# Race: Human > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Common | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Positive to neutral almost everywhere. Humans are the default, and are treated as such. | > | **Subraces** | [[#Lyornish Humans\|Lyornish Humans]], [[#Dracanic Humans\|Dracanic Humans]], [[#Venomborn Humans\|Venomborn Humans]], [[#Yistoran Humans\|Yistoran Humans]], [[#Gizanthi Humans\|Gizanthi Humans]], [[#Gilded Humans\|Gilded Humans]] | > | **Guide Section** | Common Races | ## Overview Humans are the most widespread people in Gryth by an enormous margin, present in vast numbers on every continent, though they are thinnest on the ground in [[Continent - Ganath|Ganath]]. They originate in [[Continent - Edaria|Edaria]], whose sweeping grasslands, drowned marshes and volatile volcanic country would seem a poor cradle for any species, and yet it is exactly that variety which shaped them. ## Built to Adapt No other people adapts as fast. Humans breed quickly, settle anywhere, and remake themselves to suit a place within a handful of generations, while a dwarven hold or an elven house is still deciding whether the place is suitable. Where a dwarf hold endures a thousand years unchanged, three human cities will have risen and fallen on the same ground. It is the single advantage humanity has over the older peoples, and it has proven to be enough. They are also impossible to summarise. Humans show no one purpose and no one character, and they are spread across the world in an endless churn of shifting politics, shifting opinion and shifting war. A human raised in the Redlands and a human raised on the Edarian coast are not different peoples, merely different in habit, and both will tell you theirs is the proper way. ## Under the Eldari Humanity’s defining memory is of being owned. During the Ascension the Eldari dynasty of Sun Elves claimed Edaria as their dominion and ruled it with campaigns of subjugation and extermination, and humans bore the worst of them. That is what eventually produced the uprisings, and the uprisings produced the Sunrise Wars, the largest conflict in recorded history, fought across six countries at once. It reached its height at the Battle for the Throne, on the slopes of [[Landmark - Arag'Mar (Gold Peak)|Arag’Mar]] outside the [[City - Gold City|Gold City]], where the son of the human king killed the Eldari emperor and ended millennia of elven rule across the world. Humans did not win that war alone, but nobody else could have won it either. It was the sheer weight of human numbers that made rebellion against elven magic and elven craft arithmetically possible, and the dwarves, gnomes and halflings have never forgotten which people supplied it. Much of the goodwill humanity enjoys today was bought on that mountain. ## Hated by the Old Bloodlines The elves remember it differently. Among the ancient bloodlines, most of them now gathered behind the wards of [[Region - High Vel'Nora|High Vel’Nora]], humanity is regarded as a virus loose in a world that was made perfect and made for someone else. There are elves on that island who call openly for humanity to be driven to extinction, a position nobody has yet explained how to act upon given that there are more humans than there are of anything. ## At Odds with Nature Humans occupy an awkward place in the natural order. They are the people most reliably observed stripping a landscape bare and closing their ears to what it costs, and they are also capable of a communion with the natural world as deep as any wood elf or faun manages. Druidic human tribes keep the Syndani Forest alongside its elves; human logging interests out of [[Region - Durdany|Durdany]] and [[Region - Prosperia|Prosperia]] are the reason that forest is a quarter of its former size. Both are entirely characteristic. ## The Words of Ada Ada the Wanderer, the one True God who walks the material plane in flesh, takes human form more often than any other, most frequently that of an old man moving through human settlements with an air of strange wonder. He is credited with a single line that has become the bane of elves, the hope of humanity, and a matter of cautious curiosity to everyone else. *At the end of days, only humans can save this world.* What it means has never been established. The devout hold it as proof that the fate of their people and the fate of Gryth are the same thing. The elves of High Vel’Nora regard it as the worst sentence ever spoken. ## The Six Exceptions For the most part humans need no subraces at all, and their defining trait is that they never have. Six populations are the exception, and every one of them is an exception because of where it lives rather than what it is. Each is walled off from the rest of the world by geography, by magic, or by its own choosing, and each has been worked on long enough by whatever is in the ground, the air or the water beneath it to show. They remain human. Most of them no longer look it. ## Human Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Two different ability scores of your choice increase by 1. **Age.** Humans reach adulthood in their late teens and live less than a century. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. **Size.** Humans vary widely in height and build, from barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet tall. Your size is Medium. **Speed.** Your base walking speed is 30 feet. **Versatile.