orcs

Orcs

The Orcs of Bisengal are a diverse and hardy people shaped by the unforgiving landscapes they call home. Orcish civilization values strength, endurance, and unwavering loyalty to their clans. Orc society emphasizes personal honor achieved through overcoming adversity, whether in combat, survival, or mastery of one’s craft. Because such honor must be earned rather than inherited, many young orcs leave Bisengal to seek hardship worth conquering, like serving abroad as caravan guards, builders, tribunal deputies, or adventurers, before returning home to boast of their feats.

Orcs are powerfully built, standing around 7 feet tall with broad shoulders and muscular frames that speak to generations of physical adaptation. Their rough skin ranges from deep forest green to weathered grayish-brown. Their prominent lower canines and strong jaws reflect their carnivorous heritage, while their keen senses serve them well in Bisengal’s harsh environments. Most orcs live 60-80 years, reaching maturity by age 16.

Throughout the last thousand years, several Orcish empires have risen and fallen across Azergad. In antiquity, it was the Dramakha empire that first rose to prominence, asserting long-lasting dominance over the other races; the conquests of rising leaders ever since have all sought to regain their past glory.

At one time, a revived Dramakha empire conquered vast swaths of Inazria and Zilwynbar through superior Orcish metallurgy and warfare tactics, only to fragment when the ruling clan was challenged by dozens of rival houses simultaneously. Another time, a reunified offensive built the greatest naval force the world had ever seen and controlled trade routes across the Violet Sea, but collapsed again when a succession crisis turned into the War of Burning Ships. Just a hundred years ago, another echo of the Empire controlled large portions of Azelliot, Zilwynbar and northern Inazria. An empowered public protested, leading to deadly resistance efforts on many borders. As Dramakha power was weakening, the squabbles of the ruling class quickly erupted into ethnic tensions between Gushbeks, Dramkhani and Yaz’togals. Yet again, a new conflict exploded into the devastating three-way civil war that has left the Orcish people broken, impoverished, and confined to the hostile badlands of Bisengal today.

Traits

• Ability Score Increase: +2 Strength
• Age: Orcs mature by age 16 and live up to 80 years.
• Size: Orcs are larger and bulkier than humans. Your size is Medium.
• Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
• Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light in shades of gray.
• Relentless Endurance: An orc’s honor is measured by what they have withstood. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this trait again until you finish a long rest.
• Tempered Strength: Like the metallurgy that built their empires, orcs are taught to be hardened by every blow and rise stronger than they were struck. Once per short or long rest, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can deal extra damage equal to your proficiency bonus, or twice your proficiency bonus if you are below half your hit point maximum.
• Powerful Build: Generations of labor, war, and survival in Bisengal’s badlands have built frames to match. You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
• Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common and Orcish. Orcish is a harsh, guttural language with sharp consonants that carries well across Bisengal’s windswept landscapes.

Dramkhani

The Dramkhani are the heartland orcs of the Targai steppe and the heirs of the ancient Dramakha, the first empire to rule Azergad. The Dramkhani are traditionally nomadic people, following the grass and the seasons across the frostbitten steppe. From among the Dramkhani come the rulers of Khurz-Marn and the Paragon Karhu herself, and it is they who keep alive the old dream of empire reborn. They are the archetype against which the other orcs are measured: tall and powerfully built, with weathered skin in deep forest-greens and grey-browns, dark hair worn in long braids, and eyes of amber or brown.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Constitution
• Language: You can speak Targun, the ancient tongue of the first Dramakha empire; in fact, modern Orcish descends directly from it. To speak Targun is to speak as the old emperors did, and it is considered the honorable mark of pure orcish heritage.
• Brutal Presence: You have proficiency in the Intimidation skill, and you can make Intimidation checks using your Strength modifier in place of Charisma.
• Life on the Move: Your nomadic heritage equips you for an adventuring lifestyle. You have proficiency in Survival, and you gain advantage on Constitution saving throws made against suffering the effects of exhaustion.

Gushbek

The Gushbek were once a roaming caste of traders and explorers who charted the least-touched corners of Bisengal, mapping the wastes no clan dared to claim. At the height of the Dramakha empire, it was they who were called upon to shepherd goods and travelers across the treacherous Oztagh. This is the origin of their name: in the old Dramakha tongue, Gushbek means “runners of the horizon.” Their skills and knowledge of the desert is unparalleled.

