Vagabond (Arbiter)

The Vagabond is unlike any other faction on the board. You have no territory, no buildings, and no warriors — just a single wandering figure picking through the forest for useful items and forging quiet alliances with whoever is winning. Where others fight over clearings, you slip between the battles and collect the spoils.

The Arbiter is the enforcer variant of this wandering life — a scarred fighter whose reputation precedes them. While other Vagabonds specialize in theft or craftsmanship, the Arbiter specializes in violence, or more precisely, in the threat of violence deployed on someone else's behalf. Your signature ability is Protector: whenever a faction is defending a battle in your clearing, they may call on you before the dice roll. You contribute all your undamaged swords to their maximum hits — and you pocket a victory point for the service.

You begin with two swords and a solid mobile kit, positioning you as the Vagabond most naturally suited to the front lines from the very first turn.

You earn points through several channels at once, and the Arbiter can run all of them while staying near the fighting:

• Protector — each time a faction enlists you to defend in their clearing, you score 1 VP. A board with two or three active wars can generate a steady trickle of free points just for being in the right place.
• Quests — reveal a quest in a clearing matching its suit, exhaust the two listed items, and score VP or draw cards. Your boot and swords let you complete quest combinations that reward combat-ready items.
• Aid and relationships — hand a card matching a faction's clearing suit to give them Aid, climbing your relationship track toward Allied status. Every tier crossed scores VP directly.
• Battle — removing enemy buildings and tokens in your own offensives scores VP too. Your twin swords make you the most potent Vagabond attacker on the board.

The Arbiter path to 30 is built around perpetual proximity to combat — you want to be where fights happen so Protector fires, then clean up damaged positions with your own attacks or drift toward quests when the front is quiet.

Your turn runs on item exhaustion, like every Vagabond. Moving between clearings costs a boot; attacking costs a sword; crafting costs the symbols shown on the card. Any hits you absorb in battle damage items rather than removing your figure, so keeping your swords healthy is directly tied to your scoring power.

The Arbiter's most distinctive feature is passive: Protector triggers on other players' turns. When any faction in your clearing is defending a battle, they can call you in before the dice roll. You add all undamaged swords to their maximum hits — potentially swinging a close fight — and score 1 VP. You cannot invoke this for yourself, and you cannot be enlisted against yourself, so the ability rewards neutrality or genuine alliance with at least one faction worth defending.

In Daylight you take the standard menu of Vagabond actions — Move, Battle, Explore ruins with a torch, Aid, Quest, Repair with a hammer, and Craft — plus the free Slip repositioning in Birdsong. Your two starting swords let you open fights immediately, and the torch keeps your ruin-clearing options alive in the early turns.

Relationships still matter enormously. A faction that trusts you is more likely to call your Protector ability instead of fighting you, while a Hostile faction turns off that income stream entirely and forces you to spend a sword just to move through their clearings.