Cartographer

You are a skilled mapmaker, and your knowledge of topography and sense of direction make you invaluable to expeditions into uncharted regions. The maps you make define the wilderness for adventurers who come after you, and with your skilled pen you chart the dangerous places beyond civilization.​

Skill Proficiencies

Nature, Survival

Tool Proficiencies

Navigator's tools, cartographer's tools

Equipment

A set of traveler's clothes, navigator's tools, cartographers tools, and an unfinished map

Feature

Mapmaking:

You never get lost in an area you have mapped. You have an excellent memory for maps and geography, and you can always recall the general layout of terrain, settlements, and other features around you. You can render an accurate map of an area you have traveled through by memory, no matter how long ago you visited it.

Suggested Characteristics

Cartographers run the full spectrum from bookish geographers to rugged explorers. Most feel equally at home in the wilderness and in a dusty study. They can spend as much time thinking in abstractions as they do observing the real world, and their characteristics often reflect this.

Personality Trait

1. I will talk so much about exotic places I've only read about, making it seem as though I've actually been there.

2. I prefer to take an unknown path over a familiar route, and want to see as much territory as possible.

3. I have an extreme attention to detail, but sometimes can't see the forest for the trees.

4. I have the perfect name for new geographical features, and prefer my name even when I learn the common name.

5. I am ALWAYS scribbling.

6. I bring as much gear as possible on expeditions - I never want to be unprepared.

7. I unconsciously count paces under my breath while marching.

8. I get antsy if I stay in the same place for more than a week.

Ideal

1. Knowledge. The pursuit of greater understanding about the world is a worthy cause in itself. (Neutral)

2. Security. Charting the world's dangers makes it a safer place. (Good)

3. Curiosity. Nothing will stop my drive to discover. (Chaotic)

4. Order. Everything has its rightful place, and I want chart it. (Lawful)

5. Conquest. Maps mark an empire's power, and I want to erase insignificant peoples from the world's atlases. (Evil)

6. Nation. With ink and parchment I will expand my people's borders. (Any)

Bond

1. I inherited a fragment of a map to a long lost treasure, and have been searching for the site my whole life.

2. It is my duty to guide my companions, and the responsibility of keeping them safe is as a heavy burden.

3. I am bound to send my charts and discoveries to my masters back home.

4. My ties to my homeland were completely severed, and I explore to find the perfect new home.

5. I dream of having a a great natural wonder named after me so that my name lives in perpetuity.

6. I seek an apprentice to pass on my skills.

Flaw

1. I overly embellish my maps, making my adventures seem more exciting than they are.

2. I forget that the map is not the territory, and am distraught when reality does not match my carefully made charts.

3. I am extremely secretive, and encode my maps so no one else can make sense of them.

4. My maps are intentionally biased to reflect my extreme political views.

5. I'll do anything to be the first to find a new land.

6. I am extremely dismissive to anyone without a good sense of direction.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/5ebackgrounds/showentry.php?e=20&catid=1#ixzz3eycObMS0