The Dramakha clans regarded the Gushbek as a lesser people, and for generations subjected them to duress and persecution. When civil war at last broke the empire, the Gushbek claimed the whole of the Oztagh as their own sovereign land, including parts of Zilwynbar’s northern wetlands where predominantly Gushbek towns and cities still stand today. The Dramakha marched to take the desert back, and there the Gushbek held, again and again, often against far greater numbers. Accounts of those skirmishes are modern fables, telling of feats so daring and so cunning they have passed into legend. In the years since, both sides have settled into an uneasy, mutually beneficial separation: two peoples, two territories, one shaky but unbroken Bisengal. Gushbek and Halfling relations continue to be a longstanding friendship of trade and trust. Gushbek stand tall and slender beside their cousins, with tan skin in many shades, eyes of gold, amber, or sky blue, and thick dark hair bound tight against the wind and sand.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Dexterity
• Language: You can speak Gushbek, a guttural language commonly used throughout rural Bisengal that is mutually unintelligible with standard Orcish. However, the language exists as a spectrum and is highly contextual, from near-Orcish in the northern wetlands to something closer to Uncommon trade-speech in the south. Merchants crossing the Kerangala learn a few phrases whether they mean to or not.
• Desert Adaptation: You are acclimated to the desert’s extreme heat and freezing nights. You can go up to five days without drinking before you risk exhaustion from thirst, and you ignore difficult terrain caused by sand, dust, and loose rock.
• Mirage Runner: You ignore difficult terrain when you Dash through sand or open desert, and you do not leave tracks on sand or dust.
• Horizon Sense: You have proficiency in Survival. After spending 1 minute observing open terrain, you know the cardinal directions, the rough hours until nightfall, and whether a sandstorm or similar hazard is likely within the next few hours. You cannot become lost in desert, steppe, or badland terrain except by magical effects.

Barithani

The Barithani trace their roots to the Dramkhani clans who spearheaded the conquests of the first Dramakha empire, feared in their day as bloodthirsty marauders who dabbled in forsworn magic. When the empire first fell, the surviving clans turned on them, and the Barithani were cast out of Bisengal entirely. Neither Inazria nor Zilwynbar would harbor such a people, and so they fled to the one place none would follow: the lightless lower depths of the Veldt. There, over thousands of years in perpetual twilight beneath the canopy, they became something apart. Now, the Barithani are expert hunters and trappers who move in silence across the forest floor, raising hidden settlements within root systems and fallen logs, and surviving in no small part on the supplies they take from travelers who stray too low along the Veldt’s paths.

Generations in the dark have reshaped them. Barithani skin has grown pale, ashy and desaturated to colors of ash-grey, ecru, beige, or light scarlets; their eyes burn red or amber and catch the faintest light; their features are sharp and angular, their fanged maws fuller than other orcs’, and their nails blackened. To the rest of the world they appear fearsome, with a cultivated reputation to match.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Charisma
• Language: You can speak Barithani, a more elegant evolution of Dramkhani that borrows words and phrases from Veldtwin and Yorokai.
• Forest Camouflage: You have proficiency in Stealth. When in forest terrain, you can attempt to hide even when only lightly obscured by foliage.
• Tracker’s Sense: You have proficiency in Survival. You can track creatures that passed through an area up to 7 days ago, and you can identify the creature’s approximate size and direction of travel.
• Eyes of the Deep Veldt: Generations in the lightless depths have sharpened your sight in darkness and dulled it in the day. Your darkvision extends to 90 feet. However, while in bright light such as direct sunlight, you have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.

Yaz’togal

The Yaz’togal hold the highest peaks of the Marram, where they raise the fortress-cities and watchtowers that guard the passes between nations. They descend from the master engineers of the old Dramakha empire - the orcs who built its strongholds and breached everyone else’s. The Treaty of Marram gave them their lasting purpose: to fortify Bisengal’s new mountain border and keep watch on the Hyzalians above. Where other orcs trust to strength, the Yaz’togal trust to the sharp eye and the well-laid stone, relying on centuries of innovations in mathematics, masonry, and careful craftsmanship. They are broad and weathered like all their kind, but marked by keen, deep-set eyes and skin in the light greys and browns of the high rock they have made their home.

The border was not the last thing the Yaz’togal were asked to build. When the Palcha invasions rolled out across the western reaches, it was the Yaz’togal who took in defectors from the valley. Over decades of argument, measurement, and repeated failure, they worked out how a dwarf’s hereditary force could be reduced to notation and taught to anyone with the discipline to study it. They called the result Bek’Tan, and for a very long time it was only a weapon. Bek’Tan proved to be the instrumental craft that pried the west back out of Palcha hands one fortress at a time. It was later that the Yaz’togal applied it toward the work they would rather be remembered for. Half the watchtowers along the high passes stand on ledges no cart could ever have reached, and the masons will tell you the stone was the easy part.

• Ability Score Increase: +1 Intelligence
• Language: You can speak Yaz’togal, a difficult but pleasant sounding dialect of Orcish. Many know basic Yaz’togal because of its wide applications as a trade language all across the Marram. Everyday usage is typically associated with the upper and royal classes of Yaz’togal society. Speaking it proficiently is a sign of status.
• Sentinel’s Eye: You have proficiency in Perception. When you observe a group of creatures from afar, you can accurately judge its distance, numbers, and direction of travel.
• Tower Code: You know the horn-and-banner signal code of the Yaz’togal watchtowers. You can send and understand simple messages to anyone within line of sight who knows the code, no matter the distance. You can teach the basic code to a willing creature over a week of daily practice, allowing it to exchange simple messages with you in this way.
• Built to Last: You have proficiency with mason’s tools and carpenter’s tools. With a glance, you can tell whether a structure is sound, sabotaged, or recently built or altered. Furthermore, when you spend 10 minutes or more reinforcing a door, wall, barricade, or other structure, creatures have disadvantage on ability checks made to break through it, and it has advantage on saving throws against being damaged or destroyed.