CINDERFALL FIELD MANUAL · HERITAGE SUPPLEMENT · COMPANION TO WHAT'S LEFT OF US
How Far The Line Bent
Ancestry says what you are. Heritage says which direction your particular branch of it bent. Choose one Heritage at 1st level from your ancestry's list below — it's yours permanently, on top of everything your ancestry already grants.
Every one of the ten confirmed ancestries in What's Left of Us gets three or four Heritage options here, matching standard field-manual depth. None of them grant a fresh set of ability boosts — those are locked in at the ancestry level — but each one grants a genuine, distinct mechanical trait, so two characters of the same ancestry can still feel like they came from different corners of the wasteland.
Design note: the three-way "cyborg problem" flagged in the ancestry draft (Wire-wards vs. Old-World Construct vs. a proposed third option) is resolved here rather than in the ancestry list itself — the congenital-nanite concept survives as the Grafted-Chrome heritage under Old-World Construct, at the very end of this document.
01Human
Adaptable by design — these three heritages are less about the body and more about which corner of the wasteland raised you.
Free Haven-Raised
Grew up in an independent settlement answering to no Republic or corporation — a childhood built on doing three jobs badly instead of one job well.
Effect
Gain an additional general feat at 1st level.
Old Blood
Descended from a pre-Turning genetic-engineering line, faint enough now that it's mostly just a knack — a whisper of an upgrade nobody asked for and nobody can fully explain.
Effect
Choose one at creation: resistance to poison, disease, or radiation (GM's choice of source, player's choice of category).
Combine-Bred
Raised inside Yankee Combine discipline — corporate-sponsored schooling, drills before breakfast, a chain of command internalized before you understood what it was.
Effect
Bonus to Fortitude saves against fear effects while at least one ally is within reach; you were trained to hold a line.
02Vaultborn
Not every bunker aged the same way.
Deep Vault
From one of the oldest, most sealed shelters — generations who never saw the sky at all until forced to.
Effect
Darkvision extends to full clarity at long range; take a permanent minor penalty to Fortitude saves against bright light and sudden glare.
Surface-Adapted
A vault that opened its doors a generation or two early, or never fully sealed to begin with — more comfortable in the sun than most Vaultborn, and it shows socially too.
Effect
Remove the Vaultborn Charisma flaw; gain no additional bonus in exchange — balance recovered, not created.
Engineer-Caste
Bred and trained specifically toward keeping the vault's machinery alive — every child apprenticed to a filtration system or a reactor core before they could read.
Effect
Bonus to Crafting checks made specifically to repair or maintain machinery, on top of Structural Sense.
03Ashwalkers
Chaotic by necessity cuts more than one way.
Burn-Pit Native
Born and raised in the literal burn-pits — the ones that never fully go out, that everyone else routes around.
Effect
Burn-Pit Blood's fire resistance increases; you can work directly beside an active burn-pit without penalty.
Scrap-Baron
Came up as trade royalty within scavenger-crew hierarchy — the one who negotiates prices, not the one who climbs into the collapsed structure first.
Effect
Bonus to Diplomacy checks made when trading or negotiating within scavenger and salvage communities specifically.
Feral Ashwalker
Raised further from any settlement than most — more comfortable moving through a collapsed structure alone than through a crowd.
Effect
Bonus to Stealth checks made while moving through ruins or rubble; take a minor penalty to initial Diplomacy checks with strangers.
04Glassblood
How much of the glow you let show is a choice, mostly.
Deep Glass
The crystalline sheen runs deeper than skin — more resistant, more radiant, harder to hide either way.
Effect
Radiation Resistance increases; Ambient Glow becomes bright enough to be seen at long range, a permanent stealth penalty in darkness.
Stable Glass
A quieter mutation — less resistant to radiation than most Glassblood, but the skin doesn't glow and doesn't crack nearly as easily.
Effect
Remove the Brittle drawback from Glass-Sheen Skin and dim Ambient Glow to nearly unnoticeable; Radiation Resistance drops to a minor bonus instead of a full resistance.
Fractured Glass
Learned to control the one thing about the mutation that's usually just a liability — venting stored radiation on purpose, in a burst, when it actually matters.
Effect
Once per day, release a short burst of radiation damage in melee reach; doing so worsens the Brittle drawback until your next rest.
05Residuals
How loud is the fragment you were born carrying?
Loud Residual
The fragment talks. Not often in words, but you know when it disagrees with you — and it usually does.
Effect
Bleed-Through can be used twice per day instead of once; involuntary quirks (a stranger's mannerism, a flash of unfamiliar memory) surface more often, GM's discretion.
Quiet Residual
The fragment is dormant more often than not — a presence you'd almost forget about, if it weren't for the fact that you can't remember not having it.
Effect
Reduce the Already a Foothold drawback's severity by one step; Bleed-Through and Borrowed Instinct function exactly as written, no more, no less.
Fractured Residual
More than one fragment took root, none of them dominant — a crowded, unstable birth that never fully settled into one borrowed voice.
