Post by Admin on May 5, 2007 22:41:14 GMT -5
Balatine Races
- Already created: human, dwarves, barbaric dwarves, wood elves, half-elf, primitive elf, avarial elf, primitive half-elf
Race & Languages: All characters know how to speak Common. A dwarf, elf, half-elf, also speaks a racial language, as appropriate.
Race & Locations:
M = monster
Dragonbane Mountains: wood elves, dwarves, half-elves, averial elves, mountain trolls [m], gargoyles [m], bugbear [m]
Sprite’s wildwoods: Wood elves, half-elves, sprites, fae.
Darrig Mountains: wood elves, dwarves, half-elves, averial elves, orcs [m], goblins [m], mountain trolls [m], bugbear [m]
Human
Humans, are a relatively young race, are the dominant race of Balatine.
Personality
Humans are the most adaptable, flexible, and ambitious people among the common races. They are diverse in their tastes, morals, customs, and habits. Others accuse them of having little respect for history, but it's only natural that humans, with their relatively short life spans and constantly changing cultures, would have a shorter collective memory than dwarves, elves, or halflings.
Except for a few pockets of humans, most can read and write to varying levels of success. they are able to adapt to nearly all situations and environments. Humans are the average race with no real advantages or disadvantages when taken in an overall standing.
Human society is very much complex because they are able to take on any alignment and any class. A lot of the cities described in ‘lands’ are human cities
Physical Description
Humans are the most varied when it comes to physical. Their height ranges from 5’2 – 6’8”. The body build varies depending on the occupation, and personality of each. Usually the obese humans are the nobles that have not had to work or fight within the military.
Relations
Just as readily as they mix with each other, humans mix with members of other races, among which they are known as "everyone's second-best friends." Humans serve as ambassadors, diplomats, magistrates, merchants, and functionaries of all kinds.
Alignment
Humans tend toward no particular alignment, not even neutrality. The best and the worst are found among them.
Dwarves
Dwarves are natural miners and smiths, and they control most of the precious metals found naturally across the continent. Powerful dwarf families mint coinage and operate banks, issue letters of credit, hold loans, and collect debts. Dwarf bankers and merchants wield a great deal of economic power throughout Balatine, and they are well respected as a result. To an extent, they are also feared, since dwarves are known to be ruthless in collecting unpaid debts.
Personality
Dwarves are known for their skills in warfare, their ability to withstand physical and magical punishment, their knowledge of the earth's secrets, their hard work, and their capacity for drinking ale. They are slow to laugh or jest and suspicious of strangers, but they are generous to those few who earn their trust. Dwarves value gold, gems jewelry, and art objects made with these precious materials, and they have been known to succumb to greed.
They fight neither recklessly nor timidly, but with careful courage and tenacity. Their sense of justice is strong, but at its worst it can turn into a thirst for vengeance. Among gnomes who get along famously with dwarves, a mild oath is "If I'm lying, may I cross a dwarf."
Physical Description
Dwarves stand only 4 to 4-1/2 feet tall, but they are so broad and compact that they are, on average, almost as heavy as humans. Dwarf men are slightly taller and noticeably heavier than dwarf women. Dwarves' skin is typically deep tan or light brown, and their eyes are dark. Their hair is usually black, gray, or brown, and worn long. Dwarf men value their beards highly and groom them very carefully. Dwarves favor simple styles for their hair, beards, and clothes. Dwarves are considered adults at about age 40, and they can live to be more than 400 years old.
Names
A dwarf's name is granted to him by his clan elder, in accordance with tradition. Every proper dwarven name has been used and reused down through the generation. A dwarf's name is not his own. It belongs to his clan. If he misuses it or brings shame on it, his clan will strip him of it. A dwarf stripped of his name is forbidden by dwarven law to use any dwarven name in its place.
