Skarns

seducers and seductresses. They enjoy business and creating wealth, both for the satisfaction of accomplishment and the style and pleasures that those riches afford them.

Roleplaying Application: If the party is facing a risky situation and there is a reasonable chance of survival, you should be the fi rst to volunteer. You believe in being a Hero with a capital H, and heroes don’t wait for a cohort to try the rope bridge fi rst. When you meet someone who you fi nd attractive, make sure that he or she knows you are eligible (or, if you are spoken for, be fl attering but honest). You should have “lines” prepared to use when approaching potential paramours. Above all, develop your own personal sense of style. Perhaps you always end a fi ght by dropping the plume from your hat onto your fallen opponent, or perhaps you are known for sinking a gold piece in every hundredth bottle of ale at the tavern you own.

Behavior: Rilkans are at ease almost wherever they go. The only haunts likely to spook a rilkan are cemeteries or places with a large undead presence; the utter lack of hope in such places is anathema to them.

Roleplaying Application: In cities, pay keen attention to the business climate. Never miss an opportunity to invest in a sure thing. Use your travels as an adventurer to learn where goods are in supply and where they are in demand. In combat, name your maneuvers, issue witty soliloquies, and add swashbuckling fl air to every strike.

Language: Rilkans love to talk. In a culture of bards, rogues, and traders, language is a specialty. Rilkan poetry is exquisite, and even nonbards memorize a number of their favorite passages. Rilkans delight in attaching belittling epithets to their nemeses and promulgating the use of these epithets across the land.

Roleplaying Application: When you encounter a recurring villain, make sure that you have an insulting nickname ready for him. Spread that nickname far and wide in the courts, trading houses, and taverns of the region, so that your enemy hears laughter whenever he introduces himself.

RILKAN ADVENTURES

Rilkan adventures can involve escapades of classic heroism such as rescuing a damsel in distress, but they can also enjoy scenarios such as investigating a forged business contract or recovering a shipping coster’s cargo from the bottom of a frigid bay. • A skarn sage claims that he has traced the failure of the mishtai to one particular rilkan bloodline. To test his theory, skarn raiders kidnap all known female members of the bloodline. A PC rilkan must rescue the distaff side of his family before they are subjected to hideous experiments. • A long-lost wartime contract surfaces, and a six-fingered halfling is making claims of ownership against a PC rilkan’s business. Is the contract real or a nefarious forgery? If forged, was it for simple profi t or a more insidious purpose? • An early winter storm sank the Ocean Dove to the bottom of the city’s deepwater harbor. Unfortunately, the Dove was carrying a cargo of caskets bound for ritual burial at sea.

Now, the undead grow restless under the waves. They will surface soon unless the PCs—who might own a share of the Dove—dive to the fl oor of the bay and end the threat.

SKARNS

“Nothing’s perfect. But a skarn is close.” —Ogava Basa, skarn incarnate

Skarn are strong, sophisticated warriors of intellect. Like the rilkans, they are descended from the vanished mishtai progenitor race, which long ago infused all mishtai with incarnum in an attempt to achieve “perfection of form.” Skarn appear human except for the fi ve or six vertically aligned reptilian spines that project from the anterior of each forearm, posterior of each calf, and the upper back. Skarn society is insular and demands both mental and physical achievement. They are a proud race—some would say arrogant—and they boast soulborns, paladins, rangers, and fi ghters of other “hybrid” classes that exemplify perfection of both mind and body.

SKARN RACIAL TRAITS

Skarns are about as tall as humans, but they are much more solidly built. They average 6 feet tall and 210 pounds. They appear human save for their most salient feature, their spines. These spines grow to six to twelve inches in length and range from turquoise and aquamarine in females to navy and sapphire in males. The spines are not retractable, but they can be held fl ush against the skin with little effort. At social occasions, the spines are layered with chiffon or gold chains. Spine jewelry and grooming are as important to a skarn as beard braiding and knotting are to a dwarf. • +2 Strength, –2 Dexterity: The hulking skarns are extraordinarily strong, but tend to be slow. • Medium: As Medium creatures, skarns have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size. • Skarn base land speed is 30 feet. • Humanoid (Reptilian): Skarns are humanoids with the reptilian subtype. • Natural Weapon (Spines): A skarn can make one attack with his arm spines each round, either with his primary hand or with his off-hand (taking the normal penalties for fi ghting with an off-hand weapon). This attack deals 1d6 points of piercing damage; if it is used as an off-hand weapon, the skarn may add only one-half his Strength bonus to the damage roll. A skarn can’t attack with his spines and a weapon wielded by the same arm in the same round. If a skarn makes a spine attack with an arm carrying a shield, he loses the shield’s bonus to AC until the start of his next turn. If the skarn has a soulmeld bound to his arms chakra, his spine attacks are treated as lawful-aligned for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. See Chakra Binds, page 51, for details. • +2 racial bonus on Intimidate and Climb checks: Skarns learn quickly how to use their spines to create a display of ferocity. These same spines aid skarns when they climb. • Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Elf, Celestial, Abyssal, and Infernal. Because skarns consider themselves slightly improved over the average mortal race, they learn the languages of those they consider to be their approximate equals. • Favored Class: Incarnate.

