Dusklings

“Use incarnum? I am incarnum.”

—Chevaril, duskling ranger

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 specifi cally 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 Halfl ing. • Favored Class: Totemist.

DUSKLING SOCIETY

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 defi ning 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 fi fty 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 specifi c 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, fi erce 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 fi nd even the loose bonds of family and clan too restrictive. These dusklings become adventuresome loners, or perhaps fi nd 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 fi nd 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 terrifi ed at

Male duskling Female duskling

the very thought of losing their families that they can feel little but pity for adventurers who fi nd themselves cut off from even the minimal social structure the race possesses.

Character Development: Dusklings use feats to take advantage of their speed and high hit points. Incarnum feats not only give them another place to invest their essentia, but more essentia as well. Since a duskling’s Intelligence is likely low, she should decide early on whether or not skill use is important. If it isn’t, she can focus on classes with few skill points, staying competent in only one or two skills. Otherwise, she should focus on high-skill-point classes, trusting to the sheer number of skill points per level to disguise this shortcoming.

Character Names: Duskling names are similar to those of elves—mellifl uous and polysyllabic. Duskling parents name their children, choosing names that refl ect some signifi cant event around their birth. Dusklings are more proud of their family names than their given names, frequently using their family names when dealing with other races. Like elf family names, duskling family names are combinations of Sylvan words, though dusklings are less likely than elves to use Common translations of their names among other races.

Male Names: Avandar, Chevaril, Estevial, Farandal, Horathiel, Javarral, Manarro, Photastial, Quarranal, Rhomian, Starronal.

Female Names: Athalia, Brellia, Darandia, Geveryn, Ialannah, Kavanyn, Levesha, Maneryn, Phyannah, Shavallah, Thyrnyn.

Family Names: Avarmathan, Briendarkan, Devishamarral, Fierabrazalan, Heloshartha, Lysseldevar, Merricanath, Oshavalari, Rhiannivar, Shellivathan, Touranisha.

ROLEPLAYING A DUSKLING

Dusklings can seem paradoxical: they hate restrictions but value family ties, reject authority but hold fi erce loyalties. The

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DUSKLING PLANAR HERITAGE

Dusklings are fey that hail from the Outer Planes. Exactly which Outer Plane a particular duskling is native to depends on the cosmology your campaign uses. In general, dusklings come from planes friendly to fey and wildlife. In a campaign world using the planar cosmology detailed in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, dusklings are native to the Wilderness of the Beastlands, the Olympian Glades of Arborea, and the Heroic Domains of Ysgard. In the FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign setting, dusklings are typically native to Arvandor or the House of Nature. In the EBERRON campaign setting, dusklings hail from Thelanis, the Faerie Court. The player of a duskling PC should, with his DM’s approval, select a home plane as part of character creation. Once chosen, this plane cannot be changed later.

Illus. by M. Poole