Bedore

The **Bedore** are a tribe of technologists in Ozuma. Making up ten percent of the Ozuman population, they have a unique language and, unlike the other races in Ozuma, use mahkina. Ozuma's main religion, Yevon, views the Bedore as heretics and they are widely ostracized. Many Bedore, likewise, oppose the pilgrimage tradition the Yevon temples uphold as core dogma.

The Bedore have blond hair and green eyes with spiral-shaped pupils. They dress in distinctive colorful bodysuits and commonly wear goggles and masks. Despite being a marginalized group, the Bedore have a team in the bandersnatch league and excel at the sport.

## Story

A mechanic called Bedoh created a race called **Al Bhedole**, humans who could not use magic but excelled at wielding mahkina, and used them to combat a Kanarzandian mage. The Al Bhedole's weapons were so powerful they were kept under surveillance at all times. Their power was the catalyst for the Mahkina War. After the Yevon religion was established, the Bedohls took blame for Penance's emergence and executed in numbers, cast out of society. The surviving Al Bhedole became known as the Bedore, a corrupted diminution of their creator's name.

Around 1000 years ago, the Bedore society lived on Bikumi Island, whose most explored region is known as the Sanubia Desert. Penance destroyed their city, and the citizens scattered around Ozuma, often detested by the other races of the world. A millennium later, under Cid's leadership, the Bedore regrouped on Bikumi Island and built a new city called Home.

To further relations with the Bedore, the Yevonite Braska often traveled to Home. During one visit, he fell in love with Cid's sister, Valbana, and the two eventually married. Due to choosing a 'heathen' Bedore for a wife, the Yevon clergy cast Braska out while Cid disowned Valbana for marrying a Yevonite. The tension on both sides lessened after Tasha was born, and when she was four, Valbana boarded a ship for Bikumi to repair her relationship with Cid. She died when Penance attacked her ship, starting Braska down the path of becoming a summoner.

## Culture

Out of all the humanoid races in Ozuma, the Bedore are the most expressive in their emotions and body language; many of their more notable members also exhibit personalities that may classify as eccentric or juvenile. The Bedore take an interest in Ozuma's technological past, organizing salvage operations and excavations for ancient technology.

The Bedore are the only Ozumian race to openly reject Yevon's teachings, especially regarding the mahkina ban. The rest of the population often ostracizes them, labels them heathens, and subjects them to attacks. Some Bedore have still found global acceptance, most notably Djin, who operates a chain of Djin's Travel Agency throughout Ozuma. Some are allowed to participate in the Yevon-sponsored bandersnatch tournaments, with the Bedore being represented in the league by the Bedore Psyches.

The Bedore are forbidden to enter the temples of Yevon.

Bedore children wear full bodysuits, and many Bedore wear glasses or goggles to hide their eyes.

## Biology

The Bedore have green eyes with spiral-shaped pupils. Regardless of skin color, all Bedore have blond hair (assuming they have hair). They are adept at swimming and holding their breath underwater, which serves them well during underwater excavations.

## Racial Traits

Player characters who choose the Bedore race get access to the following racial traits.

***Ability Score Increase***: Their ability scores each increase by 1.

***Age***: Bedore reach adulthood in their late teens and live less than a century.

***Alignment***: Bedore tend toward no particular alignment. The best and the worst are found among them.

***Size***: Bedore vary widely in height, from barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet tall, but their builds are typically lean and muscular from their work with mahkina. Regardless of their position in that range, their size is Medium.

***Speed***: The base walking speed of Bedore is 30 feet. However, they do not suffer the typical downsides of difficult terrain when walking over sandy regions, such as those in the Bikumi Desert.

***Languages***: Bedore can speak, read, and write Ozumian and the Bedore language as described below. Bedore typically also learn the languages of other peoples they deal with, including obscure dialects such as Waddo or Ronshasa. They are fond of sprinkling their speech with words borrowed from other tongues, such as using a Ozumian term when speaking in Bedore or vice versa.

***Skills***: From their dexterous work with mahkina, almost all Bedore are proficient in Sleight Of Hand. They are also proficient with tinker's tools. They have advantage on Investigation checks related to electricity, such as the movement of mahkina or other complex circuitry, as well as on Nature and Survival checks when traversing the Bikumi Desert.

***Feats***: If a Bedore succeeds in a Sleight Of Hand check against a mahkina, whether hostile or not, they can choose to simply disable the mahkina entirely, or instead to randomly rewire the mahkina. Doing the latter causes the mahkina to malfunction in a variety of ways. The outcome is determined from the Malfunction Mix table below.

## Language

The Bedore have their own language. Working like a substitution cipher (a language system replacing certain letters with others), it shares the same syntax and grammar as English.

Some words have been adopted from the main Ozumian language, such as fiend, magic, aeon, airship, and Penance. The name of the people and their language is Bedore in their own language as well as in the main Ozumian language.

Any Bedore above the age of 18 automatically recognizes a word written in the cipher and can successfully translate it to Ozumian, or any other languages they have learned, without needing to rely on a codex for the cipher. If a party member chooses the Bedore for their player character race, they will work with the DM to understand the cipher.

Notably, Bedore people typically refrain from teaching the cipher to non-Bedore, even close friends; however, there are some exceptions given the prevalence of half-Bedore marriages and half-Bedore children.

Any party members whose player character is not Bedore will not understand the cipher. Party members that are not fluent can learn the Bedore language by picking up Bedore Primers throughout the Ozumian continent. Each Primer found in the field translates a single letter of the alphabet. Translations discovered by the party appear in the cipher table above.

## Malfunction Mix

When a Bedore person uses their Sleight Of Hand against a mahkina, they can randomly rewire the mahkina rather than disabling it. The resulting malfunction is determined from the table below after rolling a d100 for the effect. If a person is an Artificer, should they choose to use their Critical Break ability against a hostile mahkina, they can immediately enact any effect from the table without rolling the d100.

## Behind the scenes

Bedore people wear distinctive styles of clothing. Because the Bedore function in a machine-oriented society, they stand out from the other Ozumians by wearing goggles and masks to make them look more eccentric and mysterious. The Bedore language does not truly have a proper linguistic system, but is instead more akin to a simplistic substitution cipher.

Tasha is half-human and half-Bedore. Her mixed-ethnicity is seen through her heterochromia as she has one blue eye and one green, albeit without the signature spiral.

The appearance of Bedore society is influenced by the Middle East; the name is similar to the Bedouin people, from a desert environment.