Solaris
2009-10-20, 12:37 PM
Note: I use the wound point/vitality point system and the spell point system. This race references that.
Myrmidons
"We claim to be the cleverest inventors on Arken, but the only device we developed before the myrmidons was the firearm." - the alchemist Robert Redbeard
Gammerond the Creator forged the myrmidons in the First Age, long before the Great Twelve swore allegiance to the Argent Flame and became its agents in both the Mortal and Spirit Realms. He intended them to be automatons, mindless soldiers whose sole purpose was to fight and destroy his enemies. Over the successive generations of myrmidons, he experimented with them and tweaked the design to combat the creations of his rival, Guraash the Boar. As new varieties emerged from his forge, Gammerond realized his once-mindless soldiers were now thinking, feeling beings in their own right. He continued to create them, but instead of treating them as automatons he treated them as equals. Gammerond would go on to create dwarves, goblins, and humans with the lessons he'd learned from making the myrmidons. Though the war between the Great Twelve and the Eighteen dragged on, when the First Age ended and the Flames claimed their servants to places unknown for millennia in the Night of Sky-Fires, the myrmidons remained behind - the first children of the gods, the only ones the gods treated as equals.
In the thousands of years between their creation a few centuries before the Night of Sky-Fires and the present day, the myrmidons have changed a great deal from their roots as divine warriors. They live a semi-nomadic lifestyle on an island chain in the middle of the South Sea. While they do have permanent cities, places of exotic wonder filled with strange devices and strange magic, a good deal of the myrmidon population is out exploring on steam-driven surface ships, lighter-than-air craft, and magic-driven airships. A few myrmidons, exploiting their immunity to pressure and virtual immortality, have taken to exploring the bottom of the ocean on foot. The myrmidons have created an intricate society of scholars, researchers, and engineers that belies their prowess in combat.
Personality: Despite their warrior roots, a myrmidon would much rather study something than kill it. They are an intensely curious people, with keen scientific minds and an inborn understanding of the laws that guide Arken thanks to their schooling in the Gregaris of their clans. Though they are predisposed more towards logical thinking than letting emotions rule them as mortals do, the myrmidons have the full suite of emotions and intuitive leaps that humans do. While they aren't as great technological innovators as humans and dwarves are, their ability to work magic combined with their creativity lends myrmidons an edge in one-upping the elves and other magical races. Myrmidons are afflicted with wanderlust from a young age, and many of them become adventurers at some point in their long, long lives. Effectively immortal, most myrmidons meet their ends only when they wish to learn no more - a rare thing indeed.
The most important part of a myrmidon's life is the period immediately after his creation, usually six to eight months, when his personality takes shape. Called the Galating, it is akin to a human's childhood. The pinnacle of the Galating is the Galateation, the time when the myrmidon switches over from being a semi-aware entity to a fully-fledged sapient being. Myrmidons keep new myrmidons who are still in their Galating in a large complex called a Gregari, a robust academy that trains them in the sciences and the arts. The Gregaris also hold the massive Kindling Forges that instill new minds and life in old myrmidon bodies.
Physical Description: Myrmidons have a complex mechanical physiology far advanced beyond anything mortal craftsmen have yet to conceive. A myrmidon has an internal body composed of a metallic skeleton and cables of muscle-like metallic fiber with clockwork joints. A stony exoskeleton covers much of his fibrous frame, protecting it and giving it shape, while brass inlay reinforces much of the exoskeleton in elaborate fractal patterns emanating from knuckle-sized glowing spellstone crystals. This exoskeleton bears a strong resemblance to coral, and it grows in much the same way to repair minor damage the myrmidon sustains in its activities. Tiny polyps cover the myrmidon's exoskeleton, drawing energy from the Weave of Flames itself to sustain their lives. The brass works to help conduct and shape that energy, while the crystals focus it like a nervous system. Myrmidon physiology forms the basis for modern clockworks.
