Valhyr

The Valhyr, or Valher are a faction of pucks guided by their patrons, the Pucels. They are known for their expansionism, construction magic, and many ruined settlements found across Welt.
== As a species ==
Despite early beliefs of extra weltian origin, the Valhyr are biologically identical to pucks, although much taller than the average of the species.
What separates them from other pucks however is their lifestyle which separates dramatically from the trickster figure usually associated with pucks.
== Society and lifestyle ==
Valhyr society is based around small tribes living in the same realm (generally) working together to accomplish the goals of the Pucel. The Valhyr lifestyle is largely dictated by their patrons and that they are found all over the realms surrounding welt. Valhyr society is innately nomadic, they are transported to new realms by winged pucks, called Pucels, to a structured set of six individual large stones placed around a small circular stone foundation called landing stones. While this structure remains on the realm, the Valhyr cannot truly die. If killed, they seemingly reincarnate at the structure, while their corpse will remain for a day before undergoing corpselessness and their items will congeal into a tombstone like structure called a cenotaph, from which they can reclaim their items from at a later time. 
=== Religion ===
The Valhyr religion is one of theocratic-nomadism based on the commands of the Pucels. They are expected to establish settlements and infrastructure wherever they are transported until they are able to defeat the quarries the Pucels have designated. These quarries are universally large and dangerous, such as draconids, keresh, blobs, dryads, insect queens and undead lords. Although never witnessed by outsiders, it is believed that once all the quarries have been hunted and their trophies set upon the hooks of the stones, the Valhyr are taken by the Pucels to another realm to new landing stones to begin their mission once again.
==== Pucel altars ====
These altars are used exclusively to summon specific monsters or demons the Pucel want them to hunt.
=== Diplomacy ===
Since the Valhyr are often transported to realms where other races live, they have to contend with them.
==== Gegenists ====
Main article: Gegenism
The Valhyr are currently in a crusade against the gegenists, a people who worship a dead goblin king, the crusade began because the object of the religions worship is a quarry of the Pucels.
==== Mwarvs ====
Main article: Mwarv dwarves
The Valhyr have cordial relations with Mwarv dwarves, trading and sometimes assisting each other, although thievery and battles between tribes isn't uncommon. Their proximity and dependence on the fog dwelling dwarves is to the point that the Valhyr actually collect gold pieces, jewels, jewelry and amber just to trade with the Mwarv.
Mwarv are a faction of dwarves found in areas near root systems whose sap can be used to make mana. These root systems cause a great amount of heat, causing these areas to be blanketed by fog. They know how to tap root systems to recover sap, create underground settlements, and hunt giants. The giants they hunt are integral to their society, their marble bones are used in their masonry, their brain matter has magical potential that, when refined with sap, can create mana. Mwarv are considered masterful engineers, having created magical staves, protective wards, sap extractors, arbalests and fog condensing devices, all of which have been copied or stolen by the valhyr. Like the Valhyr, the Mwarv have a tribal culture with no overarching government, mostly because of the dangers of venturing in the foglands, some will trade with the valhyr, but will actively fight them if wronged or harmed. Among their settlements are excavation sites where giant bones are mined and their brains harvested, to be refined into mana. Lighthouses and guard towers help disperse the fogs, and some tribes build elaborate citadels and harbours where they dwell. Their mines produce hearts that power altars that build magical devices.
==== Varger ====
Main article: Varger
The Valhyr hunt the varger and their pet lycanthropes for their fur, and to capture mountain wolves to tame as their own. As such they are ennemies with the Valhyr who will sometimes send their lycanthropes to hunt them, and in turn the Valhyr will raid their caves.
In the valhyr realm there is a society of wolf anthropods called the Varger and their pet werewolves called Varglings that lives in the mountains. The varger live in caves high in the snow covered mountains, where they raise wolves, practice fire magic and worship a wolf god, supposedly the source of their condition. 
==== Other races ====
Valhyr rarely respect borders and tend to take whatever resources they can find (though some try to use only renewable resources) which causes violent frictions with the other races, but their landing stones usually appear in sparsely populated or unpopulated territories.
