Archetypes
Everyone starts human. What happens next is up to you. An Archetype is how your character survives NYTE City: the power they start with, and the Milestones that unlock as they grow.
Where everyone starts: human
Nobody survives NYTE City the same way twice.
Every character begins as a person. The Stats you set are who you were before power found you, and the Archetype you choose is how you got here. Two of them stay human and close the gap on their own terms, two left humanity behind before your story begins, and the last is whatever the city doesn't have a word for yet.
Mortal paths
Still human. Trained, augmented, or taught to speak to the Aether until they can stand in a room with something that isn't.
Professional
No bloodline. No implants rewriting their nervous system. No covenant with forces older than language. Just a person who decided that wasn't going to be enough of a reason to lose.
Humans who trained until they can compete with supernatural beings. They bring skills, techniques, and Tweaks into situations that expect a mundane human, and teach those situations otherwise. Where others rely on supernatural gifts, a Professional relies on preparation and precision. They are not the most powerful thing in any room. They are frequently the most dangerous.
They're also the only ones who go under the knife. When someone in NYTE City buys chrome to keep up, it's a Professional.
Professions: Cleaner, Enforcer, Fence, Jack of All Trades, Mercenary, Slayer, True Warrior, Wheelman
Arcanist
The Aether doesn't care how curious you are. It only cares whether you can hold on.
Humans who learned to use magic. Wizards, sorcerers, mages: those who can manipulate Aether and wield it like a weapon. What they gain in power, they trade for the risk of ripping themselves, or the world, apart. Every spell is a negotiation with forces that do not care whether you survive the conversation, and the Aether leaves marks. Arcanists wear them.
Origins: Book (magic is knowledge), Blood (magic is instinct), Bound (magic is debt)
Supernatural paths
No longer human, whether they were turned, born to it, or made, and it happened before the campaign starts. They live in a version of NYTE City most people will never see.
Vampire
As old as civilization itself.
Centuries to accumulate power, influence, and everything that comes with both. Every Vampire comes from a bloodline and a sire, with allies, rivals, and reluctant kin to match, and their kind holds one of the four seats on the Unseen Court, which keeps the old powers out of the headlines and inside every room that matters. You navigate hunger, power, and eternity in equal measure. Feeding is not optional.
Bloodlines: Strigoi (deception and intellect), Upyr (raw savagery), Draugur (discipline and war)
Werewolf
Predators not of malice, but of duty.
Lycanthropy is both a curse and a gift: immense strength, savage instinct, and the weight of a tribe and lineage older than the city. Werewolves protect humanity from the things beyond the Veil, whether or not anyone knows it. You live between restraint and release. The beast is not a weapon you draw cleanly; it has its own opinions about how things should be resolved.
Origins: Trueborn (the gift), Wildblood (the curse), Forge Fang (the transaction)
Something else
For the character that doesn't fit any box the city has defined.
Custom
Something the city never catalogued. You and your GM write it.
When what you have in mind doesn't fit, you work with your GM to define it. A Custom Archetype names its own nature, whether that's mortal, supernatural, or something the city has no word for yet, and its own power, borrowed from the other Archetypes or built from scratch. The character sheet has room for one.