DUSKLINGS
“Use incarnum? I am incarnum.”
—Chevaril, duskling ranger
RACES
CHAPTER 1
Dusklings are small but savage fey native to the Outer Planes. They boast of an innate connection to incarnum that no other race possesses—as a dryad is one with her tree, they claim, the duskling race is one with incarnum.
DUSKLING RACIAL TRAITS Dusklings stand about as tall as elves, though they are far more robust. They average about 5 feet tall and about 120 pounds. Their skin is steely blue-gray and their hair ranges from light blue to darker shades of blue, gray, and black. Their eyes are deep blue, emerald green, or purple. They have a wild, feral look about them—their hair grows long and unkempt, and their faces are long and somewhat vulpine. The men grow long, full beards. • +2 Constitution, –2 Intelligence: The duskling race’s innate connection to incarnum grants them extraordinary health. Dusklings disdain strict education and learning, though no one is certain whether this is a cause or result of their slightly diminished reasoning capacity. • Duskling base speed is 30 feet. However, a duskling can invest essentia to improve this speed. For every point of essentia invested in this racial trait, the duskling’s speed improves by 5 feet. (See Essentia, page 50, for information about investing essentia.) This enhancement bonus only applies when the duskling is wearing light or no armor and carrying no more than a light load. • Fey (Extraplanar): As fey, dusklings are immune to effects that specifically target humanoids, such as the charm person spell. As natives of an Outer Plane, dusklings have the extraplanar subtype while they are on the Material Plane (or any other plane besides the dusklings’ home plane). This makes them vulnerable to certain effects that might force them back to their home plane. See the Duskling Planar Heritage sidebar for more details. • Fey (Incarnum): Dusklings are fey with the incarnum subtype (see page 169). • Low-Light Vision: Dusklings can see twice as far as humans in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. They retain the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions. • Essentia Pool: A duskling’s essentia pool is permanently increased by 1. If she doesn’t have an essentia pool, this trait grants her one with a single point of essentia. • Automatic Languages: Common and Sylvan. Bonus Languages: Elf, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, and Halfling. • Favored Class: Totemist.
DUSKLING SOCIETY
10
Dusklings are tribal fey who dwell throughout the planes. They travel in small bands but carefully keep track of their family relations even to distant cousins. Alignment: Dusklings hold alignments without strong extremes. Most dusklings are neutral (or within one step of neutral). They have a slight tendency toward good over evil, but their defining cultural characteristic involves avoiding extremes of morals and ethics.
Lands: Dusklings are nomads—not because they follow herds on seasonal migrations, but simply because they seem incapable of settling in a fi xed location. They favor thick forests in warm climes, but wander through plains, hills, and mountains on their endless travels. They avoid civilized or heavily populated regions, but trade with frontier settlements established by other races. Settlements: Dusklings set up camps for a week or perhaps a month at a time, very rarely as long as a season, before moving on to a new location. These camps might include tents built from whatever materials are at hand, but just as often the dusklings sleep and conduct their daily business in the open air. Power Groups: Dusklings (even lawful ones) resist strong authority. Their society is based around clan groups of ten to fifty individuals who share family ties, with the oldest living ancestor governing each group. When that elder dies, the clan splits and each fragment is led by one of the former leader’s children. The authority of a clan elder is far from absolute. Every duskling with a grandchild sits on a council of elders whose purpose is to advise the ruling elder. In practice, this council can overrule the ruling elder’s decisions in some clans but not in others. Beliefs: Dusklings are not a particularly religious race. They feel a close connection with the power of nature and produce more druids than clerics. Relations: Dusklings get along well with almost any other race, though specific relations vary based on the duskling’s alignment. They dislike anyone who is rigid, authoritarian, or dogmatic, a description that includes most skarns, many dwarves, and a fair number of humans as well.
DUSKLING CHARACTERS Dusklings prove themselves as fast, fierce characters whose speed lets them keep out of sight—or at least out of reach. Ranger and rogue are obvious class choices. Of the melding classes, totemists are the most common, though incarnates are also present; both classes exemplify the ideals the race holds dear. Adventuring Dusklings: Dusklings value family ties enormously; a duskling without family feels cut off from everything she holds dear. Such dusklings—whether orphaned or exiled—often take up a life of adventuring. The close camaraderie of an adventuring party can serve as an acceptable substitute for family ties, and a duskling who adopts her adventuring companions as a surrogate family is the most loyal ally her fellow adventurers could hope for. Other dusklings manifest the racial tendency toward wanderlust in an extreme fashion and find even the loose bonds of family and clan too restrictive. These dusklings become adventuresome loners, or perhaps find company with similarly independent souls. These adventurers are motivated by nothing more than the need to be on the move and free from any kind of ties, and they view even their adventuring companions as temporary allies rather than lifelong friends. As a race, dusklings are ambivalent about adventurers. On the one hand, their folklore is full of heroes who, cut off from family, perform heroic deeds and come to find a new family (usually a long-lost group of duskling relatives, in contrast to the reality of adventuring life). Dusklings truly admire these heroes of legend and hold at least a grudging respect for present-day adventurers whose stories mimic theirs to some extent. On the other hand, most dusklings are so terrified at
