Treasure Hunters

In Everwealth, treasure hunting is less a profession and more a slow negotiation with death. The ruins of the Lost Ages stretch across the world like scabbed-over wounds, brimming with rusted marvels, forgotten armories, and traps laid by gods or ghosts. Treasure Hunters are the madmen and miracle-workers who dare to crawl through them.

Treasure Hunters are daring, often desperate, individuals who make a living, or die trying as the saying goes, by scavenging what remains of the old world The Great Schism left behind scattered and forgotten. These are the men and women who brave collapsed tunnels, sunken cities, and haunted ruins, hoping to recover relics, tech, or wealth left behind when everything fell apart. It’s a profession with no uniform, no organization, and no safety net. Their tools are intuition, stubbornness, and luck. Their enemies are as numerous as the treasures they seek: bandits, cursed landscapes, monster-infested bunkers, and, perhaps worst of all, their own greed. It is said that Everwealth’s greatest finds were not made by scholars or kings, but by mud-slicked fools with rope in one hand and a lantern in the other. To treasure hunt is to dance on the edge of civilization, often alone, always in peril, and very, very likely never to be seen again.

Career

Qualifications

None are required, though many come from failed soldiering, desperate poverty, or a death wish wrapped in wanderlust. Most treasure hunters are self-declared. The ones who survive earn the title in scars, not scrolls.

Career Progression

Treasure hunting has no official ranks. Reputation is the currency here. Survive one or two major digs, find something The Scholar's Guild or The Merchant's Consortium will kill for, and your name carries weight. Fail? Well, no one remembers your name anyway.

Payment & Reimbursement

Compensation is wholly dependent on what is recovered and how intact it is. A broken cog from a Lost Age clock might fetch a few coppers; a working relic could fund a manor. Survivors often sell to Guilds, nobles, or discreet collectors who pay for silence. But few jobs offer payment up front, treasure hunters often eat lean.

Other Benefits

Occasionally, treasure hunters recover working items or rare artifacts they keep for personal use, enchanted arms, healing vials, pre-Schism devices that can start fires with a gesture or repel beasts with sound. Some grow rich enough to retire. Some disappear into the field, choosing the wild mystery of the old world over the bleakness of the new one.

Perception

Purpose

The primary goal is simple: find what was lost. Whether for profit, glory, or knowledge, treasure hunters serve as scavengers of civilization's graveyards. They are the pickers of history’s bones, daring what others dare not.

Social Status

Seen by many as reckless vagrants, by some as heroes. Townsfolk might treat them with awe, or suspicion. Stories abound of hunters who brought disease, cursed objects, or arcane disasters back from their journeys. And yet, others regard them as romantic figures, lone adventurers defying fate.

Demographics

Treasure hunters come from every race and region. Some are exiles. Others are scholars who grew tired of dusty libraries. Orcish and Maned are common among their ranks, their endurance suiting long travels. Aquians rarely qualify, ruins don’t tend to sit underwater, but those who do participate become legends, recovering artifacts from sunken vessels or cities thought lost forever.

History

Though scavenging existed before The Great Schism, modern treasure hunting began in the aftermath. When the magick burned and the roads broke, great vaults, towers, bunkers, and forgotten strongholds were swallowed by forest, desert, or collapse. Some began as survivors looking for tools. Others sought vengeance or divine answers. Now, centuries later, entire regions remain untouched, festering with wonder and ruin. The Grandgleam Forest. The Bay of Knives. Boulderrain Woods. Each a land where gold lies beneath the corpse of every man who tried to reach it. Treasure hunting surged again in recent decades as famine, border wars, and arcane instability drove desperate folk to seek fortune in the bones of the past. Every year, new seekers emerge. Most do not return.

Operations

Tools

Standard tools include ropes, lanterns, breather masks, collapsible shovels, heat-treated gloves, alchemical stabilizers, chalk, and a guide rope. Relic-detecting compasses and rune-dowsers are rare but invaluable. Many wear light armor, preferring speed to protection.

Materials

Anything found may be a treasure, or a trap. Common finds include scorched journals, sealed caches of enchanted ammunition, inert automatons, and once-magickal gear fused by time. Some objects hum with dormant energy. Others leak poison. Many are never identified before being sold off or destroyed.

Workplace

There is no workplace, only the world. Hunters travel through unpatrolled wilderness, sleeping rough or paying hush-coin for maps and stables in towns that hate outsiders. The ruins themselves vary wildly: frozen laboratories, sunken manors, breached temples, tangled greenhouses glowing with unstable flora.

Provided Services

• Recovery of pre-Schism artifacts, documents, and devices.

• Mapping of lost ruins, collapsed cities, or arcane decay zones.

• Extraction of volatile materials or alchemical samples.

• On-demand salvage missions from Guilds or private interests.

Dangers & Hazards

Treasure hunting is possibly the deadliest profession in Everwealth. Death comes in many forms, ambush, disease, collapse, monsters, and ancient weapons mistaken for relics. One wrong nudge of a rusted cylinder and you may vanish in a pillar of light and fire. Many ruins contain latent enchantments: time loops, memory fogs, haunted echoes, or worse. There are also human dangers. Bandits prey on hunters returning from their expeditions, and the Scholar’s Guild has been heavily rumored to erase those who find the “wrong” thing.

Alternative Names

'Dustpickers' (derisive), 'Ruin-Rats', 'Delvers', 'Gleamers', 'Vaultwalkers'.

Demand

Incredibly high, especially among elite circles. Relics that prove historical truth, refute doctrine, or carry magickal potential are priceless. But trustworthy hunters are few, and fewer survive long enough to be hired more than once.

Legality

Officially, treasure hunting is legal if declared, but many act first and declare later, if at all. Some ruins are warded or claimed by local powers. Hunters who stumble into cursed zones or forbidden vaults may not live long enough to argue jurisdiction.