Choosing a Race

The Stoic black haired humans of Oldavia, the savage long eared Wild Elves of the Gallovale, the Rugged bronze-skinned muscular warriors of the Dune-Dwarves or the Impish and warm smile of a Stout-Heart Halfling... These are just a few of the many races you can choose from in Empire of Wyrms.

Humans are the most common people in the worlds of Faerodune, but they live and work alongside dwarves, elves, halflings, and countless other fantastic species. Your character belongs to one of these peoples. Not every intelligent race of the multiverse is appropriate for a player-controlled adventurer. Dwarves, elves, halflings, and humans are the most common races to produce the sort of adventurers who make up typical parties. Other races and subraces are less common as adventurers. Your choice of race affects many different aspects of your character. It establishes fundamental qualities that exist throughout your character’s adventuring career. When making this decision, keep in mind the kind of character you want to play. For example, a halfling could be a good choice for a sneaky rogue, a dwarf makes a tough warrior, and an elf can be a master of arcane magic. Your character race not only affects your ability scores and traits but also provides the cues for building your character’s story. Each race’s description in this chapter includes information to help you roleplay a character of that race, including personality, physical appearance, features of society, and racial alignment tendencies. These details are suggestions to help you think about your character; adventurers can deviate widely from the norm for their race. It’s worthwhile to consider why your character is different, as a helpful way to think about your character’s background and personality.

####

#### **Humans:**

In the reckonings of most worlds, humans are the youngest of the common races, late to arrive on the world scene and short-lived in comparison to dwarves, elves, and dragons. Perhaps it is because of their shorter lives that they strive to achieve as much as they can in the years they are given. Perhaps they feel they have something to prove to the elder races, and that’s why they build their mighty empires on the foundation of conquest and trade.

Humans are the most adaptable and ambitious people among the common races. They have widely varying tastes, morals, and customs in the many different lands where they have settled. When they settle, though, they stay: they build cities to last for the ages, and great kingdoms that can persist for long centuries. An individual human might have a relatively short life span, but a human nation or culture preserves traditions with origins far beyond the reach of any single human’s memory. They live fully in the present—making them well suited to the adventuring life—but also plan for the future, striving to leave a lasting legacy. Individually and as a group, humans are adaptable opportunists, and they stay alert to changing political and social dynamics.

Humans who seek adventure are the most daring and ambitious members of a daring and ambitious race. They seek to earn glory in the eyes of their fellows by amassing power, wealth, and fame. More than other people, humans champion causes rather than territories or groups.

**Dwarves:**

Kingdoms rich in ancient grandeur, halls carved into the roots of mountains, the echoing of picks and hammers in deep mines and blazing forges, a commitment to clan and tradition, and a burning hatred of goblins and orcs—these common threads unite dwarves across the multiverse, the heritage of every dwarf character.

Dwarves respect the traditions of their clans, tracing their ancestry back to the founding of their most ancient strongholds in the youth of the world, and do not abandon those traditions lightly. Part of those traditions is devotion to the gods of the dwarves, who uphold the dwarven ideals of industrious labor, skill in battle, and devotion to the forge.

Dwarves who take up the adventuring life might be motivated by a desire for treasure—for its own sake, for a specific purpose, or even out of an altruistic desire to help others. Other dwarves are driven by the command or inspiration of a deity, a direct calling or simply a desire to bring glory to one of the dwarf gods. Clan and ancestry are also important motivators. A dwarf might seek to restore a clan’s lost honor, avenge an ancient wrong his or her clan suffered, or earn a new place within the clan after having been exiled. Or a dwarf might search for the axe wielded by a mighty ancestor, lost on the field of battle centuries ago.

#### **Elves:**

Elves live in places of ethereal beauty, in the midst of ancient forests or in silvery spires glittering with faerie light, where soft music drifts through the air and gentle fragrances waft on the breeze. Elves love nature and magic, art and artistry, music and poetry, and the good things of the world.

They are more often amused than excited, and more likely to be curious than greedy. They tend to remain aloof and unfazed by petty happenstance. When pursuing a goal, however, whether adventuring on a mission or learning a new skill or art, elves can be focused and relentless. They are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. They reply to petty insults with disdain and to serious insults with vengeance.

Elves take up adventuring out of wanderlust. Since they are so long-lived, they can enjoy centuries of exploration and discovery. They dislike the pace of human society, which is both regimented from day to day but constantly changes over decades, so they find careers that let them travel freely and set their own pace. Elves also enjoy exercising their martial prowess or gaining greater magical power, and adventuring allows them to do so. Some might join with rebels fighting against oppression, and others might become champions of just causes.

#### **Halflings:**

Halflings are an affable and cheerful people. They cherish the bonds of family and friendship as well as the comforts of hearth and home, harboring few dreams of gold or glory. Even adventurers among them usually venture into the world for reasons of community, friendship, wanderlust, or curiosity. They love discovering new things, even simple things, such as an exotic food or an unfamiliar style of clothing.

Though some halflings live out their days in remote agricultural communities, others form nomadic bands that travel constantly, lured by the open road and the wide horizon to discover the wonders of new lands and peoples. But even these wanderers love peace, food, hearth, and home, though home might be a wagon jostling along an old dirt road.

Halflings usually set out on the adventurer’s path to defend their communities, support their friends, or explore a wide and wonder-filled world. For them, adventuring is less a career than an opportunity or sometimes a necessity.