Skarns prefer hierarchical societies with clearly defi ned social classes. They prefer cities to farms, planning to spontaneity, and cotillions to revels.

Alignment: Skarns are usually lawful. They count an equal number of adherents to the ethos of good and evil among their race, but chaotic skarns are rare. Chaotic skarns are nevertheless tolerated and even welcomed into skarn society, since they are still skarns as opposed to members of some lesser race. Such free-spirited skarns cannot stand to remain with their fellows, however, where they are typically treated as amusing black sheep rather than serious iconoclasts.

Lands: Skarns prefer artifi ce to the vagaries of the natural, favoring large cities over undeveloped locales. Potential sites for skarn cities include defensible positions on bluffs overlooking river junctions, deepwater ports, or fertile land reclaimed from the sea through a complicated dyke system.

Settlements: Skarns prize architecture dearly. It is their fi rst and most loved art, and their cities refl ect this passion. A skarn city is a celebration of styles, a harmony of building and landscape fl owing from one city gate to its opposite. In general, skarns prefer powerfully built, tall buildings with skyway arches and caryatid buttresses. These buildings can rise to ten or more stories. A skarn city always includes several huge amphitheaters and public squares for speeches, elections, and spine-fi ghting rituals.

Power Groups: Governments in skarn cities vary from oligarchies to feudal monarchies to representative senates, but they all share three characteristics: they are strict, active, and powerful. Unlike in some towns, where council members might be puppets to the thieves’ guild or the local temple, the skarns’ penchant for social order guarantees that the lawfully invested government remains the uncontested supreme authority in the city. Outside of the government, skarn aristocrats and decorated military officials wield considerable influence.

Beliefs: The skarns believe that they have almost attained “perfection of form” without any help from the deities—only from incarnum. Hence, skarns honor incarnum before any god. This is not to say, though, that skarn are irreligious. Temples to Wee Jas in particular are common in skarn communities. Relations: Skarns do not get along well with others. They hold that the other races are generally inferior to the races of the mishtai. It is not that skarns dislike the other races; they simply consider the other races misguided for not believing that “perfection of form” is achievable. The one exception to this indifference is the rilkan race. Skarns blame the rilkans for ruining the mishtai’s racial experiment. The story goes that the mishtai were close to forming the perfect body coupled with the perfect mind when a faction within the mishtai meldshapers arose, advocating the pursuit of goals other than physical and mental perfection. These libertines, who gave rise to the rilkan race, fomented such social upheaval that the intense focus demanded by the great goal could not be maintained, and thus the mishtai fell short of their aspiration.

SKARN CHARACTERS

Skarns are strong, noble characters whose sense of purpose is as overt and sharp as the spines on their forearms. They immerse themselves in all kinds of fi ghts, from sword melees with necrocarnum zombies (see page 186) to verbal repartee with rilkans and other inferior races. Skarns expect lesser folk to be awed in their magnifi cent presence. Incarnate, soulborn, paladin, ranger, and even monk are traditional class choices.

Adventuring Skarns: Skarns adventure to advance their social standing. Their sophisticated warrior culture places great value on proof of mettle. When a soulborn skarn returns to his Ward Perfect’s headquarters with the tusks of the orc chieftain that had been raiding nearby farms, he is guaranteed to rise in the esteem of both the Perfect and his peers. Other skarns might develop a chaotic bent and fi nd life in the stratifi ed city too restrictive. Neutral or chaotic skarns are happy to join a band of adventurers, fi nding solace in what is often the fi rst community they have known that does not conform to the rigid rules of skarn society. Still other skarns adventure as part of the skarns’ great racial quest: to fi nd what became of the progenitor race and to complete its work. Most other races, especially the rilkans, scoff at the idea that the skarns will ever achieve the venerated concept of “perfection of form.” But the skarns believe perfection is possible, and many have taken up their swords and ventured in search of their forebears, their purposes, and their fate.

