Athasian halfling

Athasian halflings were a race of halflings endemic to the desert world of Athas.
==Description==
The average Athasian halfling adult stood tall and weighed around . Their muscles were comparable to that of adult humans, but their facial features were youthful. Due to their lifestyle, an Athasian halfling's body was usually in peak physical condition and their skin, which varied in tone, tended to be well bronzed. Beyond their heads, these halflings had largely hairless bodies.
It was common for Athasian halflings to decorate their bodies with piercings, tattoos, and war-paint. Both men and women tended to wear their hair as long, unkempt manes, though priests typically shaved their heads.
==Personality==
These halflings were widely known by other Athasian races as being brave, cunning, isolationist, xenophobic savages. However, this perception of them as a primitive and bloodthirsty people was a gross generalization. While they were cautious and mistrustful of other races, Athasian halflings were also quite a curious and open-minded people, likely to experiment with the customs of other races. Thus the more widely traveled a halfling was, the more likely they were to be tolerant of other cultures, showing great openness in trying new experiences and forms of food or entertainment.
Some tribes, known as "renegades", were more brutal and xenophobic in their behavior than others, caring only for themselves and their own tribe. Whilst other tribes were open to trading with outsiders that showed them respect, though retained a sense of wariness towards them.
These halflings did not have any alignment preference, though those that lived among the city-states or were "renegades" tended to lean towards chaotic neutral.
Athasian halflings were also a deeply spiritual people. They showed great reverence towards nature and primal spirits, their reverence rivaling other races on Athas. They showed great care towards the inner well-being of individual people, though some would argue otherwise, and pitied those who lived in the deserts for how they had to struggle for food and water, though this could at times come across as patronizing.
==Abilities==
Like many creatures on Athas, a good deal of Athasian halflings possessed the power of psionics.
==Combat==
When hunting Athasian halflings preferred a stealthy approach, stalking their prey and waiting for the right opportunity to ambush them. Other common tactics included the use of booby traps and poisoned weapons, particularly poisoned darts. Other weapons preferred by halflings included daggers, bows, halfspears, and like halflings on other worlds they had talent with slings. Any weaponry they had was typically made of bones or wood, as metal was scarce on Athas.
When hunting, halflings often made an effort to capture their prey alive so that it could be brought back to their village and presented to their tribal chiefs.
Due to their deep reverence for nature, it was not uncommon for Athasian halflings to take up the path of a druid or shaman and generally disdained from wizardry. Though there were exceptions to this disdain for arcane magic, such as village chiefs being Preserver wizards. Other common lifepaths included being dedicated psionicists, fighters, gladiators, rangers, thieves, and elemental clerics.
==Society==
The life of Athasian halflings was deeply seeped in long-held customs and rituals, having a rich and complex culture that was prevalent in art, songs, and other expressive forms of communication. They lived in small hunter-gatherer clans that numbered between 30 to 75 people.
A strong sense of racial unity was common among Athasian halflings and this sense of unity was considered spiritual. To this end many felt honor bound to aid any halfling in need, avoided crossing or lying to other halflings, clans actively avoided encroaching upon each other's territory and causing conflict, and individual halflings devoted many of their actions towards helping both their community and culture. Whenever a halfling was captured among a mixed-race group of travelers it would be assumed they were a prisoner and would be either invited to join the tribe or presented with gifts so they could decide their own course. The tribes of halflings known as "renegades" eschewed this believe, caring only for themselves and their own tribe. Consequently, traveling halfings were warned to avoid making contact with "renegades".
Athasian halflings generally didn't care for currency and viewed wages as a sort of slavery, yet many lived outside their forest homelands worked in a variety of professions. These included being mercenaries, hunters, trackers, guides, slavers, or slaves. Whenever they were enslaved it was typically as a gladiator curiosity, since it was well-known that Athasian halflings generally didn't last long in bondage as they often starved themselves to death. Those living in city-states sometimes they worked for nobility as hunting guides, craftsmen, or stonechippers in return for merely room and board.
===Diet===
Halflings were an omnivorous species, though they leaned towards a preference for meat over vegetation.
They considered all non-halfling creatures to be potential sources food, including intelligent and sentient species. They also considered it wasteful and a disrespect to nature to not eat whatever you killed. The most savage of the tribes wouldn't hesitate to eat their prisoners alive, while the more civilized tribes always killed and cooked their prey before consuming it and might even give it a chance to explain why it shouldn't be eaten.
