Here is an excerpt to help players understand how magical skills fit together, and to help GMs know how to manage descriptions and decisions about what’s covered in a skill.

Adepts, Alchemists, Chosen, and Enchanters all produce mystical effects. However, they are very different in practice.

  • Adepts can see and feel the magic that binds the world together. The mutagenic processes that warped the dwarves into a slave race in the mists before civilization still lingers in them; they are open to manipulating the latent energy in the world. They sense different flavors of supernatural energy, and they can weaponize energy.
  • Alchemists have learned that combining different materials carefully can create incompatibilities that provoke magical effects, or synergies that elevate otherwise undetectable magic in physical matter. Their work is rooted in observation, a ridiculous amount of memorization, some superstition, and a handful of luck. They revere formulae as ways to control and exploit the world. Everything has energies and harmonies, and knowing how to repair or disrupt those harmonies is a key to power.
  • Chosen have a trace of divine energy threaded through their veins, whether because they are descended from gods or because their ancestors were touched by that energy somehow. Many chosen can trace their lineage back to someone who was raised from the dead, punished by a god, bathed in divine blood, or some other miraculous event. Chosen can touch on the cosmic, and provide an outlet for that energy to distill into the mundane world. When they act to bring about harmony, they align with their energy. When they bring about despair and darkness, it sours in them. The Gods of Ur, real or symbolic, serve as their guides.
  • Enchanters have mastered using runes to pull the threads of the fabric of reality, drawing energy through objects to achieve certain effects. Visible tangible shapes hold a complex multi-dimensional matrix of energy that tugs reality into alignment with the rune’s purpose, achieving magical and impossible feats. Reality is repurposed, adjusted by symbol and pattern.

None of these mystical abilities are dependent on any of the others, and they can be combined to create truly peculiar shamen of the dwarven people. Some upgrades are provided for each, but GMs can make up their own for their games.