Not every character is a sword. Skyrim runs on people who fish, fell timber, cut stone, cook, sew and play for coin, and we want those lives to be as legible as a warrior's. The public jobs are trades anyone can take up without asking permission, each with its own ladder from Novice to Master, and each paced so that a Master is somebody who has actually done the work.
How it works
Nine jobs share one ladder: fishing, lumberjack, mining, cooking, tailoring, and the bard disciplines of lute, flute and drum. Each runs from level 0 to 100, with ranks at Novice, Apprentice 25, Adept 50, Expert 75 and Master 100, and /skill reads any of them back.
Gathering work runs on timers rather than on how fast you can click. Every job action carries your own personal cooldown, which follows you to every station of that kind and shortens as you level, and the station itself carries a shorter reset that everyone shares. A personal timer never becomes a lock on a public mill, and a mill's reset never follows you to the next mill.
Fishing. /fish casts at the water in front of you, with a rod equipped, out of combat and off a horse. What you pull out is a real fish with a species, a size and a quality, and a rare or record catch is announced across the province instead of only to the people standing beside you. Only an accepted catch starts your cooldown, so a cast you break off costs nothing but the time.
Felling and the stations. A chopping block wants a woodcutter's axe equipped, not merely carried, and a sawmill wants the log loaded before the lever. Neither hands you the wood when the work is done. The mill tells you it is ready and you take it with /collect, standing at the station, within fifteen minutes.
The Bards. Owning the instrument is the whole entry gate. You do not have to join the Bards College and you do not have to equip the instrument to play it. You perform for whoever is in earshot, and an audience is what makes it worth doing, though listeners have to actually stay to count as one. Practising alone earns something, slowly, up to a daily ceiling. At Bard 25 you can take requests, and the licensed catalogue opens at 60.
The three social verbs belong to the audience rather than to the performer. /applaud is once per person per performance and pays nothing at all. /tip hands over real gold and never touches anyone's experience. /request names a song you want from a Bard high enough to take requests, and it waits ten minutes for them to play it.
Commands (/help skill)
/skill lists your effective Aurbis skills and public jobs. /skills is an alias./skill jobs lists your public-job levels and ranks./skill <skill or job> shows one in detail, with its trained level, XP, next level and next rank./skillbar <skill|job> pins a progress bar to the bottom of the screen. /skillbar off clears it.
Fishing (/help fish)
/fish starts a Fishing cast at the water in front of you./fish stop ends the active cast without XP or a reuse delay.
Stations (/help identity)
/collect collects finished resources from a nearby station: a sawmill, a chopping block or a grain mill.
Performing (/help scene)
/bard list [lute|flute|drum] [page] lists the songs you know, and with an instrument named, the locked ones and the level they want./bard skill reads your Bard, Lute, Flute and Drum levels together./bard <lute|flute|drum> <title> begins a performance./bard stop ends it.
For the audience (/help player)
/applaud [chat id] applauds one nearby active Bard. Name the id when more than one is playing./request <chat id> <lute|flute|drum> <title> asks a nearby Bard of level 25 or higher for a song they have unlocked./tip <chat id> <amount> tips a Bard during a performance or in the thirty seconds after it. Tips never affect XP.
