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Sidhe

LanceAdmin — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:23:24 GMT

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	== Culture & Society ==		== Culture & Society ==
	~~Elven~~ society is shaped by ~~the~~ weight ~~of centuries~~. Where shorter-lived peoples build quickly and rebuild often, elves build slowly and rarely rebuild at all—a home, a garden, or a piece of art might be worked on for a generation before it's considered "finished," and even then, finished is a loose word. This patience seeps into everything: their laws are ancient and rarely amended, their grudges (and their friendships) can outlast empires, and their art favors subtlety and layered meaning over immediate impact, since ~~an elven~~ audience has centuries to unpack it.		Sidhe society is shaped by centuries of weight. Where shorter-lived peoples build quickly and rebuild often, elves build slowly and rarely rebuild at all—a home, a garden, or a piece of art might be worked on for a generation before it's considered "finished," and even then, finished is a loose word. This patience seeps into everything: their laws are ancient and rarely amended, their grudges (and their friendships) can outlast empires, and their art favors subtlety and layered meaning over immediate impact, since a Sidhe audience has centuries to unpack it.

	~~Elven~~ communities tend to organize less around central authority and more around keepers—elders entrusted with a specific inheritance: a keeper of seeds, a keeper of songs, a keeper of names, a keeper of old treaties. Leadership is often circumstantial rather than absolute; the keeper whose knowledge is most ~~relevant to~~ a crisis will naturally take the lead, then step back once the matter passes. Councils of keepers handle larger decisions, and consensus, however slow to reach, is valued far above speed.		Sidhe communities tend to organize less around central authority and more around keepers—elders entrusted with a specific inheritance: a keeper of seeds, a keeper of songs, a keeper of names, a keeper of old treaties. Leadership is often circumstantial rather than absolute; the keeper whose knowledge matters most in a crisis will naturally take the lead, then step back once the matter passes. Councils of keepers handle larger decisions, and consensus, however slow to reach, is valued far above speed.

	Because of their longevity, elves often hold a complicated relationship with shorter-lived races. Friendships with humans, dwarves, or others are treasured precisely because they're brief—elves have a cultural tradition of "swift-bonds," relationships understood from the outset to be intense but finite, and ~~elven~~ mourning customs for such friends are elaborate and specific, distinct from how they grieve their own kind.		Because of their longevity, elves often hold a complicated relationship with shorter-lived races. Friendships with humans, dwarves, or others are treasured precisely because they're brief—elves have a cultural tradition of "swift-bonds," relationships understood from the outset to be intense but finite, and Sidhe mourning customs for such friends are elaborate and specific, distinct from how they grieve their own kind.

	== Magic ==		== Magic ==

	~~Elven~~ magic is less about force and more about relationship—with time, with land, and with pattern. Where other traditions might treat a spell as a tool to be wielded, elves tend to treat magic as something to be asked, cultivated over years or decades the way one might tend an orchard. This makes ~~elven~~ magic slow to learn but remarkably deep; ~~an elven~~ mage in their third century might work enchantments that a younger race would consider mythical simply because they've had the time to refine a single working across an entire lifetime.		Sidhe magic is less about force and more about relationship—with time, with land, and with pattern. Where other traditions might treat a spell as a tool to be wielded, elves tend to treat magic as something to be asked, cultivated over years or decades the way one might tend an orchard. This makes Sidhe magic slow to learn but remarkably deep; a Sidhe mage in their third century might work enchantments that a younger race would consider mythical simply because they've had the time to refine a single working across an entire lifetime.

	Their magic is often tied to the same seasonal and regional currents that shift their skin and hair—many elves believe their coloring is itself a mild magical phenomenon, an outward sign of an inward attunement to the land. Common ~~elven~~ magical traditions include:		Their magic is often tied to the same seasonal and regional currents that shift their skin and hair—many elves believe their coloring is itself a mild magical phenomenon, an outward sign of an inward attunement to the land. Common Sidhe magical traditions include:

	Songweaving – magic bound into music and verbal tradition, where the exact phrasing of a centuries-old song matters as much as the intent behind it.		Songweaving – magic bound into music and verbal tradition, where the exact phrasing of a centuries-old song matters as much as the intent behind it.

Sidhe

LanceAdmin — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:20:54 GMT

Created page with "Sidhe stand tall and slender, their frames drawn out with a willowy grace that belies a surprising sturdiness beneath the surface. Where other folk might see fragility in their long limbs and narrow shoulders, Shide move with the quiet strength of a bent bow—flexible, resilient, and far tougher than they appear. Every gesture carries an effortless elegance, as though their bodies were shaped as much for beauty as for function. Their coloring is far from fixed. Skin to..."

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Sidhe stand tall and slender, their frames drawn out with a willowy grace that belies a surprising sturdiness beneath the surface. Where other folk might see fragility in their long limbs and narrow shoulders, Shide move with the quiet strength of a bent bow—flexible, resilient, and far tougher than they appear. Every gesture carries an effortless elegance, as though their bodies were shaped as much for beauty as for function.

Their coloring is far from fixed. Skin tones drift across a wide spectrum—bark-brown, moon-pale, sun-bronzed, ash-grey, or faintly touched with green or blue—shifting subtly with the region an elf calls home and even with the turning of the seasons. Hair follows the same restless pattern: a woodland elf's hair might deepen to autumn copper as the leaves turn, while a coastal elf's could bleach toward silver-white under a long summer's sun. This chromatic drift is thought to be tied to the land itself, as if Sidhe are a living reflection of the places and cycles they inhabit—less a fixed trait than an ongoing conversation with their environment.

Perhaps most striking is their longevity. Sidhe live for centuries, their lifespans stretching so far beyond those of shorter-lived races that a single elf might witness the rise and fall of kingdoms, the slow reshaping of forests, or the birth and death of entire dialects. This vast span of years lends them a distinctive patience and a long view of history—what feels urgent to a human may seem, to an elf, only the opening notes of a much longer song.

== Culture & Society ==
Elven society is shaped by the weight of centuries. Where shorter-lived peoples build quickly and rebuild often, elves build slowly and rarely rebuild at all—a home, a garden, or a piece of art might be worked on for a generation before it's considered "finished," and even then, finished is a loose word. This patience seeps into everything: their laws are ancient and rarely amended, their grudges (and their friendships) can outlast empires, and their art favors subtlety and layered meaning over immediate impact, since an elven audience has centuries to unpack it.

Elven communities tend to organize less around central authority and more around keepers—elders entrusted with a specific inheritance: a keeper of seeds, a keeper of songs, a keeper of names, a keeper of old treaties. Leadership is often circumstantial rather than absolute; the keeper whose knowledge is most relevant to a crisis will naturally take the lead, then step back once the matter passes. Councils of keepers handle larger decisions, and consensus, however slow to reach, is valued far above speed.

Because of their longevity, elves often hold a complicated relationship with shorter-lived races. Friendships with humans, dwarves, or others are treasured precisely because they're brief—elves have a cultural tradition of "swift-bonds," relationships understood from the outset to be intense but finite, and elven mourning customs for such friends are elaborate and specific, distinct from how they grieve their own kind.

== Magic ==

Elven magic is less about force and more about relationship—with time, with land, and with pattern. Where other traditions might treat a spell as a tool to be wielded, elves tend to treat magic as something to be asked, cultivated over years or decades the way one might tend an orchard. This makes elven magic slow to learn but remarkably deep; an elven mage in their third century might work enchantments that a younger race would consider mythical simply because they've had the time to refine a single working across an entire lifetime.

Their magic is often tied to the same seasonal and regional currents that shift their skin and hair—many elves believe their coloring is itself a mild magical phenomenon, an outward sign of an inward attunement to the land. Common elven magical traditions include:

Songweaving – magic bound into music and verbal tradition, where the exact phrasing of a centuries-old song matters as much as the intent behind it.
Grove-binding – long-term pacts with specific trees, groves, or bodies of water, sometimes lasting an elf's entire life.
Thread-sight – a divinatory practice focused on long causality—less "what will happen tomorrow" and more "what does this choice mean in two hundred years."

== Subraces by Region ==

* '''Sunder Sidhe (deep forest/woodland)'''
Skin tones range from deep umber to mossy green-brown, deepening further in autumn. Hair often shifts through a full seasonal cycle—green-tinged in spring, russet and gold in autumn. Sunder elves are the most tied to Grove-binding traditions and tend to live in settlements grown with the forest rather than carved out of it—homes built into living trees, paths that shift with root growth.

* '''Glasshaven Sidhe (coastal / island)'''
Pale, sun-touched skin that bronzes and fades with the tide-seasons, and hair that bleaches toward silver or sea-glass green in summer. Known for Thread-sight traditions tied to reading currents and stars, and for a seafaring culture surprisingly bold given their otherwise unhurried nature—long lives make for very patient navigators.

* '''Ashfall Sidhe (mountain/highland)'''
Grey-toned or faintly stone-colored skin, with hair that darkens toward soot-black in winter months and lightens in summer. Culturally the most rigid and law-bound of the subraces, having built their keeper-councils into something closer to formal courts. Their magic leans toward Songweaving, using long call-and-response chants passed down for generations to bind agreements and mark boundaries.

* '''Duskmere Sidhe (plains/borderlands)'''
The most physically variable subrace, since they range farthest and mix most often with neighboring peoples. Skin and hair color shift noticeably with the seasons of migration—many Duskmere elves are semi-nomadic, following herds or trade routes, and their culture places unusually high value on swift-bonds, having the most regular contact with shorter-lived races.

----

* '''OVERCONFIDENT''': Shide believes they can do anything.
* '''AGILE''': Shide are graceful and agile. They start with a d6 in Agility instead of a d4. This increases maximum Agility to d12+1.
* '''ALL THUMBS''': Shide have an inherent dislike of mechanical objects in traditional fantasy settings, giving them the All Thumbs Hindrance.
* '''LOW LIGHT VISION''': Shide eyes amplify light. Other races often claim they can see stars in the Shide’ eyes. They ignore penalties for Dim and Dark Illumination.

Lance's Dúnamhar Campaign

LanceAdmin — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:20:11 GMT

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	We are the watchers eternal, the silent observers of this world. We alone witnessed the birth of this place, standing by as its various races sprang forth into existence. We have watched their steps as they grew, learned, and spread across the lands. We welcome you, dear reader, to the world of <mark>'''Dúnamhar'''</mark>.		We are the watchers eternal, the silent observers of this world. We alone witnessed the birth of this place, standing by as its various races sprang forth into existence. We have watched their steps as they grew, learned, and spread across the lands. We welcome you, dear reader, to the world of <mark>'''Dúnamhar'''</mark>.

	The world of '''Dúnamhar''' was born of chaos, and so chaos dwelt upon it. The first of the primordial races to emerge were the gigantic <mark>'''[[Jotuns]]'''</mark>, the <mark>'''[[Ogres]]'''</mark>, and the multitude of the smaller <mark>'''[[Bòcan]]'''</mark> (''BOH-can''). They set about shaping the raw world, but being born of upheaval, chaos remained deeply rooted in their nature. They worked stone and rock, wood and weed.		The world of '''Dúnamhar''' was born of chaos, and so chaos dwelt upon it. The first of the primordial races to emerge were the gigantic <mark>'''[[Jotuns]]'''</mark>, the <mark>'''[[Ogres]]'''</mark> (change to Fomorian), and the multitude of the smaller <mark>'''[[Bòcan]]'''</mark> (''BOH-can''). They set about shaping the raw world, but being born of upheaval, chaos remained deeply rooted in their nature. They worked stone and rock, wood and weed.

