The Zar'ir Adept

The Zar’ir Adept is the only sanctioned crossing of the divide — a church-trained priest bonded not to one discipline but to a matched pair, one Order and one Chaos, drawn from a single canonical god-pair. Where any other soul who tried this would risk the Break twice over, the Adept has spent years in liturgy, breath-drill, and paired vigil learning to hold two currents in one body without either drowning the other. They are diplomats between worlds that were never meant to touch, and the church trusts almost no one else to try.

“Order asks the body to hold still. Chaos asks the self to let go. I do not choose. I hold the door open between them and call that my prayer.” — Postulant’s oath, Zar’ir seminary of the Twin Hearth

Quick Build & Core Stats

Quick Build: Wisdom first, Constitution second. Choose the Acolyte background. Take a paired sigil as your holy focus and either a mace or a simple ranged weapon.

• Hit Die: d8 (d8 + Constitution modifier per level after 1st)
• Primary Ability: Wisdom
• Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma
• Armor: Light and medium armor, shields
• Weapons: Simple weapons
• Tools: None
• Skills: Choose 2 from Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, Religion, History, Perception
• Starting Equipment: (a) a chain shirt or (b) leather armor; a simple weapon; a paired sigil (holy focus); a priest’s pack; an explorer’s pack; a prayer book recording your god-pair’s rites

The Level 1–20 Table

Level	Proficiency Bonus	Features	Consecration	Max Half-Reaching Tier
1	+2	Postulant’s Communion, Sacred Sigil	2	—
2	+2	Balancing Rite, Lent Mercy	2	—
3	+2	Sanctified Pairing (Path)	2	T1
4	+2	Ability Score Improvement	2	T1
5	+3	Twinned Eye, Hollow Censure	3	T2
6	+3	Path feature	3	T2
7	+3	Steady Hand	3	T2
8	+3	Ability Score Improvement	3	T3
9	+4	Communion Anchor	4	T3
10	+4	Path feature, The Pair Answers	4	T3
11	+4	Deep Communion	4	T4
12	+4	Ability Score Improvement	4	T4
13	+5	Warded Channeling	5	T4
14	+5	Path feature (capstone)	5	T4
15	+5	Practiced Overchannel	5	T5
16	+5	Ability Score Improvement	5	T5
17	+6	Second Consecration	6	T5
18	+6	Sanctified Constancy	6	T5
19	+6	Ability Score Improvement	6	T5
20	+6	The Living Covenant	6	T5

The Adept’s Max Half-Reaching Tier tracks one full band below the standard Reaching schedule — the cost of walking two disciplines at once — bottoming out at Tier 5 rather than Tier 6, the shared ceiling for both halves.

Class Features

Postulant’s Communion (1st): Before bonding to a god-pair, you can produce cantrip-tier flickers of an Order and a Chaos color at will (no Tier, no cost). You open the Communion: a single cost track capped at 10 + (proficiency bonus × 2), shared by both future halves. Every point added is tagged Order or Chaos by source. A short rest clears all Order-tagged points; a long rest of stillness clears half your Chaos-tagged points. Crossing 75% triggers the matching flavor’s consequence (1 exhaustion for Order, a Loss Menu d6 for Chaos); the cap forces that flavor’s Overchannel.

Sacred Sigil (1st): Required in hand to cast above cantrip-tier; sundered by a called shot until rebonded over downtime.

Sanctified Pairing (3rd): You take vows to one god-pair (your Path), gaining two half-Reachings — one Order, one Chaos — both capped at your Max Half-Reaching Tier. Casting either adds its Tier to the Communion (tagged accordingly), after the normal Faith Die reduction (roll twice, take higher, if dead-center of your Tenet, which must speak to both halves).

Balancing Rite (2nd): Bonus action, 1 Consecration, immediately after a cast: reduce the points that cast adds to the Communion by your Wisdom modifier (min 1).

Consecration (2nd): Your signature resource — devotion, not exertion. Pool size per table; full recovery on long rest, 1 point on short rest from 7th level. Spent on Balancing Rite; Lent Mercy and Hollow Censure (below); Convergence (2 Consecration, cast your Path’s paired Working, adding its Tier to the Communion twice — once each flavor — using one Faith Die roll for both); and Steadying Vow (1 Consecration reaction, from 7th, to reroll a Loss Menu die or negate an exhaustion tick).

