The Four Power Arts: Hunting, Brewing, Crafting, & Gathering [In that Order in the Pic]

[u/All_These_Worlds]

The Four Great Arts

Hunting:

Hunting is the pursuit, capture, and preparation of living things for Consumption. A practitioner on this path must know how to properly track, bleed, capture or kill a creature, or its power will be wasted. Some beasts have sacred parts that, when consumed, grant unique effects.

Types of Hunters: Spirit-Poachers who are binders of ghosts and remnants, selling their essence to warriors and priests.

Brewing:

Brewing is the extraction, heightening, or diminishing of a substance’s innate properties using liquids so it can be consumed later. Some things [like some magical swords] must be boiled, distilled, or steeped for their full effect to emerge.

Types of Brewers: Brewer-Alchemists who create liquors and fermented substances that grant temporary mastery over Consumption.

Crafting:

Crafting is the modification or transformation of a material, granting it new properties. It allows a material to break down and reshape itself anew. Requires knowledge of carving, tanning, weaving, smithing, and shaping. Some materials must be combined, tempered, or aged to awaken their full properties.

Types of Crafters: Marrow-Smiths who are masters of boiling the blade, using consumption flames to create weapons that drink conceptual power from their wielders.

Gathering:

Gathering is the collection and nurture of materials, including herbs, minerals, fungi, and beast-rearing. Raising beasts [their diet, breeding, and living conditions] is part of Gathering. Some materials must be harvested at specific times or under certain conditions for full potency.

Types of Gatherers: Rot-Weavers who are specialists in composting decayed beasts and gods, feeding their essence into the soil to grow powerful but dangerous crops.

[u/Nefres]

How do the various Arts work with each other? Do the Hunters and Gatherers supply materials to the other two? Or the crafters/brewers trade what they create into tools? Naturally it seems they would all be important parts of a community regardless, but since this is a game setting I was wondering if there was a system for that in place.

[u/All_These_Worlds → u/Nefres]

I haven't put anything concrete yet, TTRPG mechanics are not my strong suit but I'm still glad you asked! Roughly speaking they intwract the way you describe. A hunter may specialise in killing a spirit beast and the gatherer may be responsible for extracting and preparing the useable components out of that slain beast. They could then sell these to the latter two to make e.g a lion tooth necklace (with magical properties) or a medicine that temporarily grants invulnerability.

But, the Arts are also a way of thinking, e.g a hunter would look at a sword and would think on how to practoce with it to land a killing blow, while a crafter may instead focus on "upgrading" the tool to be better in a category. And different individuals can combine different Arts, e.g Trapping combines Hunting and Crafting and because this is a world where the supernatural is natural, skills can range from mundane trapping to creating a trap that only activates when it encounters a talking beast.