Relations
Dwarves get along fine with gnomes and passably with humans, half-elves, and halflings. Dwarves say, "The difference between an acquaintance and a friend is about a hundred years." Humans, with their short life spans, have a hard time forging truly strong bonds with dwarves. The best dwarf-human friendship is often between a human and a dwarf who liked the human's parents and grandparents. Dwarves fail to appreciate elves' subtlety and art, regarding elves as unpredictable, fickle, and flighty. Still elves and dwarves have, through the ages, found common cause in battles against orcs, goblins, and gnolls. Through such joint campaigns, the elves have earned the dwarves' grudging respect. Dwarves mistrust half-orcs in general, and they grant individual half-orcs the opportunity to prove themselves.
Alignment
Dwarves are usually lawful, and they tend toward good. Adventuring dwarves are less likely to fit the common mold, however, since they're more likely to be those who did not fit perfectly into dwarven society.
Habitat
Except for merchants and adventuring dwarves, nearly all dwarves live within the mountainous regions of Balatine. . Their mysterious kingdoms, carved out from the insides of mountains, are renowned for the marvelous treasures that they produce as gifts or for trade.
Traits
Dark vision, stonecunning, sensitivity to earth magic
Barbaric Dwarf
These Barbaric dwarves actually are distant cousins of the underground dwelling dwarves with their own language. Much is similar with their more commonly seen kin, yet the Barbaric Dwarves live above ground in the wastelands of Balatine. Their oral traditions are strong, despite a written language that all can read and write. Due to their low-light vision, and their knowledge about what lives in the jungle and how to finding things (or avoiding it, as the case may be), they often make excellent rangers within their homeland. They need both outdoor skills and combat proficiency to survive.
Their clan’s societies are centered on their warrior skills and traditions, and not so much of mining or economic power. The better the warrior and leadership qualities are the more respect outsiders will gain. Courage, daring, self-reliance, honesty, honor are some of the virtues that they uphold above others. Normally the clan leaders are the one of the best warriors.
Because of their height, they can duck under vegetation that impedes humans—yet they are stockier than gnomes or halflings, and able to bull through what they can't avoid. Hardy to a fault, barbaric dwarves are explorers, pathfinders, and traveling merchants.
ELVES
Many elves are regal and aloof, concerned with plans that cover the sweep of centuries, not the petty day-to-day affairs that occupy the thoughts of other races. A few elves are rather more down-to-earth: The elves that have lived among humans and other short-lived races for centuries and have adjusted their sense of time to accommodate, some even have rejected many of the old ways of their kind in order to take a more active and expansionist place in the world.
Personality
Elves are more often amused than excited, and most likely to be curious than greedy. With such a long life span, they tend to keep a broad perspective on events, remaining aloof and unfazed by petty happenstance. When pursuing a goal however, whether an adventurous mission or learning a new skill or art, they can be focused and relentless. They are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. They reply to petty insults with disdain and to serious insults with vengeance. All elves can not see how one could survive enslaved and without freedom.
Physical Description
Elves are short and slim, standing about 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 feet tall and typically weighing 95 to 135 pounds, with elf men the same height as and only marginally heavier than elf women. They are graceful but frail. They tend to be pale-skinned and dark-haired, with deep green eyes. Elves have no facial or body hair. They prefer simple, comfortable clothes, especially in pastel blues and greens, and they enjoy simple yet elegant jewelry. Elves possess unearthly grace and fine features. Many humans and members of other races find them hauntingly beautiful. An elf reaches adulthood at about 110 years of age and can live to be more than 1000 years old. Around the age of 800, most usually go to an their blessed lands to live their last two-hundred years.
Elves do not sleep, as members of the other common races do. Instead, an elf meditates in a deep trance for 4 hours a day. An elf resting in this fashion gains the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep. While meditating, and elf dreams, though these dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive through years of practice. The Common word for an elf's meditation is "trance," as in "four hours of trance."
Relations
Elves consider humans rather unrefined, halflings a bit staid, gnomes somewhat trivial, and dwaves not at all fun. They look on half-elves with some degree of pity, and they regard half-orcs with unrelenting suspicion. While haughty, elves are generally pleasant and gracious even to those who fall short of elven standards (a category that encompasses just about everybody who's not an elf).