	Then came the elven <mark>'''[[~~Shide~~]]'''</mark> (''~~Sheed~~''), bearing the gifts of order and harmony. Tall, elegant, and ethereal, they lived in perfect concert with the land, their skin and hair shifting color with the passing seasons. They possessed a longevity that far outlasted the '''Jotuns''' and their kin.		Then came the elven <mark>'''[[Sidhe]]'''</mark> (''Shee''), bearing the gifts of order and harmony. Tall, elegant, and ethereal, they lived in perfect concert with the land, their skin and hair shifting color with the passing seasons. They possessed a longevity that far outlasted the '''Jotuns''' and their kin.

	Alongside the ~~Shide~~ came the <mark>'''Creidne'''</mark> (''CRANE-ya''), a diminutive race of unparalleled ingenuity. As they populated '''Dúnamhar''', they claimed the low hills, riverbanks, and deepest mountain caverns. For the Creidne, creation was a sacred, reality-bending rite. This absolute devotion to their trades eventually split them into three distinct cultures: the <mark>'''[[Korrigan]]'''</mark>, who carved out lives in the subterranean depths; the <mark>'''[[Abcán]]'''</mark>, sharp-witted, obsessive master artisans who wove magical alloys; and the <mark>'''[[Lúchorp]]'''</mark> (''loo-horp''), the nimble, resilient, and masterfully stealthy keepers of the valleys and hidden hollows.		Alongside the Sidhe came the <mark>'''Creidne'''</mark> (''CRANE-ya''), a diminutive race of unparalleled ingenuity. As they populated '''Dúnamhar''', they claimed the low hills, riverbanks, and deepest mountain caverns. For the Creidne, creation was a sacred, reality-bending rite. This absolute devotion to their trades eventually split them into three distinct cultures: the <mark>'''[[Korrigan]]'''</mark>, who carved out lives in the subterranean depths; the <mark>'''[[Abcán]]'''</mark>, sharp-witted, obsessive master artisans who wove magical alloys; and the <mark>'''[[Lúchorp]]'''</mark> (''loo-horp''), the nimble, resilient, and masterfully stealthy keepers of the valleys and hidden hollows.

	Then, slowly, the race of the <mark>'''[[Humans]]'''</mark> stepped forth. Much smaller than the '''Jotuns''', the '''Ogre''', or even the '''Shide''', but taller than any of the '''Creidne'''. They tended more toward order and harmony, but a streak of chaos still lived within them. They lived shorter lives than those of the '''Shide''' or the '''Creidne''', and perhaps because of that, they populated the land quickly. They tended to be intelligent, creative, and industrious, but perhaps not as talented as the '''Creidne'''.		Then, slowly, the race of the <mark>'''[[Humans]]'''</mark> stepped forth. Much smaller than the '''Jotuns''', the '''Ogre''', or even the '''Shide''', but taller than any of the '''Creidne'''. They tended more toward order and harmony, but a streak of chaos still lived within them. They lived shorter lives than those of the '''Shide''' or the '''Creidne''', and perhaps because of that, they populated the land quickly. They tended to be intelligent, creative, and industrious, but perhaps not as talented as the '''Creidne'''.

MediaWiki:Sidebar

LanceAdmin — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:25:45 GMT

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			* Dúnamhar
			** https://wiki.mypixelstudio.net/index.php?title=Lance%27s_D%C3%BAnamhar_Campaign\|Ancestry Overview
			** Jotuns\|Jutons
			** Ogres\|Ogres
			** Bòcan\|Bòcan
			** Shide\|Shide
			** Korrigan\|Korrigan
			** Abcán\|Abcán
			** Lúchorp\|Lúchorp
			** Humans\|Humans
			** Lupin\|Lupin
			** Ursians\|Ursians
			** Slíogach\|Slíogach
			** Nathair\|Nathair
			** Selkies\|Selkies
			** Odovhar\|Odovhar
			** Cathach\|Cathach
			** Racán\|Racán
	* navigation		* navigation
	** mainpage\|mainpage-description		** mainpage\|mainpage-description
	** Lance%27s_Dúnamhar_Campaign-url\|Lance%27s_Dúnamhar_Campaign
	** specialpages-url\|specialpages		** specialpages-url\|specialpages
	* SEARCH		* SEARCH
	* TOOLBOX		* TOOLBOX
	* LANGUAGES		* LANGUAGES

MediaWiki:Sidebar

LanceAdmin — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:07:42 GMT

Created page with " * navigation ** mainpage|mainpage-description ** Lance%27s_Dúnamhar_Campaign-url|Lance%27s_Dúnamhar_Campaign ** specialpages-url|specialpages * SEARCH * TOOLBOX * LANGUAGES"

New page

* navigation
** mainpage|mainpage-description
** Lance%27s_Dúnamhar_Campaign-url|Lance%27s_Dúnamhar_Campaign
** specialpages-url|specialpages
* SEARCH
* TOOLBOX
* LANGUAGES

Humans

LanceAdmin — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:03:00 GMT

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 Humans are the most physically varied of all the peoples of Dúnamhar, as if the land itself couldn't settle on a single mold when shaping them. Their heights span an extraordinary range—some standing no taller than three feet, compact and quick, while others rise to a towering seven feet, built like the standing stones of the old mountain passes. Between these extremes lies every possible variation, and it isn't uncommon for a single human family to include both the short and the sky-reaching, with no clear pattern to explain why.
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 It is this same restless variability, some say, that fuels their tenacity—a people who cannot even agree amongst themselves what a human is supposed to look like are perhaps better equipped than most to adapt to a world that keeps refusing to hold still.
 ----
 * '''ADAPTABLE:''' Humans begin play with any Novice Edge of their choosing. They must meet its Requirements as usual.

Nathair

LanceAdmin — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:57:54 GMT

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			== Overview ==

			Of all the peoples the watchers have catalogued across Dúnamhar's long unfolding, none carry themselves with quite the same ancient bearing as the Nathair—draconic humanoids, scaled and sharp-featured, who move through the world as though faintly aware that their bloodline predates most of what surrounds them. They stand tall, often matching or exceeding human height, with lean, sinuous builds that belie a wiry strength, long necks and narrow, angular faces set with slitted eyes in shades of amber, copper, and deep volcanic red. Scales cover them entirely, patterned in overlapping rows that catch the light differently depending on mood and movement, in colors ranging through deep emerald, obsidian black, burnished bronze, and the rarer, much-remarked storm-grey. A ridge of short, horn-like spines runs from crown to the base of a long, tapering tail, and clawed hands and feet give every Nathair a bearing that reads, even at rest, as something not quite finished relaxing.

			The tome's authors confess a particular fascination with the Nathair, for they are, among all the younger races catalogued thus far, the ones who seem most conscious of the Churn's old shadow, and least troubled by it. Where other peoples build and strive with an urgency born of short years or hard memory, the Nathair carry themselves with a patience that borders on the reptilian in more than scale alone—unhurried, watchful, and prone to a stillness that visitors often mistake for either boredom or contempt, when it is, more often, simply the Nathair way of giving a situation the time it deserves before committing to a response.

			== Blood and Bearing ==

			Nathair society places enormous weight on bloodlines, though not in the manner of human nobility or inherited title; a Nathair's bloodline is understood as a living record of accomplishment, grudge, and alliance stretching back generations, recited and maintained with a formality the tome finds closer to the Lupin's pack-memory than to any human genealogy. To know a Nathair's full bloodline is to know, in considerable detail, what that Nathair owes and is owed, who their ancestors stood beside in old conflicts long since settled, and which debts, however ancient, remain quietly unpaid. A Nathair who cannot recite their own bloodline with confidence is regarded, by their own kind, with genuine pity—a person adrift from the context that gives a Nathair life its proper shape.

			This weight of inheritance has made the Nathair formidable keepers of history, their oral and increasingly written records considered among the most reliable in Dúnamhar precisely because forgetting is treated, within Nathair culture, as something close to a moral failing. It has also made them, the tome notes with some caution, a people capable of holding a grievance across a span of time that would exhaust nearly any other race's patience for the exercise—a debt owed to a Nathair bloodline is rarely considered void merely because the Nathair who was personally wronged has long since died, and more than one old dispute between Nathair Clutches has simmered, formally unresolved, for longer than some entire nations elsewhere in Dúnamhar have stood.

			== Clutches and the Reckoning ==

			Nathair gather into Clutches, extended bloodline-groups that function as the primary unit of Nathair society, each typically holding a fixed territory—often defensible high ground, caverns, or cliffside strongholds—that the Clutch maintains and improves across generations with the same patient, long-view investment other races reserve for far shorter projects. A Clutch is led by an Eldest-Blood, the most senior and most thoroughly versed member of the bloodline, whose authority rests on the same foundation as a Root-Elder's or Deep-Eldest's: demonstrated wisdom accumulated over time, rather than any contest of strength, though the tome notes a Nathair Eldest-Blood is also expected to be perfectly capable of defending that position physically should the need somehow arise.

			Disputes both within and between Clutches are addressed through a formal practice the Nathair call the Reckoning—a structured accounting of bloodline history, grievance, and debt, conducted before witnesses from both sides and, where the matter is serious enough, before Eldest-Bloods from neutral Clutches invited specifically to judge the matter fairly. A Reckoning can take days to properly conduct, as the full relevant history of both bloodlines involved is laid out and argued over in exhaustive detail, and the tome's authors, who have observed a Reckoning or two across the ages, note a grim admiration for a process that treats the full weight of history as something worth the time it costs to get right.

			== Temperament and Fire ==

			The Nathair are not, whatever their draconic ancestry might suggest to those unfamiliar with them, a hot-tempered people in the manner of the Ashgorge Jutons or the ill-tempered Odovhar. Their anger, when it comes, is cold and deliberate rather than sudden—a Nathair wronged is far more likely to begin quietly building a case for a future Reckoning than to lash out in the moment, and this patience, paired with an undeniable physical capability when a Nathair does choose to act, has earned them a wary respect from nearly every race that has had cause to cross them.

			This is not to say fire plays no role in Nathair life; a number of Nathair bloodlines, particularly those settled near volcanic or geothermal territory, have developed a genuine tolerance for heat and flame that borders on the remarkable, and certain old Nathair techniques of flame-working—used in craft, in ceremony, and, when truly provoked, in more direct expression—remain closely guarded knowledge passed down within specific Clutches rather than shared freely even among other Nathair.

			== Relations with Other Races ==

			The Nathair hold themselves at a careful, considered distance from most of Dúnamhar's younger peoples, not from hostility but from the same unhurried patience that shapes everything else about them—a Nathair sees little urgency in a friendship or a trade agreement that a human or even an elf might pursue immediately, preferring instead to let a relationship prove itself worth the investment over time before committing a Clutch's bloodline-memory to it. Where that trust is eventually earned, however, it tends to run deep and to last; a Clutch that has formally recorded an alliance within its bloodline history will honor that alliance with a consistency few other peoples can match, bound as they are by their own cultural horror of being remembered as a bloodline that broke its word.

			The Jutons and Nathair maintain a wary mutual respect born of shared mountain and highland territory, each recognizing in the other a patience and territorial seriousness the Jutons rarely extend to lesser-regarded neighbors. The Korrigan, for their part, have found the Nathair surprisingly compatible collaborators on occasion, both peoples sharing a cultural reverence for precision and permanence, even if a Korrigan's exacting calculation and a Nathair's generations-deep bloodline-memory arrive at that same shared value from very different directions.

