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View Full Version : Ideas for a Shadar-Kai city [4e]



Randel
2008-08-03, 12:41 AM
Looking through the 4e Monster Manual, I came across the Shadar-Kai who seem like a pretty interesting race.

Essentially, they are human-like inhabitants of the Shadowfell, have bonuses for Int and Dex, get skill bonuses for stealth and athletics, get a bonus to fort, and can teleport through the shadows for 15 feet and arrive insubstantial (which means they take half damage from attacks) until their next turn.


Thinking this over, I've gotten my own thoughts on how their society might look and was wondering if anyone else has ideas or information on them.


What I have so far:

1. They worship a death goddess because the shadowfell turns evverything undead: The necromantic energy which permiates the Shadowfell causes the corpses of the dead to rise as undead. They pay homage to the Raven queen in the hopes that she may provide sanctuary from this effect and let the dead rest in peace... or stop killing people.

Oddly, due to this natural zombification, farm animals tend to get back up after they are slaughtered and Shadar-Kai may have to deal with cooking and eating still-animated zombie flesh... which explains why they are stuffed with shadow energy and get bonuses to fortitude. Priests of the Raven Queen may have alters that prevent this zombification from happening and occasionally animal sacrifices are made which result in delicious non-undead meat. The occasional celebratory feast is one of the biggest attractions to the Church of Death.


2. They are essentially humans who were trapped in the shadowfell and corrupted by its nature: Kind of like the drow being 'evil twins' to normal elves the Shadar-Kai are corrupted counterparts to humans. They might have some evil-ingrained into them from the shadowfells magic (like being sociopaths), or could just come across to others as really uncaring and cold due to basically living in HELL, but all in all the average Shadar-Kai works to get along with their fellows.

Even in the material plane, things for the average joe human would be pretty trying with all the orcs and monsters and stuff attacking everyone. In a world where everything is gray and the screaming homicidal ghosts of mass-murderers from another dimension pop into existence every now and then, you would expect Shadar-Kai to have either a dim outlook on things or just try double-killing anything that isn't each other.


3. Their Shadow-Jaunt ability makes for some pretty alien architecture: Basically, after a five minutes rest, any Shadar-Kai can naturally teleport 15 feet to a spot they can see and be momentarily resistant from harm after they reappear. Since zombie-apocolypses are a fairly common occurance in the Shadowfell you can expect this to help considerably.

Buildings would have heavily reinforced and locked doors on the ground-floor or maybe not even have doors at all... because people can just teleport in through the second-story window. Huge iron gates would be set up in the outer walls to let carts through while pedestrians just Shadow-Jaunt right through the bars. Ten foot-high walls partition the city in the event of attacks and folks can just teleport onto the top of the wall to rest, savely away from melee-troops on the ground.

But since everyone needs a five-minute rest between jumps and there might be a few folks who can't teleport well, everyone gets a little excercise working around their intentionally malevolent archetecture. Climbing rope ladders up into the attic from the ground floor is a common occurance and decorative ledges on the ousides of buildings work as emergency walkways and handholds. With Shadow-Jump being a move action (and instinctive) one could argue that a shadar-kai who moves carfully on a climb could save themselves from a fall by Shadow-Jumping in mid-air. Just teleporting 15 feet or less to the next stable ledge they can find. Extream sports and chases through the streets and over the rooftops are the common past time for children everywhere... which is good because in a world run by DnD rules the best survival stratagy an NPC has involves running away. And a society of usually-evil NPCs would have a LOT of running away. Or at least running to the higher ground so they can range-attack the monsters.


4. There are evil twins in the shadowfell: This might just be me overthinking things, evil universe counterparts are a common trope in fiction and the Shadowfell has 'evil universe' written on its travel brochure. Anyway, what if in addition to the souls of the dead traveling from the material plane through the Shadowfell to the Great Beyond, every birth (or conception) of a new life creates a sort of echo that goes through the shadowfell.

Whenever a female human gets pregnant in the material plane, the conception echoes into the shadowfell and a female shadar-kai who 'really wishes for a child' may get a child through immaculate conception. A child born from such an event, is identical to their human 'twin' aside from their shadar-kai traits brought about by the shadowfells nature. They are genetically identical to their 'twin' and might have similar personalitly traits or quirks as a result but are only 'evil' inasmuch as any other Shadar-kai is evil. Though running into their human counterpart may cause a bit of a shock.

Due to this ability to immaculately conceive, shadar-kai have some pretty different social moors since as long as even a single female exists, she can repopulate a society by herself... and since the children aren't even genetically related to her then inbreedint isn't a problem. This quirk not only guarantees that shadar-kai never go extinct in a world full of undead monsters and weird shadow aspects, but people from the material plane who look at their society could label them all as monsters even if they ignore everything else.

Humans occasionally breed with other races, Shadar-Kai occasionally reproduce asexually.


5. Shadar-Kai dislike killing when not necessary: Considering that the dead rise up as flesh-eating zombies, Shadar-Kai prefer to knock their enemies unconscious in battle and then deal with them later. (Fortunatly the rules state than when reducing an opponent to zero hp, one can choose to either kill or knock them out). For intelligent captives, they often sell them into slavery or bringing them to their superiors to be recruited into their society.

Since they are usually evil, loyalty in sharar-kai society can be shifted fairly quickly... very quickly when a sword is at ones throat. Thus most battles between rival shadar-kai factions involve the front-line fighters getting captured like chess pieces and given places in the victors army (under supervision of course) is someone makes a habit of killing their opponents then that REALLY pisses people off... and results in a bunch of undead roaming around.

Those who break the laws of society end up getting assassinated or executed, often by decapitation to prevent them from becoming a zombie. Or getting sold into slavery or used as zombie-fodder.


6. Shadar-Kai make good wand wizards: with bonuses to int and dex they do favor the wizard and their bonus to stealth and acrobatics gives the some movement options. Their racial power gives both movement and defense which any good wizard could use.



Anyway, those are a few things I got so far. Ideas or suggestions?

AslanCross
2008-08-03, 07:47 AM
Needless to say I find the idea of spontaneously animating ribeye steak very amusing.

I'd think the architecture makes use of a lot of alcoves and dead ends shrouded in shadow so that the Shadar-Kai can use them to jump into secret areas of their structure.

I like the "evil twin" angle. Quite creepy if the PCs come face to face with their Shadar-Clones.

Starsinger
2008-08-03, 07:54 AM
And they say 4e inspires laziness and a lack of creativity... I really enjoyed this. If you wanna write out stuff for other races, I'll be glad to read them too :smalltongue:

bosssmiley
2008-08-03, 09:45 AM
1: Take Menzoberranzen. Replace all references to "Drow" with "Shadar-Kai".

2: WH40K Dark Eldar, Camorragh.

3: High Cromlech and the Witchocracy of Tesh (China Mieville's "The Scar" and "Iron Council")

Tengu_temp
2008-08-03, 10:43 AM
In such a city razors would be very cheap.