#### **Half-Elf:**

Elves have long drawn the covetous gazes of other races. Their generous lifespans, magical affinity, and inherent grace each contribute to the admiration or bitter envy of their neighbors. Of all their traits, however, none so entrance their human associates as their beauty. Since the two races first came into contact with each other, humans have held up elves as models of physical perfection, seeing in these fair folk idealized versions of themselves. For their part, many elves find humans attractive despite their comparatively barbaric ways, and are drawn to the passion and impetuosity with which members of the younger race play out their brief lives.

Sometimes this mutual infatuation leads to romantic relationships. Though usually short-lived, even by human standards, such trysts may lead to the birth of half-elves, a race descended from two cultures yet inheritor of neither. Half-elves can breed with one another, but even these “pureblood” half-elves tend to be viewed as bastards by humans and elves alike. Caught between destiny and derision, half-elves often view themselves as the middle children of the world.

#### **Half-Orc:**

Some half-orcs are proud chiefs of orc tribes, whose human blood gives them an edge over their full-blooded orc rivals. Some are children of the frontiers, in places where orcs and human barbarians live in uneasy balance, fighting in some seasons and trading in others. Some are desperate outcasts doing whatever it takes to get by in a world that shuns them, making a living by strength and violence. And some half-orcs are adventurers, finding a home and a family like none they’ve ever known among people who don’t care about their ancestry, only about their valor and loyalty.

Orcs regard battle scars as tokens of pride and ornamental scars as things of beauty. Other scars, though, mark an orc or half-orc as a former slave or a disgraced exile. Any half-orc who has lived among or near orcs has scars, whether they are marks of humiliation or of pride, recounting their past exploits and injuries. Such a half-orc living among humans might display these scars proudly or hide them in shame.

Half-orcs most often live among orcs. Of the other races, humans are most likely to accept half-orcs, and half-orcs almost always live in human lands when not living among orc tribes. Whether proving themselves among rough barbarian tribes or scrabbling to survive in the slums of larger cities, half-orcs get by on their physical might, their endurance, and the sheer determination they inherit from their human ancestry.

#### **Rajaka:**

The Rajaka seem to think they differ greatly in their worlds, but to an outsider they are very similar. Bound to the world and each other in a very spiritual sense, individualism is rare. The proud and noble races of the Rajaka are full of selflessness and compassion. There is also a feral rage deep inside them, but that is a part of their link to their animal spirits.

#### **Gnome:**

A constant hum of busy activity pervades the warrens and neighborhoods where gnomes form their close-knit communities. Louder sounds punctuate the hum: a crunch of grinding gears here, a minor explosion there, a yelp of surprise or triumph, and especially bursts of laughter.

Though gnomes love jokes of all kinds, particularly puns and pranks, they’re just as dedicated to the more serious tasks they undertake. Many gnomes are skilled engineers, alchemists, tinkers, and inventors. They’re willing to make mistakes and laugh at themselves in the process of perfecting what they do, taking bold (sometimes foolhardy) risks and dreaming large.

Curious and impulsive, gnomes might take up adventuring as a way to see the world or for the love of exploring. As lovers of gems and other fine items, some gnomes take to adventuring as a quick, if dangerous, path to wealth. Regardless of what spurs them to adventure, gnomes who adopt this way of life eke as much enjoyment out of it as they do out of any other activity they undertake, sometimes to the great annoyance of their adventuring companions.

#### **Giant-Kin (Goliath)**:

Goliaths are mountain-dwelling nomads who see life as a grand competition. Their scattered bands have never been major players in the politics of the lowland world, but they have wandered the mountain ranges of the world since the first shaped peaks and valleys. Tall and massive, goliaths revere the primal power of nature and use it to enhance their own strength.

#### **Naguan**:

Born and bred as slaves of an extinct race, the Naguan rose up and destroyed their captors. Hellbent on never allowing them to be enthralled again, the iksar expanded quickly. Strength above all else. They grew a mighty empire, only to draw the attention of greedy dragons, who after a long war destroyed the once great empire of the Naguan. Reduced back to their starting grounds; small, meagre lands they are more empowered and bitter than ever. Thought to be an inherently evil race by outsiders, the Naguan are incredibly xenophobic and are generally hostile with anyone entering their lands.

#### **Half-Drow:**

Half-drow walk in two worlds ...
... but belong even less to either of them than do half-elves. Some say half-elves combine the best qualities of both their elven and human parents. The opposite holds true for the way that half-drow are viewed. The worst qualities of both races are imputed to them: the corruptibility of humans and the treachery of drow being high on the list of their suspected sins.

Places that will accept a known half-drow in their midst are more rare than half-drow themselves. A half-elf may find a home in some community, but a known half-drow is likely to by shunned by humans, and among drow, they’ll either be oppressed and enslaved or killed in infancy as detestable abominations suitable only as sacrifices to fell gods.

Known half-drow, unless they are able to relocate to a new location where they can leave knowledge of their hybrid nature behind, will be unable to find a welcome almost everywhere and so are forced to choose lives of solitary wandering or must join other misfits and outcasts in the adventuring life.

 Quick Jump Menu

1. **Introduction**
2. **Character Creation Overview**
3. ****Choosing a Race****
4. **Choosing a Class**
5. **Ability Scores**
6. **Building a Backstory**
7. **Customizing your Persona**
8. **Equipment**
9. **Magic and Spells**
10. **Stepping into Faerodorn**