			The elves hold, by most accounts, the warmest relationship with the Nathair of any of the younger races, a kinship the tome suspects grows from a shared comfort with long spans of time that few other peoples can fully appreciate—an elf and a Nathair Eldest-Blood, meeting to discuss a matter centuries in the making, are said to find in each other a rare and welcome absence of the impatience that colors so many of their dealings with shorter-lived folk.

			== Nathair Clutches by Territory ==

			=== Emberscale Nathair (Wyrm-Tooth Mountains, volcanic highlands)===
			The largest and most fire-tolerant of the known Clutches, settled deep in territory shared uneasily with Ashgorge Juton clans and Emberwright Abcán Workshops, the Emberscale are the foremost keepers of Nathair flame-working tradition and maintain bloodline records stretching back further, by their own account, than any other Clutch.

			=== Stormcrag Nathair (Choróin Mountains, high northern peaks)===
			Grey-scaled and storm-toned, the Stormcrag occupy the same forbidding northern heights claimed in part by Choróin Jutons, Frostpelt Ursians, and Frostroot Korrigan, and have developed, out of long necessity, the most carefully negotiated web of territorial agreements of any Clutch, a Reckoning-like formality the Stormcrag apply even to disputes with non-Nathair neighbors.

			=== Duskscale Nathair (southern borderlands, near Duskmere and Sunstrand territory) ===
			Bronze and copper-scaled, the most outward-facing of the Clutches, having settled nearest the greatest mixing of peoples along Dúnamhar's southern borderlands, the Duskscale maintain the most active trade and diplomacy with human, elven, and Lupin neighbors of any Nathair grouping, though even the Duskscale negotiate at a pace other races find trying.

			=== Hollowdeep Nathair (deep cavern systems, scattered beneath multiple ranges) ===
			The most reclusive and little-understood of the Clutches, dwelling in vast natural cavern systems far beneath the mountains rather than upon them, the Hollowdeep are rarely encountered by any other race, and what little is known of them comes largely through occasional, carefully brokered contact with Korrigan Guild-halls whose deepest tunnels have, on rare occasion, bordered Hollowdeep territory.

			----

	* '''ARMOR''': +2: Dragonfolk have thick, scaly skin.		* '''ARMOR''': +2: Dragonfolk have thick, scaly skin.
	* '''BITE/CLAWS''': Str+d4, AP 2. Note that Bite allows a character to bite grappled prey rather than just crush; and claws add +2 to Athletics when climbing most surfaces.		* '''BITE/CLAWS''': Str+d4, AP 2. Note that Bite allows a character to bite grappled prey rather than just crush; and claws add +2 to Athletics when climbing most surfaces.

Lúchorp

LanceAdmin — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:52:02 GMT

Lúchorp Growing-Rings by Region

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	Where the ~~dwarves~~ shape stone with patient calculation, the Lúchorp shape soil with something closer to conversation—a small, wiry people, rarely taller than three and a half feet, with weathered, sun-browned skin and bright, quick eyes that seem perpetually assessing the health of whatever grows nearest them. Their hands, disproportionately large for their size and permanently stained with the good, dark soil they spend their lives working, are gentle enough to coax a reluctant seedling and strong enough to wrestle a stubborn root system into submission when gentleness fails to persuade it. Hair, worn long by custom among both sexes, tends toward earthen tones—loam-brown, moss-green, the pale gold of ripe grain—and it is not uncommon for a gnome's hair to shift subtly with the season, not unlike the elves, though Lúchorp attribute this to simple proximity to growing things rather than any grander cosmic pattern.		Where the Korrigan shape stone with patient calculation, the Lúchorp shape soil with something closer to conversation—a small, wiry people, rarely taller than three and a half feet, with weathered, sun-browned skin and bright, quick eyes that seem perpetually assessing the health of whatever grows nearest them. Their hands, disproportionately large for their size and permanently stained with the good, dark soil they spend their lives working, are gentle enough to coax a reluctant seedling and strong enough to wrestle a stubborn root system into submission when gentleness fails to persuade it. Hair, worn long by custom among both sexes, tends toward earthen tones—loam-brown, moss-green, the pale gold of ripe grain—and it is not uncommon for a gnome's hair to shift subtly with the season, not unlike the elves, though Lúchorp attribute this to simple proximity to growing things rather than any grander cosmic pattern.

			If the Korrigan consider engineering a discipline of exacting permanence, the Lúchorp consider agriculture a discipline of exacting patience with the world's own rhythms—a philosophy that shapes nearly everything about gnomish culture. Where a dwarf might reshape stone to suit a design conceived in advance, a gnome is far more likely to spend a season simply watching a plot of land before deciding what it wants to grow there, and gnomish farming custom holds a deep, near-superstitious respect for working with a place's existing character rather than forcing it toward an outcome the land itself resists.

			== The Growing Wisdom ==

			The Lúchorp possess what the tome's authors, after considerable study, can only describe as an uncanny intuition for living things—an instinct that borders on genuine communication, though the Lúchorp themselves tend to describe it more modestly as simply paying closer attention than most other races bother to. A Lúchorp farmer can diagnose a failing crop, an ailing orchard, or an exhausted plot of soil with a glance that would leave a human or elven farmer baffled, and Lúchorp agricultural techniques—terracing, crop rotation, companion planting, and a great many more specialized practices refined over generations—have made Lúchorp-tended land some of the most reliably productive in all of Dúnamhar, regardless of how unpromising that land first appeared.

			This intuition extends to livestock and beast alike, and the Lúchorp are frequently sought out by other races to tend animals too delicate, too valuable, or simply too temperamental for less patient hands. A Lúchorp's approach to any living thing, plant or animal, tends toward the same core philosophy: understand it thoroughly before attempting to change it, and never force what patient encouragement might achieve just as well given time.

			== Warrens and Growing-Rings ==

			Lúchorp settlements, called Growing-Rings for the concentric fields, orchards, and gardens that typically surround them, are built low and unobtrusively into hillsides and fertile valleys, designed to disturb the surrounding land as little as possible while making full use of it. A Growing-Ring's homes are often built directly into slopes or beneath the eaves of large, cultivated trees, roofed with living turf or thatch, such that a Growing-Ring viewed from any distance can be genuinely difficult to distinguish from the ordinary countryside around it—a quality the Lúchorp consider a point of considerable pride rather than any accident of poverty.

			Authority within a Growing-Ring rests with the Root-Elders, the most experienced growers and keepers of a community, chosen through long demonstrated success rather than any contest of strength or wit—a Root-Elder's authority rests entirely on the plain, visible evidence of their harvests and herds over many years, and a Root-Elder whose judgment begins to fail the land is expected, by Lúchorp custom, to step aside gracefully in favor of someone whose judgment has not. Disputes within a Growing-Ring are rare and typically settled through simple, practical demonstration—two Lúchorp disagreeing over the best approach to a troubled field are as likely to simply try both methods on separate plots and let the following season settle the matter as they are to argue it out in words.

			== Relations with Other Races ==

			The Lúchorp maintain warm, practical relationships with nearly every settled race in Dúnamhar, their skills being valuable enough, and their temperament agreeable enough, that few communities have cause to hold a grudge against Lúchorp neighbors. The Synarchy of Glenmaura in particular has come to depend heavily on Lúchorp expertise in maintaining the valley's considerable agricultural output, and it is not uncommon for a Lúchorp Root-Elder to be consulted directly by the Synarch of Grain on matters of harvest planning and land management.

			The relationship between the Lúchorp and Korrigan is one the tome finds particularly worth noting, given how neatly the two peoples' domains complement one another—a Korrigan hold requires food it cannot easily grow within stone tunnels, and a Lúchorp Growing-Ring often benefits considerably from Korrigan engineering when it comes to irrigation, terracing on difficult terrain, or the construction of root-cellars and storage built to Korrigan standards of precision. Joint Korrigan-Lúchorp settlements, where a Growing-Ring rises directly above or alongside a Korrigan hold's upper levels, are increasingly common in regions where both peoples have claimed neighboring territory, and the tome considers this partnership one of the more naturally harmonious relationships between any two races recorded thus far.

			Ursians, sharing something of the Lúchorp's patience with natural cycles, hold a quiet mutual respect for Lúchorp farming customs, and several Blackroot Ursian dens have been known to trade forest goods and protection for the produce of nearby Growing-Rings. Even the notoriously mischievous Bocans and Racán, whose thieving reputations precede them into most settlements, are said to observe an unusual restraint around Lúchorp Growing-Rings—not from any particular fear, but from what several accounts describe as a genuine, if grudging, respect for the sheer patient effort a Growing-Ring represents, and reluctance to see that effort undone by casual mischief.

			The Lúchorp's relationship with the Abcán mirrors much of what the Korrigan share with that same restless people—Lúchorp patience pairing well with Abcán enthusiasm for clever tools that make cultivation easier or more delightful, even if a Growing-Ring's Root-Elders have learned, over the years, to inspect any Abcán-built mechanism rather thoroughly before trusting it near a season's planting.

			== Lúchorp Growing-Rings by Region ==

			=== Loamhearth Lúchorp (central Glenmaura valley floor) ===
			The largest and most agriculturally productive of the Lúchorp communities, settled across the richest farmland the valley has to offer, the Loamhearth maintain the closest working relationship with the Synarchy and are widely credited with sustaining Glenmaura's food supply through several difficult harvest years since the founding.

			=== Terracewood Lúchorp (Coill-Spine foothills, shared with Ironvein Korrigan territory) ===
			Specialists in difficult terraced agriculture on steep, rocky ground, the Terracewood maintain the valley's closest Korrigan-Lúchorp partnership, their terraced orchards and irrigation systems built in direct collaboration with Ironvein engineers.

			=== Mistvale Lúchorp (near Brine-Root Fen borders) ===
			Adapted to wetter, more challenging growing conditions at the fen's drier margins, the Mistvale specialize in water-tolerant crops and maintain a careful, respectful distance from Slíogach and Fenwrought Juton territory, trading produce for safe passage and occasional protection when the fen's more dangerous inhabitants stir.

			=== Sunfallow Lúchorp (southern borderlands, near Duskmere territory) ===
			The most sociable and widely traveled of the Lúchorp communities, having grown accustomed to the greater mixing of peoples along the southern borderlands, the Sunfallow are known to trade seed stock and agricultural knowledge freely with human, elven, and even Lupin communities nearby.

	If the dwarves consider engineering a discipline of exacting permanence, the Lúchorp consider agriculture a discipline of exacting patience with the world's own rhythms—a philosophy that shapes nearly everything about gnomish culture. Where a dwarf might reshape stone to suit a design conceived in advance, a gnome is far more likely to spend a season simply watching a plot of land before deciding what it wants to grow there, and gnomish farming custom holds a deep, near-superstitious respect for working with a place's existing character rather than forcing it toward an outcome the land itself resists.