== Economy ==
Despite their quasi-nomadic lifestyle, the Valhyr have limited knowledge of agriculture, however, in realms where they become sedentary, they becomes experts in the domain, as well as in the practices of metallurgy, construction and other subjects.
=== Agriculture ===
Valhyr have extensive agricultural customs, which fall under distinct categories of foraging, gardening, exploitation, hunting and culling.
==== Foraging ====
Due to their lifestyle, Valher are foragers, and supplement their diets with berries and mushrooms found in the wilderness.
==== Gardening ====
While crude, valher gardens are both decorative and a source of food where they grow root and leaf vegetables. They are fond of cereal cultivation, which they typically steal from nearby settlements (especially from gegenist goblins).
==== Hunting ====
Valher enjoy hunting, deer and boar hunting being one of their favored pastimes, more experienced hunters will seek out more dangerous animates such as wolves, drakes, bizards and mega arthopoda. 
===== Culling =====
The Valher like to exploit areas where animates appear from proliferates, such as pileups and arduinling portals in order to slaughter them and take back the resources they provide, such as meat and skins.
===== Coralling =====
Valhyr use various techniques to engineer the terrain to their advantage when hunting such as placing fire pits close together in a field to hinder the movements of giant creatures.
=== Exploitation ===
Valher are known for their extensive use of various animals and creatures for resource processing.
They capture hobgoblins and summon dryads to level down entire forests for lumber using their strength. Some Valher are averse to woodcutting, and instead hunt arduinlings and cull their proliferates to use their remains as lumber, stone and resin. 
==== Proliferates ====
Also called proliferation altars, proliferates are ritual magic devices that are used by several other races in Welt. Their name differs from area to area but all have the common trait of allowing the limitless production of one or several lifeforms in a manner unexplainable by physics or biology, and are thus considered ritual magic. They also seem to be geographically linked, with some machines failing to work altogether when in a different area of welt than from where they originate.
=== Tar pits ===
One of the more curious aspects of the Valher pucks is their method of safekeeping their valuables. They drop their treasure in tar pits where sentient growths of the substance periodically emerge, spraying their toxic gelatin at nearby intruders. the items dropped are preserved and cannot be retrieved for as long as the pit is filled with tar, meaning the Valher have an incredibly stable reserve of value in tar pits, kept safe by its gelatinous dwellers, who periodically add to the pits reserves as local pillagers will try their luck at emptying the pit. Those that do manage to defeat the pit's protectors and empty its contents (usually by funneling the tar into a nearby stream, poisoning local water supplies in the process) will find a mound of treasure nearing that of an average gryphon.
=== Bog Iron smelting ===
Areas where bog iron concentrates, are often protected by the undead who often build elaborate crypts atop them and protect them with peat bogies. They are often lead by a ghost. These crypts are periodically mined by the Valhyr who seek the iron found inside.
=== Occupations ===
Valhyr have occupations that differ from those usually found among the other races. Some of these have been integrated into the other races from cultural contact with the Valhyr.
==== Ranchers ====
Use harpoons to bring back tameable animals to their ranches, where they feed the animals in pens until they become docile. They then place the animals on a special altar called giraffe farms.
===== Giraffe farms =====
The Valhyr create strange apparatus to mass breed boars, pigs and wolves. The structure superficially resembles a house atop a very tall perch joined to the ground using portal magic. In the house are a breeding pair of pigs arranged in a manner that when a piglet is born, it drops from the house into the ground. Through strange ritual magic not only does the piglet survive the fall to the ground, this causes the breeding pair to continuously breed new piglets, causing mass production of the animals in a short time. They use this to raise enough boars to feed them several times over and to create veritable armies of wolves. Some Valhyr create these boar breeders above an excavated pit with a captured troll. The troll will not attack the boar until it's mature, automating the process of butchering the boar.
==== Fellers ====
Fellers are in charge of gathering wood, but not always chopping down trees. Fellers are trained to hunt for arduinlings and mobile flora, who are a source of high quality wood. The bravest seek out root and vine monsters in swamps, in order to collect the valuable bark from the plant.
Fellers also use local fauna to cut down lumber, by baiting hobgoblins, bizards and dryads into charging through trees, breaking them down.