Character Development: To play to a skarn character’s strengths, literally play to his Strength. Take feats that exploit his natural Strength bonus: Power Attack and Cleave are traditional favorites, but don’t forget Improved Grapple, Improved Bull Rush, and Improved Trip. His Dexterity is likely not high, so look to acquire heavy armor and wade into melee. A shield can boost armor class, but a skarn might consider wielding a two-handed weapon, which allows him to take further advantage of his Strength bonus.

Character Names: Skarn names refl ect the race’s urbane belligerence. Given names are often polysyllabic while family names are generally monosyllabic. The goal of parents in selecting a child’s name is to fi nd one that implies both sophistication and strength. Refl ecting the race’s social awareness, titles often precede or follow a skarn’s name. The high value that the skarn place on art extends to poetry, and skarns are frequently named after heroes from ancient epics.

Male Names: Alekk, Ikkilis, Imre, Morgalle, Mydrinn, Ogava, Rotenh, Stergan, Teruska, Trakkisin, Vinnik, Vorlance.

Female Names: Aci, Adra, Arethe, Chariss, Dyssilka, Mish lyrren, Myrivist, Ormykka, Shallimtan, Shyvrandil, Theliram.

Family Names: Arsh, Bas, Dal, Drott, Mak, Mish, Mys, Rus, Tark, Thon, Thull, Wylle.

Common Titles: Esh (marks a petty aristocrat), Kourin (crafter), Leshvar (merchant), Uthman (laborer), Kavval (servant).

ROLEPLAYING A SKARN

While it might be tempting to roleplay a skarn as contemptuous of all other races, most skarns avoid such behavior. True, they view themselves as the rightful successors to the mishtai’s quest for “perfection of form.” But they are painfully aware that they are not perfect yet (for which they blame the rilkans), and their main attitude toward other races is one of indifference. The truth is that the skarn people don’t think about the other races much at all, preferring to focus on developing their own minds, bodies, and art. In any case, they consider exceptionally rude or insulting behavior—their own or anyone else’s—to be in very poor taste.

Male skarn Female skarn

Personality: Skarns are well-mannered fighters and aristocrats with fi erce but tightly controlled passions. Open display of strong emotion is frowned upon at skarn courts, where a veneer of civility is considered the hallmark of urbanity. Skarns have diverse interests and are very much at ease in a one-on-one discussion. As soon as a third person is introduced, a skarn becomes conscious of the tacit social hierarchy and modifi es his behavior accordingly.

Roleplaying Application: Always observe the rules of etiquette. Do not sink to the level of the boor by responding in kind; a gauntlet challenge is preferable to a shouting match. Your adventuring companions should be able to count on you for courageous intensity in battle and a sharp, rational mind outside of combat. You might not be your adventuring companion’s closest friend, but you strive to be the most dependable.

Behavior: Skarn children spend equal time playing with wooden swords and testing each other at games of mental acuity. The twin ideals of mental and physical perfection carry over into adulthood. A skarn aristocrat seeks to support these goals through philanthropy; a skarn adventurer seeks to exemplify them directly.

Roleplaying Application: If given time to explore a city, spend the morning with the combat mannequins at the Ward Marshal’s sparring hall and the afternoon with the nobility and philosophy books in the seminary library. Skarns pursue multiclass and “hybrid” class careers, since they value both mental and physical development.

Language: Skarns never forget to include a title when addressing a peer or noble. Their speech at social functions is always proper and might strike others as contrived or overly courteous.

Roleplaying Application: Upon meeting someone, always fi nd out the proper way to address the person, including an appropriate title. In an argument, try to play the role of “the voice of reason,” speaking calmly but fi rmly.

SKARN ADVENTURES

A skarn metropolis is a breeding ground for intrigue and adventure. Specific plots might revolve around court politics, a quest to discover secrets of the lost mishtai, or a military campaign. • The king’s Undersecretary for Mercenary Affairs is drafting strange new writs that allow the immigration of countless armed northerners. In fact, the “new” undersecretary is an impostor put in place by an enemy nation, and the new writs are cover to allow a foreign army into the land before usurping the throne. • A map appears purporting to show the location of “Thessaris

Kremnati,” one of the last mishtai enclaves. Whoever fi nds it might discover what happened to the progenitor race. • The king is sending division after division to the border.

When the player’s division takes up its position, however, he fi nds that the enemy is an unknown force that strikes only at dawn and dusk, leaving its victims lacerated from neck to stomach.

Illus. by M. Poole