	----		----

Korrigan

LanceAdmin — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:45:58 GMT

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-Where the Ursians build for permanence and the Jutons reshape the land through simple force, the dwarves reshape it through design—a people of stocky, powerful build, standing shorter than humans but considerably denser through bone and muscle, as though they were shaped from the same stone they have spent every age of the world learning to master. Their skin runs in tones of weathered clay, granite-grey, and deep earthen brown, often marked with the fine pale scarring that comes from a lifetime spent close to stone, fire, and the tools that shape both. Beards, grown long and often woven or clasped with metal fittings that double as both ornament and small, functional tools, are worn by dwarves of every kind with evident pride, and it is considered no small insult among their kind to speak carelessly of another's beard-work.
+Where the Ursians build for permanence and the Jutons reshape the land through simple force, the Korrigan reshape it through design—a people of stocky, powerful build, standing shorter than humans but considerably denser through bone and muscle, as though they were shaped from the same stone they have spent every age of the world learning to master. Their skin runs in tones of weathered clay, granite-grey, and deep earthen brown, often marked with the fine pale scarring that comes from a lifetime spent close to stone, fire, and the tools that shape both. Beards, grown long and often woven or clasped with metal fittings that double as both ornament and small, functional tools, are worn by Korrigan of every kind with evident pride, and it is considered no small insult among their kind to speak carelessly of another's beard-work.
-The dwarves are not, first and foremost, a people of the sword and forge in the manner other tellings of the world might expect, though they are perfectly capable with both when the need arises. The tome records them instead as Dúnamhar's foremost engineers, architects, and miners—a people whose deepest cultural pride lies not in what they can destroy but in what they can build to outlast them, and whose true weapon, when it comes to shaping the world, is patient and exacting calculation rather than brute strength alone. Where a Juton might simply move a mountain, a dwarf will spend a generation tunneling through it precisely, and take considerably more satisfaction in the result.
+The Korrigan are not, first and foremost, a people of the sword and forge in the manner other tellings of the world might expect, though they are perfectly capable with both when the need arises. The tome records them instead as Dúnamhar's foremost engineers, architects, and miners—a people whose deepest cultural pride lies not in what they can destroy but in what they can build to outlast them, and whose true weapon, when it comes to shaping the world, is patient and exacting calculation rather than brute strength alone. Where a Juton might simply move a mountain, a Korrigan will spend a generation tunneling through it precisely, and take considerably more satisfaction in the result.
 ----

Abcán

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:45:50 GMT

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	If the dwarves consider engineering a discipline of exacting permanence, and the gnomes consider agriculture a conversation with patient natural cycles, the Abcán consider craft itself a form of play—brilliant, occasionally reckless, and driven far more by the question of what if than by any sober assessment of should we. This has made Abcán Dúnamhar's foremost artists, inventors, and metallurgists, capable of work that borders on genius, and just as capable of work that borders on genuine hazard to everyone standing nearby when an experiment doesn't go quite as planned.		If the dwarves consider engineering a discipline of exacting permanence, and the gnomes consider agriculture a conversation with patient natural cycles, the Abcán consider craft itself a form of play—brilliant, occasionally reckless, and driven far more by the question of what if than by any sober assessment of should we. This has made Abcán Dúnamhar's foremost artists, inventors, and metallurgists, capable of work that borders on genius, and just as capable of work that borders on genuine hazard to everyone standing nearby when an experiment doesn't go quite as planned.

			== The Restless Craft ==

			Abcán metallurgy differs sharply from the dwarves' patient, load-bearing precision—where a dwarf asks whether a structure will hold for centuries, an Abcán is more likely to ask whether an alloy can be made to do something no one has yet convinced metal to do at all. This has produced, across generations of Abcán experimentation, genuine innovations that more cautious peoples might never have stumbled toward: alloys lighter than they ought to be for their strength, mechanisms of startling delicacy and complexity, and no small number of complete failures that Abcán craftsfolk discuss with as much enthusiasm as their successes, on the reasoning that a spectacular failure still teaches something worth knowing.

			This same restless creativity extends fully into Abcán artistry, which the tome's authors consider among the most vibrant and varied in all of Dúnamhar. Abcán work rarely settles for simple function where flourish might also fit, and it is a point of genuine cultural pride among the Abcán that even a humble tool—a hinge, a kettle, a simple door-latch—ought to be beautiful as well as functional, an attitude dwarves privately find wasteful and the Abcán privately find joyless in equal measure. Abcán inventions, similarly, rarely stop at solving the problem first presented; an Abcán asked to build a better lock is nearly as likely to return, weeks later, with a lock that also plays a small tune when properly opened, whether or not anyone specifically requested music.

			== Workshops and the Gathering of Wonders ==

			Abcán communities organize around Workshops—loose collectives of artisans, inventors, and metallurgists who share space, tools, and ideas far more freely than the dwarves' closely guarded Guild techniques, on the theory, widely held among the Abcán, that a clever idea shared and improved upon by many hands is worth considerably more than a clever idea hoarded by one. An Abcán Workshop might house woodcarvers alongside jewelers alongside tinkerers building some entirely impractical mechanical curiosity, and cross-pollination between these disciplines is not merely tolerated but actively encouraged, Abcán custom holding that the best ideas often arrive at the seams between crafts rather than within any single one.

			Standing within Abcán society is earned through demonstrated cleverness and the regard of one's fellow artisans rather than any formal hierarchy, and Workshops elect Sparkmasters—respected senior craftsfolk who coordinate larger projects, mediate the occasional creative dispute, and represent the Workshop in dealings with outside settlements—through informal, ongoing consensus rather than any fixed process. A Sparkmaster's authority, much like a Root-Elder's among the gnomes, rests entirely on continued demonstrated skill and good judgment, and a Sparkmaster who stops producing work worth admiring will simply find the Workshop's attention, and its informal deference, drifting elsewhere.

			Larger Abcán settlements periodically host a Gathering of Wonders, a communal exhibition where Workshops display their finest and strangest recent creations for mutual admiration, good-natured competition, and the particular Abcán delight of watching some other Workshop's ambitious invention fail spectacularly in front of an appreciative crowd. The tome notes that these Gatherings have, on occasion, produced genuine breakthroughs, as one Workshop's failure sparks another's solution on the spot—a form of open, collaborative innovation dwarven Guild-masters find bewildering, and rather enjoy visiting all the same.

			== Relations with Other Races ==

			The Abcán maintain enthusiastic, generally delighted relations with nearly every other race in Dúnamhar, their work being prized widely enough, and their temperament curious and agreeable enough, that Abcán artisans are welcomed almost everywhere they choose to travel. The Synarchy of Glenmaura has come to rely on Abcán metallurgy and craft for goods that fall outside dwarven engineering's more structural focus—fine tools, decorative work, and no small number of small mechanical conveniences that have quietly made daily life across the valley more pleasant than it might otherwise be.

			The relationship between the Abcán and dwarves is one the tome finds genuinely productive, if occasionally exasperating on both sides—dwarven engineers value Abcán metallurgical innovation, and Abcán artisans value dwarven precision and structural knowledge, but the two peoples' fundamentally different philosophies of craft (permanence versus possibility, caution versus experimentation) produce frequent, spirited disagreement over methodology even amid genuine mutual respect. Joint dwarf-Abcán projects are common and often highly successful, provided both parties enter with patience for the other's very different definition of a job well done.

			Gnomes and the Abcán share an easy, complementary fondness, gnomish patience with living things pairing well with Abcán enthusiasm for clever tools that make cultivation easier or more delightful—more than one Growing-Ring boasts some small Abcán-built mechanism, from self-watering trellises to absurdly ornate scarecrows, that a passing gnome commissioned on a whim and has never regretted since. Even the Racán, whose own mischievous cleverness runs in a similar vein, hold a particular fondness for Abcán company, and joint Racán-Abcán schemes—part invention, part prank—are said to be responsible for some of the more elaborately ridiculous incidents recorded in the Synarchy's more recent history.

			== Abcán Workshops by Region ==

			Brightforge Abcán (central Glenmaura, near Loamhearth gnomish territory)
			The largest and most prolific of the Abcán communities, settled in the fertile valley center where trade and travel bring the widest variety of ideas and materials through their Workshops. Brightforge metallurgists are particularly renowned for decorative ironwork commissioned by Synarchy officials wishing their halls to look rather less austere than dwarven stonework alone would leave them.

			Tinkervale Abcán (Coill-Spine foothills, near Ironvein dwarven holds)
			The Workshop-cluster with the closest and most productive dwarf-Abcán partnership, having settled near enough to Ironvein territory that collaborative projects between the two peoples' very different craft philosophies have become routine, if rarely conducted without at least some spirited debate.

			Emberwright Abcán (Wyrm-Tooth foothills, near Deepforge dwarven territory)
			Specialists in heat-forward metallurgy, having settled near the same volcanic-adjacent territory that shapes Deepforge dwarven alloy-work, the Emberwright are known for producing some of the most ambitious—and most frequently combustible—Abcán experiments on record.

			Willowmere Abcán (southern borderlands, near Duskmere and Sunfallow territory)
			The most widely traveled of the Abcán Workshops, trading freely across the mixed southern borderlands, the Willowmere are particularly known for small, portable inventions favored by traders, caravaners, and travelers of every race passing through the region's busy crossroads.

	----		----

Selkies

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:39:11 GMT

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 * '''AQUATIC:''' Selkies cannot drown in water and move at their full Pace when swimming.
 * '''DEPENDENCY:''' Selkies must immerse themselves in water one hour out of every 24 or become automatically Fatigued each day until they are Incapacitated. The day after the Incapacitation from dehydration, they perish. Each hour spent in water restores one level of Fatigue.
 * '''LOW LIGHT VISION:''' Selkies are used to the darkness of the depths. They ignore penalties for Dim and Dark illumination.
 * '''TOUGHNESS:''' Life in the depths of their watery world has made Selkies flesh dense and resilient. Add +1 to their Toughness.

Racán

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:55:03 GMT

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	Where the Bocans take without malice, as unremarkable to them as breathing, the Racán take with a flair that borders on performance—raccoon-like humanoids whose reputation for mischief precedes them into every settlement they pass through, and whose talents, the tome must admit, generally justify that reputation in full. They stand shorter than most races, rarely exceeding four and a half feet, with compact, dexterous builds, ringed and banded tails held high for balance, and the unmistakable dark mask of fur across the eyes that gives them an expression of perpetual, knowing amusement whether or not one is actually warranted. Their fur runs in greys, browns, and blacks, banded and patterned in ways no two Racán quite share, and their hands—small, black-fingered, and extraordinarily nimble—are, by wide consensus, the most skillful of any race in Dúnamhar at manipulating locks, latches, knots, and anything else built with the confidence that it cannot be opened by uninvited fingers.		Where the Bocans take without malice, as unremarkable to them as breathing, the Racán take with a flair that borders on performance—raccoon-like humanoids whose reputation for mischief precedes them into every settlement they pass through, and whose talents, the tome must admit, generally justify that reputation in full. They stand shorter than most races, rarely exceeding four and a half feet, with compact, dexterous builds, ringed and banded tails held high for balance, and the unmistakable dark mask of fur across the eyes that gives them an expression of perpetual, knowing amusement whether or not one is actually warranted. Their fur runs in greys, browns, and blacks, banded and patterned in ways no two Racán quite share, and their hands—small, black-fingered, and extraordinarily nimble—are, by wide consensus, the most skillful of any race in Dúnamhar at manipulating locks, latches, knots, and anything else built with the confidence that it cannot be opened by uninvited fingers.

			== Mischief as Craft ==

			The tome must draw a careful distinction here, one the Racán themselves insist upon whenever the comparison to Bocans arises, as it often does: where Bocan thievery is described by the Bocans themselves as simple nature, unremarkable and largely unplanned, Racán mischief is deliberate, considered, and—the Racán would say—an art form unfairly maligned by races too dull to appreciate it. A Racán does not merely take a thing; a Racán takes a thing in a manner calculated to be discovered eventually, and admired, however grudgingly, once the method becomes clear. Elaborate locks picked and relocked with a taunting note left behind, prized possessions relocated to increasingly improbable places rather than simply stolen outright, entire evenings spent orchestrating a prank whose punchline may not land for days—this is, to the Racán mind, the whole point.

