Bulwark
"The Vaultkeeper at Marker Hall Four hadn't moved from that post in six years. When the debt audit finally came — the real one, the one with firearms — they found out why."
— Trade record, Duskcrag Concord, sealed by the Debt AuthorityBulwarks are walls that decide. Every protective thing they do is paid for out of the same pool that keeps them standing.
Aether shielding worked into your own fitted gear — cut to your body, maintained by you, and useless to anyone else. It generates Shield Charge, and Shield Charge is the answer to everything: absorbing a hit, holding an aura, denying a doorway, taking a blow meant for someone else.
Spend it protecting the party and you have nothing left when the hit lands on you. Hoard it and you watched someone else take that hit for no reason. The Bulwark is the only class where being generous is a resource decision. Your oath is also a legally binding document, which is a complication the other seven don't have.
Vaultkeeper
Plants and punishes. Two shields, brutal adjacency, and the hardest thing on the field to chip down. They do not chase — they make approaching them the mistake.
Rampart
Advances and controls. Shield forward, polearm extended, pushing the fight into terrain they chose rather than the terrain they were given.
Fontguard
Stands between one specific person and harm. Not a vault, not a line — someone. That specificity is the whole identity.