Chapter 4 — Callings

“A discipline is a thing you can do. A Calling is a thing you are. The city is full of people who can raise a ward; a Vowbound is what happens when raising the ward becomes the shape of a whole life.” — Master-Cataloguer Vessa Orn, On the Sorting of Practitioners

Your Calling is your class — the life your character has been forged into, and the engine that drives everything they do at the table. In Merretia, a Calling is deliberately not the same thing as a discipline of magic. Magic is a tool; a Calling is a vocation. This matters more here than in most worlds, because it means your class never forces you to be a spellcaster. An Ironclast who has never run a channel in her life is exactly as complete a character as the Cipherwright beside her — no blank space on her sheet, no missing “spellcasting” line, no apology.

There are thirteen Callings, in two families:

The seven casting Callings (this chapter’s first half) each hold a Reaching into a discipline — a trained connection that lets them shape Workings, paid for on the two-track cost economy of Chapter 6.

Calling	Die	The fantasy	Discipline (Reaching)	Signature engine	Plays like
Vowbound	d10	the oath-knight whose word is a weapon	the Binding	Oaths & Sealing Strikes	the Paladin
Hearthwarden	d8	the healer who frays their own self to mend yours	the Growing	Vitality Dice	the Druid
Cindermarch	d8	the foundry-soldier who burns hot and close	the Unmaking	Heat (a boil-over gauge)	the Sorcerer
Cipherwright	d6	the scholar-spy who weaves what others perceive	the Knowing	Threads & Filaments	the Wizard
Zar’ir Adept	d8	the church-sworn priest of a god-pair, the one sanctioned crossing	a paired half-Reaching	Consecration	the Cleric
Heartstring	d8	the performer who plays the bonds between people like strings	the Heart	Heartstring Dice	the Bard
Stonewright	d8	the magitech maker — the city itself is your spellbook	half: Current or Binding (choose at L1)	Field-Settings	the Artificer

The six martial (or otherwise) Callings (this chapter’s second half, statted in PHB-04f–04j) stand entirely on their own steam:

Calling	Die	The fantasy	Reaching	Signature engine	Plays like
Duelist	d10	the blademaster who needs no magic at all	— (none)	Forms & maneuvers	the Fighter
Ironclast	d12	the unbreakable wall; “magic isn’t required to matter”	— (none)	Grit	the Barbarian
Verge-Tracer	d10	the frontier hunter of the thinning edge	half: Current or Weight (choose at L1)	Quarry	the Ranger
Warrens-Runner	d8	the knife in the city’s shadow — skill is your magic	— (none)	the Clean Line	the Rogue
Relic-Bound	d10	bound to a relic that lends power — and collects	— (relic, not faith)	the Relic & its Debt Clock	the Warlock
Hollowmarked	d8	touched by the Wound and let go, walking the threshold	half: the Dream	the Wound Die	the Monk

With these, the discipline wheel is nearly closed: Binding, Growing, Unmaking, Knowing are full-caster primary; Current, Weight are Verge-Tracer primary (half); the Dream is Hollowmarked primary (half); Heart is now fully seated: the Heartstring carries it as a full Reaching (with the Zar’ir Adept’s Rashel/Bamoph Path as the sanctioned half-crossing). Every discipline wheel-seat is filled.

The shared chassis

Every Calling — caster or martial — is built on one skeleton, so no class is secretly ahead of another:

Ability Score Improvement (or a feat) at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, 19.
A Path (your subclass) chosen at level 3, with Path features at 3, 6, 10, 14. Each Calling names its Path-axis in its own tongue — the Vowbound’s sworn Orders, the Hearthwarden’s Covenants, the Cindermarch’s Forge-Rites, and so on.
A capstone class feature at level 20.
For casting Callings, one shared Reaching curve — max Working Tier 1 at L1–2, 2 at L3–4, 3 at L5–7, 4 at L8–10, 5 at L11–14, 6 at L15+. (The Zar’ir Adept splits this across two half-Reachings, each one Tier-band lower, the price of holding both sides.)
Player Callings top out at Tier 6. Workings of Tier 7–9 are legendary, story-tier, and archon-scale — they belong to the Master’s Guide, not to standard advancement. Canon holds that the world’s highest practitioners number only a few dozen across an entire city; your character can become one of them through play, but not simply by leveling.

The five casting Callings follow, each fully statted, in PHB-04a through PHB-04e. The five martial/other Callings are the next build pass.

Concept gallery — the Ten Callings