==== Arduinling ranchers ====
These ranchers wall in or bury arduinling nests to trap them inside and butcher them for supplies or use fire to kill the nocts. These devices are called boon anthills.
===== Boon anthill =====
The Valhyr bury arduinling nests under dirt and stone, but this doesn't stop the arduinlings from emerging from them. They bury the nest so that the arduinlings that emerge don't risk damaging the proliferate, and the Valhyr keep wolves nearby to kill them, and the valhyr have access to a steady stream of wood and stone.
==== Geyser farmers ====
The Valhyr secure fire geysers by submerging them underwater and collecting the heat hearts and coal that periodically erupt from them. Fire geyser are a type of proliferate that summons brimlings. Submerging the geyser kills the magmatic creatures when they surface, leaving behind the organic coal and heat hearts they produce in their bodies.
Fire geysers are proliferates that appear in swamps where coal, sulfur and other materials aggregate. Eventually the composition explodes and when set alight can create fire geysers from which fire elementals called Brimlings emerge (in a manner similar to the arduinnling lifecycle). The Valhyr harvest Brimlings by waterlogging the geyser so that their flames are extinguished, leaving behind only heat hearts and the coal that feeds them. Brimling hearts are used extensively as a heat multiplier to create lighting devices such as lanterns, fireworks, bonfires and fire staves, and industrial metalworking machines such as blast furnaces, charcoal kilns, smelters and other house wares such as portals, ovens and wards.
==== Metallurgists ====
Metallurgists are specialized in collecting ores from various sources. They strike the ground using enormous hammers and wishbones that ring loudly when there are ore deposits underground. They produce copper by finding nodes in forests and excavating the earth all around the deposit until it crumbles on itself (or is destroyed by baiting local hobgoblins) into transportable ore pieces. They collect tin from nodes that wash up on shorelines and riverbanks. They smelt iron found in bogs and from weapons, usually collected by arduinlings. They find silver in mountains using wishbones, and digging them out like copper. They hunt gegenist goblins for the metal scrap they produce in their bodies. They mine petrified fossils for bone and marrow, which they refine into mana. Those that search for bog iron in swamps using sounding hammers are called Bogwhackers.
==== Night wolfherd ====
The Valhyr are known to tame a specific breed of wolves they call Night wolves. Night wolves appear high in snowy mountains, can only be tamed at night and disappear if unseen during the day. The Valhyr bypassed this curse by breeding the night wolf with a normal wolf, the resulting hybrid didn't disappear if unseen during the day, but is identical to wild night wolves. The Valhyr now commonly use them as war dogs. 
==== Rain feathers ====
Valhyr bird hunters that hunt a species of seagull whose arrows are good for fletching. The birds are easy to hunt because they stay on the ground while in the rain. Traditionally the hunters wear wolf pelts and use inexpensive sharpened wooden rods to hunt these birds.
==== Egg farmers ====
Farm chickens by placing eggs near fires to incubate. The Valhyr use troll caves to raise massive amounts of chickens. These are known as troll chickens and are well known for their naturally smoky taste.
==== Chitin collectors ====
Valher that track Hafgufa in order to collect chitin from the barnacles that grow on its shell. The animals tend to come back to have these pests removed by the collectors.
==== Occult engineers ====
There are several kinds of big game hunters among the valhyr. Occult engineers use enchanted ballistas and bear traps, infamous for clearing out entire villages and slaughtering herds of animals by placing these machines in unreachable areas such as within boulders, from where they rain down bolts upon their targets. The machines work by using ballista boxes. A ballista box is an enchanted box. When it contains a head and is affixed to an artillery weapon, the weapon will fire at any member of the species contained in the box. Without the trophy inside the ballista box, the ballista will fire at anything that moves, including the engineer. The valhyr have found ways to gather the necessary ingredients to build these machines by having them target goblins carrying black metal.
Despite this, the machine is relatively slow to fire, making it unfit against fast targets, (unless immobilized with traps), it shines against large slow moving targets however, and so are well suited to hunt bleugris hobgoblins, trolls, root masses, ghost sheets, golems, bizards and blimpticks, they also function relatively well against targets that must stop to fire ranged weapons, such as drakes, skeletons, growths and goblins.
