dalvas

Dalvas

The Dalvas are the life of Azergad, both literally and figuratively. They make their home in Azelliot, whose central and northern plains hold the most fertile ground in the known world. However, the Dalvas themselves are no mere farmers. They are a people of vibrant, overflowing vigor, famous above all for their amazing ears and voices. From their throats they herald many tones, sounds, and volumes at once, weaving together music and speech that no other race of man can imitate. Yet, for all their volume, the Dalvas are a gentle people. They make the finest mediators and diplomats in Azergad. They are natural leaders, and it is a common sight to find a single Dalvas walking the road trailed by a following they never quite asked for.

The Dalvas are Azergad’s great oral tradition keepers. They are the bearers and passers of its stories, songs, and news. Dalvas gather in enormous communities where nightly festivals and dramas are an ordinary rhythm of life, full of Dalvas music (perhaps the finest in all the world… by any who can bear the volume of it). Their settlements sprawl without plan, growing wherever the people grow, evolving like a single vast roof of dyed tarps and canvases stretched across the grass. Despite the traveler’s challenge of basic privacy, hospitality is nevertheless a sacred service of the Dalvas. A Dalvas does not prize gold or fine goods from their guests, but instead the only gift worth giving is an untold dance, song or story.

When a Dalvas comes of age, they undertake the Wander: a special rite where, for at least a year, the young Dalvas roams the wider world to gather songs, news, and tales to carry back home. It’s this custom that fills the roads of Azergad with Dalvas adventurers - in many cases, veteran Dalvas that never choose to return home.

Across the rolling country, where the wind scatters every sound, the Dalvas call to one another in booming voices shaped for other keen, amplified ears kilometers away. They hear the world as much as see it: a Dalvas will read the wind by ear alone, judging distance, weather, and the commotion of a far-off crowd. It’s said that the sharpest among them can even hear the casting of different magical spellcraft. From their tongues come clicks, multiphonics, and sounds no other mouth could make, rendering the Dalvas languages all but unspeakable for any man born outside Azelliot. For their part, the Dalvas take to other tongues with remarkable ease, and most speak several.

Though they loosely resemble Humans, the Dalvas are particularly wiry. The shortest stand just above six and a half feet, while the tallest rise well into the eight-foot range. To weather the heavy wind and relentless sun, they grow thick hair of short to medium lengths across the shoulders, back, neck, tops of the arms and hands, and all around the head; men carry more of it than women, including full facial hair. The features they use for sound are exaggerated and elaborate. The jaws and mouth are quite large, including an unusually shaped tongue capable of uttering the Dalvas languages. A Dalvas’s ears are like finely-tuned instruments, shaped to catch even the faintest of sounds. Their skin ranges from dark brown to a warm tan, with a blueish undertone of varying degrees. Their hair runs black, brown, and white, typically worn in elaborate braids or wraps. Their eyes are amber, brown, green, or gray. The Dalvas adorn the lips and ears with beautiful jewels and piercings. Their crafts and handiwork blaze with color, for Azelliot offers a wealth of natural dyes at their disposal.

Toward the southeast, where Azelliot’s plains pour open toward the bell of the realm, the warmth begins to fall. The soil turns cold and hard, crops will not take, and life thins away to nothing all the way to the bottom of the world. It is from that lifeless cold that the dead are said to rise. The Dalvas have experienced generations of bitter anguish driving against the undead. When a Dalvas dies, the whole community sings them a special song that is said to lay the body and soul to rest. The Sangoman who walk the roads of Azergad, led by the Paragon Myrdin the Meek, are the most devoted crusaders against the plight of necromancy. In their hatred of undeath, the people and their Paragon are wholly of one mind.

Traits

• Ability Score Increase: +2 Charisma.
• Age: Dalvas reach adulthood around the age of 28 and often live past 150.
• Size: The tallest Dalvas stand near eight feet, with lean and long-limbed frames. Your size is Medium.
• Speed: Built for open country, your base walking speed is 35 feet.
• Keen Ears: Your ears are elaborate instruments tuned to the faintest sound. You have proficiency in the Perception skill, and you have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on hearing. You can also pinpoint the precise location of any sound you can hear within 60 feet of you, even when you cannot see its source.
• The Carrying Voice: Across open ground, you can raise your voice to be heard clearly up to a mile away. Any creature that shares a language with you understands you at that range, and two Dalvas can hold a full conversation across it.
• Sundering Cry: As an action, you can focus your many-layered voice into an overwhelming blast of sound. Choose any creatures you can see within 15 feet of you that can hear you. Each must make a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier). On a failed save, a creature takes thunder damage equal to 1d8 + your Charisma modifier and is deafened until the end of your next turn; on a successful save, it takes half as much damage and is not deafened. Once you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
• Windborn: You are at home in the ceaseless winds of the plains. You ignore the effects of strong wind, including its penalties to ranged weapon attacks and
  to Wisdom (Perception) checks.
• Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and one additional language of your choice. The Dalvas pick up new languages with ease. The Dalvas tongues are woven from clicks, multiphonics, and layered sounds that no mouth born outside Azelliot can reproduce; others may learn to understand them, but none but a Dalvas can truly speak them.

