Schools of The Ebon Watch

Overview

Every full member of The Ebon Watch selects (or is selected by) one of the Four Schools, specialized paths of knowledge, technique, and lore focused on a specific classification of monster. Though all Blades receive general training, specialization through a School defines their career—and survival.

Wards may declare interest in a School during their third year of training, though some are selected earlier based on aptitude or bloodline. A Trial of Knowledge and Hunt is required before full admission.

Elite Blades may cross-train into a second School after five successful contracts against that monster type.

Each School is headed by a Master Instructor, appointed by the Shade Council. While Outposts often specialize in one or two Schools, with the Drangleic HQ being the only fully integrated School stronghold. Often times, mixed-school squads, containing one specialist from each School, are sometimes formed for high-risk assignments.

School of Myths

Focus: Undead, revenants, myth-born, shapeshifters, and folklore-turned-real nightmares.

Creatures Covered:

• Cyclopes
• Trolls
• Valkyries
• Imps
• Merrow
• Sylphs
• Doppelgangers
• Zombies
• Shades

The School of Myths is the oldest of the Ebon Watch’s four divisions, and for good reason. Before fae trickery, before the rage of beasts or the fire of daemonkind, there was the undying, the shapeless, the once-dead-now-walking—those born of story and sorrow.

Training here is slow, deliberate, and relentless. Recruits study folklore, funeral rites, and necromantic patterns. The coursework includes moonlit vigils in graveyards, hours of meditation, and dangerous lessons in fighting beings that wear the faces of loved ones. Mirror combat is a hallmark—young Wards learn to duel foes who look exactly like them, learning not to flinch at their own reflection. In later stages, trainees are exposed to undead remnants—low-risk shades or husks—forced to fight without the use of light, magic, or support.

To graduate, a student must undertake the Quiet Wake: a silent, solitary mission into a sealed tomb. There, they will face a Myth-class entity—typically a Shade or Doppelganger—and must destroy it without alerting the world.

Hunters from the School of Myths tend to be reserved, calculating individuals. Many hail from small border towns or forgotten places where folklore is history. Some are scholars, others survivors, but all carry the same haunted clarity in their eyes. They fight with precision weapons—slim blades, mirrored steel, and silver-banded tools—aiming to strike fast, true, and unseen.

There are few boasts among these hunters. Only quiet nods.

School of Fae

Focus: Corrupted fae, spirits of the deep wilds, dream-invaders, and old world horrors.

Creatures Covered:

• Liches
• Oreads
• Nepheles
• Lampads
• Sirens
• Furies
• Mares
• Alps
• Lemures

The School of Fae is a paradox—serene in appearance, but trained to unravel the most insidious threats known to the natural world. Its hunters walk the line between dream and nightmare, confronting fae-born horrors that twist beauty into madness and music into suffering.

Trainees begin their journey by learning to disbelieve everything. Fae riddles and shifting truths—nothing is ever what it seems. They are placed in magically altered landscapes and dream realms where time, identity, and memory break down. The lesson is brutal: your mind is the first battlefield.

Negotiation is just as important as combat. Recruits are taught how to navigate fae contracts, how to recognize binding pacts, and—crucially—how to escape them. Music plays a strange role in their training: songs of counter-charm, harmonic break wards, and chant-magic to unmake illusions or calm maddened allies. Instructors frequently shift their appearance mid-lesson, ensuring the students never grow too comfortable.

The graduation trial, the Twilight Bargain, is a test of will and wit. Each student is thrust into a fae dream-realm and tasked with retrieving a stolen soul, artifact, or child—without ever making a deal they cannot break. Many fail. Some never return.

Graduates are elegant but dangerous. Many were once scholars, bards, or those who had close brushes with the corrupted fae. They are charming, composed, and often speak in layered truths. Their weapons are graceful—runesabers, arcane whips, and singing daggers—paired with ritual tokens, music-based magic, and powerful relics.

Fae hunters are respected and feared within the Watch.

School of Daemons

Focus: Daemons, devils, infernal entities, hellbound monsters, and demonic manifestations.

Creatures Covered:

• Paimonians
• Gargoyles
• Amdukias
• Devils / Akuma
• Taps
• Ferthurs
• Drudes
• Zagans
• Bunes

The School of Daemons is where the bravest—or most tormented—go to learn how to fight the most insidious and terrifying threats: daemons, devils, and the many-titled lords of the lower planes. These hunters are forged in pain, discipline, and fire. Many call them zealots. Others, necessary evils.

Their training is grueling. Recruits are immersed in infernal theology, forced to memorize the hierarchy of daemons, their titles, their real names, and the rules of infernal contract law. A single slip of the tongue, a wrong glyph, or an unsealed circle can spell doom. Physical suffering is used as a tempering tool—trainees are burned, bound, or exposed to ritual torment under supervision, learning to resist fear, pain, and possession.

One of the most infamous lessons, the Binding Forge, requires the trainee to craft or anoint their first weapon using flames kindled from daemon blood or cursed ash. The weapon that survives the forge is not just a tool—it is a symbol of defiance, and the beginning of a pact: you will kill them before they kill everything.

Graduation is earned through the Hell-Gaze. The trainee must face a mirror that reflects their worst self—their future, if they gave in to the same lust for power that corrupts daemons. Only by naming the daemon they would become, and declaring how to kill it, can they pass.

Hunters of this School are intense, introspective, and often spiritual. They may be former cultists, war survivors, or even infernal bloodlines seeking redemption or mastery. Their weaponry is heavy, brutal—blackened greatswords, hellforged chains, or cursed gauntlets etched with binding wards. They carry sigils burned into their armor—and sometimes, into their flesh.

The Watch fears them as much as they rely on them. If a Daemon Hunter draws their blade, there are no second chances.

School of Beasts

Focus: Natural and unnatural beasts, apex predators, cursed creatures, lycanthropes, and draconic threats.

Creatures Covered:

• Chimera
• Basilisks
• Thunderbirds
• Drakes
• Naga
• Harpies
• Dullahans
• Werebeasts
• Ghouls
• Dragons (rare and nearly legendary)

The School of Beasts is the blood and breath of the wilderness—the wild School. Its hunters face creatures that cannot be reasoned with, cannot be banished with words or symbols, only felled by strength, cunning, and grit. Beasts, dragons, and cursed animals fall under their blade.

Training is primal, physical, and dangerous from day one. Recruits are thrown into the wild with only the barest tools and tasked to survive for weeks. They track monsters not with maps, but with instincts honed by fear and hunger. Some learn to fight with bestial fervor, echoing the beasts they hunt, and a few even train alongside semi-tamed drakes or werebeasts, learning their patterns, languages, and fury.

Combat training is savage and relentless. They learn how to wrestle creatures ten times their size, how to fight in mud, rain, caves, skies. They spar blindfolded, scale cliffs with knives in their teeth, and learn what it’s like to be prey.

The Fang Pact—The Schools final trial—is brutal. A trainee is hunted by a Beast-class monster for three days. They must turn the tables, slay the predator, and return with proof—or they never return at all.

Graduates are often blunt, physical, and deeply in tune with the natural world. Many come from nomadic tribes, wildlands, or cursed bloodlines. Their weapons are enormous or primal—polearms, axes, beast claws, or even bare hands—and they wear the bones or hides of their kills with pride.

To fight beside a Beast Hunter is to feel safe. To fight against one is to know fear.