== Magic ==
The Valhyr are ritual magic practitioners, which they use to fuel their ability to expand their territory. Valhyr ritual magic consists of using altars, which in turn allows the practitioner to use magic within the circle. When in range of the altar, using certain items causes certain effects (holding a wooden hammer grants the user the ability to move wood, stone and metal for construction, holding a till and stones gives the ability to flatten or raise the ground, for example).
=== Valhyr magicians ===
Magicians practice summoning skeletons and magical shielding by farming excavated anduinling nests. Settlements near dryad forests know not to accept large shipments of wood, stone and other anduinling products from young wizards so as not to provoke the forests ire. There is also the infamous Valhyr ballista ritual where the valhyr place trophies of specific targets in order for it to target the corresponding species. This prevents misfires by the ballista, because, by default the enchanted ballista will fire at anything moving in front of it.
=== Altars ===
Altars are the foundation of every Valhyr settlement, and their territory is typically dotted with them. They use altars and perform rituals to ward off local fauna, the most common ritual being the buried fire ceremony. Altars also allow the valhyr to use certain construction magics within their area of effect. Valhyr ritual magic requires an altar protected by a chapel, the altar can be upgraded by placing relics near it. Placing the altar creates an area of consecrated ground where construction pieces can be assembled, such as floors, walls, ceilings and doors, using a ceremonial tool. In order to build or repair items at an altar, it must be protected by a covering known as the chapel. Once the chapel is completed, items can be made and tools repaired at the altar. 
=== Consecration ===
Tools and clothes made at an altar cannot be destroyed, only broken until repaired at an altar. While valhyr ritual items are exceptionally long lived and can be repaired in any chapel with the appropriate altar, their magical constructions have to be consistently consecrated with a ritual tool to prevent rain and environmental damage from occurring daily. This explains why they are inherently nomadic.
==== Workbench ====
Altar that allows the enchanter to create various items from organic materials sacrificed on the altar, or to shape them into construction pieces.
==== Forge bench ====
Altar that allows the enchanter to create various items from metals, also sacrificed on the altar, or to shape them into construction pieces.
==== Artificiers bench ====
Altar that allows the enchanter to build machines powered by dragon tears or magic.
==== Artisan's bench ====
Altar that allows the enchanter to create mechanical and magical items.
==== Stonecutter's altar ====
Altar that allows the enchanter to shape stone into construction pieces using a hammer.
==== Mana refinery ====
Uses petrified bone marrow matter and tree sap to create and refine mana.
==== Wisp fountain ====
A trap that uses a soul encased in stone to attract wisps, which are then collected to make portable and fixed light sources.
=== Cenotaphs ===
If killed, Valhyr seemingly reincarnate at the landing stones or at a bed, while their corpse will remain for a day before undergoing corpselessness and their items will congeal into a tombstone like structure called a cenotaph, that they can reclaim their items from at a later time. In fact, much of their culture revolves around reclaiming tombstones in an event called "corpse recovery", where a band of Valhyr will protect the newly reincarnated from danger while on its voyage to recover a cenotaph. Despite the almost holy nature of this quest, it isn't uncommon for Valhyr to recover the items of their fallen or even steal from the cenotaphs of others on occasion.
=== Ritual bed ===
The Valhyr, similarly to some magics found in the Domain, have the ability to reincarnate in the last bed they have consecrated rather than at the landing stones, should the bed be defiled or broken, they will reincarnate at the stones.
=== Blessings ===
The Valhyr have many beliefs that are linked to phenomena in the world around them. They often attribute these blessings and curses to their deities, symbolized by the attire they wear which grants some of these effects, or protects them from certain effects, or items of religious significance they place in their settlements.
Blessing of the wolf: Makes the wearer of the Varger cult robes run faster.
Blessing of the root: Makes their arrows and bolts strike harder.
Blessing of the fireside: Some armors make the wearer immune to fire, and can stand in firepits without burning (but wearers are still subject to the smoke).
Blessing of the pelt: Capes that make the wearer immune to the cold.
Blessing of rest: Makes the blessed recuperate faster for a time.
Blessing of the cenotaph: Reclaiming a cenotaph will grant the blessing of the stones, which grants strength and endurance to bring back the items to safety.
