Play what the world
has never seen again
On Sylkaen, civilizations rise, prosper, then vanish. All that remains of them are ruins, silent machines, closed doors. And those who dare reopen them. The Player's Book gives you 235 pages to become one of them: create your hero and roam Sylkaen, its peoples, its classes, its magic born of the ruins.
Two brand-new spell families: Vestige & Resonance, Strata & Thresholds. 5e and 3.5 editions included, readable on tablet, e-reader and game screen.
A people. A class.
A world that answers.
Twenty peoples in four families: the classic Founder lineages, the Ancients who survived the Cycles, the children of the Vestiges and the emanations of the Strata. None of them exists anywhere else.
Discover the 20 playable peoples →The twelve SRD classes keep their original rules and each receives a Sylkaen archetype. Two more were built from the ground up for this world, with four specialization Paths each.
See the classes and their archetypes →Gods who were once mortal
The Laws are eternal; the gods are merely the ascended, former mortals who each bear one face of a Law. Fifteen reign today. None of them tells the whole truth.
Here, magic is not invented: it is found again.
Magic born of the ruins
Two fully original spell families, written for Sylkaen and expressed within the SRD framework. They do not replace the core spells, they add to them.
Vestige and Resonance Spells
Vestige Probe. Your senses attune to the weave of ancient things. Constructs, vestigial mechanisms and active magic appear around you.
Mechanism Awakening. You convince a door, an articulated arm or a broken automaton to serve one moment longer.
Awakening of the Guardian. From the remains of a mechanism, you revive a Large Vestige Guardian.
Strata and Threshold Spells
Threshold Stride. You walk as though space opened its seams for you. No difficult terrain, no living obstacle.
Seam of Distances. You draw together two points that nothing truly separated, and you can bring someone along.
The Endless Threshold. You open a threshold to a place you know well enough, for yourself and up to eight creatures.
28 original spells in all, split between the two families.
What the world leaves
on those who explore it
Twenty-five feats in three families: general feats, Vestige feats, open to everyone, and people feats, reserved for those who carry the blood.
Vestige Reader
Origin Feat. You have learned to make the ruins of past Cycles speak.
Breath of the Strata
General Feat. You know how to breathe where reality itself wavers.
Living Metal Graft
People Feat, Ferrans. Your metal grows and shapes itself to your will: a weapon, or a companion's wound closed.
Boon of the Open Furrow
Epic Boon, level 19. You have spent so much time among the Vestiges that the Cosmos's past answers you directly.
“They are there… until your gaze drifts elsewhere.”
Frequently asked questions about the Player's Book
What is inside the Player's Book?
235 pages to create your hero and roam Sylkaen: the 20 playable peoples including 12 brand-new ones, the 12 classes plus 2 original classes (Archaeomancer, Mechanist), 2 original spell families and the 15 ascended gods with portraits and symbols. High-definition digital book, readable on tablet, e-reader and game screen.
Where can I find the Player's Book?
The Player's Book is part of the Complete Bundle with the Game Master's Book and the Monstrous Bestiary. It is not sold separately. The Bundle includes the 5e and 3.5 editions of each book, as digital downloads on itch.io.
How do you create a character in Vestiges?
Character creation rests on four pillars: the People, the Class, the Background and the ability scores. The Player's Book walks through six steps: imagine your hero, define their identity, shape their history, choose their convictions, take their equipment and first powers, then set out. Ability scores are determined by the standard SRD 5.2.1 method: array, point buy or dice roll.
What is a Background, and what does it grant?
The Background is the third pillar of creation: it tells the life you led before taking to the road. Each one grants two skill proficiencies, a tool proficiency or a language, starting equipment, an Origin Feat of your choice and a narrative Trait, that is, a social or exploration lever, never a combat bonus. It deliberately grants no ability score bonus: in Sylkaen, your convictions set you apart, not your former trade. Ten Backgrounds are offered, from the Vestige Archaeologist to the Strata Ferryman.
Do Sylkaen's spells replace the SRD ones?
No: they add to them. The 28 original spells in the Player's Book are written for Sylkaen and expressed within the SRD 5.2.1 framework, without removing any. Your characters keep every core spell of their class and draw, on top of that, from the two brand-new families: Vestige and Resonance Spells, Strata and Threshold Spells.
How does magic work in the world of Sylkaen?
Magic there is not a power wrested from the world, but a conversation with it. It is found again more than invented: Vestige spells read and wake what the Cycles left behind, Strata spells cross the seams of the Cosmos. The two brand-new classes push that logic further still, with their own resources (Resonance for the Archaeomancer, Inventions for the Mechanist) instead of classic spellcasting.
What is a Vestige feat?
It is one of the book's three feat families, alongside general feats and people feats. Vestige feats are born of time spent among the ruins and the Strata: Vestige Reader, Seasoned Plunderer, Anomaly-Hardened, Breath of the Strata. They stay open to any character, whatever their people. The book contains 25 feats in all.
Do I need to know the 5e or 3.5 rules to use it?
The book builds on the core rules of your chosen edition (SRD 5.2.1 or SRD 3.5), which remain necessary to play: it does not copy them, it adds everything that makes Sylkaen. To try first, the free adventure is fully self-contained.