Alignment
Since elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, they lean strongly toward the gentler aspects of chaos. Generally, they value and protect others' freedom as well as their own, and they are more often good than not.
Traits
Sensitive to Earth Magic, Hard to detect and track through forested areas, have pointed ears and very defined physical features. Well known for their use of a bow and arrow, low-light vision,
Wood Elf
They make up most of the elven population, and is also the most commonly seen of all the elven races. Because they are the most commonly seen, certain wood-elf societies tend to be more accepting of the non-elven kind. Wood Elves are legendary for their skill with the bow and arrow, and training with the bow begins at an early age. The most common classes for this race are Mage, Healer, and Ranger. Wood Elves are among the finest and best rangers in the world.
Half- Elves
Half-elves are not truly an elf subrace, but they are often mistaken for elves. Half-elves usually inherit a good blend of their parents’ physical characteristics. The most common half-elf breeding is with a human as one parent. Half-elves tend to be outsiders in both their parent’s societies.
For all effects related to race, a half-elf is considered an elf. Half-elves, for example, are just as vulnerable to special effects that affect elves as their elf ancestors are, and they can use magic items that are only usable by elves. The further down the lineage a human family is from any half-elven ancestor, the less elven they become due to the elven blood thinning out through generations of being with non-elves.
Primitive Elf
While they get along with most other surface elves, it is hard to gain their trust. Unlike most of their cousins, the primitive elves rarely have a pleasant or gracious attitude towards those who fall short of their standards. When strangers wander into their land, they either take them prisoners or run them out beyond their borders.
Many pride themselves on having good memory. Their have an oral tradition with very few written pieces of information. This is because of a nomadic lifestyle and the rough environment most live in. In Balatine, they live within the wastelands and parts of the Darrig mountain chain.
Cities are few and far between due to the murky swamps and the jungle environment of the wasteland. Most of their cities have been swallowed up by the encroachment of trees, plants, and animals that live there, leaving only a shadowy remnant of the population to remember the former glories of their lost civilization. The weapons they normally use include handaxe, shortsword, shortbow, and rapier. The rapier is a vestige of past glories and honored tradition. They live in clans of about 20 to 40 people, depending on what the land can support. As more humans come to their homeland, they find themselves being pushed out of their ancestral lands. The most common classes are: healer and ranger.
Primitive Half-Elf
Some elf communities believe that introducing human blood into their families is a way to invigorate their race once again. Others prefer a mixed-race emissary to deal with outsiders, rather than a pure-blood elf. Either way, primitive half-elves are the result.
Averial Elf
Personality
Similar to that of a wingless elf.
Physical Features
The physical features of these elves are different than their wingless cousins. They are slim and short in nature, ranging from 4’2 – 5’2. Both genders tend to have white or light blue hair, with blue or silver eyes. Their features tend to be more defined than most elves. They tend to be pale-skinned and possess white feathered wings and hollow bones.
Due to their hollow bones, Averials are easily injured in melee combat or from falling. Because of this they tend to concentrate on the magical arts and are experts with the bow and the crossbow. They generally do not wear much armor and only light clothing in order to keep their weight down as much as possible. The greatest advantage to the Averial Elf are the stark white wings that all possess. With them they are able to fly as fast as a fastest bird and are agile and nimble in the air, able to dodge and weary away from potential threats and from attackers. Averials have spent most of the last few centuries rebuilding most of their mountain side cities and dwellings in the highest trees of the ancient forests.
Relations
They look at most of the wingless with pity, because of their inability to fly. This includes their own elven cousins. Nobody will ever see a half-averial elf because averial elves do not have children with those not of their own race because of this reason. Humans believe that they are good luck, some even thinking they are messenger of certain deities.
Winged elves either go crazy or get gravely ill if they are enslaved and kept in an area where they can not use their wings. Yet because of their rarity and the human belief that they are good luck, they have been and are hunted down to be sold as slaves in the blackmarket.