** You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. **Resourceful.** You gain inspiration whenever you finish a long rest. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and one extra language of your choice. ## Human Variants The six variants below use the Human traits above, except where a variant says otherwise. Each replaces the Human Ability Score Increase entirely. All six are rare, and four of them are barely believed in. A player choosing one is declaring a birthplace, not merely an appearance, and should expect to be recognised as foreign everywhere in Gryth. ### Lyornish Humans The humans of [[Region - Lyorn|Lyorn]] are set apart by inherited traits that no other population in Gryth carries. Their skin is burnished, glowing with a copper sheen, and their pale eyes run through a spectrum of colours seen nowhere else. Beneath that sits an old bloodline magic, tangled with time, which grants some Lyornites brief and unbidden sight of the future or the distant past. Nobody knows where it came from. It answers to no elven or celestial lineage anyone can trace, and appears to be tied to the earth of Lyorn itself, which is why the restorationist families fight for the country the way they do. They are not defending land. They are defending the only ground that makes them what they are. The magic shows on the body as a Lyornite matures. Orange markings like tattoos spread across the head and chest in intricate patterns and pulse with a faint inner light when the bloodline stirs. In stronger cases the manifestation turns animal: thick manes, lithe tails, a silhouette that reads as predatory and regal at once. In the ruins of Great Maikesh the marked are treated as living links to a lost history, and the scholars of the restorationist pockets have never managed to explain them. To the traders who occasionally breach the coastal mountains, Lyornites look human from a distance and alien up close. Within Lyorn, the markings are celebrated in art and song, a standing argument that the cities may be rubble but the country is not gone. **Rarity:** Very rare **Perception in Gryth.** Neutral, tipping to wary. Lyornites look human at a distance and alien up close, and are read as foreign everywhere outside Lyorn. #### Lyornish Human Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Charisma score increases by 1, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1. This replaces the Human Ability Score Increase. **Marked Bloodline.** The patterns on your skin pulse with light when your heritage stirs. You gain proficiency in the History or Arcana skill, your choice. Choose a manifestation from the table below or roll for one. **Lyornish Manifestations** | d6 | Manifestation | |---|---| | 1 | Fine orange markings across the brow and temples, brightest when you are startled | | 2 | Broad banded patterns down the chest and shoulders, warm to the touch | | 3 | A thick mane running from the crown down the back of the neck | | 4 | A long, lithe tail, expressive and difficult to keep still | | 5 | Eyes that change colour with your mood, never settling on one | | 6 | Markings that shift position slowly over the course of years | **Echoes in the Stone.** You know the *guidance* cantrip. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the *augury* spell once with this trait, requiring no material components, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells. **Glimpse of What Was and What Will Be.** Time slips for you without warning, and occasionally it slips usefully. When you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to force that creature to reroll the die. The new roll must be used. Once you use this trait, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest. ### Dracanic Humans [[Location - Dracan-Shrine|Dracan-Shrine]] sits in Nornika, in the frozen north of [[Continent - Norn|Norn]], and its people worship dragons to the exclusion of everything else. They revere all of them, but the white dragons are sacred above the rest, held to be the pure embodiment of the northern frost. That devotion has not stayed in the temple. It has gone into the population: their skin is soft and pale blue, and ice magic runs through them from birth. The culture is total. Grand priests wear armour cut from dragon skulls and the bones of wyrmlings. The shrines are built of permanent magical ice, vast and shimmering. At the centre of all of it stands Ixinath, taken by outsiders for a statue, and in fact the frozen and mummified corpse of a dragon older than any record. Ixinath is said to speak to the faithful in their sleep, and to direct the specialist warlocks who serve as the town’s priests. Dracanic humans bond with drakes from childhood and are the finest riders in the world, which is how they became the only beings other than dragons ever to reach the Dragon Island in the Far Beyond. Their lore holds that the prismatic god-dragon Drascaris fell there during the Divine War, that his corpse split into the demigods Velmora and Rastaat, light and darkness, and that the island remains a warm, magically shielded sanctuary thick with dragons in the middle of a blistering cold ocean. They hate the dragonborn of [[Region - Pymandi|Pymandi]] with an ancient and undiminished fury. Their creation myths do not make the dragonborn cousins. They make them a perversion of draconic glory, a disgrace to the dragons of old, to be shunned or destroyed. Dracan-Shrine is technically part of the loose nation of Nornika and is in practice left entirely alone. **Rarity:** Very rare **Perception in Gryth.