			This same cleverness serves the Racán well beyond mischief alone. They are gifted problem-solvers, natural improvisers, and surprisingly capable negotiators, able to talk their way through a situation with the same nimble confidence their fingers bring to a stubborn lock. Racán intelligence runs consistently sharp across the race, less narrowly focused than the Bocans' quick, practical wit, and more inclined toward genuine cleverness for its own sake—a Racán is as likely to solve a problem for the sheer satisfaction of a clever solution as for any reward the solving might bring.

			== Society of the Troupe ==

			Racán gather in loose, high-spirited groups the tome has taken to calling troupes, following the Racán's own theatrical bent, ranging from a handful of individuals to several dozen, bound together less by blood or strict loyalty than by shared taste for company, mischief, and mutual entertainment. A troupe's membership shifts often and without much ceremony, as individual Racán drift toward whichever gathering currently offers the most interesting company or the richest opportunity for cleverness, and rejoin old troupes or form new ones with equal ease.

			Leadership within a troupe, such as it is, tends to fall—informally, and usually temporarily—to whichever Racán has most recently pulled off something sufficiently impressive to earn the troupe's collective admiration, a status the tome notes bears some resemblance to Ogre leadership-by-competence, though considerably more good-natured and far less likely to matter within a season's time. Racán troupes maintain surprisingly firm boundaries despite their loose structure: mischief played on troupe-mates is expected and even encouraged, provided it causes no lasting harm, but mischief that draws serious danger down upon the troupe—rather than simple embarrassment or inconvenience—is treated with genuine and lasting disapproval.

			== Relations with Other Races ==

			Human and elven settlements near Racán territory have, over time, developed a wary fondness for their small neighbors that other races find difficult to understand—the Racán's mischief, while genuinely troublesome, rarely rises to real harm, and is often executed with enough evident skill and good humor that even its victims sometimes find themselves laughing before they finish complaining. This has not stopped more than one furious merchant from posting a bounty on a particularly bold Racán troupe, bounties the Racán themselves treat less as a threat and more as a kind of scorekeeping, to be avoided cleverly rather than taken as genuine cause for reform.

			The relationship between Racán and Bocan communities, where their territories overlap, is a source of persistent and largely good-natured rivalry—two peoples with overlapping reputations and sharply differing philosophies about what that reputation ought to mean, each regarding the other as doing thievery badly, if for entirely opposite reasons. Genuine conflict between the two is rare; genuine cooperation, when a scheme proves too large for either people alone, is rarer still, but the tome has recorded at least a few instances of joint Racán-Bocan enterprises ambitious enough that the resulting stories are, by now, told across half of Dúnamhar in some form or another.

			== Racán Subgroups by Territory ==

			Streamwatch Racán (rivers and waterways near Glenmaura)
			The most commonly encountered troupe-clusters, favoring territory along the Mauraborne and its tributaries, the Streamwatch have the most regular contact with human settlements and the correspondingly richest catalogue of pranks and schemes played upon river traders and dockside merchants.

			Hollowbark Racán (Coill-Spine forest edges)
			Slightly larger and more heavily banded than other Racán, the Hollowbark favor forest territory bordering both human and Athàn-Garrow lands, and have developed a curious, mutually amused relationship with the elves—the Athàn-Garrow's patience proving an irresistible target for Racán mischief, and the Racán's cleverness apparently entertaining enough that the elves rarely retaliate with any real severity.

			Duskraider Racán (southern borderlands, near Duskmere territory)
			The boldest and most far-ranging of the troupe-clusters, willing to travel considerable distances alongside caravans and trade routes in search of fresh opportunity, the Duskraider are the subgroup most likely to be encountered far from any fixed Racán territory at all.

			Cinderveil Racán (Wyrm-Tooth foothills, near Ashgorge Juton and Ashmarsh Ogre territory)
			The rarest and most cautious of the subgroups, having settled dangerously close to some of Dúnamhar's more volatile neighbors, the Cinderveil have tempered the usual Racán boldness with real discretion, having learned early and painfully that an Ashgorge Juton's sense of humor does not remotely match their own.

	----		----

Cathach

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:33:09 GMT

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	Where the Ursians carry the forest's patience and the Lupin the pack's fierce loyalty, the Cathach carry something closer to the forest's silence itself—feline humanoids built for solitude, precision, and a self-possession that other races often mistake for arrogance, though the tome suspects it is simply the honest confidence of a people who rarely need help finishing what they start. They stand roughly at human height, lean and long-limbed, with a sinuous grace to every movement that makes even their stillness look deliberate. Fur covers them in patterns as varied as the cats of the old world once were—striped, spotted, solid, or dappled—in shades of gold, russet, grey, and black, with eyes that catch and hold light in a way that unsettles those unused to being watched so precisely. Retractable claws tip both hand and foot, and a long, expressive tail serves as much for balance as for the subtle language of mood the Cathach read fluently in one another and rarely bother explaining to outsiders.		Where the Ursians carry the forest's patience and the Lupin the pack's fierce loyalty, the Cathach carry something closer to the forest's silence itself—feline humanoids built for solitude, precision, and a self-possession that other races often mistake for arrogance, though the tome suspects it is simply the honest confidence of a people who rarely need help finishing what they start. They stand roughly at human height, lean and long-limbed, with a sinuous grace to every movement that makes even their stillness look deliberate. Fur covers them in patterns as varied as the cats of the old world once were—striped, spotted, solid, or dappled—in shades of gold, russet, grey, and black, with eyes that catch and hold light in a way that unsettles those unused to being watched so precisely. Retractable claws tip both hand and foot, and a long, expressive tail serves as much for balance as for the subtle language of mood the Cathach read fluently in one another and rarely bother explaining to outsiders.

			== Solitude and Selective Company ==

			The Cathach are not, strictly speaking, solitary by necessity—they simply prefer their own company, or the company of a small, carefully chosen few, to the crowded warrens and packs and dens other races seem to find so essential. A young Cathach will often leave its birth-territory entirely upon reaching maturity, staking out ground of its own rather than remaining bound to family the way an Ursian remains bound to its den or a Lupin to its pack. This does not make them cold, precisely—Cathach friendships and mating-bonds, once formed, tend to run deep and last—but it does make them selective in a way that reads, to less patient races, as aloofness.

			This selectivity extends to territory itself. A Cathach's claimed ground, however modest, is treated as inviolable, marked and maintained with a precision bordering on ritual, and trespass—intentional or otherwise—is met with a coldness that can escalate quickly if not corrected. Unlike the Odovhar's blunt fury or the Ursian's slow-building rage, Cathach displeasure tends toward calculation: a Cathach wronged is more likely to plan a fitting response than to lash out immediately, and the tome cautions that this patience should never be mistaken for forgiveness.

			== Society Without Structure ==

			Formal governance among the Cathach is minimal, and largely by choice. Where other races build councils, packs, or herds, the Cathach maintain something closer to a loose network of mutual respect and occasional obligation—individuals who owe each other favors, who honor old debts, and who gather rarely and only for matters serious enough to warrant setting aside their preference for solitude. These gatherings, when they occur, are called Convenings, and a Cathach who fails to honor a Convening's consensus, rare as that consensus is to reach, will find their claimed territory quietly and universally disrespected by other Cathach from that point forward—a social consequence more effective among this proudly independent people than any formal punishment could hope to be.

			What the Cathach lack in collective structure, they make up for in individual capability. Cathach hunters, trackers, and scouts are prized across Dúnamhar for a precision that borders on the uncanny, and more than one desperate settlement has sought out a Cathach willing to solve a problem—a persistent predator, a troublesome rival, a debt owed—that no larger, more organized force could resolve as cleanly. This has made the Cathach, individually, some of the most sought-after and best-compensated specialists among the races, even as the Cathach as a whole remain one of the least politically organized.

			== Relations with Other Races ==

			The Cathach hold no particular grudge against other peoples, nor any particular warmth, meeting most interactions with the same measured neutrality they extend to strangers of their own kind. Trade with the Cathach is possible and often profitable, provided one approaches with patience and without pressing too hard or too fast—a Cathach rushed into a decision is a Cathach likely to simply walk away from the table entirely, transaction forgotten. The Athàn-Garrow elves, sharing something of the Cathach's own unhurried precision, have maintained the warmest relationship with them of any race, though even this warmth runs cooler and more transactional than the deep kinship the elves hold with, say, the Blackroot Ursians.

			Human settlements have found Cathach individuals useful, if expensive, allies for problems too delicate or too dangerous for a village to solve alone, and a wise settlement learns quickly never to haggle too aggressively over a Cathach's price—not from any fear of retaliation, but simply because the Cathach in question will, without rancor or explanation, decline the job and leave.

			== Cathach Subgroups by Territory ==

			Duneshadow Cathach (open plains and grasslands)
			Lean and sand-toned, built for speed across open ground, the Duneshadow are the most frequently encountered Cathach, having territory that overlaps considerably with human trade routes. The most willing of the subgroups to work regularly with outsiders, if only because open plains offer fewer places to hide from the problems that require solving.

			Thornback Cathach (Coill-Spine forest fringes)
			Darker-coated and striped for cover in dappled forest light, the Thornback favor the boundary between deep woodland and open ground, and maintain the closest ties to the Athàn-Garrow of any Cathach grouping, sharing territory with a quiet, mutual respect built on similarly unhurried temperaments.

			Ashclaw Cathach (Wyrm-Tooth foothills, volcanic scrubland)
			Grey-and-black mottled, adapted to harsher, rockier ground, the Ashclaw are considered the most solitary even among a solitary people, rarely seen even by other Cathach, and sought after specifically for problems requiring a level of discretion no other race, and few other Cathach, can guarantee.

			Frostwhisker Cathach (Choróin Mountains, high cold reaches)
			Thick-coated and pale for the northern snow, the Frostwhisker are the rarest subgroup, having adapted to territory harsh enough that even the notoriously self-sufficient Cathach maintain small, informal support networks there out of simple necessity—the mountains, it seems, are one problem even Cathach independence cannot fully solve alone.

	* '''BITE:''' Cathach fangs cause Str+d4 damage and may be used against grappled foes.		* '''BITE:''' Cathach fangs cause Str+d4 damage and may be used against grappled foes.

Ursians

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:31:28 GMT

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	The Ursians are a people of contrasts the tome finds worth recording carefully, for a single observer's account of them can vary wildly depending entirely on when that observer happened to look. In their ordinary state, Ursians are famously unhurried—slow to anger, slow to judge, and content to let a season pass before making a decision that another race might rush into within the hour. They are, by most accounts, thoughtful company: deliberate speakers, careful listeners, and possessed of a dry, patient humor that catches outsiders off guard given their imposing frames. Yet this patience conceals a temper that, once fully roused, transforms an Ursian into something closer to a natural disaster than a combatant—strength unleashed all at once, without the slow build most other races' anger requires, and just as difficult to reason with as it is to withstand.		The Ursians are a people of contrasts the tome finds worth recording carefully, for a single observer's account of them can vary wildly depending entirely on when that observer happened to look. In their ordinary state, Ursians are famously unhurried—slow to anger, slow to judge, and content to let a season pass before making a decision that another race might rush into within the hour. They are, by most accounts, thoughtful company: deliberate speakers, careful listeners, and possessed of a dry, patient humor that catches outsiders off guard given their imposing frames. Yet this patience conceals a temper that, once fully roused, transforms an Ursian into something closer to a natural disaster than a combatant—strength unleashed all at once, without the slow build most other races' anger requires, and just as difficult to reason with as it is to withstand.