===Homelands===
The halflings of Athas were largely settled within the few remaining forests and jungles of the desert world, such as the Forest Ridge, a wooden mountain range to the northwest of the city-states of the Tablelands. Occasionally halflings could be found outside these forests, living throughout the Tyr region. Either due to small bands of them having traveled down from the Forest Ridge to seek a gift for their chief in penance, individuals having left to fulfill a sense of wanderlust, or individuals cast out from their tribes.
===Languages===
Athasian halflings spoke their own language, known simply as "halfling", which was based upon the sounds made by various forest creatures. It consisted of a collection of chirps, hoots, howls, shrieks, and whistles. They also relied heavily upon their shared culture for communicating with one another. Many halflings also spoke the Athasian trade tongue, picking it up from traveling merchants and other envoys.
===Relationships===
The halflings of Athas were the least social of all halfling subraces in the multiverse and were widely feared by other races on their desert world. Those who lived outside their forest homes typically lived as raiders, mercenaries, hunters, trackers, guides, slavers, or slaves. Whenever they were enslaved it was typically as a gladiator curiosity, since it was well-known that Athasian halflings generally didn't last long in bondage. Those living in city-states sometimes they worked for nobility as hunting guides, craftsmen, or stonechippers in return for merely room and board.
They cautiously engaged in trading arrangements with nearby cultures, regardless of their race. However, they would not allow traders into their village, instead conducting any trade within a neutral location or within the other party's community.
Athasian halflings often tamed wild beasts within the Forest Ridge, such as kirres and panthers.
==History==
Halflings were notably the first sentient race on Athas. After the destruction of their early civilization, the halflings of Athas evolved into that world's dwarves, gnomes, humans, and other demihuman and humanoid races of Athas. They also possibly evolved into that world's elves, though others believed that Athasian elves were descended from high elves that had settled on Athas in eons past. Information on this ancient time would be passed down over the ages through a strong oral tradition recounts, but would deteriorate to the point they felt like mere fables and legends.
At some point a powerful, planeshifting fortress known as The Planar Sphere visited Athas and abducted a group of Athasian halflings that included the mage Taibela and the necromancer Necre. The halflings remained trapped in the Planar Sphere after it departed from Athas, occupying its furnace room until Gorion's Ward entered the fortress in the , after it manifested on Toril in the Amnian city of Athkatla's slums.
Some time else in the late 14 century DR, in The Year of Despair on the Malatran calendar, a group of heroes of the Living Jungle were sent from the Malatran Plateau through an elemental gate to the faraway world of Athas. Immediately upon arrival, the group was captured by elven slavers. A young Athasian thri-kreen named Ka'cha was among creatures captured by the elves, and he lamented being separated from his clutch. Subsequently, the heroes escaped when the elven caravan was attacked by a hungry sink worm. They seized the opportunity and freed Ka'cha, fleeing from their pursuers across the desert.
After two days of travel across the hot sands, guided by Ka'cha, the group stumbled across his tribe, the Windrunners, and their leader, Ki'rik'ku. Ka'cha convinced them that the strange adventurers were friends, not food. Happy with one of their number returned, chief Ki'rik'ku gifted the aliens four large erdlu eggs (an invaluable source of nourishment in the Athasian desert) and two apples of healing. The thri-kreen then explained to the Malatran heroes how to reach the Ringing Forest, which held a way for them to return to Toril.
When the Malatran adventurers eventually reached their destination, a massive oak tree in the Ringing Forest, they encountered a group of thirty Athasian halflings that they mistook for the similarly tattooed and halfling-like shu of Malatra. A pair of them emerged from the underbrush, introducing themselves to a shu in the party as Botila and Trenik. Mistaking the shu for an Athasian halfling, they thank them for bringing their tribe a feast (referring to the other Malatran adventurers) and asks the party to put down their arms. A fight quickly ensues, though the shu are reluctant to hurt the halflings. The adventurers get knocked out by the sleep poison laced on the halfling weaponry, but touch the oak in the process, allowing the earth elemental noble Roshink to transport them back to the Malatran Plateau, where they later awaken on the banks of the River of Laughing Idols.
==Appendix==
===Notes===
===Appearances===
===External Links===
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===References===
===Connections===
Category:Creatures found on Athas