Blessing of the hearth: Valhyr Wards emit a strong aura, the blessing of the hearth prevents other Valhyr from building things. It also locks all doors and chests within its influence. Wards are believed to be a great source of racial pride amongst the Valhyr. They are useless against non sentient beings breaking their things however.
Blessing of resistance: Shows the blessed subtle signs if a weapon is effective or not against an enemy.
=== Portal magic ===
The Valhyr use magical portals for transport, but also for ingenious ritual magic spells. 
==== Spells ====
* For one to be transported within a large tree's trunk which is hollowed out with magic. Swamp trees are their favorite, they use them to ambush marsh creatures and the undead.
* They place portals facing doors so that they are transported on the other side. It sometimes works on very thick walls. Due to this, secret rooms use false walls or spaced walls to trap invaders within them.
* They use portals to enter great boulders which they remodel as homes, safe from the dangers of the world. The limits of the boulders are invisible and so they must be cautious not to accidentally exit them and reveal their home. They place small palissades serving as guard rails all around their homes and outside the boulder (which is a giveaway to the experienced observer). The intangibility of the wall to those who exit means that they can safely attack their enemies from the safety of their boulder homes. The boulder home cannot be entered unless with the portal, but the boulder can be destroyed.
=== Chair and bench magic ===
Valhyr chairs and benches are magical in themselves and are used for certain spells
==== Spells ====
* Sitting on a chair near a door causes one to sit up on the other side of the door.
* Use hardwood benches to access lost spaces outside of mountain ice caves, these ice realms are used to store lumber and wood products.
* The valhyr are very fond of hardwood benches for their mystical qualities of accessing voids surrounding lost space. They use this magic by building hardwood bench ladders to access the void that surrounds burial chambers and crypts. In troll caves they build these benches to stage invasions into troll markets.
=== Doors ===
They build dark wood doors that can push people into trees and boulders. The tree or boulder becomes hollow, and can be exited by simply walking out. The Valhyr sometimes build depots, hunting lodges and treasure rooms within.
=== Trees ===
The Valhyr have a custom of waiting for a tree to grow and envelop them inside of it. They can stay inside as long as they wish, but once they exit they cannot enter. Entities can sense but never spot the puck within the tree. They hide wards inside to protect their homes, chests of food for the winter times or treasure. They sometimes fill the trees with lanterns so they glow from the inside. They can make portals to return within their trees.
=== Magical tools ===
==== Architects hammer ====
A unique Valhyr tool that can manipulate construction materials when in range of the appropriate altar.
==== Slopers till ====
A magical device that uses stones to raise or lower the ground.
==== Crofters pitchfork ====
A device that plows the ground into cultivable soil and can plants seeds.
==== Bile oozer ====
A poisonous explosive made from slime creatures and land jellyfish.
==== Mana sap extractor ====
A mwarv device that extracts usable mana sap from root systems, which can be used to make mana from refining a giants brain matter.
==== Flesh hammer ====
A weapon originally designed by the mwarvs, made from giants flesh and silver. Is lethal against the undead and causes lethargy in the target.
==== Staves ====
Another device inspired by Mwarv magic, Valhyr use staves that emit quick bursts of frost or large fireballs. The Valhyr have their own unique staves, some create protective fields, others raise skeletons to fight for them.
==== Wishbone ====
A dowsing bone that indicates silver deposits found in mountains.
==== Wisp fountain ====
A device that attracts and captures wisps at night, that can then be bound and turned into portable fog dispersers or long lasting torches. 
==== Wisplight ====
A mwarv inspired technology that disperses the characteristic opaque fogs that surround sap trees.
==== Gegen metal ====
A gruesome metal made from refining gegenist goblins
== Culture ==
Soul of coal
Tradition of turning a loved pet's flesh into coal, and using the coal to smelt metal which will become a weapon. This is believed to imbue the weapon with the pet's soul.
==== Mine pit fights ====
An interesting cultural aspect of the valhyr is the number of gladiatorial rings they construct in pits of depleted copper quarries.
