Rilkans

key to roleplaying a duskling is to acknowledge only those ties and obligations that the duskling chooses to accept. They rebel against anyone who tries to make them follow and obey, but if a duskling swears to follow and defend a companion, she will give up her life to fulfi ll that oath if need be.

Personality: Dusklings are best described as wild. They feel emotion fi ercely, and rarely hide their feelings—they like to make sure their loved ones feel loved and their enemies know the depth of their hatred. They dislike confi nement, whether it is physical, emotional, or legal, and have a hard time staying in one place for long.

Roleplaying Application: Unless a situation demands tact, make it clear what you are thinking and feeling. In situations where being too forthright could jeopardize your mission, it’s easiest to stay out of the conversation entirely—stand away on guard or just staring out the window. Your adventuring companions, at least, should never hold any doubt about what you think of them. Fight with feral intensity—you could even punctuate your attack rolls with growls or insults directed at your opponents. Should you fi nd yourself captive, pace your cell or jangle your chains. Stand up to bullies and tyrants and don’t take orders from anyone unless you’ve promised to.

Behavior: Dusklings are either moving or still. They move quickly and purposefully from one place to another, and stand very still when they reach where they want to go. The exception is when they feel confi ned—trapped dusklings pace and fi dget in stark contrast to their usual stillness. Dusklings are more comfortable with their feet than most other races are. Dusklings do not consider it rude to prop their feet up on chairs or tables, while others hide their feet away. They enjoy going barefoot when it is practical. Duskling lovers exchange anklets as tokens of their love and massage each other’s feet as an expression of affection.

Roleplaying Application: To the extent that it’s possible and practical, avoid heavy armor and items that encumber you—make the most of your speed. Don’t wander, even in combat. Move to where you want to be and stay there as long as possible.

Language: Dusklings use few words but spit them out in a rapid-fi re stream. They are not reluctant to offer opinions and contribute to debates, but speak their piece succinctly and then quietly allow others to speak theirs. Though they speak Sylvan, they make use of idioms that other Sylvan speakers do not necessarily understand and that sound even stranger when translated literally into Common. Favorite duskling idioms include “Let’s cut these chains” (let’s start moving, let’s get out of here), “I turned it blue” (I changed my mind), and “You smelted him” (you hurt him badly, you mortally wounded him).

Roleplaying Application: Speak quickly and succinctly. Pepper your speech with unfamiliar idioms and aphorisms.

DUSKLING ADVENTURES

Adventures involving dusklings might include an entire family facing some external threat, rescuing dusklings who are in captivity, or a confl ict caused by humans (or some other race) settling wild territory frequented by dusklings. • Members of a PC duskling’s family have been captured by goblins or orcs and are being held as slaves. The PC drafts her adventuring companions to help her free them. • A group of araneas have built a nest in the heart of a forest inhabited by dusklings and are preying on the fey. The dusklings seek help combating the araneas. • A human village experiences rapid growth and begins clearing much of the surrounding forest for farmland. The dusklings who inhabit the forest begin attacking the human loggers. The humans seek protection from these attacks, while the dusklings want their territory preserved.

RILKANS

“What’s the point of incarnum if you’re not going to have a little fun with it?”

—Tarrenta Willet, rilkan bard

Rilkans are rakish entrepreneurs and daredevils of fortune. They believe in drinking deep from the cup of life. Like skarns, they are descended from the enigmatic mishtai, displaying their heritage in the bands of semireptilian scales grace rilkan forearms and necks. For the rilkans, the skarn and mishtai goal of “perfection of form” is a false idol. They believe that perfection is to be found in the journey, not the destination, and they seek to relish every moment that they are alive. According to the skarns, it was this heterodoxy that thwarted the mishtai’s efforts toward perfection, and the skarns have resented the rilkans for it ever since. In keeping with their reverence for gold and song, rilkans count numerous bards, merchants, and rogues among their number.

