Chaotic)
2	Beauty. Everything and everyone should be given the chance to show their best self. (Good)
3	Perseverance. If it takes me a day to get a single stroke correct, it was time well spent. (Lawful)
4	Piety. My work glorifies a higher power. Any success I find is merely incidental. (Lawful)
5	Spontaneity. If the right spirit strikes me, I have no problem coloring outside the lines. (Chaotic)
6	Wealth. I only care about opinions of the rich and powerful, for they pay my bills. (Evil)

d6	Bond
1	I had one large codex that I never got to finish for financial. One day I hope to return to it.
2	I grew up in an austere monastery, but never took their more hardcore beliefs.
3	I can’t stand seeing a dull page of pure information.
4	My favorite pen was gifted to me by my mentor.
5	I only use a specific paint manufacturer to ensure consistent results.
6	I always call rogues rouges and every time they get pissed about the mistake.

d6	Flaw
1	I have trouble reading words. All the letters keep getting mixed up in my head!
2	I became a limner as a front to sneak into monasteries and palaces to steal from them.
3	Years of stooping over a desk to inspect my drawings has left me with chronic back pain.
4	I keep worrying that someone is going to make fun of the bald spot on the crown of my head.
5	I am actually a cultist secretly encoding messages of heretical depravity into my illustrations.
6	I will be along in a moment. Let me just make sure the upper side of this square is parallel to the paper’s edge.

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