An average myrmidon stands approximately six feet tall and weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds. A myrmidon has a stocky frame, clearly modeled along the same lines as humanity. Myrmidons universally appear masculine, though they have little native concept of gender beyond what they've observed from animals and humanoids. They have two toes on their feet and two thick fingers with a single opposable thumb. A kite-shaped jewel engraved with a rune marks a myrmidon's forehead, helping the myrmidons identify each other as well as binding the magic that animates them to his body. The rune is the only part of the myrmidon destroyed when he gives himself to the Gregari, and they believe the type of gemstone involved has a strong influence on the resultant personality, while the rune itself actually defines his lineage all the way back to Gammerond's Forge. Bloodstone, coral, hematite, jade, moonstone, and turquoise all are common stones to carve the rune on. A myrmidon's face is a nearly featureless brass mask, bearing a lipless mouth, no nose, and two eyes that are little more than glowing crystals in his face.
Relations: Myrmidons have a reputation as everybody's second-best friends. Less warlike than the humans, less traditionalist than the dwarves, and far more agreeable than the elves, myrmidons get along well with nearly everybody in Fieria and Kundarath. They do not much care for elves, but no one really does. Myrmidons are quite wary of the goblin races given their past performance record, and they hold a special rancor for orcs.
Alignment: Myrmidons tend towards altruistic behavior, looking for the greater good, but they can forget the individual lives have meaning in and of themselves. While often traditionalist, myrmidons are too free-spirited to be really lawful.
Myrmidon Lands: The myrmidons lay claim to the Vaundei Isles, a volcanic island chain south of Kundarath. The chain of eight islands has fertile soil, thick jungles, and are home to their glittering, seemingly-utopian cities. While life in Vaundei is far better than life on the mainland, political dealings between the four major clans has sometimes resulted in full-scale war between the cities. Usually, though, they remain at peace under their democratic republic. The myrmidon population is sixty thousand, and it has kept stable at that number for centuries.
Religion: Myrmidons approach religion with a casual, familiar air that shocks more pious human clergy. A good number of myrmidons actually remember the First Age; it's not their fault a lot of their elders remember Gammerond stuttered when he got nervous. While casual, a myrmidon's faith can also be surprisingly strong and is not limited to just Gammerond; they freely worship all of the Great Twelve in Vaundei.
Language: Myrmidons speak their native tongue, Vaundeiian, a complex language that had a major influence on Tradespeak's development thanks to myrmidons trading with Jelkeshans early in their history. Many also speak Tradespeak and other human languages picked up in their travels. Few myrmidons enjoy speaking the elven tongues; they're too fluid and too subtly nuanced for any sensible language.
Names: A myrmidon has three names: a given name, which he chooses for himself and carries from his Galateation onward, a clan name which denotes which lineage of myrmidon he arises from, and a guild name which reflects his profession. The myrmidon has his clan name from creation onward, changing only in the exceedingly rare instance where a myrmidon forsakes his clan for a new one. He usually inherits his clan name from his progenitor, unless the Gregari was overrun and the surviving myrmidons cast into the Gregari's Kindling Forge to be reborn as members of the victorious clan.
Given Names: Aeneas, Gacis, Fale, Ionus, Joneu, Musa, Telemachas, Xerita
Clan Names: Heteiaregan, Krasochtate, Meosidem, Zegemalv
Guild Names: The myrmidon's guild name tends to reflect the guild's primary profession, such as Blacksmith or Navigator. Unlike the clan name, a myrmidon's guild name can change several times in his life.
Adventurers: Myrmidon adventurers are frequently youths who have just ended their Galateation or elders grown bored with life in Vaundei. Many are wizards or rogues, but a good number are fighters or multiclassed fighters.
Myrmidon Racial Traits
- +2 Strength, +4 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma. As constructs, myrmidons lack Constitution scores. Myrmidons are strong and preternaturally intelligent, but they have a certain inhuman characteristic about them that unnerves living people.
- Construct type. Unlike other constructs, myrmidons are vulnerable to mind-affecting effects, negative energy, and positive energy (though they still cannot be healed by cure light wounds and similar magic).