RILKAN RACIAL TRAITS

Rilkans can pass for humans if they cover their pebbly, corundum-hard scales. These scales range in color from turquoise to sapphire to ruby. In males, the scales are a single solid color; in females, they are patterned and polychromatic. Rilkan men are dashing and handsome, while rilkan women dress to accentuate their femininity. • +2 Dexterity, –2 Strength: Rilkans are naturally lithe and graceful but also physically weak. • Medium: As Medium creatures, rilkans have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size. • Rilkan base land speed is 30 feet. • Humanoid (Reptilian): Rilkans are humanoids with the reptilian subtype. • Racial Knowledge: The rilkan race is linked through the power of incarnum to the accumulated knowledge of their entire people. This manifests in two ways. First, all

Knowledge checks are treated as trained skill checks for rilkans, regardless of whether they actually have ranks in the skill. Even without formal instruction, a rilkan naturally absorbs learning from the accumulated knowledge of her people. Second, rilkans gain a competence bonus on all

Knowledge checks and bardic knowledge checks. This bonus is +1, but increases by an additional +1 for every two soulmelds currently shaped by the rilkan, since each soulmeld contains a small portion of the collected souls of the rilkan race. • +2 racial bonus on Bluff and Diplomacy checks: Rilkans are talented at saying the right word at the right time. • Racial Aid: Because of the incarnum bond that knits together all rilkans, at any time that a rilkan succeeds in

using the aid another action to assist another rilkan, she adds +3 to the ally’s roll, rather than +2. • Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Any (other than secret languages, such as Druidic). Rilkans enjoy learning a wide range of languages, as befi ts their nature. • Favored Class: Incarnate.

RILKAN SOCIETY

Rilkans happily integrate into most other societies. Gregarious by nature, rilkans do not form isolated, all-rilkan enclaves. Their adventurous spirits often lead them to travel, but they are equally likely to settle down in a community that strikes them as especially charming.

Alignment: Rilkans tend toward the chaotic, since they have a strong individualistic streak. Chaotic neutral is the most likely alignment for any given rilkan.

Lands: Rilkan lands are beautiful. Whether they choose ragged escarpments high in snowbound mountains, a tropical bay, or a glittering city with marvels of artifi ce on every corner, rilkans believe in the value of the moment. None ever suffer themselves to live in an environment that they do not cherish.

Settlements: Rilkans are content to live in the settlements of other creatures. They enjoy elven tree villages, human cities, and even dwarven delves. Halfl ing burrow communities refer to the enlarged rooms in their taverns and town halls as “rilkan rooms.” As a result of their natural talents for diplomacy and peacemaking, rilkans rise to places of prominence in whatever society they choose. In settlements where rilkans are the majority, other races are welcomed with open arms. This extends even to bugbears, orcs, gnolls, and other “monstrous” races, as long as they keep the peace. In one famous rilkan city, the head of the Sewer Workers Guild is an intelligent gelatinous cube.

Power Groups: Rilkan culture venerates merchants and bards. The rilkan knowledge pool awakens them to a sense of history that few other cultures share, and bardic tales of the heroes of yore fascinate them. Rilkans also believe in the power of trade as a means to enjoying the best that life has to offer. A common rilkan saying is, “Gold is the root of all good.” In rilkan-majority communities, the most powerful organizations include trading guilds, adventuring companies, and bardic colleges. Rilkan governments, which limit their activities to little other than the courts and the city watch, take a distant fourth place.

Beliefs: The rilkan ethos teaches members of the race to seek out and experience the best that life has to offer. It does not embrace utter hedonism, instead placing emphasis on heroic struggle, grand passion, and epic strife. Religion plays a major part in rilkan society. Deities of wealth, beauty, and love are popular among rilkans—in the core pantheon, they favor Olidammara above all others. In contrast to the stories of other races, the heroes of rilkan epics are also traders, usurers, and oligarchs who generated great wealth for themselves, their families, and their employees. It is rare to fi nd a villainous merchant in rilkan art.