** Neutral where they are known at all, which is barely anywhere. Within Nornika they are left entirely alone. Any dragonborn will treat them as an enemy on sight, and the feeling is returned. #### Dracanic Human Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Constitution score increases by 1, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1. This replaces the Human Ability Score Increase. **Frost-Blooded.** You have resistance to cold damage, and you are naturally acclimatised to extreme cold. **Drakebonded.** You gain proficiency in the Animal Handling skill. You have advantage on any ability check you make to calm, train, or ride a creature of the dragon type, including drakes. **Draconic Gift.** The ice in your blood surfaces in one of two ways. Choose one when you select this variant. **Ice Breath.** You can use your action to exhale a 15-foot cone of frost. Each creature in the area must make a Constitution saving throw against a DC equal to 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. A creature takes 2d6 cold damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one. The damage increases to 3d6 at 6th level, 4d6 at 11th level, and 5d6 at 16th level. Once you use this trait, you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest. **Wyrm Wings.** Starting at 5th level, you can use a bonus action to unfurl a pair of pale, membranous wings, gaining a flying speed of 30 feet for 1 minute. You cannot use this flying speed if you are wearing medium or heavy armour, and the wings fold away when the duration ends. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Draconic. This replaces the Human Languages entry. ### Venomborn Humans Maghtara is an island of vile air. The poisons that saturate its ground and atmosphere would kill an ordinary person within the hour, and the people who live there have spent generations being remade by it rather than dying of it. Venomborn skin is green and faintly slick, and the reptilian and amphibian cast to their features is slight enough to be missed in poor light and impossible to forget once seen. They take no harm from the venoms of their home, and they feed in a way the rest of Gryth finds difficult to be reasonable about. A Venomborn heals by eating the dead. Nobody sees them. Ivoryn raised a barrier around Maghtara, and the Venomborn have been behind it ever since. A Venomborn character outside the island needs an explanation, and it should be a good one. **Rarity:** Extremely rare **Perception in Gryth.** Very negative. Very few people in Gryth have met one. Those who have, watched them eat. > [!warning] A difficult character to play > The Venomborn are not merely disliked, they are outside every settled idea of what a person does. Discovery of how a Venomborn heals will end most welcomes immediately and start some fights. A player choosing this variant is taking on a roleplaying challenge built around concealment, and should agree that with the rest of the table before session one. #### Venomborn Human Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Constitution score increases by 1, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1. This replaces the Human Ability Score Increase. **Toxic Physiology.** You have resistance to poison damage and acid damage, and you have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the poisoned condition on yourself. **Maghtaran Lungs.** The air of your home would kill anyone else. You can hold your breath for up to 15 minutes, and you can breathe and see through airborne poison, gas, and fumes as if they were clean air. **Carrion Feast.** You can spend 1 minute consuming flesh from the corpse of a creature that died within the past 24 hours. You regain hit points equal to 1d8 plus your proficiency bonus, and you do not need to eat for the next 24 hours. Once you use this trait, you cannot do so again until you finish a short or long rest. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. ### Yistoran Humans The [[Location - The House of Yist|House of Yist]] is the ruling dynasty of a region in south-east [[Continent - Iros|Iros]], with its palace above the capital, High Kalaphan. Across Gryth it is known for its assassins, hired by kings and nobles, and Yistoran killers have played a part in some of the largest events in recorded history. Yistorans are pale to the point of translucence, with green and purple veins visible across the skin. Every one goes through a birth ritual whose details have never left the House. Their monk arts are built on deception and stealth, and they weave dark magic into their own bodies. A Yistoran’s body also draws magic out of the air around it, and their touch can read your thoughts. **Rarity:** Extremely rare **Perception in Gryth.** Negative. Everyone knows what the House sells, and a Yistoran abroad is assumed to be working. #### Yistoran Human Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Dexterity score increases by 1, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1. This replaces the Human Ability Score Increase. **House Training.** You gain proficiency in the Acrobatics or Stealth skill, your choice. **Drink the Weave.