			== Den and Season ==

			Ursian society organizes around the den, a term the tome borrows directly from the Ursians' own tongue, denoting both a physical dwelling and the extended family unit that occupies it. Dens are typically built into hillsides, hollowed groves, or the deep lee of mountain ranges, sturdy and built to last generations, and it is not uncommon for a single den to house grandparent, parent, and cub together under one roof for the whole of the elder's long life. Ursian lifespans, while not rivaling the elves, run considerably longer than a human's, lending Ursian dens a settled, unhurried permanence that echoes the temperament of their inhabitants.

			Ursian life follows the turning of the seasons with a devotion other races find almost religious in its consistency. The warmer months are given over to gathering, building, and the slow work of trade and craft for which Ursian artisans—particularly their woodworkers and stoneworkers—have earned quiet respect even among more insular neighbors. As the cold months draw near, however, Ursian dens withdraw inward, activity slowing to a deliberate crawl, and it is considered a serious breach of custom, bordering on genuine offense, to disturb a den during this quiet season without grave and pressing cause. More than one hapless traveler has learned this lesson from an Ursian roused early from its winter stillness, and the tome is compelled to note that few such travelers cared to repeat the experience.

			== Governance Among the Dens ==

			Ursians are not isolationist by temperament so much as simply unhurried about the wider world's affairs, and their relations with other peoples tend to reflect this: cordial where contact is calm and patient, catastrophic where it is not. Human settlements bordering Ursian territory have, over generations, learned the value of clear boundaries, advance notice, and a healthy respect for the winter quiet, and those who observe such courtesies often find Ursian neighbors to be reliable, if reserved, allies. The elves, and the Athàn-Garrow in particular, are said to hold a longstanding and genuine mutual respect with several Ursian dens, born from a shared patience the two peoples recognize easily in one another, whatever else separates them.

			Where that patience is tested, however, the tome's authors council all readers to exercise considerable caution. An Ursian's temper, once fully spent, does not distinguish neatly between the party that caused offense and those merely standing nearby, and more than one border conflict in Dúnamhar's long history has ended not in a negotiated peace but in the simple, exhausted silence that follows an Ursian's fury finally burning itself out.

			== Ursian Subgroups by Territory ==

			Blackroot Ursians (deep Coill-Spine forest)
			The most numerous of the Ursian groupings, dark-furred and forest-dwelling, the Blackroot maintain the closest ties to the Athàn-Garrow elves of any Ursian den-cluster, sharing forest territory in a long and largely undisturbed peace built on mutual patience and mutual disinterest in disturbing the other's affairs.

			Frostpelt Ursians (Choróin Mountains, high slopes)
			Pale, thick-coated, and suited to genuine cold, the Frostpelt occupy the same forbidding heights claimed in part by the Choróin Jutons, and have developed a wary but workable coexistence with their giant neighbors, each generally content to let the mountain provide enough territory for both.

			Hollowvale Ursians (Wyrm-Tooth foothills)
			Somewhat smaller and notably quicker-tempered than other Ursian groupings, the Hollowvale have taken the brunt of pressure from expanding human settlement along the eastern valley's edge, and relations there remain the most strained of any Ursian territory—cordial in quiet years, and considerably less so when boundaries are pressed.

			Duskhollow Ursians (southern borderlands, near Duskmere territory)
			The most sociable and least reclusive of the Ursian groupings, having grown accustomed to the greater mixing of peoples along the southern borderlands, the Duskhollow are known to trade more freely and travel further from their dens than Ursian custom typically favors, much to the quiet consternation of more traditional dens elsewhere.



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Odovhar

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:29:42 GMT

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	The Odovhar are ill-tempered by nature, a trait the tome records without exaggeration or apology, for it is confirmed by nearly every account that exists of them. Patience is not a quality the Odovhar cultivate, and slights—real or merely perceived—are met swiftly and without much interest in proportion. A shoving match over a poor catch of fish and a genuine territorial incursion may draw, from an Odovhar, precisely the same order of response. This has made them poor neighbors to nearly everyone who has attempted to settle near their waters, and poorer negotiating partners still, for an Odovhar insulted mid-bargain is far more likely to end the conversation with a fist than a counteroffer.		The Odovhar are ill-tempered by nature, a trait the tome records without exaggeration or apology, for it is confirmed by nearly every account that exists of them. Patience is not a quality the Odovhar cultivate, and slights—real or merely perceived—are met swiftly and without much interest in proportion. A shoving match over a poor catch of fish and a genuine territorial incursion may draw, from an Odovhar, precisely the same order of response. This has made them poor neighbors to nearly everyone who has attempted to settle near their waters, and poorer negotiating partners still, for an Odovhar insulted mid-bargain is far more likely to end the conversation with a fist than a counteroffer.

			== Life Between Water and Shore ==

			True to their semi-aquatic nature, the Odovhar divide their lives between cold coastal waters and the rocky shores and ice-fields they haul themselves onto to rest, breed, and quarrel among their own kind. They swim with a power and endurance that puts even the Slíogach to shame in open water, though they lack the fen-dwellers' patience for stillness, preferring instead to close distance directly and settle matters, aquatic or otherwise, through blunt and immediate force. On land, their great bulk makes them slower and considerably less graceful, a vulnerability the Odovhar seem entirely aware of and correspondingly furious about, which does little to improve their famously short tempers.

			Odovhar settlements, such as they are, tend to cluster along harsh northern coastlines and ice-locked shores that few other races have much interest in contesting—not from any lack of resources in such places, but because the Odovhar's reputation alone is usually sufficient to keep other claims at a respectful distance. Where territory is contested regardless, the Odovhar do not negotiate so much as they simply outlast, hurling themselves at the problem with a persistence that borders on the geological, not unlike the Jutons in this one narrow respect, though the tome hastens to note the two races share no known kinship beyond a mutual fondness for solving problems by main force.

			== Society Among the Herds ==

			Odovhar gather in loose groupings the tome's authors have taken to calling herds, following the Odovhar's own blunt terminology for themselves, ranging from a few dozen individuals to considerably larger gatherings during breeding seasons, when otherwise scattered Odovhar convene on favored shorelines in numbers that make the ground itself seem to shift and groan beneath them. Leadership within a herd falls, unsurprisingly, to whichever Odovhar has most recently and most convincingly proven itself the strongest, through contests of raw physical dominance that other races might call brutal and the Odovhar simply call Tuesday. A herd-leader's authority lasts exactly as long as no rival successfully challenges it, which is to say, often not very long at all.

			Despite this constant churn of leadership, Odovhar society holds together reasonably well, bound less by governance than by a shared and genuine loyalty to the herd as a concept, if not always to whichever individual currently leads it. An Odovhar will fight viciously among its own herd-mates over food, territory, or simple insult, yet will turn that same ferocity outward without hesitation the moment an outside threat presents itself—an inconsistency other races find baffling and the Odovhar, characteristically, have never bothered to explain or justify.

			== Relations with Other Races ==

			The Odovhar hold little regard for diplomacy and less patience for those who attempt it, which has left most other peoples of Dúnamhar content to simply avoid Odovhar territory rather than risk the alternative. The rare trade that does occur—typically for the thick, weather-resistant hides the Odovhar shed in the warmer months, or for oils rendered from their considerable blubber—tends to happen through intermediaries willing to absorb an Odovhar's temper as a cost of doing business, rather than through any direct negotiation the Odovhar themselves would tolerate for long.

			No known alliance, grudge, or lasting conflict yet ties the Odovhar formally to the wider events the tome has thus far recorded, though the watchers note this with some suspicion rather than comfort—a race this numerous, this territorial, and this immovably settled along Dúnamhar's northern waters seems unlikely to remain apart from the world's affairs forever. We suspect the day the Odovhar's temper turns outward in earnest has simply not yet arrived.

			== Odovhar Subgroups by Territory ==

			Ironshoal Odovhar (northern Obsidian Sea coast)
			The largest and most frequently encountered of the Odovhar groupings, the Ironshoal take their name from the dense kelp-and-mineral shoals they favor for hunting, and carry the darkest, most iron-grey hides of any subgroup, said to result from decades spent in the mineral-rich waters near the Obsidian Sea's northern reaches. They are, if the tome may use such a relative term, the most tolerant of outside contact, having grown at least somewhat accustomed to the occasional trading vessel bold enough to approach their shores with proper caution and properly modest expectations.

			Frostmaw Odovhar (far northern ice-fields)
			Paler and even more heavily built than their southern kin, the Frostmaw dwell along the permanent ice-fields at the furthest edge of the known north, where few other races have ever ventured far enough to observe them closely. What accounts do exist describe tusks longer and more deeply scarred than any other subgroup's, and a temperament, if such a thing were thought possible, even shorter-fused than the Odovhar norm—a trait some scholars attribute to the sheer difficulty of survival in a territory that offers no margin for patience.

			Redrock Odovhar (eastern coastal cliffs, near Wyrm-Tooth foothills)
			Named for the rust-colored stone of the cliffs and tidal caves they claim as breeding grounds, the Redrock are somewhat smaller than other Odovhar subgroups, though no less aggressive, and have the distinction of being the only Odovhar grouping with any regular, if deeply reluctant, contact with the Ashgorge Jutons whose mountain territory meets their coastline. The relationship between the two is not so much an alliance as a mutually enforced boundary, maintained through periodic, brutal reminders on both sides of exactly where that boundary lies.

			Duskfen Odovhar (southern brackish estuaries, bordering the Brine-Root Fen)
			The smallest and southernmost of the known subgroups, having pushed further from the cold waters most Odovhar favor than any other grouping, the Duskfen have adapted to warmer, brackish estuary waters and taken on a mottled brown-grey hide better suited to murkier surroundings. Their proximity to the Brine-Root Fen has produced an uneasy and infrequent overlap with Slíogach territory, generally avoided by mutual and wordless agreement, as neither race has found the other worth the trouble of a proper conflict—yet.

			----

	* '''SIZE +1:''' Odovhar are tall and broad, adding +1 to their Toughness.		* '''SIZE +1:''' Odovhar are tall and broad, adding +1 to their Toughness.

Lupin

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:27:13 GMT

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	The Lupin are a people of the far south, having made their home in the wild territories beyond where Cét-Talam's maps ever thought to reach in any detail—territory rugged enough, and Lupin society insular enough, that few outsiders had cause to know much of them before the kingdom's fall sent refugees stumbling toward their borders. What little was known painted them, not unfairly, as a wary and self-contained people, slow to trust strangers and slower still to forget a wrong done to the pack.		The Lupin are a people of the far south, having made their home in the wild territories beyond where Cét-Talam's maps ever thought to reach in any detail—territory rugged enough, and Lupin society insular enough, that few outsiders had cause to know much of them before the kingdom's fall sent refugees stumbling toward their borders. What little was known painted them, not unfairly, as a wary and self-contained people, slow to trust strangers and slower still to forget a wrong done to the pack.

			== Pack and Pack-Bond ==

			Lupin society is built, unsurprisingly, around the pack—though the tome must clarify for readers unfamiliar with the term that a Lupin pack is closer to an extended clan than to the hunting-groups of true wolves, bound as much by chosen loyalty as by blood. A pack may include dozens of Lupin, sometimes more, spanning several generations, and it is to the pack rather than to any wider nation that a Lupin's deepest loyalty is owed. Lupin who lack a pack—orphaned, exiled, or simply wandered too far from home—are regarded with a mixture of pity and unease by other Lupin, for a packless Lupin is considered, by their own reckoning, only half a person.

