SRD - Races

AZURINS

Azurins are incarnum-touched beings born to human parents. Every so often, the energies of incarnum bond with a pure soul as it becomes instilled in a human form. Perhaps incarnum seeped into the place where the soul emerged, or the soul passed through an incarnum-rich area of the planes on its way to the mortal realm. Whatever the cause, the result is an azurin child, a child who is not entirely human.

The incarnum-infused spirit of an azurin ties itself closely to the physical form, but the intensity of the bonded energies causes rapid physical aging and maturation. An azurin's shorter lifespan creates a tendency to undertake risky endeavors and embrace ideals passionately.

Azurins do not always create other azurins when they reproduce. Two azurin parents have a much greater chance of conceiving an azurin child, but the child might also be human. As a result, azurins tend to be solitary, living their lives within human civilizations. Azurins have never been born to non human parents.

Personality: Azurins are passionate, even a little brazen and foolhardy. They act before thinking through a situation, a byproduct of their inexperience in the world. Even as they age, they remain impatient, since their early successes merely reinforce their behavior.

Azurins pace nervously if forced to wait; action is always better than inaction. Even while sleeping, azurins toss and turn. Once engaged in activity, azurins are almost single-minded in their purpose, almost to the point of ignoring peripheral activity.

Among less tolerant human societies, azurins veil their eyes to appear less conspicuous, even though the goggles or veils they wear might draw even more attention. Azurins consider it a measure of respect to meet another's gaze, which some find troubling when an azurin continues to stare uncomfortably at a speaker while engaged in conversation.

Physical Description: Azurins resemble their human parents in most respects, including the familial similarity that any human child would share with his or her parents. The one exception to this is their eyes: the sclera (whites) of azurin eyes have a sky-blue sheen. Azurins are otherwise as varied in appearance as humans.

Relations: Azurins get along best with those who similarly embrace their passion for life. Humans, half-orcs, and halflings are the likeliest friends and companions of an azurin. They typically don't understand the eternal patience of the elves, preferring to act immediately rather than engage in unending debate, and they don't live long enough to forge strong bonds with dwarves. Azurins disdain gnomes for their playful attitude, which they see as a waste of precious time. Because of the common bond of incarnum, azurins accept the other incarnum-wielding races, including dusklings, skarns, and rilkans.

Alignment: Azurins are never neutral, instead favoring extreme alignments. Azurins are as likely to be lawful good as they are chaotic good, lawful evil, or chaotic evil. More so than most other mortal races, azurins strive to embody their alignment.

Azurin Lands: As part of human culture, azurins live in all types of lands. They can be found among nomadic desert peoples or in the midst of a city's aristocracy. Even if cast out from a society, azurins still thrive on interaction and can usually be found near a human settlement.

Azurins rarely create settlements of their own, but when they do, they find a secluded place near larger human towns or cities. These colonies might house upward of one hundred azurins. Settlements range from ornate monasteries on high mountaintops, to temporary camps in the middle of dark forests, to fortified cave complexes in the hills overlooking popular trade routes.

Azurins follow the laws and customs of the lands in which they reside, but most are too zealous in their beliefs to seek rulership over those lands. Instead, azurins are often involved in groups that follow their alignment extremes, from monastic orders to death cults. Such organizations operate along the fringes of human culture.

Religion: Azurins worship deities that embody their alignments. Numerous azurins choose careers as priests or paladins, using their profession as a platform for espousing their extremist viewpoints. They can also choose more secular philosophies instead of religious dogma, but underlying either belief is the fundamental certitude of law versus chaos and good versus evil.

Language: Azurins don't waste words on those who don't want to listen, but anyone who expresses interest in an azurin's beliefs or history had best be prepared for a long soliloquy. When engaged in menial or boring tasks, an azurin might spontaneously extol the virtues and limitations of law, chaos, good, or evil. Azurins speak Common in whatever regional dialect from which they hail.

Names: Azurin names are usually the names given to them by their human parents, with a first name derived from a relative or historical personage and a family surname. As human descendants, azurins have names as diverse as the human cultures they are born into. Some even have names drawn from other races. As they progress through life, azurins become known more for their deeds and less for their family. Thus, Arun Cooperson might later become known as Arun, the Liberator of Geoff.

Adventurers: Azurins strive to become examples of their alignment, an objective that pushes them out of mainstream society and into groups of like-minded individuals. These groups rally around the cause and might function as adventuring companies as they work to further their philosophies.

Azurins who do not associate with an organization or group devoted to a singular cause might position themselves as solitary paragons embodying their chosen virtues. Such azurins might join with a typical adventuring party. As long as the party's goals are in accordance with the tenets of an azurin's alignment, the azurin is a loyal ally and companion.

Azurins recognize that it takes strong individuals to achieve change in the world. Indeed, their rapid aging causes azurins to quickly realize that there is more to life than fishing, farming, or other mundane tasks. Their souls call them to become adventurers; an azurin who does not heed this call would be looked down on by others of his race, for no affront is greater than knowing you have a purpose and neglecting to fulfill it.