Lent Mercy (2nd): All light is lent, and the Adept’s first duty is to lend it onward. As an action, spend 1 Consecration and touch a creature, or reach toward one you can see within 30 feet: it regains, or takes, 1d8 + your Wisdom modifier hit points — your choice, declared as you cast. Channel it through your Order half and it lands as an emitted flare, lit from within; through your Chaos half and it arrives as a deep matte stain that drinks the light around the wound. Either finish, the effect is the same coin. Because this is devotion and not a Working, it adds nothing to the Communion and needs no Faith Die. The die becomes 2d8 at 7th level, 3d8 at 13th, and 4d8 at 18th.

Twinned Eye (5th): Both eyes flash simultaneously on any cast; Insight checks to read you are made at disadvantage instead of advantage.

Hollow Censure (5th): The church did not train you to hold two currents for your own sake. Where the Wound leaks into the world, you are the door that closes. As an action, present your Sacred Sigil and spend 1 Consecration: each Hollow-touched creature and each active Hollow effect within 30 feet must make a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier). On a failure, a creature recoils — for 1 minute it cannot willingly move within 10 feet of you, flinching from a body that carries both currents the Wound has neither of. While you concentrate (as on a Working, up to 1 minute), minor Hollow seepage within the radius — curdled luck, guttering lamps, small stirrings that should not stir — is suppressed, held shut behind the presented sigil. What the Hollow spends of the world, the pair spends back.

Steady Hand (7th): Steadying Vow usable once per rest without spending Consecration.

Communion Anchor (9th): Once/long rest, action, clear points from the Communion equal to your Wisdom modifier, split freely between flavors.

The Pair Answers (10th): Once per long rest, when you cast a Working through either half-Reaching, you may declare that the pair answers: the other god carries the cost, and the Working adds zero points to the Communion — no Faith Die needed, nothing tagged, nothing owed. For one cast, the door you hold open holds you. (At 20th level, The Living Covenant extends this feature; see below.)

Deep Communion (11th): Your Communion cap increases by 2. In addition, you gain your signature active rite, Twinned Channel: once per short rest, on your turn you may cast one Order and one Chaos half-Reaching Working in the same turn (one as your action, the other as a bonus action), resolving both with a single Faith Die roll and letting the two eye-colors flare at once — the sanctioned crossing made manifest. This is the button the whole Path is built toward: for one shining turn, you are the pair.

Warded Channeling (13th): Advantage on saves vs. mind/spirit effects while you hold ≥1 Communion point.

Practiced Overchannel (15th): Order Overchannel drops you to 1 HP instead of 0 (once/long rest); Chaos Overchannel’s loss may be temporary (until next stillness rest) instead of permanent, once/long rest.

Second Consecration (17th): Devotion practiced this long stops being an act and becomes a place you can stand. Your Consecration pool increases to 6 (as shown on the table), and — more than the extra point — you learn to consecrate a single rite twice in one breath, spending your devotion deeper rather than wider.

Once on each of your turns, when you spend Consecration on one of your rites, you may spend 1 additional Consecration point to consecrate that same act a second time, deepening it as follows:

• Lent Mercy — the light you lend reaches a second creature within range for the same amount and your same declared choice (both flares, or both stains); one act of mercy, twice given.
• Hollow Censure — its radius doubles to 60 feet, and a creature that fails its save recoils for 10 minutes instead of 1. The door you hold against the Wound opens wider and stays open longer.
• Convergence — you may resolve your Path’s paired Working as though your Max Half-Reaching Tier were one Tier higher than it is, letting the pair speak a sentence you could not otherwise reach.
• Balancing Rite — you reduce the Communion points that cast adds by twice your Wisdom modifier instead of once (minimum 2).
• Steadying Vow — it applies to two dice or ticks instead of one, or you may extend it to a willing ally within 30 feet.

You may deepen only one rite per turn in this way, and only if you have the Consecration to spend on both the rite and its second consecration. What a younger Adept could do once, you now do to the root.

Sanctified Constancy (18th): Chaos-tagged points now clear fully (not half) on a rest of stillness.