Effect
Each day, choose which untrained skill Bleed-Through can apply to instead of it being fixed; take a permanent minor penalty to Will saves against possession and soul-based effects, on top of Already a Foothold.
06Cinderborn
The Choir of Ash notices all of you. How you answer is the variable.
Choir-Bound
Never really left, or came back, or simply never pretended the pull wasn't there — the Choir considers you one of its own, and means it.
Effect
Banked Warmth's fire resistance improves; Choir of Ash NPCs treat you as a peer by default, for better and worse, at the GM's discretion.
Wandering Cinderborn
Put real distance between yourself and the cult that would claim you — enough that most Choir of Ash rank-and-file don't immediately recognize what you are.
Effect
The Choir of Ash no longer immediately recognizes you on sight; lose the passive edge from A Fingerprint, Not a Coincidence when actually dealing with them directly.
Bright Cinderborn
The cracks run brighter and closer to the surface than most — unmistakable the moment you're afraid, angry, or hurt.
Effect
Bonus to Intimidation checks while Hairline Cracks are visibly glowing; take a permanent penalty to Stealth while below half HP or frightened.
07Hymnkin
Everyone hears the hymn underneath. Not everyone lets it out.
Choir-Touched Hymnkin
The Gaunt Choir's pull runs strong in you — useful, in the right rooms, and heavy, in most of them.
Effect
Bonus to Religion and Occultism checks involving the Gaunt Choir specifically; take a permanent minor penalty to saves against despair and fear effects.
Silent Hymnkin
The hymn is barely a whisper in you — present, but easy to ignore most days.
Effect
Remove the despair-effect vulnerability tied to A Voice Recognized; The Hymn Underneath's awareness range shrinks to immediate proximity only.
Warding Hymnkin
Learned to push the hymn outward instead of just hearing it — a rare, unsettling gift for briefly steadying someone else's nerves with your own.
Effect
Once per day, grant one adjacent ally a bonus to their next save against a fear or despair effect by humming the hymn where they can hear it.
08Wire-wards
Every Wire-ward has a parent, somewhere. How close that link still runs is the choice.
First-Generation
Raised most recently, closest to the source — the node is strong, and so is the machine intelligence's opinion of you.
Effect
Congenital Node's sensing range doubles; the parent intelligence occasionally reaches out unprompted, a standing GM hook rather than a bonus.
Weaned Wire-ward
The link was deliberately dulled, whether by the parent's choice or an accident during a server-core's collapse — quieter now, and steadier for it.
Effect
Lose A Parent, Somewhere as an active GM hook; gain a permanent minor bonus to Will saves, reflecting a mind that finished growing up on its own terms.
Networked Wire-ward
Learned to open the node to more than just the one intelligence that raised you — shallower bonds, but more of them.
Effect
Congenital Node can exchange data with any nearby machine intelligence, not only ghost-machines; the once-per-day exchange becomes twice-per-day, but each exchange is weaker.
09Emberforged
Every escaped furnace-spirit burns differently.
Furnace-Core
Burns hot and bright, the way the original industrial furnace was built to — more power on tap, more hunger to match it.
Effect
Heat Surge can be used one additional time per day; you need fuel or Ghost-Static roughly twice as often as other Emberforged.
Banked-Coal
A calmer flame, closer to embers than a blaze — less impressive in a fight, far easier to keep fed.
Effect
Can go roughly twice as long between fuel or Ghost-Static sources before guttering; Heat Surge's bonus damage is reduced.
Escaped Emberforged
Closest to the Foreman's memory of what you were built to be — and the most actively hunted for it.
Effect
Bonus to Stealth and Deception checks made specifically to pass as an inert or bound ghost-machine rather than a free one; the Foreman's agents pursue you with unusual persistence as a standing GM hook.
10Old-World Construct
Not every pre-Turning chassis was built for the same job — and one line was never fully a chassis at all.
Sentinel-Line
Built for security and combat roles before the Turning — the chassis still remembers what it was for.
Effect
Bonus to Fortitude saves; natural armor grants a small permanent bonus to AC.
Companion-Line
Built for service, companionship, and public-facing roles — the parts of the old world that wanted a synthetic person, not a synthetic soldier.
Effect
Bonus to Diplomacy or Performance checks (choose at creation); Suppression Protocol's "reads as insincere" drawback is reduced.
Archive-Line
Built to hold and cross-reference records — a walking pre-Turning library that outlived every institution that used it.
Effect
Bonus to Recall Knowledge checks about pre-Turning history, institutions, or technology; Full Diagnostic can also be used to recall one relevant fact instead of a condition check, once per day.
Grafted-Chrome
A rarer manufacturing line, built or later retrofitted with a living, nanite-grown core rather than a fully synthetic one — the line the draft ancestry list called "Chromeborn" before it found its proper home here. Still fully Construct by trait and law; the line between built and born runs straight through the middle of it instead of around the outside.
Effect
Gain slow, passive natural healing beyond Synthetic Body's normal upkeep; take a permanent minor penalty to saves against effects that specifically target living tissue (including flesh-mancy), on top of the Cybernetics-vs-Flesh-mancy matchup already applying to Constructs.