Korrigan
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 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.
The Deep Design
Korrigan settlements are almost universally built downward and inward before they are built upward and outward—vast, deliberately engineered warrens carved into mountain and bedrock, ventilated, drained, and structurally reinforced with a precision that has left more than one collapsed human ruin standing in humbling contrast to Korrigan halls that have held firm for centuries. The tome's authors, who have watched a great many structures rise and fall across the ages, consider Korrigan stonework among the very few mortal creations built with anything resembling a watcher's own patience for permanence.
This engineering instinct extends well beyond simple shelter. Korrigan settlements are laced with systems other races rarely think to build at all: aqueducts and cisterns carved directly into stone to move water exactly where it is needed and nowhere it is not, forges vented through shafts engineered to draw smoke entirely clear of living quarters, and load-bearing structures calculated with a mathematical rigor that Korrigan engineers can, and frequently do, discuss at length whether or not their audience has any genuine interest in hearing it. Korrigan mining, similarly, is conducted with a methodical care that borders on reverence—shafts surveyed and reinforced well ahead of the digging, tunnels planned generations in advance, and a working knowledge of stress, weight, and structural integrity passed down through Korrigan engineering-lines with the same seriousness other races reserve for sacred text.
Guilds and the Weight of Craft
Korrigan society organizes primarily around Guilds, professional bodies built around a specific discipline—stoneworking, metallurgy, hydraulic engineering, mine-surveying, and a great many more specialized trades besides—each maintaining its own internal hierarchy, standards, and closely guarded techniques. Standing within Korrigan society is earned almost entirely through demonstrated mastery of a Guild's craft rather than through bloodline, though the tome notes that certain Guild techniques are indeed kept within particular families for generations, less out of formal restriction than simple practical inheritance—a technique refined over decades is, after all, most easily taught to those closest at hand to learn it.
Authority above the individual Guilds rests with a Warden-Council, composed of the most senior master of each major Guild within a given settlement, which governs collectively on matters too large for any single Guild to resolve alone—the design and expansion of a settlement's deep structure, the allocation of mining rights, or relations with the surface-dwelling races beyond Korrigan halls. Disputes between Guilds are common, occasionally fierce, and almost always conducted through exhaustive technical argument rather than open conflict; the tome has recorded Korrigan Guild disputes lasting years over matters as narrow as proper load-bearing ratios, argued with a seriousness that would strike most other races as wildly disproportionate to the stakes involved, and struck by the Korrigan as entirely reasonable given what poor engineering can eventually cost.
Relations with Other Races
Korrigan halls maintain careful, generally cordial relations with the surface races nearest them, built less on sentiment than on the straightforward mutual benefit of trade—Korrigan stonework, metal goods, and engineering expertise are valued highly across Dúnamhar, and few other races can match the precision of Korrigan craft when a bridge, dam, or fortification genuinely needs to last. The Synarchy of Glenmaura, in particular, has come to rely upon Korrigan engineers for some of its more ambitious fortress-works along the valley's mountain borders, a partnership the tome notes has proven mutually profitable, if occasionally strained by the Korrigan's famous insistence on doing a task correctly rather than quickly, regardless of a human client's more urgent timeline.
The Jutons and Korrigan share an uneasy, mutual wariness born of proximity, both peoples having claimed mountain territory for their own purposes since ages past—a Stonebrow Juton clan and a Korrigan Guild-hall have been known to coexist for generations within the same range with barely a shared word between them, each content to let the other's tunnels and territories remain entirely their own affair. Where genuine conflict has arisen between the two, it has almost always concerned the same root cause: a Korrigan excavation grown too close to territory a Juton clan considered its own, disputes the tome records as tense, occasionally violent, but rarely prolonged, given how little either side genuinely desires a sustained fight over stone that a slightly redirected tunnel could just as easily avoid.
The Korrigan's relationship with the Abcán deserves particular note, the two peoples sharing enough common ground—a fondness for metal, fire, and fine craft—to make genuine partnership possible, and enough difference in philosophy to make that partnership a source of perpetual, good-natured friction. Where a Korrigan values a thing's ability to outlast its maker, an Abcán values a thing's capacity to delight, and joint Korrigan-Abcán commissions are common precisely because each people secretly suspects the other's approach, however exasperating, produces something worth having that neither could manage entirely alone.
Korrigan Holds by Region
Ironvein Korrigan (Coill-Spine Mountains) The largest and most industrious of the Korrigan holds, having claimed deep mineral-rich stone beneath the same range the human refugees once crossed in desperation. Ironvein engineers were instrumental in reinforcing several of Glengarrow's earliest deep foundations, and the hold maintains the Synarchy's closest ongoing Korrigan partnership to this day.
Deepforge Korrigan (Wyrm-Tooth Mountains) Settled in territory shared uneasily with Ashgorge Juton clans, the Deepforge have developed, out of necessity, the most sophisticated structural reinforcement techniques of any Korrigan hold, their halls engineered to withstand the occasional seismic consequence of an Ashgorge temper finding release nearby. Deepforge metallurgists are particularly renowned for alloys developed to withstand the volcanic heat their mountain range occasionally produces.
Frostroot Korrigan (Choróin Mountains) The most isolated and traditional of the Korrigan holds, dwelling in the same forbidding northern range claimed in part by Choróin Jutons and Frostpelt Ursians, the Frostroot have maintained a careful three-way territorial understanding with both neighboring peoples, aided considerably by the fact that Korrigan tunnels and Juton or Ursian surface territory rarely have cause to overlap.
Hollowmere Korrigan (independent holds, scattered lowland quarries) Smaller, more scattered Korrigan communities who have chosen shallower lowland quarry-work over the deep mountain holds of their kin, the Hollowmere maintain the most frequent and casual contact with human, elven, and even Racán or Abcán neighbors, trading finished stone and modest engineering work across the valley's settlements with considerably less of the ceremony and Guild formality found in the deeper mountain holds.
- LOW LIGHT VISION: Korrigan eyes are accustomed to the dark of the underearth. They ignore penalties for Dim and Dark Illumination.
- SIZE −1: Adult Korrigan are typically four feet tall, reducing their Size and Toughness by 1.
- REDUCED PACE: Korrigan have short legs compared to most races. Decrease their Pace by 1 and their running die one die type.
- TOUGH: Korrigan are stout and tough. They start with a d6 Vigor instead of a d4. This increases maximum Vigor to d12+1.