# Race: Kenku > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Rare | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Neutral, and sharply divided by continent. In the south kenku are broadly well liked, with a residue of suspicion that never quite clears. In the northern continents, and on Bonedagger above all, they are widely treated as property rather than people. | > | **Subraces** | [[#The Raven Line\|The Raven Line]], [[#The Magpie Line\|The Magpie Line]] | > | **Guide Section** | Rare Races | ## Overview Kenku are native to the dense jungles and inaccessible islands of [[Continent - Q'Shar|Q’Shar]]. They are avian humanoids under an ancient curse that took both their wings and their creative spark, and a kenku can reproduce anything and originate nothing. They operate in the margins, and they speak only in borrowed voices, which has never made them easy company. What it has not done is make them hated. Kenku have been part of the furniture of Gryth’s port towns and back streets for long enough that the unease they cause is habitual rather than sharp. ## Owned, in the North That is the southern view. The northern continents hold a different one, and it is a great deal uglier. In [[Continent - Auken|Auken]], [[Continent - Norn|Norn]] and [[Continent - Edaria|Edaria]] a kenku is widely understood to be property, and the practice is open rather than whispered about. Bonedagger is the clearest case. Kenku are kept there in numbers, chained and collared, and put to two uses. A kenku who can reproduce any voice exactly makes an ideal announcer, and the courts and arenas of that island use them to carry proclamations in the voice of whoever issued them. The second use is quieter. A creature that repeats what it hears, perfectly, in the speaker’s own voice, is the finest listening device anybody has ever owned, and the households of Bonedagger have been placing them in each other’s halls for generations. A kenku who escapes that arrangement and reaches the south is a particular sort of person, and tends to be unwilling to discuss how they came by the voices they use. ## The Habit of Silence A kenku who has nothing to repeat says nothing at all. Their preference is for silence, and they will sit through an entire evening in company without contributing, which outsiders read variously as rudeness, stupidity or calculation and which is none of those things. When a kenku does speak it is usually a phrase borrowed whole from somebody else, delivered in that person’s voice, chosen because it is close enough to what the kenku means. Long conversations with a kenku are therefore conducted in fragments of other people’s lives. Their mimicry is otherwise flawless. A kenku who has heard a voice once can produce it indefinitely, and the best of them can hold a conversation as two people without either part slipping. That skill is worth money, and the kenku of every large city in Gryth know exactly who is buying. There is scarcely a crime overlord anywhere in the world who does not have a kenku somewhere in the arrangement, and the free kenku of the back streets are among the best connected people in any city they live in. ## Tifi-Tif and the Marsh God The kenku have one enemy older than any of this. Their god is Tifi-Tif, the god of Black Eyes, and the lizardfolk keep Ssillarn, the Great Marsh God, and those two have been at war with one another since before either people could write the fact down. The theology is not complicated: the gods fight, they have always fought, and they will not stop. What that means on the ground is the valleys of Q’Shar where both races live. The skirmishing there is constant, old, and understood by both sides as a continuation of something rather than a dispute about anything. A kenku and a lizardfolk who meet a thousand miles from those valleys, in a port town where neither has any stake in the matter, will still take a moment to decide against it. ## Cliffs, Caves and Exiles Free kenku communities exist, and they are found where nobody wants the land. Deep cliffs and cave systems hold the largest of them, generally shared with vulpins and with whatever other beast races have been driven out of somewhere else. Those settlements have no single culture and no shared language beyond Common and borrowed phrases, and they work tolerably well on the simple basis that everybody present has been treated badly by the same sorts of people. In the southern continents the kenku themselves are broadly well liked, with a residue of suspicion that never entirely clears. A kenku is good company, useful, and still somebody who may be repeating this conversation to a stranger in your own voice next month. ## Two Lines Two lines survive. The Raven Line is the one most people mean by kenku, and the Magpie Line is barely known outside the corner of [[Continent - Ganath|Ganath]] it has never left. A kenku character chooses one of them. ## Kenku Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Dexterity score increases by 2. **Age.** Kenku have shorter lifespans than humans. They reach maturity at about 12 years old and can live to 60. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. **Size.** Kenku are around 5 feet tall and weigh between 90 and 120 pounds. Your size is Medium. **Speed.** Your base walking speed is 30 feet. **Expert Forgery.** You can duplicate other creatures’ handwriting and craftwork. You have advantage on all checks made to produce forgeries or duplicates of existing objects. **Kenku Training.** You are proficient in two of the following skills of your choice: Acrobatics, Deception, Stealth, and Sleight of Hand. **Mimicry.** You can mimic sounds you have heard, including voices. A creature that hears the sounds you make can tell they are imitations with a successful Wisdom (Insight) check opposed by your Charisma (Deception) check. **Languages.** You can read and write Common and Auran, but you can speak only by using your Mimicry trait. ## Subraces ### The Raven Line The Raven Line are the kenku of reputation: larger than their kin, heavy through the shoulder, and built along lines that suggest a bird of prey rather than a scavenger. They are the more numerous of the two lines by a wide margin. What they are known for is fighting. A kenku cannot invent a technique, but a Raven Line kenku who has watched one performed properly can reproduce it exactly, and will keep reproducing it long after the person who invented it is dead. Their schools are archives rather than academies, and a master’s whole worth is measured by how much they have seen. **Rarity:** Rare **Perception in Gryth.** Neutral. Their discipline is recognised even where their people are not, and a Raven Line kenku is usually judged on what they can do rather than what they are. #### Raven Line Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Wisdom score increases by 1. **Size.** You are heavier and taller than other kenku, standing close to 6 feet. Your size is Medium. **Raven Line Training.** You are proficient with two martial weapons of your choice. **Stolen Technique.** You cannot invent, but you can take. When a creature you can see within 30 feet of you hits with a melee weapon attack, you can use your reaction to commit the movement to memory. You have advantage on the next weapon attack roll you make before the end of your next turn. Once you use this trait, you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest. ### The Magpie Line The Magpie Line is found in one place only: western Ganath, along the Yustan Peninsula, where a handful of communities have kept to themselves long enough that most of Gryth has never heard they exist. They are small even by kenku standards, narrow-boned and very quick, and they are the sharpest minds their people have produced. Magpies collect. Objects, phrases, techniques, overheard arguments, anything at all, kept and catalogued and produced years later in the exact form it was taken. A Magpie Line kenku’s hoard is not treasure so much as a filing system that happens to include the silverware. **Rarity:** Very rare **Perception in Gryth.** Neutral. Almost nobody outside the Yustan Peninsula has met one, and those who have tend to come away with fewer possessions and no clear account of when that happened. #### Magpie Line Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Intelligence score increases by 1. **Size.** You are slight and narrow-boned, standing barely 4 feet tall. Your size is Small. **Yustan Nimbleness.** You can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than yours, and difficult terrain costs you no extra movement when you move through the space of another creature. **Collector’s Eye.** You gain proficiency in the Investigation or Sleight of Hand skill, your choice. Additionally, you have advantage on Intelligence checks made to appraise an object, identify its maker, or recall where you have seen one like it before. ## Connections - [[Continent - Q'Shar]] — Homeland - [[Continent - Ganath]] — The Magpie Line (Yustan Peninsula, western Ganath) - [[Continent - Auken]], [[Continent - Norn]], [[Continent - Edaria]] — Northern continents where kenku are widely treated as property --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Kenku.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*