- A myrmidon has 10 hp plus his Strength score, not wound points. A myrmidon is immediately destroyed upon reaching 0 hit points, and only a wish or similar magic can restore it to a functional state. Raise dead doesn't work, but resurrection or true resurrection will bring the myrmidon back in a humanoid body (treat as reincarnate).
- Medium-Sized: As Medium creatures, myrmidons have no special bonuses or penalties due to size.
- Speed: Myrmidon base land speed is 30 feet.
- Wonderworkers: +4 racial bonus on all Craft and Repair checks. Bearing Gammerond's blessing even after all these eons, myrmidons have a unique gift for invention and manufacture. In addition, all Knowledge skills are permanent class skills for the myrmidon.
- Low-light Vision (Ex): Myrmidons ignore concealment due to darkness (but not total concealment). They retain the ability to discern color under low-light conditions.
- Innate Armor: The metallic exoskeleton protecting the myrmidon grants him a +2 armor bonus and DR 2/-. This is not natural armor; it counts as light armor, and takes up the same slot as a robe or cuirass would. A myrmidon's innate armor has a maximum Dexterity bonus of +5 with no armor check penalty or arcane spell failure chance. Myrmidon monks (and other classes, up to the purview of the DM) are not treated as wearing armor for purposes of their special abilities.
- Spell Resistance (Su): equal to 11 + hit dice.
- Clan Rune: The myrmidon's clan rune directs the arcane energies within him that give him life. He becomes inanimate in an antimagic field and reacts to dispel magic and similar spells as a magic item with a caster level equal to his hit dice because of this intensely magical nature. Dispel magic and similar spells must first overcome the myrmidon's spell resistance.
- Automatic Languages: Vandaiiar, Tradespeak. Bonus Languages: Any. Myrmidons are well-traveled and gifted linguists.
- Favored Class: Fighter. Originally created to be soldiers in the ancient war between the Great Twelve and the Eighteen, the myrmidons still retain a strong aptitude for fighting and combat. A myrmidon with half his levels in this class gains a +10% increase to experience points gained.*
- Level Adjustment: +2
*: My standard replacement for the 'removal' of the -20% multiclass penalty in Core.
Myrmidons
"We claim to be the cleverest inventors on Arken, but the only device we developed before the myrmidons was the firearm." - the alchemist Robert Redbeard
Gammerond the Creator forged the myrmidons in the First Age, long before the Great Twelve swore allegiance to the Argent Flame and became its agents in both the Mortal and Spirit Realms. He intended them to be automatons, mindless soldiers whose sole purpose was to fight and destroy his enemies. Over the successive generations of myrmidons, he experimented with them and tweaked the design to combat the creations of his rival, Guraash the Boar. As new varieties emerged from his forge, Gammerond realized his once-mindless soldiers were now thinking, feeling beings in their own right. He continued to create them, but instead of treating them as automatons he treated them as equals. Gammerond would go on to create dwarves, goblins, and humans with the lessons he'd learned from making the myrmidons. Though the war between the Great Twelve and the Eighteen dragged on, when the First Age ended and the Flames claimed their servants to places unknown for millennia in the Night of Sky-Fires, the myrmidons remained behind - the first children of the gods, the only ones the gods treated as equals.
In the thousands of years between their creation a few centuries before the Night of Sky-Fires and the present day, the myrmidons have changed a great deal from their roots as divine warriors. They live a semi-nomadic lifestyle on an island chain in the middle of the South Sea. While they do have permanent cities, places of exotic wonder filled with strange devices and strange magic, a good deal of the myrmidon population is out exploring on steam-driven surface ships, lighter-than-air craft, and magic-driven airships. A few myrmidons, exploiting their immunity to pressure and virtual immortality, have taken to exploring the bottom of the ocean on foot. The myrmidons have created an intricate society of scholars, researchers, and engineers that belies their prowess in combat.
