Every wayman possesses supernatural power, but those powers don’t manifest the same way.
For centuries, wayman scholars have organized the abilities into six categories based on the belief that they descend from six powerful families—but these gifts describe more than what they can do. As their abilities mature, their powers shape how they interact with the world around them.
But every category has a dark side.
Explore the powers below:
01/SIGHT
See beyond the visible
THE GIFT: These special abilities enhance the senses and perception. They often allow users to discern things beyond that of normal waymen.
SOME KNOWN ABILITIES: Spirit Sight, Future Sight, Dark Mapping, Telepathy, Empathic Sense
OBSERVATIONS: Those blessed with this family of gifts tend to be the wisest and most discerning of all waymen.
SHADOW SIDE: Unfortunately, those with these gifts are unusually prone to depression, cynicism, hopelessness, and splitting headaches.
DID YOU KNOW: The rare gift of Future Sight doesn’t actually reveal a predetermined future. It reveals possible outcomes of decisions.
THE GIFT: Defense gifts specialize in protection, resistance, and the prevention or redirection of harm. Rather than overpowering a foe, these gifts prevent the foe from doing damage.
SOME KNOWN ABILITIES: Barriers, Attack Reflection, Power Nullification, Cloaking, Toxin Resistance
OBSERVATIONS: Defensive abilities tend to amplify personality characteristics of loyalty, protectiveness, and a willingness to stand between danger and others.
SHADOW SIDE: When the instinct to protect becomes an obsession with vengeance and punishment, the soul of these waymen (and their gifts) can take on a rather dark or sadistic forms.
DID YOU KNOW: Placing the gift of invisibility into the Defense family has garnered centuries of heated debate amongst scholars.
02/DEFENSE
Protect all from harm
03/SUSTAINMENT
Strengthen what others cannot
THE GIFT: These gifts specialize in strengthening, restoring, and supporting others. Like the bones and joints that form a functional hand, these gifts are often less appreciated but critical in battle.
SOME KNOWN ABILITIES: Healing, Sealing, Power Enhancement, Imbuing objects with spiritual properties.
OBSERVATIONS: Waymen in this family tend to develop a strong orientation toward others. Generous, empathetic, and encouraging, they are at their best when they recognize their truth strength is in what they can help others become.
SHADOW SIDE: What was once used to give can become a means of taking. When these warriors give into their dark impulses, they become possessive, manipulative, or parasitic. And worst of all, their abilities mutate in extremely dark ways.
DID YOU KNOW: Despite their reputation as healers, some of the most unusual Sustainment gifts have little to do with physical recovery.
THE GIFT: This family of gifts is considered the largest, for it is the one most utilized in direct combat. These waymen can project, generate, manipulate, and unleash devastating power on the Shadiem. This family encompasses everything from elemental powers to telekinesis.
SOME KNOWN ABILITIES: Elemental Attacks, Telekinesis, Weather Manipulation, Projectile Launching
OBSERVATIONS: These abilities often shape waymen to be bold, assertive, decisive, and action-oriented. At their best, they posses the courage and confidence to wield tremendous power against the enemy.
SHADOW SIDE: Unfortunately, power is often a hungry beast. For these waymen, having grown accustomed to possessing such raw power, can sometimes be tempted toward believing that their gift gives them license to wield it over others.
DID YOU KNOW: The ability to generate fire out of thin air is the rarest of all Offense related abilities.
04/OFFENSE
Turn power into unyielding force
05/BODY MANIPULATION
Become the weapon
THE GIFT: Instead of projecting power outward, like in the Offense family, these gifts turn power inward. Altering the wayman’s own physical form and capabilities, gifts of this nature transform the user so that they can produce effects beyond normal human limits.
SOME KNOWN ABILITIES: Enhanced Strength, Shapeshifting, Enhanced Speed, Flight, Body Resizing
OBSERVATIONS: These waymen often become adaptable, instinctive, and highly aware of themselves and surroundings. Mature users often display remarkable discipline and self-control.
SHADOW SIDE: Vanity, impulsiveness, superiority, and obsession is usually where the corruption starts for these waymen. At their worst, the ability of these users to become anything may result in them forgetting who they are and what they stand for.
DID YOU KNOW: Not all gifts in this family visibly transform the user. Some alter the body’s capabilities without changing physical appearance
THE GIFT: The smallest and rarest family of gifts, Space-Time waymen manipulate the fundamental boundaries of reality itself. They can alter distance, gravity, and space itself. Being so poorly understood, scholars continue to debate where the limits truly lie and whether some abilities operate by different rules altogether.
SOME KNOWN ABILITIES: Teleportation, Portal Creation, Gravity Bending, Spatial Manipulation, Time Distortion
OBSERVATIONS: These waymen are notoriously difficult to categorize. They often become highly intelligent, independent, intensely introspective, or even eccentric. At their best, bending reality to their will allows them to think creatively in combat and problem solving.
SHADOW SIDE: These waymen are often vulnerable to isolation, detachment, and superiority. Some become so consumed by their own power that they lose touch with people and reality altogether.
DID YOU KNOW: Some experts suggest that less than 5% of waymen have abilities in this family.
06/SPACE-TIME
Bend the rules of reality
R.J. Wilson 