Jaziko

The most common of the Dalvas, the Jaziko fill the fields and rolling meadows of the Luba, the great throat of Azelliot. They are a boisterous, outgoing folk with proud voices to match. The Jaziko are the criers who carry news across the plains, the bards that keep the names and reputations of the living, and the makers of the roaring markets and festivals for which the Dalvas are known. Naturally friendly and irrepressibly social, the Jaziko welcome outsiders of every kind, and a stranger who can laugh easily and lend a song will never want for a place at their fire.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Dexterity.
• Language: You speak Jaziko, the most widespread of the Dalvas tongues — quick, bright, and endlessly inventive, boasting the largest vocabulary of any dialect.
• Crier’s Carry: You have proficiency in the Persuasion skill. When you address a gathering, you can shape your voice to be heard and understood by every creature that can hear you within 300 feet, and you have advantage on Charisma checks made to sway, rally, or win over a crowd of ten or more creatures.
• Born of the Festival: A life of nightly dramas and revelry leaves no Jaziko untrained. You have proficiency in the Performance skill and with one musical instrument of your choice.

Lendolo

The Lendolo dwell along the northern fens, where the Luba’s grasslands drown into the marshes that border Zilwynbar. They live simpler, laid-back lives in stilted villages that rise and fall with the seasonal floods. They spend their free time in deep thought, contemplating philosophy and art, such as the carving of beautiful sculptures from driftwood and river reed. They throw annual festivals celebrating their many lakes and rivers during the flooding season. Against the Jaziko’s roar, the Lendolo make a slower, lower music. Long, haunting chants carry for miles across still water, echoing over the marshes like the breath of the land itself. A Lendolo village is a quiet place of fishermen and artisans, and its people are as deep and unhurried as the water they live upon.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom.
• Language: You speak Lendolo, a slow, low, and poetic language shaped to carry across still water. It is spoken at an unhurried pace; a Lendolo conversation, while beautiful, is a test of patience.
• Fenstrider: You can move across mud, bog, and other soft ground without sinking, and you ignore difficult terrain created by marshland and shallow water. You also have a swimming speed of 20 feet.
• Contemplative Soul: Long hours of quiet thought and patient craft sharpen the Lendolo eye. You have proficiency in the Insight skill and with one type of artisan’s tools of your choice.

Borshai

The Borshai roam the Vash, the foothill country where Azelliot narrows beneath the Marram, following ancient migration routes with their herds along the high rolling country. More solidly built than their willowy plains cousins, and hardened by the wind and altitude of the foothills, they are an intensely proud people and the keepers of the Dalvas’ deepest memory. The Borshai are renowned storytellers and masters of their overtone-laden speech that, when spoken with confidence, bears the bone-chilling, room-filling sound of an organ. They have amazing memories, which are used to preserve oral histories spanning centuries. A Borshai elder is famous for being able to recite, word for word, what was sung or spoken before them long ago.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution.
• Language: You speak Borshai, the most tonal and challenging of the Dalvas tongues; spoken with confidence, a single Borshai voice rings like a chorale.
• Keeper of Memory: You have proficiency in the History skill. When you make an Intelligence (History) check concerning events, peoples, or songs of the last three centuries, you add double your proficiency bonus to the check. In addition, you can recall verbatim anything you have personally heard spoken, sung, or recited.
• Highland Drover: A life following the herds through the high foothills hardens you. You are acclimated to high altitude, and you have advantage on Constitution saving throws against exhaustion brought on by forced marches and extreme weather.

Shava

The Shava hold Azelliot’s southwestern flank, where the rolling breadlands break at last against the great green wall of the Veldt. They are the Dalvas most often met far from home, for it is the Shava who guide the caravans crossing the vast forest between Azelliot and the wider Realms. Their woven roads of rope and waystations thread the space between the Veldt’s upper and lower layers, kilometers above the monstrous forest floor. A Shava guide is part porter, part herald, and part singer: hauling freight up the tree-columns, calling the road ahead through leaves and trunks, and paying for a night’s hospitality in Veldtwin villages the only way a Dalvas would. Generations of escort work have made the Shava and the Veldtwin elves fast friends. The Shava name is a byword for a safe Veldt crossing; merchants across Azergad alike will wait weeks for a caravan with a Shava at its head. The shade of the canopy and a lifetime of rugged work have shaped them into the broadest-shouldered of the Dalvas, with deep brown skin, hair worn bound close against snag and wind, and eyes of green, amber, or gray.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Strength.
• Language: You speak Shavan, a clipped, bright and consonant-heavy Dalvas tongue shaped to ring cleanly off trunk and leaf; centuries of escort work have filled it with Veldtwin loanwords.
• Canopy Carry: The Shava learned to send the voice up and down through living wood and leaf as well as out across open ground. Your Carrying Voice trait is not stopped by wood, leaves, vines, or other biological forest materials. Your voice carries clearly to any point within 600 feet of you in any direction, including straight up or down between the layers of the Veldt.
• Layer Guide: You have proficiency in the Survival skill. By studying a forest path or crossing for 1 minute, you can determine which layer of the forest it runs through, the obvious hazards along it, and whether travelers, beasts, or storms have passed that way recently.