Personality: Despite their warrior roots, a myrmidon would much rather study something than kill it. They are an intensely curious people, with keen scientific minds and an inborn understanding of the laws that guide Arken thanks to their schooling in the Gregaris of their clans. Though they are predisposed more towards logical thinking than letting emotions rule them as mortals do, the myrmidons have the full suite of emotions and intuitive leaps that humans do. While they aren't as great technological innovators as humans and dwarves are, their ability to work magic combined with their creativity lends myrmidons an edge in one-upping the elves and other magical races. Myrmidons are afflicted with wanderlust from a young age, and many of them become adventurers at some point in their long, long lives. Effectively immortal, most myrmidons meet their ends only when they wish to learn no more - a rare thing indeed.
The most important part of a myrmidon's life is the period immediately after his creation, usually six to eight months, when his personality takes shape. Called the Galating, it is akin to a human's childhood. The pinnacle of the Galating is the Galateation, the time when the myrmidon switches over from being a semi-aware entity to a fully-fledged sapient being. Myrmidons keep new myrmidons who are still in their Galating in a large complex called a Gregari, a robust academy that trains them in the sciences and the arts. The Gregaris also hold the massive Kindling Forges that instill new minds and life in old myrmidon bodies.
Physical Description: Myrmidons have a complex mechanical physiology far advanced beyond anything mortal craftsmen have yet to conceive. A myrmidon has an internal body composed of a metallic skeleton and cables of muscle-like metallic fiber with clockwork joints. A stony exoskeleton covers much of his fibrous frame, protecting it and giving it shape, while brass inlay reinforces much of the exoskeleton in elaborate fractal patterns emanating from knuckle-sized glowing spellstone crystals. This exoskeleton bears a strong resemblance to coral, and it grows in much the same way to repair minor damage the myrmidon sustains in its activities. Tiny polyps cover the myrmidon's exoskeleton, drawing energy from the Weave of Flames itself to sustain their lives. The brass works to help conduct and shape that energy, while the crystals focus it like a nervous system. Myrmidon physiology forms the basis for modern clockworks.
An average myrmidon stands approximately six feet tall and weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds. A myrmidon has a stocky frame, clearly modeled along the same lines as humanity. Myrmidons universally appear masculine, though they have little native concept of gender beyond what they've observed from animals and humanoids. They have two toes on their feet and two thick fingers with a single opposable thumb. A kite-shaped jewel engraved with a rune marks a myrmidon's forehead, helping the myrmidons identify each other as well as binding the magic that animates them to his body. The rune is the only part of the myrmidon destroyed when he gives himself to the Gregari, and they believe the type of gemstone involved has a strong influence on the resultant personality, while the rune itself actually defines his lineage all the way back to Gammerond's Forge. Bloodstone, coral, hematite, jade, moonstone, and turquoise all are common stones to carve the rune on. A myrmidon's face is a nearly featureless brass mask, bearing a lipless mouth, no nose, and two eyes that are little more than glowing crystals in his face.
Relations: Myrmidons have a reputation as everybody's second-best friends. Less warlike than the humans, less traditionalist than the dwarves, and far more agreeable than the elves, myrmidons get along well with nearly everybody in Fieria and Kundarath. They do not much care for elves, but no one really does. Myrmidons are quite wary of the goblin races given their past performance record, and they hold a special rancor for orcs.
Alignment: Myrmidons tend towards altruistic behavior, looking for the greater good, but they can forget the individual lives have meaning in and of themselves. While often traditionalist, myrmidons are too free-spirited to be really lawful.
Myrmidon Lands: The myrmidons lay claim to the Vaundei Isles, a volcanic island chain south of Kundarath. The chain of eight islands has fertile soil, thick jungles, and are home to their glittering, seemingly-utopian cities. While life in Vaundei is far better than life on the mainland, political dealings between the four major clans has sometimes resulted in full-scale war between the cities. Usually, though, they remain at peace under their democratic republic. The myrmidon population is sixty thousand, and it has kept stable at that number for centuries.
Religion: Myrmidons approach religion with a casual, familiar air that shocks more pious human clergy. A good number of myrmidons actually remember the First Age; it's not their fault a lot of their elders remember Gammerond stuttered when he got nervous. While casual, a myrmidon's faith can also be surprisingly strong and is not limited to just Gammerond; they freely worship all of the Great Twelve in Vaundei.