==== Attire ====
Valhyr consists of cloth or metal protections of varying quality. The Valhyr use organic materials such as leather, wolfskin, and chitin, metals such as bronze, iron and silver, and more esoteric materials such as the roots and sap of certain plants. Some of these have magical properties, such as circlets that shine brightly, capes that negate fall damage, a belt that increases strength. They also have religious attire that require a full set of clothes to be worn to grant blessings, such as accelerated mana generation, increased accuracy and bow strength, faster speed, and increasing fishing skill.
==== Trophies ====
The valher have a headhunting culture and are fond of trophies, which they display in their homes and temples, These trophies can even speak when displayed at their ritual stones. Some trophies have uses in manufacturing, several are collected to produce high quality fishing baits. Others are used in summoning rituals in order to grant supernatural powers such as greater stamina, resistance to the elements, and wind control. Trophies are used to decorate helmets, hoods, capes, shields and warhammers. Other items of cultural significance used by the Valhyr are tankards and the animal adornments they decorate their houses with. For their rituals, they sacrifice deer heads, seeds, eggs, totems and holy seals on ritual stones in order to summon strange entities that they then defeat in combat, possibly to honor their angels. The entities are monsters whose spoils are used by the Valher to create wondrous tools and machines.
==== Dishes ====
Cuisine is an important aspect of Valher culture, and are avid cooks. While they could simply farm, ranch and brew their needs in ingredients, the Valher continue hunting and gathering certain ingredients they cannot produce. The valher hunt using bows and arrows usually, but also spears and, when they wish to bring back quarries alive, harpoons. Gathering plants is second nature to valher, as they can bless berry bushes to grow fruit every few days, but cannot plant them. It is a sin to destroy one of these bushes, even by accident for this fact. They feed their animals vegetables and wild flowers. The weirder ingredients the Valhyr use in cooking include leech and tick stomachs and anthropod intestines, making them technically cannibals.
== Habitat ==
The Valhyr are polybiomic, and build settlements all across their territory, gathering in small tribes never exceeding 10 members. They usually invade areas of economic or religious significance and build small fortifications centered around an altar (without which they cannot build anything).
=== Architecture ===
Aided by their magic, Valhyr build many structures and settlements, but rarely inhabit them for long. Their settlements are often based around the exploitation of a resource, such as farmland, ranches, wildlife, ores and other exotic goods, or areas of religious importance, such as temples, stone circles, berry bushes, tar pits burial chambers and henges.
==== Landing Stones ====
Ritual sites created by Pucels that summon Valhyr to the realm. Ancient Stone Circles are the preliminary installation to the construction of landing stones. Pucels find enormous stones and set them in a circle, if the area is suitable, they will inscribe runes and install hooks for trophies on the stones. Then they will fetch Valhyr from a faraway plane and bring them to the stones for them to carry out their will. The quest given by the Pucels is most often to find and kill certain creatures, and in exchange grant certain abilities
==== Burial Chambers ====
Also called mushroom mines, where the valhyr store heat hearts and bodies for fertilizer. This causes the chambers to be naturally protected by skeletons, against whom the Valhyr pit their young as a rite of passage.
==== Abandoned settlements ====
It is in the nature of the Valhyr to abandon but also to revisit previously inhabited realms, where their former installations are often in disrepair or overtaken by other creatures. They sometimes rebuild these structures for their own needs using altars. Arduinlings have found ways to keep the Valhyr away from their ruins, by making "pile ups'", body pile proliferates in their abandoned forts and villages so that the undead will keep them away.
== History ==
=== The lost king ===
The valhyr rampage across an entire realm looking for the gegenist deity. They slaughtered countless goblins, cut down innumerable forests, smelted enough metal to armor the plains, built a fleet to shadow the sea, constructed cruel war machines to target the goblin leaders and shamans, but still they wouldn't reveal the location of their ancestor king.
They emptied the tar pits, causing an outbreak of the mosquito populations they regulate, they slaughtered the bizards, to starve the goblins, they stole their crops they used to feed and clothe themselves, killed any unwise to cross their paths, they even went as far as to break a taboo and destroyed cloudberry bushes, they enchanted ballistas outside their villages to target them at all times of the day, their ships and gates spelling doom as the relentless hordes inevitably slaughtered them.
Category:Pucks
Category:Valhyr
Category:Unfinished articles
Category:Other Races