The Living Covenant (20th, capstone): Once/long rest, declare Covenant: for 1 minute, casts add zero new Communion points (existing points unaffected). The Covenant also extends The Pair Answers: it now recovers on a short or long rest, and it may answer your Path’s paired Working itself — a Convergence cast with zero points added to the Communion and no Consecration spent. What the Adept spent a career holding open, the pair now holds open in return.

The Paths

Three of the four canonical god-pairs are detailed below; Ilogo-Jawehn (Unmaking + Dream) is recognized doctrine but has no active seminary and isn’t playable in this book. A fourth Path answers no pair at all — the Path of the Undivided, the inner teaching’s saint-road, which refuses the split every other Adept lives by and holds the outward and the inward as one.

Path of Embelekor-Michana (Binding + Knowing) — the oathkeepers and confessors

The confessor’s Path answers the pair that governs the sworn word and the seen intent. An Embelekor-Michana Adept is the priest a guild sends when a contract must be made unbreakable and a lie must be made visible — the witness at the signing, the interrogator who needs no rack, the testimony a court cannot doubt.

3rd — Sanctified Pairing. Your two half-Reachings are into Binding (Order, emitting yellow) and Knowing (Chaos, absorbing magenta), both capped at your Max Half-Reaching Tier. Your paired Working is Oathsight: you bind a spoken promise between two willing creatures and, for its duration, read on each of them whether they presently intend to keep it — the vow and the truth of the vow in a single casting.

6th — Sworn Injunction (action, 1 Consecration). You speak one prohibition to a creature within 30 feet that can hear you — you will not cross this line; you will not raise a hand against her; you will not leave this room. It makes a Wisdom saving throw against your rite DC (8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier). On a failure the Binding takes hold for 1 minute while you concentrate: each time the creature deliberately acts against the injunction it repeats the save, and on a failure the action simply fails and is wasted — the word will not let the body finish — while your Knowing half tells you, instantly and exactly, what it tried to do. A creature that has ever sworn you a genuine oath makes the initial save with disadvantage; the Path was built first for the ones who gave you their word and then reached for a blade.

10th — Read the Kept Oath (bonus action, 1 Consecration, once per short rest). You open the confessor’s sight. Until the end of your next turn you see every binding, debt, oath, and compulsion lying on a creature within 60 feet as luminous threads running off into the world — you learn who or what it is bound to, and whether, at this moment, it is keeping faith or breaking it. You may grant one ally advantage on the next attack roll or ability check made to exploit what you have read; and if the creature is presently violating a binding you can see, that attack also deals extra psychic damage equal to your Wisdom modifier — the pair’s judgment landing alongside the blow.

14th — Convergence: Oathsight. When you spend 2 Consecration to Converge your paired Working, Oathsight additionally strips one fact the target has actively concealed within the last day — a name, a loyalty, a lie already told — laid bare to you and to every ally who can see your sigil flare.

Path of Zathra-Yadra (Weight + Growing) — the field-priests of famine and harvest

Zathra presses down; Yadra pushes up. Their Adept is the priest of the lean year and the fat one — the one who walks the border villages when the soil turns, who can crush a road into a furrow with one hand and raise a season’s grain with the other. Where the confessor holds the word, the field-priest holds the ground.

3rd — Sanctified Pairing. Your two half-Reachings are into Weight (Order, emitting blue) and Growing (Chaos, absorbing green), both capped at your Max Half-Reaching Tier. Your paired Working is Bloomwall: a wall of crushing, thorned, self-mending growth — Weight in its mass, Growing in its healing — that repairs a share of its own breached hit points at the start of each of your turns.

6th — Rite of the Lean Furrow (action, 1 Consecration). You call a 20-foot-radius field of grasping, weighted growth centered on a point within 60 feet, and hold it for 1 minute while you concentrate. The ground is difficult terrain for your enemies (Weight drags at them) but not for you or your allies (Growing parts to let them pass); and a creature you choose that starts its turn in the field makes a Strength saving throw against your rite DC or has its speed reduced to 0 until the start of its next turn — held in the furrow like a plow that struck stone.

