# Race: Faun > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Very rare | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Positive. Received as a good omen across Ganath and Edaria, and their willingness to guide travellers through country nobody else can read has earned them a great deal of quiet goodwill. | > | **Guide Section** | Very Rare Races | ## Overview Fauns are isolated fey who wander the wild fields and open plains of the world, sleeping in gentle woodland and singing to travellers who are not yet sure whether to be pleased about it. They are patient where a fairy is all flight and mischief, and they walk extraordinary distances for no stated reason. A faun will keep a herd for forty years on the same hillside and then leave one morning without telling anyone where they are going, and both halves of that are entirely in character. They stand about the height of a human, with pale fur across the legs and body in whatever colour their line runs to, cream, dun, silver, ash, or a soft red. Horns come in from the temples in early adulthood and vary as much as the fur. Their eyes are the part people remember. There is a spark in them that does not sit still, and which no amount of quiet shepherding ever settles. ## Not a Beast Race Some humans file fauns alongside the minotaurs and have done for centuries, on no better evidence than horns and hooves. It is wrong in every particular. The minotaur was made, in a temple, out of stock that was never fey; the faun is Feywild-born and has the fey inheritance entire, which is why charms slide off them and why no magic yet devised has put one to sleep. Fauns find the confusion more baffling than insulting. They have never corrected it with any energy, on the grounds that a people who do not build, claim or argue have little to gain from being correctly catalogued. The minotaurs, for their part, consider the comparison flattering and have said so, which the fauns found funny. ## Friends of the Road and the Field What fauns are actually known for is turning up when they are needed. A traveller on the wrong path finds one sitting on a wall. A farmer whose fields have gone sour finds one walking the boundary, saying very little and leaving the soil better than it was. They guide, they tend, and they adjust things in the countryside with a gentleness most people do not notice until a season later. Across [[Continent - Ganath|Ganath]] and [[Continent - Edaria|Edaria]] this has hardened into a settled belief: a faun seen is a good omen. A faun in the hedgerows before planting means a strong harvest. A faun on the road means the road is safe. Whether the sign causes the outcome or merely accompanies it is a question farmers decline to pursue, and no faun has ever offered a view. ## The Deeper Language The thing that genuinely marks fauns out is who they talk to. Dryads will speak with a faun and with almost nobody else, and a faun passing through old woodland will stop, apparently alone, and hold a conversation for an hour. What passes between them is the forest’s own language, older and slower than Sylvan, concerned with root and season and the long arguments trees have with one another about light. Fauns treat this as unremarkable and will not explain it to outsiders, partly from discretion and mostly because they have never found a way to put it into words that survives the translation. ## Playful, Until They Are Not A faun is capricious, fond of a joke, and frequently silly in a way that catches people off guard in something so old. They sing badly and often. They will walk three days out of their way to see something they have been told about and then refuse to discuss it. None of which should be mistaken for softness. A faun who decides that a place, a herd or a person under their eye is threatened becomes something else entirely and without any warning at all, and the people who have seen it tend to describe the change rather than the fight. Fauns do not build, claim territory or take sides, which has left them almost entirely outside the histories of Gryth despite having walked most of it. What they defend is smaller than a side and they defend it absolutely. ## Faun Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1. **Age.** Fauns reach adulthood at about 15 and live around 120 years, though a faun deep in the wilds may go a great deal longer without anyone noticing either way. **Creature Type.** You are a Fey. **Size.** Fauns stand between 5 and 6 feet tall. Your size is Medium. **Speed.** Your base walking speed is 35 feet. **Ram.** You can use your head and horns to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with them, the strike deals 1d6 + your Strength modifier bludgeoning damage, instead of the normal damage for an unarmed strike. **Bounding Gait.** Whenever you make a long jump or a high jump, you can roll a d8 and add the number rolled to the number of feet you cover, even when making a standing jump. **Fey Resilience.** You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened, and magic cannot put you to sleep. **Shepherd of the Wild.** You gain proficiency in the Animal Handling and Survival skills. Additionally, using gestures and sounds, you can communicate simple ideas with any beast. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Sylvan. ## Connections - [[Continent - Ganath]] — Fauns are received as a good omen here - [[Continent - Edaria]] — Fauns are received as a good omen here --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Faun.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*