Counselors are Rafa who care for patients’ mental and emotional health. They know more about the workings of the brain than any other Rafa, though much remains a mystery. Counselors diagnose and treat brain disease and perform therapy sessions with individuals and families. People often come to Rafa Counselors over Rebas when they want common sense advice not as cluttered with legal precepts and scholarly debates.
Counselors are experts in how jealousy and trauma impact physical health. When faced with the Evil Eye, Physicians and Counselors often work together with both the ones causing and experiencing harm to repair the damage.
The other half of their role is to represent Kahal in negotiations with the spirits. They mediate disputes between individual humans and spirits. Sometimes they act as solicitors, writing contracts where needed. Their goal is to always find a way to maintain balance between human and spirit needs.
Specialty Boon #
Once per game session, players of this specialty can freely take advantage of the Counselor’s Specialty Boon:
The People’s Ear #
Sometimes the natural harmony of things needs to be negotiated into existence, and you stand at the center of those palavers like a tree with limbs wide. Describe a small, seemingly irrelevant spirit contract in the immediate area that you know of or helped create.
Reroll one additional die on your next use of a Rafa Skill as good fortune bends mostly in your favor.
Rafa Bag Supplies #
- Notebook & pen
- Book of Spirits
- 1 hand pie of choice
- 5 Silver Dollars
Herbal Remedies #
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Tea for Focus
Recipe
Infuse water with lemon balm, ginger, and green tea for concentration.
Instructions
Drink in the morning. Taking after sundown will ruin one’s sleep schedule.
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Tea for Sleep
Recipe
Make a tea of marjoram leaves and lemon balm.
Instructions
Take before bed for a calming sleep.
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Anxiety Tincture
Recipe
Make a tincture of lemon balm and alcohol.
Instructions
Serve in warm water.
Eases mind, allowing rest or clear decision making. +1 to life energy.
Counselor Skills #
Recommended Started Skills #
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Ailment’s Origin
A humble lump of wax can shed the humble light of a candle or divine the true origin of illnesses. Certainly this betrays something essential about the Light.
This skill divines whether an ailment is originates from spirits or bodily illness by pouring wax into a bowl of water where it hardens. Tell the Rafa what form their wax takes: shape, consistency, color, etc.
Side Effects
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Ease Pain
A wise Rafa once said that pain leaves marks on the body and the mind. A deeply unserious Rafa once said that pain is weakness leaving the body, and they were made to retake their ethics courses twice.
This skill lowers a patient’s pain. Tell the Rafa how the pain makes itself known as it departs the patient.
Side Effects
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Energy Boost
While boosting the energy of a patient, some Rafa emit a gentle light, while others bring a crisp sea breeze with them. Rafa Yohanan, blessed be her memory, shortly after Freka fell to the ocean, was rumored to cause her patients to twinkle in the darkness of the night.
This skill revives and boosts a patient’s energy. Tell the Rafa about their patient’s energy and how it hums.
Side Effects
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Mood Boost
Have you ever tried to cheer someone up only to have them more irritable for your efforts? If they’re holding onto an emotion with a vice grip, manipulating its shape may only hone an angry, cutting edge.
This skill improves a patient’s mood. Tell the Rafa if they experience any negative emotional bleed from manipulating moods unbidden.
Side Effects
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Staunch Bleeding
Scholar Asher, blessed be his memory, wrote that, “as the blood of life flows within us, so does the Light flow through all the spaces in this world. Even the most full, and especially the most empty.”
This skill stops a patent’s bleeding. Tell the Rafa about the qualities of their patient’s light.
Side Effects
Advanced Skills #
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Calm
Different specialties calm patients differently. Counselors focus on entrancing the subject, while Shepherds of Souls offer more physiological relief. Rafa Yoni caused so many adverse symptoms casting Calm that the Society banned him from casting it.
This skill calms a patient. Tell the Rafa what anxious thoughts enter the periphery of their mind.
Side Effects
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Find Lost People
Often a matter of life and death, Rafa know the importance of connecting with their community. When truly enmeshed with their community, a Rafa can feel people in need of help like the ache of a phantom limb.
This skill lets the Rafa find anyone they know. Tell the Rafa about the environment the lost person is in, as well as their location.
Side Effects
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Focus Mind
The sun rains light down on all things equally, but the magnifying glass collects it and funnels to a point of intense heat. So too can Rafa help patients intensify their own mental energies, and the resultant focus can pierce opaque issues.
This skill helps a patient focus or clarify their thoughts. Tell the Rafa what thoughts nip at their patient’s attention.
Side Effects
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Heal Nervous System
The brain wills the body as the Light compels the Avodai. Rafa must study mightily before being trusted with such a skill, which has as much potential to interrupt signals or cross wires as they do to fix them.
This skill heals injuries to the brain or nerves, often requiring many sessions to return to full functionality.Tell the Rafa what phantom sensory experience they feel.
Side Effects
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Long Distance Mind Speak
Although Rafa Kula created Mind Speak to connect with her surviving siblings, few know that she invaded their minds. Rafa Kula never shared her techniques until inventing protocols of consent, similar to knocking before opening a door.
This skill allows Rafa to forcefully project words into minds over great distances, without knowing how the target feels about the communication.
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Mind Speak
Some twins share supernatural connections, but when Rafa Kula’s twin Luka died she went mute in grief. Only after she learned to project telepathically into her surviving siblings’ minds did she speak again.
This skill allows the Rafa to communicate with a willing participant in their vicinity. Tell the Rafa how their perspective subtly shifts to mirror their target.
Side Effects
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Reveal Truth
Counselors developed this technique to hypnotize patients who might be engaging in harmful behaviors. All Rafa are entrusted not to abuse the trust of their patients, including using this as a parlor act or to divulge confidential patient information.
This skill forces a patient to reveal the truth. Tell the Rafa how their patient reveals a reluctance to speak true, or a lack thereof.
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Speak with Spirits
Avodai history hinged on learning to coexist with spirits. Rafa, Reba, and even Avodai scholars put faith in a belief that all life stems from, and reflects, the Light. As such, we must learn to listen, even when spirits do not communicate by speech.
This skill allows the Rafa to converse with any non-verbal spirits or similar creatures.
Side Effects
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Unburdening
Some emotions weigh on us, all the heavier when we can’t let go of them. We can cling to them subconsciously with greater strength than any conscious effort.
This skill helps a patient release emotions and guilt. Tell the Rafa what physical weight they feel on their body as the patient unburdens themselves.