			Leadership within a pack falls to an Alpha pair, chosen not by birthright but by a combination of strength, judgment, and the pack's collective trust—a trust that can be lost as well as earned, and Alphas who prove reckless or unjust with pack lives have, on more than one recorded occasion, been quietly deposed by their own kin rather than tolerated out of tradition. Beneath the Alphas, a pack organizes into looser roles suited to individual strength: hunters, who provide and defend; watchers, whose keen senses guard the pack's borders; and elders, whose long memory of old grievances and old alliances the pack relies upon before any major decision.

			The bond between packmates runs deep enough that the tome's own watchers, who have observed a great many forms of loyalty across the ages, still find it remarkable. A Lupin will risk grave harm to protect a packmate with a readiness that other races often call reckless, and the death of a packmate is mourned with a communal howl that can carry for miles across open country—a sound other races have learned, over the years, to recognize and to leave well alone.

			== Wariness and Trust ==

			The Lupin's caution toward outsiders is not baseless. Long isolation in difficult southern territory taught them, across generations, that unfamiliar faces more often bring danger than aid, and pack instinct runs deep enough that even individual Lupin who might personally warm to a stranger will often defer to the pack's more guarded judgment. Trust, once given, is a serious thing among the Lupin—closer to a pack-bond extended outward than to the casual trust other races offer freely and revoke just as easily.

			This is what makes their alliance with the fleeing humans, brokered through elven persuasion, so remarkable a moment in the tome's account of that age. For Lupin packs to extend aid to strangers, on the word of the Athàn-Garrow alone, without any long history of trust to draw upon, speaks to something the tome considers worth recording plainly: that whatever their wariness, the Lupin are not without compassion for suffering clearly and honestly shown to them. Several Lupin packs are known to have guided human refugees through southern passes that would otherwise have swallowed them entirely, at real cost to their own hunting grounds and, in at least one recorded account, at the cost of pack lives lost defending refugees from creatures loosed by Cét-Talam's fall.

			== Lupin Subgroups by Territory ==

			Grayfang Lupin (southern highlands)
			The largest and most populous of the known Lupin packs-of-packs, the Grayfang favor grey and black coats suited to the stone and scrub of the southern highlands. They are considered the most traditional of the Lupin groupings, holding tightly to Alpha-led governance and pack-bond customs, and were among the first to answer the Athàn-Garrow's call to aid the human refugees.

			Emberrun Lupin (southern scrublands, near volcanic vents)
			Marked by reddish-brown fur and an unusually high tolerance for heat, the Emberrun make their home near the scattered volcanic vents of the deep south. Somewhat more aggressive in temperament than other Lupin groupings, quick to challenge trespassers, though fiercely protective of packmates and allies once trust is earned.

			Silverhowl Lupin (southern coast, near the Obsidian Sea)
			Rare and reclusive, marked by pale silver-white coats, the Silverhowl dwell along the remote southern coastline and are said to communicate across great distances using long, layered howls that carry information—danger, welcome, mourning—encoded in pattern rather than mere volume. Little else is reliably known of them, as they are the most withdrawn of all Lupin groupings, even from other Lupin packs.

			Duskmere Lupin (southern borderlands, overlapping human Duskmere elven territory)
			Named, as the Duskmere elves are, for the borderland territory they share, this pack-grouping has had the most regular contact with other races through trade and shared land, and is correspondingly the least insular of the Lupin groupings—though "least insular" among the Lupin still means considerably more guarded than most other peoples of Dúnamhar.

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Bòcan

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:25:17 GMT

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	For the truth is fuller than the reputation suggests. Bocans are, almost without exception, quick-witted—not in the deep, patient cunning of a Choróin war-chief, but in a fast, adaptive intelligence built for immediate problems: how to open a lock, how to slip past a guard, how to talk their way out of a situation their hands have gotten them into. Where Juton and Ogre intelligence ranges unpredictably across their kind, Bocan cleverness is close to universal, if narrow in its application. Few Bocans have any interest in philosophy, statecraft, or the slow arts; nearly all of them can pick a pocket, pick a lock, or talk a farmer out of a meal without breaking stride.		For the truth is fuller than the reputation suggests. Bocans are, almost without exception, quick-witted—not in the deep, patient cunning of a Choróin war-chief, but in a fast, adaptive intelligence built for immediate problems: how to open a lock, how to slip past a guard, how to talk their way out of a situation their hands have gotten them into. Where Juton and Ogre intelligence ranges unpredictably across their kind, Bocan cleverness is close to universal, if narrow in its application. Few Bocans have any interest in philosophy, statecraft, or the slow arts; nearly all of them can pick a pocket, pick a lock, or talk a farmer out of a meal without breaking stride.

			== Bocan Society ==
			Bocans do not build kingdoms, and the tome suspects they never will, not from any lack of capability but from a genuine disinterest in the kind of permanence other races prize. They gather instead in warrens—loose, shifting communities built into hillsides, abandoned structures, root systems, or the forgotten undercrofts of larger settlements—that might house a dozen Bocans or several hundred, and that reorganize constantly as members drift between warrens seeking better pickings, more interesting company, or simply a change of scenery.

			Leadership within a warren, such as it is, tends to fall to whichever Bocan is best at the specific problem currently at hand—not unlike the Ogres in this respect, though far more casual and far less permanent. A Bocan skilled at negotiating with human merchants might lead trade dealings one season, while a Bocan gifted at reading the mountain weather leads the warren's relocation the next. No Bocan expects, or particularly wants, to lead for long; authority among Bocans is treated less as a prize and more as an inconvenience to be shared around.

			Despite—or perhaps because of—their thieving reputation, Bocan warrens maintain a surprisingly consistent code among themselves: never steal from a warren-mate twice in the same season, always share information about danger freely, and never, under any circumstance, betray a warren-mate to an outsider, whatever the offered price. Bocans who break this last rule are not merely shunned but actively hunted by their former kin, for a Bocan who will sell out their own is considered the one true danger their society cannot absorb and balance out.

			== Relations with Other Races ==

			Human settlements near Bocan warrens have developed a resigned, almost ritualized relationship with their small neighbors—accepting a certain amount of pilfering as an unavoidable cost of proximity, in exchange for the genuinely useful services Bocans are often willing to provide: message-running through terrain too cramped for larger folk, information gathered from places no human could go unnoticed, or small repairs performed by hands nimble enough to work in spaces a human's fingers could never fit. Wise settlements learn to leave out a small, deliberate offering rather than fight a losing battle against Bocan fingers, and find the arrangement cheaper than the alternative.

			Elves regard Bocans with a puzzled sort of tolerance, finding their short lives and shorter attention spans difficult to relate to, though the more patient elven communities have found Bocans surprisingly reliable messengers between distant Athàn-Garrow settlements, provided the message itself is interesting enough to hold a Bocan's focus for the journey. Jutons, predictably, take almost no notice of Bocans at all, dismissing them as beneath concern in the way a mountain takes no notice of the moss growing on it—though more than one Ashgorge Juton has woken to find a valued trinket missing, with no explanation the giant's temper could ever hope to resolve.

			== Bocan Subgroups by Region ==

			* '''Hollowdown Bocans (Coill-Spine foothills, near human territory)'''
			The most frequently encountered Bocans, having settled closest to Glenmaura's borders and adapted their warrens to sit just beneath human notice—literally, in many cases, with warrens built directly under the floorboards and root-cellars of border villages. The most skilled among the subgroups at reading human speech, coin, and custom.

			* '''Fenlight Bocans (Brine-Root Fen, drier hummocks)'''
			Smaller and paler than their cousins, with a faint luminescence to their eyes said to come from long exposure to the Fen's strange marsh-lights, the Fenlight keep an uneasy truce with both the Slíogach and the Fenwrought Jutons who share their swamp, trading information and small services for safe passage through territory that would otherwise devour them.

			* '''Highstone Bocans (Choróin Mountains, lower passes)'''
			The hardiest of the subgroups, having adapted to genuine cold in a way most Bocans never need to, the Highstone are also, oddly, the most trusted by outsiders—having built a long-standing, if wary, relationship with the Choróin Jutons, for whom they serve as scouts and messengers in exchange for protection from the mountains' harsher predators.

			* '''Driftwarren Bocans (nomadic, no fixed region)'''
			Rather than settling any single territory, Driftwarren Bocans travel in small bands alongside human, elven, or Ogre caravans, trading their considerable skills at scouting, lock-work, and general problem-solving for passage and provisions. They hold no permanent loyalty to any single warren and are regarded, even by other Bocans, as the most unpredictable of their kind—liable to vanish from a caravan the moment a more interesting opportunity presents itself.


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Ogres

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:22:07 GMT

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	This dual unpredictability—never knowing, on meeting an Ogre, whether one faces a brute or a schemer, a face that repels or one that charms—has made Ogres uniquely difficult for the other races to categorize or dismiss. Where a Juton's danger announces itself from a horizon away, an Ogre's danger, or lack of it, must be discovered up close, and by then it is sometimes too late to matter.		This dual unpredictability—never knowing, on meeting an Ogre, whether one faces a brute or a schemer, a face that repels or one that charms—has made Ogres uniquely difficult for the other races to categorize or dismiss. Where a Juton's danger announces itself from a horizon away, an Ogre's danger, or lack of it, must be discovered up close, and by then it is sometimes too late to matter.

			== Ogre Society ==
			Where Juton society, such as it is, tends to fracture along subspecies lines and rarely rises above the scale of a clan or a war-band, Ogre society is a stranger and more varied thing—shaped less by bloodline and more by whichever Ogre happens to be clever enough, or strong enough, to hold a group together at a given time. An Ogre band led by a shrewd schemer might operate almost like a small mercantile company, trading, bargaining, and building alliances with human or elven settlements at its borders. That same band, should its leader fall and a duller-witted Ogre take its place through simple strength, might collapse within a season into little more than raiders.

			This instability is, in the watchers' long estimation, the defining feature of Ogre society: it is never fixed, and never entirely predictable, because it rests so heavily on the character of individuals rather than any inherited structure. Ogres organize around competence and charisma far more than lineage, and an Ogre band will follow whichever among them proves most capable of keeping the group fed, safe, and unified—whether that capability comes from cunning, strength, cruelty, or, in rarer cases, genuine fairness.

			Because of this, Ogre settlements vary enormously in how they are perceived by their neighbors. Some have earned grudging respect as canny traders and tough but honest negotiators. Others are given the widest possible berth, their names invoked by parents to hasten children home before dark. The tome cautions its readers against assuming either reputation applies universally—an Ogre band's character can change entirely within a generation, or even within a single change of leadership.

			== Kinship with the Jutons ==
			The bloodline the Ogres share with the Jutons is not merely a scholar's theory but a fact acknowledged, however grudgingly, by both races. Ogres are widely believed to be descended from Juton stock that broke away in some ancient age—diminished in size, perhaps by dwelling too long from the mountain heights that seem to sustain full Juton growth, or perhaps by some old mingling with other peoples that the tome cannot confirm with certainty.

			The relationship between the two races is, at best, distant, and at worst openly contemptuous. Many Jutons—the Stonebrow and Ashgorge especially—regard Ogres as a lesser branch of their line, diminished and undignified, too small to be true kin and too stubborn to simply be dismissed as another race entirely. Ogres, for their part, tend to hold no particular reverence for the Jutons either; where a Juton sees a shrunken cousin, an Ogre often sees an oversized brute too slow-witted and too isolated in its mountains to matter much to Ogre affairs.