Language: Myrmidons speak their native tongue, Vaundeiian, a complex language that had a major influence on Tradespeak's development thanks to myrmidons trading with Jelkeshans early in their history. Many also speak Tradespeak and other human languages picked up in their travels. Few myrmidons enjoy speaking the elven tongues; they're too fluid and too subtly nuanced for any sensible language.
Names: A myrmidon has three names: a given name, which he chooses for himself and carries from his Galateation onward, a clan name which denotes which lineage of myrmidon he arises from, and a guild name which reflects his profession. The myrmidon has his clan name from creation onward, changing only in the exceedingly rare instance where a myrmidon forsakes his clan for a new one. He usually inherits his clan name from his progenitor, unless the Gregari was overrun and the surviving myrmidons cast into the Gregari's Kindling Forge to be reborn as members of the victorious clan.
Given Names: Aeneas, Gacis, Fale, Ionus, Joneu, Musa, Telemachas, Xerita
Clan Names: Heteiaregan, Krasochtate, Meosidem, Zegemalv
Guild Names: The myrmidon's guild name tends to reflect the guild's primary profession, such as Blacksmith or Navigator. Unlike the clan name, a myrmidon's guild name can change several times in his life.
Adventurers: Myrmidon adventurers are frequently youths who have just ended their Galateation or elders grown bored with life in Vaundei. Many are wizards or rogues, but a good number are fighters or multiclassed fighters.
Myrmidon Racial Traits
- +2 Strength, +4 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma. As constructs, myrmidons lack Constitution scores. Myrmidons are strong and preternaturally intelligent, but they have a certain inhuman characteristic about them that unnerves living people.
- Construct type. Unlike other constructs, myrmidons are vulnerable to mind-affecting effects, negative energy, and positive energy (though they still cannot be healed by cure light wounds and similar magic).
- A myrmidon has 10 hp plus his Strength score, not wound points. A myrmidon is immediately destroyed upon reaching 0 hit points, and only a wish or similar magic can restore it to a functional state. Raise dead doesn't work, but resurrection or true resurrection will bring the myrmidon back in a humanoid body (treat as reincarnate).
- Medium-Sized: As Medium creatures, myrmidons have no special bonuses or penalties due to size.
- Speed: Myrmidon base land speed is 30 feet.
- Wonderworkers: +4 racial bonus on all Craft and Repair checks. Bearing Gammerond's blessing even after all these eons, myrmidons have a unique gift for invention and manufacture. In addition, all Knowledge skills are permanent class skills for the myrmidon.
- Low-light Vision (Ex): Myrmidons ignore concealment due to darkness (but not total concealment). They retain the ability to discern color under low-light conditions.
- Innate Armor: The metallic exoskeleton protecting the myrmidon grants him a +2 armor bonus and DR 2/-. This is not natural armor; it counts as light armor, and takes up the same slot as a robe or cuirass would. A myrmidon's innate armor has a maximum Dexterity bonus of +5 with no armor check penalty or arcane spell failure chance. Myrmidon monks (and other classes, up to the purview of the DM) are not treated as wearing armor for purposes of their special abilities.
- Spell Resistance (Su): equal to 11 + hit dice.
- Clan Rune: The myrmidon's clan rune directs the arcane energies within him that give him life. He becomes inanimate in an antimagic field and reacts to dispel magic and similar spells as a magic item with a caster level equal to his hit dice because of this intensely magical nature. Dispel magic and similar spells must first overcome the myrmidon's spell resistance.
- Automatic Languages: Vandaiiar, Tradespeak. Bonus Languages: Any. Myrmidons are well-traveled and gifted linguists.
- Favored Class: Fighter. Originally created to be soldiers in the ancient war between the Great Twelve and the Eighteen, the myrmidons still retain a strong aptitude for fighting and combat. A myrmidon with half his levels in this class gains a +10% increase to experience points gained.*
- Level Adjustment: +2
*: My standard replacement for the 'removal' of the -20% multiclass penalty in Core.