- Already created: human, dwarves, barbaric dwarves, wood elves, half-elf, primitive elf, avarial elf, primitive half-elf
Race & Languages: All characters know how to speak Common. A dwarf, elf, half-elf, also speaks a racial language, as appropriate.
Race & Locations:
M = monster
Dragonbane Mountains: wood elves, dwarves, half-elves, averial elves, mountain trolls [m], gargoyles [m], bugbear [m]
Sprite’s wildwoods: Wood elves, half-elves, sprites, fae.
Darrig Mountains: wood elves, dwarves, half-elves, averial elves, orcs [m], goblins [m], mountain trolls [m], bugbear [m]
Human
Humans, are a relatively young race, are the dominant race of Balatine.
Personality
Humans are the most adaptable, flexible, and ambitious people among the common races. They are diverse in their tastes, morals, customs, and habits. Others accuse them of having little respect for history, but it's only natural that humans, with their relatively short life spans and constantly changing cultures, would have a shorter collective memory than dwarves, elves, or halflings.
Except for a few pockets of humans, most can read and write to varying levels of success. they are able to adapt to nearly all situations and environments. Humans are the average race with no real advantages or disadvantages when taken in an overall standing.
Human society is very much complex because they are able to take on any alignment and any class. A lot of the cities described in ‘lands’ are human cities
Physical Description
Humans are the most varied when it comes to physical. Their height ranges from 5’2 – 6’8”. The body build varies depending on the occupation, and personality of each. Usually the obese humans are the nobles that have not had to work or fight within the military.
Relations
Just as readily as they mix with each other, humans mix with members of other races, among which they are known as "everyone's second-best friends." Humans serve as ambassadors, diplomats, magistrates, merchants, and functionaries of all kinds.
Alignment
Humans tend toward no particular alignment, not even neutrality. The best and the worst are found among them.
Dwarves
Dwarves are natural miners and smiths, and they control most of the precious metals found naturally across the continent. Powerful dwarf families mint coinage and operate banks, issue letters of credit, hold loans, and collect debts. Dwarf bankers and merchants wield a great deal of economic power throughout Balatine, and they are well respected as a result. To an extent, they are also feared, since dwarves are known to be ruthless in collecting unpaid debts.
Personality
Dwarves are known for their skills in warfare, their ability to withstand physical and magical punishment, their knowledge of the earth's secrets, their hard work, and their capacity for drinking ale. They are slow to laugh or jest and suspicious of strangers, but they are generous to those few who earn their trust. Dwarves value gold, gems jewelry, and art objects made with these precious materials, and they have been known to succumb to greed.
They fight neither recklessly nor timidly, but with careful courage and tenacity. Their sense of justice is strong, but at its worst it can turn into a thirst for vengeance. Among gnomes who get along famously with dwarves, a mild oath is "If I'm lying, may I cross a dwarf."
Physical Description
Dwarves stand only 4 to 4-1/2 feet tall, but they are so broad and compact that they are, on average, almost as heavy as humans. Dwarf men are slightly taller and noticeably heavier than dwarf women. Dwarves' skin is typically deep tan or light brown, and their eyes are dark. Their hair is usually black, gray, or brown, and worn long. Dwarf men value their beards highly and groom them very carefully. Dwarves favor simple styles for their hair, beards, and clothes. Dwarves are considered adults at about age 40, and they can live to be more than 400 years old.
Names
A dwarf's name is granted to him by his clan elder, in accordance with tradition. Every proper dwarven name has been used and reused down through the generation. A dwarf's name is not his own. It belongs to his clan. If he misuses it or brings shame on it, his clan will strip him of it. A dwarf stripped of his name is forbidden by dwarven law to use any dwarven name in its place.
