halflings

Halflings

The Halflings of Zilwynbar inhabit the smallest of the Realms yet the most full of life, where the hundred channels of the Kerangala turn the lowlands into a sprawling, neverending garden. Theirs is a civilization built physically on well-engineered dikes, drains, and stilted causeways against the water. Yet, the Halflings are perhaps best known as a people of literature. No people in Azergad writes as much as they do. Every Halfling family is expected to keep a record of accounts, such as births, natural disasters, recipes, grudges, successes, failures and all sorts of personal family history worth documenting. These books are called the family’s Chronicle. Every village keeps a Common Chronicle, which is appended to full-time by a group of particularly gifted writers called scribes. Ultimately, all of Zilwynbar’s accounts flow, sooner or later, toward the Great Library, where their Paragon Ostro, the Author of Knowledge, has spent three thousand years gathering all of Azergad’s memories under one roof. Once a year at the New Solar Reading, the most important Chronicles are read aloud to crowds upon crowds. This is not just a celebration for Halflings, but all races of man, who may travel for weeks just to be witnesses of history.

For all the bookkeeping, Halfling history is deeply intertwined with their homeland. The wetlands of Zilwynbar that bring so much life are capable of equally great destruction. Generations of losing the ground beneath their feet during the annual monsoon season bred a people characterized by resourcefulness, cooperation, and upright attitudes. It was the wandering Wendric caravans that stitched together the first roads between Orcish Bisengal, the Dalvas fens, and their own delta country. In fact, their language became so widespread and useful that it sprawled into an international vernacular full of loanwords from dialects all across the world. Though not the lingua franca of Thilidan (that being Common), it seemed fitting that the Wendric language would become known as “Uncommon”: a secondary widespread language spoken wherever the races of man are present, but particularly so in northern Inazria, Bisengal, Zilwynbar and Azelliot.

A traveler who deals fairly and tells a good story will find that Halfling hospitality, like Halfling record-keeping, is thorough. And since every chronicle needs new pages, plenty of young Halflings take to the roads to fill them - a well-traveled personal Chronicle is a respectable addition to their family story.

Halflings stand between just 3 and 4 feet tall, with sturdy builds and quick, practiced hands. Their skin ranges greatly, from the lightest to the darkest tan colors, while their hair comes in browns, blondes, blacks and occasional reds. Known for their cheerful dispositions and love of comfort, Halflings value the high achievements of good food, warm hearths, and the company of friends above material wealth.

Traits

• Ability Score Increase: +2 Dexterity
• Age: Halflings mature by age 20 and live about 150 years.
• Size: Halflings average about 3 feet tall and weigh about 40 pounds. Your size is Small.
• Speed: Your base walking speed is 25 feet.
• Brave: Generations of standing their ground against the oversized beasts of the wetlands have bred a quiet, practical courage. You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
• Halfling Nimbleness: A lifetime of slipping through dense wooded terrain, crowded markets, and the legs of larger folk leaves its mark. You can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than yours.
• Lucky: Halfling folk wisdom holds that small kindnesses and well-kept promises buy the favor of fortune. When you roll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die. You must use the new result, even if it is a 1.
• Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and Halfling. Halfling is a warm, expressive and romantic language full of diminutives and terms of endearment.

Yorokai

The Yorokai have made their homes within the Fennveldt, where the last drowned giants of the Veldt stand deep within the marshy floor, carving intricate communities into the living wood of their arboreal hosts. Their culture is particularly formal and contemplative among Halfling peoples: a world of moon-viewing verandas high in the branches, seasonal poetry contests judged by village elders, and a courteous, unhurried etiquette that outsiders find equal parts charming and impenetrable. These Halflings have formed a symbiotic relationship with the wetland forest, serving as its guardians while the trees provide shelter, protection and beauty. Their architecture is not at the expense of the Veldt, but in partnership with it. The Yorokai are also the Fennveldt’s scholars, for no one else has studied the primal magic that moves through it so long or so carefully. Ostro’s Arbiters commonly reside among Yorokai pergola libraries.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Intelligence
• Language: You can speak Yorokai, which includes many terms borrowed from Veldtwin and specialized Fennveldt vocabulary. Written Yorokai is careful brushwork: a well-lettered verse is judged as much by its strokes as by its words.
• Tree Stride: You can climb at your walking speed, and you have advantage on ability checks and saving throws made to avoid falling from a tree.
• Forest Friend: As an action, you can communicate simple ideas to beasts and plants within 30 feet for 10 minutes. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
• Fennveldt Lore: Whenever you make an Intelligence (Nature) check related to the plants, beasts, or primal magic of forests and wetlands, you are considered proficient in the Nature skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