			There are exceptions. The Fenwrought and Choróin Jutons—the more cunning of the giant subspecies—have, on rare occasion, been known to treat clever Ogre leaders as something closer to equals, particularly when a shared border or a common enemy makes cooperation useful. Such alliances remain rare enough that the tome records each instance individually, rather than treating them as any kind of pattern.

			== Ogre Subgroups by Region ==

			Bramblehide Ogres (Brine-Root Fen, borders)
			Living at the fringes of the great swamp, the Bramblehide have taken on a mottled, dark-green hue that serves them well in the tangled undergrowth, and are known as capable, patient hunters. They maintain an uneasy, transactional relationship with the Fenwrought Jutons who share their territory—neither fully allies nor enemies, but careful neighbors who have learned when to stay out of each other's way.

			Rootgrasp Ogres (Coill-Spine foothills)
			Pale green and heavily built, the Rootgrasp dwell in the wooded lower slopes below Stonebrow Juton territory and have developed, among the more intelligent of their kind, a surprising talent for woodcraft and rough trade with the human settlements of Glenmaura's borders. They are, on the whole, the Ogre subgroup most likely to be encountered as traders rather than raiders.

			Ashmarsh Ogres (near Ashgorge Juton territory, Wyrm-Tooth foothills)
			Living closest to the volatile Ashgorge, the Ashmarsh have taken on much of their neighbors' reputation for volatility, with a duller hue closer to olive-grey-green and a temperament to match the harsh land they occupy. They are widely regarded as the most dangerous of the Ogre subgroups, prone to raiding when resources run thin, and are given wide berth by travelers through the eastern passes.

			Glimmerfen Ogres (Obsidian Sea coastline)
			The rarest and most curious of the subgroups, the Glimmerfen have a faintly luminous quality to their green skin, said to come from long exposure to whatever strange properties give the Obsidian Sea its name and color. Little is known of their society, as they keep largely to themselves along the remote coast, but the few accounts that exist describe them as unexpectedly artistic, decorating their dwellings and even their own skin with pigments drawn from sea-glass and volcanic ash.
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Jotuns

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:19:45 GMT

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	What unites them, whatever their subspecies, is scale; not merely of body, but of consequence. A Juton's temper, once roused, reshapes landscapes. A Juton's word, once given, is rarely broken, for pride runs as deep in their kind as strength does. And a Juton's grudge, should one be earned, tends to outlast the grudge-bearer's enemies by a considerable margin.		What unites them, whatever their subspecies, is scale; not merely of body, but of consequence. A Juton's temper, once roused, reshapes landscapes. A Juton's word, once given, is rarely broken, for pride runs as deep in their kind as strength does. And a Juton's grudge, should one be earned, tends to outlast the grudge-bearer's enemies by a considerable margin.

			== The Juton Subspecies ==
			Though all Jutons share the same towering scale and prodigious strength, the tome must record them as several distinct peoples rather than one, for the differences between them run deeper than height or hide color. Where they dwell seems to shape not only their bodies but the sharpness of their minds—a pattern the watchers have puzzled over for an age, without settling on a satisfying answer.

			Stonebrow Jutons (Coill-Spine Mountains)
			The most commonly encountered of the subspecies, Stonebrow Jutons have hide the color of granite and weathered slate, and skulls ridged with heavy brow-bone that gives them their name. They are among the more even-tempered Jutons, favoring territory and routine over conquest, and are known to claim a mountain pass or valley as their own for generations, defending it with a stubbornness that borders on geological. Their intelligence sits solidly in the middle of the Juton range—capable of simple tool use, rough trade, and enough guile to set an effective ambush, but rarely inclined toward anything more elaborate than that.

			Ashgorge Jutons (Wyrm-Tooth Mountains)
			Leaner than their Stonebrow cousins, though no less tall, Ashgorge Jutons have hide the deep grey-black of cooled volcanic rock, veined faintly with dull orange where old heat still lingers close beneath the surface. They are the most volatile of the known subspecies—prone to sudden rages that can level a hillside—and sit at the lower end of the intelligence range, driven largely by hunger, territory, and instinct. It is the Ashgorge that most travelers picture when they hear the word "Juton," and it is the Ashgorge that has done the most to earn the race its reputation for brutishness.

			Fenwrought Jutons (Brine-Root Fen)
			Smaller than other Jutons by a few feet, though still towering over any human, the Fenwrought have adapted to the swamp's black water and tangled roots with a wiry, almost hunched build and mottled green-brown hide that renders them unsettlingly difficult to spot until it is far too late. Whether by necessity of their treacherous home or some quirk of their bloodline, Fenwrought Jutons rank among the more cunning of the subspecies—patient ambush hunters who understand the Fen's currents and false paths better than any Slíogach scout, and who are known to set traps sophisticated enough that scholars debate whether "brutish" can fairly be applied to them at all.

			Choróin Jutons (Choróin Mountains, the northern range)
			The rarest and, by most accounts, the most intelligent of the Juton subspecies, the Choróin are pale-hided, nearly white, suited to the northern cold, and are the only known Jutons to have developed anything resembling settled society—crude but genuine strongholds carved into the northern peaks, a spoken tongue distinct from the guttural signals other Jutons use, and, if certain traveler's accounts are to be believed, a tradition of war-chiefs whose tactical cunning has humbled more than one army from Glenmaura foolish enough to test the northern passes. It is the Choróin that the tome's authors suspect may, in time, be capable of far more than the other subspecies—for good or for ill, we do not yet know.

			== Society Despite the Divide ==

			That the Jutons have never united under a single banner is, in the watchers' long estimation, the only reason the younger races have fared as well as they have against them. A Stonebrow feels little kinship with an Ashgorge, and a Choróin regards both as beneath its notice—territory, temperament, and intelligence divide the subspecies as surely as the mountain ranges divide their homelands. What society exists among Jutons tends to be local and immediate: a Stonebrow clan answers to whichever among them can win a contest of strength or will, a Fenwrought band moves as an extended hunting-family with no chief at all, and a Choróin stronghold answers to a war-chief whose authority is unquestioned only so long as their cunning continues to prove itself.

			Should the Jutons ever set aside their divisions, dear reader, the tome suspects the shape of Dúnamhar would change considerably. We hope, for the sake of all who dwell here, that such a day remains far off.


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Shide

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:17:34 GMT

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 Perhaps most striking is their longevity. Shide live for centuries, their lifespans stretching so far beyond those of shorter-lived races that a single elf might witness the rise and fall of kingdoms, the slow reshaping of forests, or the birth and death of entire dialects. This vast span of years lends them a distinctive patience and a long view of history—what feels urgent to a human may seem, to an elf, only the opening notes of a much longer song.
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+== Culture & Society ==
 * '''Sunder Shide (deep forest/woodland)'''

Slíogach

LanceAdmin — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:14:07 GMT

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 The Slíogach make their home in the Brine-Root Fen and the wider marshlands of the deep south, territory so treacherous to outsiders—thick with black water, false paths, and roots that seem to shift when unwatched—that few travelers who enter uninvited ever find their way back out again unassisted. This is, by design, exactly how the Slíogach prefer it. Where the Lupin's isolation grew from wariness earned through hard experience, Slíogach isolation runs deeper still, closer to a fundamental preference than a defensive posture—the fen suits them, and they have little interest in a wider world that does not suit them nearly so well.
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+== Patience as Philosophy ==
 * '''ARMOR +2:''' Saurians have scaly skin that acts as leather armor.
 * '''BITE:''' A saurian’s fangs cause Str+d4 damage and may be used against grappled foes.

Shide

LanceAdmin — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 16:05:43 GMT

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:05, 4 October 2026
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	Perhaps most striking is their longevity. Shide live for centuries, their lifespans stretching so far beyond those of shorter-lived races that a single elf might witness the rise and fall of kingdoms, the slow reshaping of forests, or the birth and death of entire dialects. This vast span of years lends them a distinctive patience and a long view of history—what feels urgent to a human may seem, to an elf, only the opening notes of a much longer song.		Perhaps most striking is their longevity. Shide live for centuries, their lifespans stretching so far beyond those of shorter-lived races that a single elf might witness the rise and fall of kingdoms, the slow reshaping of forests, or the birth and death of entire dialects. This vast span of years lends them a distinctive patience and a long view of history—what feels urgent to a human may seem, to an elf, only the opening notes of a much longer song.

			----

			* '''Sunder Shide (deep forest/woodland)'''
			Skin tones range from deep umber to mossy green-brown, deepening further in autumn. Hair often shifts through a full seasonal cycle—green-tinged in spring, russet and gold in autumn. Sunder elves are the most tied to Grove-binding traditions and tend to live in settlements grown with the forest rather than carved out of it—homes built into living trees, paths that shift with root growth.

			* '''Glasshaven Shide (coastal / island)'''
			Pale, sun-touched skin that bronzes and fades with the tide-seasons, and hair that bleaches toward silver or sea-glass green in summer. Known for Thread-sight traditions tied to reading currents and stars, and for a seafaring culture surprisingly bold given their otherwise unhurried nature—long lives make for very patient navigators.

			* '''Ashfall Shide (mountain/highland)'''
			Grey-toned or faintly stone-colored skin, with hair that darkens toward soot-black in winter months and lightens in summer. Culturally the most rigid and law-bound of the subraces, having built their keeper-councils into something closer to formal courts. Their magic leans toward Songweaving, using long call-and-response chants passed down for generations to bind agreements and mark boundaries.

			* '''Duskmere Shide (plains/borderlands)'''
			The most physically variable subrace, since they range farthest and mix most often with neighboring peoples. Skin and hair color shift noticeably with the seasons of migration—many Duskmere elves are semi-nomadic, following herds or trade routes, and their culture places unusually high value on swift-bonds, having the most regular contact with shorter-lived races.


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Slíogach

LanceAdmin — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:58:38 GMT

← Older revision		Revision as of 09:58, 4 October 2026
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	The Slíogach make their home in the Brine-Root Fen and the wider marshlands of the deep south, territory so treacherous to outsiders—thick with black water, false paths, and roots that seem to shift when unwatched—that few travelers who enter uninvited ever find their way back out again unassisted. This is, by design, exactly how the Slíogach prefer it. Where the Lupin's isolation grew from wariness earned through hard experience, Slíogach isolation runs deeper still, closer to a fundamental preference than a defensive posture—the fen suits them, and they have little interest in a wider world that does not suit them nearly so well.		The Slíogach make their home in the Brine-Root Fen and the wider marshlands of the deep south, territory so treacherous to outsiders—thick with black water, false paths, and roots that seem to shift when unwatched—that few travelers who enter uninvited ever find their way back out again unassisted. This is, by design, exactly how the Slíogach prefer it. Where the Lupin's isolation grew from wariness earned through hard experience, Slíogach isolation runs deeper still, closer to a fundamental preference than a defensive posture—the fen suits them, and they have little interest in a wider world that does not suit them nearly so well.

			----
			* '''ARMOR +2:''' Saurians have scaly skin that acts as leather armor.
			* '''BITE:''' A saurian’s fangs cause Str+d4 damage and may be used against grappled foes.
			* '''ENVIRONMENTAL WEAKNESS (Cold):''' Though not truly cold-blooded, saurians are poorly suited for frigid conditions. They suffer a −4 penalty to resist cold environmental effects, and suffer +4 damage from cold-based attacks.
			* '''KEEN SENSES:''' Saurians have acute senses, giving them the Alertness Edge.
			* '''OUTSIDER (Minor):''' Most races distrust saurians for some reason. Perhaps it is their strange ways and customs, their often-sibilant speech, or an ancient subconscious fear of their reptilian ancestors. Saurians subtract 2 from Persuasion rolls with all but others of their kind.