# Race: Tortle > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Rare | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Positive. Welcomed almost everywhere, on the strength of being friendly, honest and entirely without an angle. | > | **Subraces** | [[#Hardbacks\|Hardbacks]], [[#Snapjaws\|Snapjaws]] | > | **Guide Section** | Rare Races | ## Overview Tortles are found on warm beaches across the southern half of the world, along coasts, river mouths and mangrove swamps. The largest populations are in [[Continent - Q'Shar|Q’Shar]] and [[Continent - Ganath|Ganath]], and smaller communities hold the Spring Isles, the scatter of tiny islands lying off Olat Tumir on the southern edge of [[Continent - Iros|Iros]]. They carry their houses on their backs, live slowly, and have a settled view that most problems resolve themselves if you outlast them. ## The Pace of the Thing Tortles are gentle, friendly and almost impossible to hurry, and they take life at whatever speed it arrives at. This is not laziness and it is not stupidity. A tortle will finish a job properly, pay what is owed and keep a promise made forty years ago, and simply declines to be rushed about any of it. What this suits is the small town. A tortle makes an excellent shopkeep, a better healer and a very good neighbour, and a coastal village with a tortle in it tends to be a village where things get mended and people get looked after. What it does not suit is the north. Tortles who find their way to the great cities of [[Continent - Edaria|Edaria]] or [[Continent - Norn|Norn]] generally do not stay long. The noise, the speed and the sheer number of people demanding an answer immediately wear on them in a way they find difficult to explain and impossible to tolerate, and most go home within the year. ## A Hundred Small Faiths There is no tortle religion. There are a great many tortle religions, and a village three days along the coast from another will often keep an entirely different set of gods, spirits, ancestors and rules about what may be eaten in which month. Tortles find nothing strange in this. A tortle asked about their beliefs will explain them at length and with pleasure, and will then listen to somebody else’s with exactly the same interest and no urge whatsoever to correct them. The practical effect is that tortles are among the very few peoples in Gryth who have never had a religious war with anybody, including each other. ## Friends of the Wild Tortles get on with the fey, and the fey get on with them, which is a sentence that can be written about almost no other mortal race. Fairies, firbolgs and the stranger things that live in deep wood and old water treat a tortle settlement as safe ground, and tortle villages on the edge of fey country keep arrangements going that nobody has written down and everybody honours. Nobody is certain why the fey took to them. The most common explanation among those who have thought about it is that a tortle wants nothing, hurries nobody and will sit through an entire conversation without once trying to make a bargain, and that in the fey world this is close to unheard of. ## The Two Lines Two lines are recognised among them, less by blood than by temperament, and both are met far more often abroad than the settled coastal tortles are. A tortle character chooses one of them. ## Tortle Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Strength score increases by 2. Your line increases another score. **Age.** Tortles reach adulthood at about 15 and live around 50 years. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. **Size.** You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you select this race. **Speed.** Your walking speed is 30 feet. **Claws.** You have claws 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. **Hold Breath.** You can hold your breath for up to 1 hour. **Natural Armour.** Your shell provides you a base AC of 17. Your Dexterity modifier does not affect this number. You cannot wear light, medium, or heavy armour, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield’s bonus as normal. **Nature’s Intuition.** Thanks to your mystical connection to nature, you gain proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: Animal Handling, Medicine, Nature, Perception, Stealth, or Survival. **Shell Defence.** You can withdraw into your shell as an action. Until you emerge, you gain a +4 bonus to your AC, and you have advantage on Strength and Constitution saving throws. While in your shell, you are prone, your speed is 0 and cannot increase, you have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws, you cannot take reactions, and the only action you can take is a bonus action to emerge from your shell. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. ## Subraces ### Hardbacks Where most tortles consider a simple life the whole of the argument, hardbacks take the other view. They leave as soon as they can walk upright, and they spend the rest of their lives as nomads and survivalists, putting themselves against country that has no interest in them and making acquaintances everywhere they go. They are the tortles the rest of Gryth has actually met, and most of the goodwill the race enjoys was earned by them. **Rarity:** Rare **Perception in Gryth.** Positive. Cheerful, competent and famously honest, and in most towns a hardback is welcome before anybody has asked what they want. #### Hardback Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Wisdom score increases by 1. **Survival Instinct.** You gain proficiency in the Survival skill. **Well Travelled.** You gain proficiency with one additional skill from the list in your Nature’s Intuition trait. ### Snapjaws Snapjaws are the exception to everything said about tortle patience. They are quicker to violence than their hardback cousins and they tend to hang about the edges of whatever society they have wandered into, watching, waiting for the chance to strike. That watching is not idle. A snapjaw reads a room better than almost anyone in it, and by the time the room has noticed the snapjaw, the reading is finished. **Rarity:** Rare **Perception in Gryth.** Neutral. The tortle name opens the door, and the snapjaw’s manner closes it again about halfway. #### Snapjaw Traits These traits replace the Claws trait of the common tortle. **Ability Score Increase.** Your Wisdom score increases by 1. **Bite.** You have a beaked maw that you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with it, the strike deals 1d6 + your Strength modifier piercing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. **Keen Observer.** You gain proficiency in the Perception skill. ## Connections - [[Continent - Q'Shar]] — One of the largest populations - [[Continent - Ganath]] — One of the largest populations - [[Continent - Iros]] — Smaller communities on the Spring Isles, off Olat Tumir --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Tortle.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*