Aaldegar

The Aaldegar create extensive networks of shallow burrows throughout the treacherous Aaldemar delta, building communities that exist both above and below ground where most people would struggle to keep anything dry. The Aaldegar are engineers and crafters, raising the dikes, drains, and root cellars that hold the brackish water at bay. It’s such constant work that “an Aaldegar’s rest” is Halfling slang for checking the sluice gates one more time. An Aaldegar’s standing is measured by the number of outsiders they can host. It’s common for an Aaldegar Family Chronicle to be full of boastful occasions where outsiders were welcomed into their home. Due to this, the Great Library must be thorough in analyzing the honesty of particularly haughty and full family accounts. Their spectacular cuisine is famous in every port on the Kerangala, and a guest who leaves an Aaldegar home hungry has probably insulted somebody.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Charisma
• Language: You can speak Aaldegar, a rich yet complicated dialect of Halfling full of history and loanwords from many languages.
• Tunnel Network: In boggy terrain, you can dig simple tunnels and burrows at a quarter of your walking speed. While underground, you always know the direction to the nearest Aaldegar settlement.
• Bayou Studies: You ignore difficult terrain of swamps, marshes, or other wetlands. Additionally, always add your proficiency bonus when you make an ability check to build, repair, or assess dikes, drains, cellars, canals, and other works made to keep water out.
• Delta Hospitality: You have proficiency with cook’s utensils. Aaldegar cuisine is universally beloved; making someone a special dish, with the right Aaldemar ingredients, is a great way to make friends.

Wendric

The Wendric are wandering halflings who follow seasonal migrations across central to northern Zilwynbar and beyond, living off the land and trading with settled communities. These halflings have developed exceptional survival skills and an encyclopedic knowledge of edible plants, useful herbs, and animal behavior. They serve as messengers and guides between distant communities, and it was their caravans that carried the Wendric language far enough to become Uncommon, the lingua franca of the northeast. A Wendric caravan arriving at a village is like half market, half festival: news is traded before goods, and by long custom the first story told around the fire is free.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Wisdom
• Language: You can speak Wendric, also known as Uncommon. It’s a language that sounds like Halfling and borrows many words from nearby Orcish, Lendolo and Common, and is written in the Common script. Besides Common, it is among the most widely-spoken trade languages, acting as a lingua-franca among the northeast region of Azergad.
• Forager’s Knowledge: You have proficiency in Survival and gain proficiency with the herbalism kit.
• Cross-Country Traveller: While traveling on foot for an hour or more, you ignore difficult terrain.
• News of the Road: A life spent carrying stories between settlements sharpens the ear for what people truly believe. You have proficiency in the Insight skill. After spending 10 minutes exchanging news in a settlement or at a roadside camp, you can accurately judge which of the local stories seem to be factual and which are treated as rumor.

Keldale

Along the far eastern coast of Zilwynbar, beyond the brackish maze of the Aaldemar, a chain of small volcanic islands smokes on the horizon. These are the Morybell Isles, born in a colossal string of eruptions during the 1st Generation and restless ever since. They are home to the Keldale, the Halflings who plan around geology the way the Wendric plan around seasons. The largest island, where most of the Keldale live, is called Isle Kloenard. Where the Aaldegar engineer permanence, the Keldale have made peace with a homeland that never stays still. Their villages are set into warm rock and heated by the earth itself; steam vents cook their meals and flowing lava fires their forges. It’s normal for eruptions to erase paths between towns, requiring new roads to be charted. Among Halflings, they are improvisational, quick-thinking people who aren’t so sentimental about their property. Among traders, they are famous for the rare minerals and volcanic glasswork that have quietly made the remote islanders quite a wealthy people. The Keldale, despite their unorthodox homes, are known for a hospitality so warm that shipwrecked sailors have been known to stay for years (typically, in the handful of places that are safe for them). The Keldale are lean and weathered for halflings, with deep tan to ash-colored skin, hair of black or vivid red, and eyes of gray, amber, or ember-orange.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution
• Language: You can speak Keldalic, a short, percussive dialect of Halfling with a vocabulary rich in words for minerals, heat, and change. It is said the Keldale have a dozen words for heat and one for permanent.
• Ashlung: You are acclimated to extreme heat, and air thick with smoke, ash, or sulfurous fumes does not harm you. You have advantage on saving throws against the harmful effects of smoke, ash, and volcanic gases, and you ignore difficult terrain caused by ash, cinders, and broken volcanic rock.
• Landscape Memory: You have proficiency with smith’s tools, worked in the heat of the vents. Additionally, when you spend 1 minute surveying an area you have visited before, you learn what has changed since your last crossing: fresh flows, collapsed paths, new vents, and ground that is no longer safe to stand on.