Nathair

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.

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• 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.
• BREATH WEAPON: Dragonfolk can breathe an impressive gout of fire. This takes an Athletics roll, may be Evaded, and causes 2d6 damage in a Cone Template or a 12” line (choose one during character creation). A Critical Failure on the attack causes Fatigue.
• COLD-BLOODED: Dragonfolk subtract 1 from Agility, Strength, and Vigor rolls after spending more than ten minutes in temperatures below 60° Fahrenheit (18° Celsius).
• ENVIRONMENTAL RESISTANCE (Heat): Dragonfolk receive a +4 bonus to resist heat or fire based effects and reduce damage from such sources a like amount.
• ENVIRONMENTAL WEAKNESS (Cold): Dragonfolk are poorly suited to frigid conditions. They subtract 4 from rolls made to resist cold or -based effects and take +4 damage from such attacks.
• ILL-TEMPERED: Dragonfolk are proud of the mighty dragons to which they’re related. This gives them the Arrogant Hindrance. If the dragon folk of your setting don’t have this trait, pick two points of Negative Racial Penalties that better suit their background or society instead.