10th — Feast or Famine (action, 2 Consecration, once per long rest). You call the harvest and the hunger at once across a 30-foot radius you can see. For each creature in the area you declare feast or famine: a feasting creature (your allies, by rule) regains hit points equal to your Faith Die + your Wisdom modifier and sheds one level of exhaustion, the field giving up its stored season; a famished creature takes that same amount as withering necrotic damage and has its speed halved until the end of its next turn, the field taking the season back. One rite, both faces of the pair, the granary and the drought in a single breath.

14th — Convergence: Bloomwall. When you spend 2 Consecration to Converge your paired Working, the wall additionally pulses once when raised: up to three allies sheltering within 5 feet of it each regain hit points equal to half their missing total, the harvest breaking over them as the Weight locks the barrier in place.

Path of Rashel/Bamoph (Current + Heart) — the wayfarers and healers-in-motion

Rashel is the river that will not be held; Bamoph is the bond that holds anyway. Their Adept is the priest of the road and the caravan, the one who keeps a moving company alive and moving — never the wall a fight breaks against, always the current that carries the wounded out the far side of it. This Path plays fastest and most mobile of the three.

3rd — Sanctified Pairing. Your two half-Reachings are into Current (Order, emitting cyan) and Heart (Chaos, absorbing red), both capped at your Max Half-Reaching Tier. Your paired Working is Tidebond: you and your chosen allies briefly move as one current, sharing a single pooled reserve of hit points so a blow meant to fell one is borne by all.

6th — Rite of the Shared Road (bonus action, 1 Consecration). You loose the current under the whole company. Until the start of your next turn, you and each ally within 30 feet add your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1) to their walking speed, ignore difficult terrain, and do not provoke opportunity attacks from the first creature they move away from — the caravan slipping the ambush as a single body of water finds the low ground. This replaces the older private quickness with a rite you spend for the others.

10th — Take the Wound Onward (reaction, 1 Consecration). When an ally you can see within 30 feet takes damage, you pull the injury into the current: you take half of that damage instead (Heart bearing it), then immediately move up to your speed without provoking opportunity attacks (Current carrying it away), and the ally may move up to half their speed with you. Below zero, the same reaction will take all of a dying ally’s lethal blow onto yourself as a single Heart-tagged Communion point — the river deciding, this once, to drown in someone’s place.

14th — Convergence: Tidebond. When you spend 2 Consecration to Converge your paired Working, the shared-reserve bond extends to any ally who has opted in within 60 feet rather than only those close by — a caravan strung out along a mile of road still bleeds, and heals, as one current.

Path of the Undivided (unshaped Faith — no pair) — the inner teaching’s saint-road

The rarest thing a Zar’ir Adept can become. Every other Path answers a god-pair and pays for its scope by splitting — two half-Reachings, each a Tier-band lower, the outward held apart from the inward. The Undivided refuses the split. It holds both orientations as a single undivided Faith and consecrates integration itself — the mending of what was divided, in a wound, an oath, a company, or one torn heart. Its focus stone runs lustrous gold and reads as no single discipline, twice as visible and twice as public as any paired stone.

3rd — Sanctified Pairing (the pairless kind). Rather than two half-Reachings, you hold a single full-Tier Reaching of unshaped Faith — you pay the Adept’s usual split-price not in Tier but in self, carrying both orientations inside one integrated will (a Master may levy the added self-cost as a Fray point on any Working where a divided Adept would spend none). You gain the paired Working Consecrate the Whole: touch a creature to heal it for your Faith Die + your Wisdom modifier, end one charmed, frightened, or discord effect on it, and until your next long rest that creature and one ally bonded to it cannot be magically turned against each other.

6th — Held Undivided. You and allies within 10 feet have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, frightened, or otherwise compelled to act against your own bonds.

10th — The Bond Answers (reaction, once per long rest). When you or a creature within 30 feet would be forced to harm an ally or break a sworn bond, you consecrate the integration and the compelling effect ends for every creature within 30 feet.

14th — Convergence: the Undivided. When you Converge Consecrate the Whole, it becomes a 30-foot aura for 1 minute: allies within it cannot be charmed, frightened, or turned against one another and share no discord, and the first time each of them would drop to 0 HP, the nearest ally may spend a reaction to hold them at 1 instead — the two of them, for that instant, one thing.