** Magic worked near you does not all reach its destination. When you succeed on a saving throw against a spell, you can use your reaction to draw off some of what was spent on you, gaining temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. **Veinsight.** As an action, you can touch one creature and read the surface of its mind. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or you learn its surface thoughts, meaning whatever is most on its mind at that moment, for 1 minute. While the effect lasts you must maintain contact, and you have advantage on Wisdom (Insight) and Charisma (Deception) checks made against that creature. The DC of the save equals 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifier; choose the ability when you select this variant. Once you use this trait, you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. ### Gizanthi Humans The Gizanthi are the Psions of [[Region - Gizanth|Gizanth]]’s interior marshes, and all of them are women. Their sisterhoods kill any man who enters their lands. The island’s men belong to separate death-magic societies, are ordinary humans, and are in a long-running standoff with the Psions. Beneath the island is a presence the Psions call the Unblinking. Every Gizanthi is sworn to it, and in return their minds reach further than a normal mind can. Their skin, eyes and hair carry a faint violet haze, strongest in the oldest of them. Their power is not magic. It is mental energy, used to subjugate and influence others, and it follows none of the rules of the magical schools. **Rarity:** Extremely rare **Perception in Gryth.** Neutral. They keep to their island, ask for nothing, and are largely a curiosity to the few who have heard of them at all. #### Gizanthi Human Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Charisma score increases by 1, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1. This replaces the Human Ability Score Increase. **Unblinking Sight.** Your eyes carry something of what sleeps below the island. You have advantage on saving throws against being blinded. **Mind of the Deep.** You have resistance to psychic damage. **Psionic Gift.** You know the *mind sliver* cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the *dissonant whispers* spell once with this trait, requiring no material components, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells. When you cast these spells with this trait, they require no components, and they cannot be detected or identified as magic. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Deep Speech. ### Gilded Humans They call themselves nothing in particular. Everyone else calls them the Gilded, and the name has stuck for long enough that they have stopped correcting it. They come from the [[Region - The Cradle|Cradle]]. How a population of humans there came to have burnished golden skin and pale yellow eyes is not recorded anywhere anyone has found, and the Gilded either do not know or have never been asked by somebody they felt like answering. What is plain is what they can do. Matter behaves differently around a Gilded. Objects change in their hands in ways that are hard to watch closely, and every Gilded anyone has met has shown the same affinity. **Rarity:** Extremely rare **Perception in Gryth.** Neutral. Not enough is known about them for anyone to have settled on a view, and the few who have met one generally come away impressed rather than troubled. #### Gilded Human Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Intelligence score increases by 1, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1. This replaces the Human Ability Score Increase. **Unchanging Form.** Whatever changes around you does not change you. You have advantage on saving throws against being petrified, and against any spell or effect that would alter your form against your will. **Transmuter’s Blood.** You know one cantrip of your choice from the transmutation school on the wizard spell list. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the *alter self* spell once with this trait, requiring no material components, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells. **Golden Hands.** You have proficiency with one set of artisan’s tools of your choice, and you add twice your proficiency bonus to any ability check you make with those tools. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. ## Connections - [[Continent - Edaria]] — Homeland of humanity - [[Continent - Ganath]] — Where humans are thinnest on the ground - [[Landmark - Arag'Mar (Gold Peak)]] — Site of the Battle for the Throne - [[City - Gold City]] — The Battle for the Throne was fought outside it - [[Region - High Vel'Nora]] — Elven bloodlines that regard humanity as a virus - [[Region - Durdany]] — Human logging interests in the Syndani Forest - [[Region - Prosperia]] — Human logging interests in the Syndani Forest - [[Region - Lyorn]] — Homeland of the Lyornish Humans - [[Location - Dracan-Shrine]] — Home of the Dracanic Humans - [[Continent - Norn]] — Continent of Dracan-Shrine and Nornika - [[Region - Pymandi]] — Dragonborn hated by the Dracanic Humans - [[Location - The House of Yist]] — Ruling dynasty of the Yistoran Humans - [[Continent - Iros]] — Continent of the House of Yist - [[Region - Gizanth]] — Island of the Gizanthi Humans - [[Region - The Cradle]] — Home of the Gilded Humans --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Human.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*