Relations
Dwarves get along fine with gnomes and passably with humans, half-elves, and halflings. Dwarves say, "The difference between an acquaintance and a friend is about a hundred years." Humans, with their short life spans, have a hard time forging truly strong bonds with dwarves. The best dwarf-human friendship is often between a human and a dwarf who liked the human's parents and grandparents. Dwarves fail to appreciate elves' subtlety and art, regarding elves as unpredictable, fickle, and flighty. Still elves and dwarves have, through the ages, found common cause in battles against orcs, goblins, and gnolls. Through such joint campaigns, the elves have earned the dwarves' grudging respect. Dwarves mistrust half-orcs in general, and they grant individual half-orcs the opportunity to prove themselves.
Alignment
Dwarves are usually lawful, and they tend toward good. Adventuring dwarves are less likely to fit the common mold, however, since they're more likely to be those who did not fit perfectly into dwarven society.
Habitat
Except for merchants and adventuring dwarves, nearly all dwarves live within the mountainous regions of Balatine. . Their mysterious kingdoms, carved out from the insides of mountains, are renowned for the marvelous treasures that they produce as gifts or for trade.
Traits
Dark vision, stonecunning, sensitivity to earth magic
Barbaric Dwarf
These Barbaric dwarves actually are distant cousins of the underground dwelling dwarves with their own language. Much is similar with their more commonly seen kin, yet the Barbaric Dwarves live above ground in the wastelands of Balatine. Their oral traditions are strong, despite a written language that all can read and write. Due to their low-light vision, and their knowledge about what lives in the jungle and how to finding things (or avoiding it, as the case may be), they often make excellent rangers within their homeland. They need both outdoor skills and combat proficiency to survive.
Their clan’s societies are centered on their warrior skills and traditions, and not so much of mining or economic power. The better the warrior and leadership qualities are the more respect outsiders will gain. Courage, daring, self-reliance, honesty, honor are some of the virtues that they uphold above others. Normally the clan leaders are the one of the best warriors.
Because of their height, they can duck under vegetation that impedes humans—yet they are stockier than gnomes or halflings, and able to bull through what they can't avoid. Hardy to a fault, barbaric dwarves are explorers, pathfinders, and traveling merchants.
ELVES
Many elves are regal and aloof, concerned with plans that cover the sweep of centuries, not the petty day-to-day affairs that occupy the thoughts of other races. A few elves are rather more down-to-earth: The elves that have lived among humans and other short-lived races for centuries and have adjusted their sense of time to accommodate, some even have rejected many of the old ways of their kind in order to take a more active and expansionist place in the world.
Personality
Elves are more often amused than excited, and most likely to be curious than greedy. With such a long life span, they tend to keep a broad perspective on events, remaining aloof and unfazed by petty happenstance. When pursuing a goal however, whether an adventurous mission or learning a new skill or art, they can be focused and relentless. They are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. They reply to petty insults with disdain and to serious insults with vengeance. All elves can not see how one could survive enslaved and without freedom.
Physical Description
Elves are short and slim, standing about 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 feet tall and typically weighing 95 to 135 pounds, with elf men the same height as and only marginally heavier than elf women. They are graceful but frail. They tend to be pale-skinned and dark-haired, with deep green eyes. Elves have no facial or body hair. They prefer simple, comfortable clothes, especially in pastel blues and greens, and they enjoy simple yet elegant jewelry. Elves possess unearthly grace and fine features. Many humans and members of other races find them hauntingly beautiful. An elf reaches adulthood at about 110 years of age and can live to be more than 1000 years old. Around the age of 800, most usually go to an their blessed lands to live their last two-hundred years.
Elves do not sleep, as members of the other common races do. Instead, an elf meditates in a deep trance for 4 hours a day. An elf resting in this fashion gains the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep. While meditating, and elf dreams, though these dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive through years of practice. The Common word for an elf's meditation is "trance," as in "four hours of trance."
Relations
Elves consider humans rather unrefined, halflings a bit staid, gnomes somewhat trivial, and dwaves not at all fun. They look on half-elves with some degree of pity, and they regard half-orcs with unrelenting suspicion. While haughty, elves are generally pleasant and gracious even to those who fall short of elven standards (a category that encompasses just about everybody who's not an elf).
