# Race: Aarakocra > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Very rare | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Positive. Valued as scouts, guides and allies, and trusted further than most peoples of Q’Shar. | > | **Guide Section** | Very Rare Races | ## Overview Aarakocra are avian humanoids native to the soaring cliffs and inaccessible islands of [[Continent - Q'Shar|Q’Shar]], and they hold the skies above a continent that is hostile at ground level. Unlike most of the peoples of Q’Shar, they are regarded warmly across Gryth, and they often serve as scouts and guides for those who can persuade them to come down. ## Out of the Air Where the aarakocra came from is an open question, and the usual answer is that they did not come from here. The Plane of Air is the common guess, on the strength of their command of the wind and their complete disinterest in the ground, though nothing has ever been proven and the aarakocra offer no view of their own. However they arrived, they have held Q’Shar’s peaks and sea-cliffs for as long as anybody has kept records. ## The High Society The largest aarakocra population in the world roosts on the mountain peaks of [[Region - The Tohon Empire|Tohon]], in eyries built into rock faces that nothing without wings has ever reached. It is a genuine society rather than a scattering of nests: it has laws, histories, families with names going back a dozen generations, and an internal politics that outsiders have never been in a position to observe. The Tohon Empire counts the peaks as imperial territory. The aarakocra have never contested this, and have never acted as though it were true either. Smaller colonies hold cliffs and stacks the length of the continent, on islands too sheer to land a boat against and headlands that face the open ocean. A colony will sit above a country for centuries without once taking part in anything that happens there. ## What They Will and Will Not Do An aarakocra will carry a message, scout a valley, find a lost party, read a coastline and tell you honestly what they saw. This is where the goodwill comes from. Every expedition that has ever come back out of the Beastial Jungles with its numbers intact had an aarakocra above it, and the ones that went in without a guide are a well-known category. What an aarakocra will not do is fight somebody else’s war, hold a position on the ground, or stay anywhere longer than the work requires. They take payment in food, information and safe passage rather than coin, and they end an arrangement the moment it begins to feel permanent. Employers who have tried to retain one find that aarakocra loyalty is real, entirely personal, and attached to no institution whatsoever. ## Short Lives, Long Memories An aarakocra is fully grown at ten and well into old age at fifty, and sixty is a number spoken of with some reverence. A life on that scale puts a different weight on everything in it. They take partners young, raise their young in earnest, and treat a decade as a substantial portion of a life rather than a phase of it. A human who befriends an aarakocra can expect to outlive them, and both parties will have understood this from the first conversation. The shortness shows most in how they hold knowledge. Aarakocra keep their histories as spoken verse, recited communally and recited often, so that no part of what the eyrie knows rests with any single bird. An eyrie that loses a generation loses nothing. An eyrie that loses its singing loses everything. ## Aarakocra Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1. **Age.** Aarakocra reach full maturity at about 10, and the very oldest reach 60. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. **Size.** Your size is Medium. **Speed.** Your walking speed is 30 feet. **Flight.** Because of your wings, you have a flying speed equal to your walking speed. You cannot use this flying speed if you are wearing medium or heavy armour. **Talons.** You have talons that you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with them, the strike deals 1d6 + your Strength modifier slashing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. **Wind Caller.** Starting at 3rd level, you can cast the *gust of wind* spell with this trait, without requiring a material component. Once you cast the spell with this trait, you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest. You can also cast the spell using any spell slots you have of 2nd level or higher. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it when you cast it with this trait; choose when you select this race. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Auran. ## Connections - [[Continent - Q'Shar]] — Homeland; cliffs, islands, peaks and sea-cliffs - [[Region - The Tohon Empire]] — Largest aarakocra population roosts on the mountain peaks of Tohon --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Aarakocra.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*