Relations: While skarns look down on rilkans as secondplace fi nishers, at best, in the race to the mishtai’s goal of

Male rilkan Female rilkan

Illus. by M. Poole

Illus. by M. Poole

“perfection of form,” rilkans shake their heads and wonder why the skarns are still running that race. Rilkans harbor ill will toward the skarns because, according to legend, the skarns once formed half of a racial link similar to the Knowledge pool (this one supposedly consisted of war and combat skills). Rilkans blame the skarns for sundering this irreplaceable link after the skarns grew dissatisfi ed with the rilkans’ progress toward “perfection.” With races other than their fellow mishtai descendants, rilkans get along famously.

RILKAN CHARACTERS

Rilkans want to gamble at a tavern, head a guild, and gallop off to adventure for the sake of true love. Bard, rogue, and ranger are excellent class choices because their high skill points complement rilkan racial bonuses. Rilkans also take enthusiastically to the incarnate and soulborn meldshaping classes.

Tarrenta Willet, a rilkan bard

Adventuring Rilkans: More than perhaps any other culture, rilkans believe in the fundamental drama of life. Every day should have meaning, every night should bring passion. The path of the adventurer is replete with drama and thus highly respected in rilkan society. Unlike in other societies where a mother might scold her child for dreaming of swordplay, a rilkan family might actively seek out a noted duelist to tutor the young lad. In an adventuring party, rilkans take the roles of leaders and spokespeople. Thanks to the racial aid ability, rilkans form particularly effective adventuring parties if there are two or more of their race present. Wise rilkans take care to observe fragile psyches in their company; more than one successful band of adventurers has broken up over jealousies, unrequited feelings, or broken hearts, all of which sometimes follow a dashing rilkan. In addition to spell and sword, rilkans believe in the adventure of trade. Tense negotiations for land rights in a bulette-infested valley, the intrigue of contracts and forgeries, selling arms to the svirfneblin and delivering them past the drow’s blockade: all these (and the pile of gold glistering at the end of every good deal) are the reasons rilkans approach business with the same passion, joy, and intensity that some reserve for religion or war.

Character Development: Rilkans use feats and skills to take advantage of their Dexterity and racial skill bonuses. With their high Dexterity, they should be able to function without heavy armor. Charisma boosts every fourth level can help a rilkan act as a natural “mouth” or “face” for the party. The Leadership feat also allows a rilkan to take advantage of high Charisma. With a cohort and recruits, it also gives her a head start on founding the guild or business that is the true mark of a successful rilkan.

Character Names: Rilkan names are varied. Rilkan parents living in elf, dwarf, or human communities often adopt the naming conventions of their hosts. Equally often, because rilkans have a strong individualistic streak, rilkan parents attempt to fi nd names that are not duplicated elsewhere.

Male Names: Aldwyn, Dallyster, Gorashedd, Hashlok, Mentriphiste, Merrik, Orl, Toskeyp, Tristan, Vao-rinh, Westlay.

Female Names: Alicine, Amaranthe, Bansebre, Cestrane, Karazele, Malisharme, Tarrenta, Tavneris, Tika, Tula, Ysati, Zaka.

Family Names: Arbuthian, Cerventa, Corundar, Gloranver, Harkedde, Klane, Lycriskan, Orbrandir, Shimboris, Themisint, Willet, Wotte.

ROLEPLAYING A RILKAN

When roleplaying rilkans, remember that they wish to experience all that life has to offer. If someone offers a drink and there is no reason to suspect it is poison, drink; if a stranger is traveling the road at night, invite him to sit at the campfi re and share his story. Rilkans pride themselves on their style and individuality. Whatever they are doing, they make sure to look good doing it. As always, remember that culture is a choice, not an automatic function of race; there are rilkans who choose to be as dour as dwarves, and dwarves who adopt the “live life to its fullest” approach of the rilkans.

Personality: Rilkans are calculated risk takers. They adore emotion, and they fi nd something heroic in both transports of joy and descents of misery. The rilkans are consummate