Alignment
Since elves love freedom, variety, and self-expression, they lean strongly toward the gentler aspects of chaos. Generally, they value and protect others' freedom as well as their own, and they are more often good than not.
Traits
Sensitive to Earth Magic, Hard to detect and track through forested areas, have pointed ears and very defined physical features. Well known for their use of a bow and arrow, low-light vision,
Wood Elf
They make up most of the elven population, and is also the most commonly seen of all the elven races. Because they are the most commonly seen, certain wood-elf societies tend to be more accepting of the non-elven kind. Wood Elves are legendary for their skill with the bow and arrow, and training with the bow begins at an early age. The most common classes for this race are Mage, Healer, and Ranger. Wood Elves are among the finest and best rangers in the world.
Half- Elves
Half-elves are not truly an elf subrace, but they are often mistaken for elves. Half-elves usually inherit a good blend of their parents’ physical characteristics. The most common half-elf breeding is with a human as one parent. Half-elves tend to be outsiders in both their parent’s societies.
For all effects related to race, a half-elf is considered an elf. Half-elves, for example, are just as vulnerable to special effects that affect elves as their elf ancestors are, and they can use magic items that are only usable by elves. The further down the lineage a human family is from any half-elven ancestor, the less elven they become due to the elven blood thinning out through generations of being with non-elves.
Primitive Elf
While they get along with most other surface elves, it is hard to gain their trust. Unlike most of their cousins, the primitive elves rarely have a pleasant or gracious attitude towards those who fall short of their standards. When strangers wander into their land, they either take them prisoners or run them out beyond their borders.
Many pride themselves on having good memory. Their have an oral tradition with very few written pieces of information. This is because of a nomadic lifestyle and the rough environment most live in. In Balatine, they live within the wastelands and parts of the Darrig mountain chain.
Cities are few and far between due to the murky swamps and the jungle environment of the wasteland. Most of their cities have been swallowed up by the encroachment of trees, plants, and animals that live there, leaving only a shadowy remnant of the population to remember the former glories of their lost civilization. The weapons they normally use include handaxe, shortsword, shortbow, and rapier. The rapier is a vestige of past glories and honored tradition. They live in clans of about 20 to 40 people, depending on what the land can support. As more humans come to their homeland, they find themselves being pushed out of their ancestral lands. The most common classes are: healer and ranger.
Primitive Half-Elf
Some elf communities believe that introducing human blood into their families is a way to invigorate their race once again. Others prefer a mixed-race emissary to deal with outsiders, rather than a pure-blood elf. Either way, primitive half-elves are the result.
Averial Elf
Personality
Similar to that of a wingless elf.
Physical Features
The physical features of these elves are different than their wingless cousins. They are slim and short in nature, ranging from 4’2 – 5’2. Both genders tend to have white or light blue hair, with blue or silver eyes. Their features tend to be more defined than most elves. They tend to be pale-skinned and possess white feathered wings and hollow bones.
Due to their hollow bones, Averials are easily injured in melee combat or from falling. Because of this they tend to concentrate on the magical arts and are experts with the bow and the crossbow. They generally do not wear much armor and only light clothing in order to keep their weight down as much as possible. The greatest advantage to the Averial Elf are the stark white wings that all possess. With them they are able to fly as fast as a fastest bird and are agile and nimble in the air, able to dodge and weary away from potential threats and from attackers. Averials have spent most of the last few centuries rebuilding most of their mountain side cities and dwellings in the highest trees of the ancient forests.
Relations
They look at most of the wingless with pity, because of their inability to fly. This includes their own elven cousins. Nobody will ever see a half-averial elf because averial elves do not have children with those not of their own race because of this reason. Humans believe that they are good luck, some even thinking they are messenger of certain deities.
Winged elves either go crazy or get gravely ill if they are enslaved and kept in an area where they can not use their wings. Yet because of their rarity and the human belief that they are good luck, they have been and are hunted down to be sold as slaves in the blackmarket.