AZURIN RACIAL TRAITS

Humanoid (Human): Azurins are of human descent and are affected by spells and the like as if they were purely human.
Humanoid (Incarnum): Azurins are humanoids with the incarnum subtype.
Medium: As Medium creatures, azurins have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Azurin base land speed is 30 feet.
1 extra feat at 1st level, a human trait that azurins inherit from their parents.
Essentia Pool: An azurin's essentia pool is permanently increased by 1. If he doesn't have an essentia pool, this trait grants him one with a single point of essentia.
Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Any (other than secret languages, such as Druidic).
Favored Class: Soulborn.

DUSKLINGS

Dusklings are small but savage fey native to the Outer Planes. They boast of an innate connection to incarnum that no other race possesses - as a dryad is one with her tree, they claim, the duskling race is one with incarnum. Dusklings are tribal fey who dwell throughout the planes. They travel in small bands but carefully keep track of their family relations even to distant cousins.

Personality: Dusklings are best described as wild. They feel emotion fiercely, and rarely hide their feelings - they like to make sure their loved ones feel loved and their enemies know the depth of their hatred. They dislike confinement, whether it is physical, emotional, or legal, and have a hard time staying in one place for long.

Dusklings are either moving or still. They move quickly and purposefully from one place to another, and stand very still when they reach where they want to go. The exception is when they feel confined - trapped dusklings pace and fidget in stark contrast to their usual stillness. Dusklings are more comfortable with their feet than most other races are. Dusklings do not consider it rude to prop their feet up on chairs or tables, while others hide their feet away. They enjoy going barefoot when it is practical. Duskling lovers exchange anklets as tokens of their love and massage each other's feet as an expression of affection.

Physical Description: Dusklings stand about as tall as elves, though they are far more robust. They average about 5 feet tall and about 120 pounds. Their skin is steely blue-gray and their hair ranges from light blue to darker shades of blue, gray, and black. Their eyes are deep blue, emerald green, or purple. They have a wild, feral look about them - their hair grows long and unkempt, and their faces are long and somewhat vulpine. The men grow long, full beards.

Relations: Dusklings get along well with almost any other race, though specific relations vary based on the duskling's alignment. They dislike anyone who is rigid, authoritarian, or dogmatic, a description that includes most skarns, many dwarves, and a fair number of humans as well.

Alignment: Dusklings hold alignments without strong extremes. Most dusklings are neutral (or within one step of neutral). They have a slight tendency toward good over evil, but their defining cultural characteristic involves avoiding extremes of morals and ethics.

Duskling Lands: Dusklings are nomads - not because they follow herds on seasonal migrations, but simply because they seem incapable of settling in a fixed location. They favor thick forests in warm climes, but wander through plains, hills, and mountains on their endless travels. They avoid civilized or heavily populated regions, but trade with frontier settlements established by other races.

Dusklings set up camps for a week or perhaps a month at a time, very rarely as long as a season, before moving on to a new location. These camps might include tents built from whatever materials are at hand, but just as often the dusklings sleep and conduct their daily business in the open air.

Dusklings (even lawful ones) resist strong authority. Their society is based around clan groups of ten to fifty individuals who share family ties, with the oldest living ancestor governing each group. When that elder dies, the clan splits and each fragment is led by one of the former leader's children. The authority of a clan elder is far from absolute. Every duskling with a grandchild sits on a council of elders whose purpose is to advise the ruling elder. In practice, this council can overrule the ruling elder's decisions in some clans but not in others.

Religion: Dusklings are not a particularly religious race. They feel a close connection with the power of nature and produce more druids than clerics.

Language: Dusklings use few words but spit them out in a rapid-fire stream. They are not reluctant to offer opinions and contribute to debates, but speak their piece succinctly and then quietly allow others to speak theirs. Though they speak Sylvan, they make use of idioms that other Sylvan speakers do not necessarily understand and that sound even stranger when translated literally into Common. Favorite duskling idioms include "Let's cut these chains" (let's start moving, let's get out of here), "I turned it blue" (I changed my mind), and "You smelted him" (you hurt him badly, you mortally wounded him).

Names: Duskling names are similar to those of elves - mellifluous and polysyllabic. Duskling parents name their children, choosing names that reflect some significant event around their birth. Dusklings are more proud of their family names than their given names, frequently using their family names when dealing with other races. Like elf family names, duskling family names are combinations of Sylvan words, though dusklings are less likely than elves to use Common translations of their names among other races.

Male Names: Avandar, Chevaril, Estevial, Farandal, Horathiel, Javarral, Manarro, Photastial, Quarranal, Rhomian, Starronal.

Female Names: Athalia, Brellia, Darandia, Geveryn, Ialannah, Kavanyn, Levesha, Maneryn, Phyannah, Shavallah, Thyrnyn.

Family Names: Avarmathan, Briendarkan, Devishamarral, Fierabrazalan, Heloshartha, Lysseldevar, Merricanath, Oshavalari, Rhiannivar, Shellivathan, Touranisha.

Adventurers: Dusklings value family ties enormously; a duskling without family feels cut off from everything she holds dear. Such dusklings - whether orphaned or exiled - often take up a life of adventuring. The close camaraderie of an adventuring party can serve as an acceptable substitute for family ties, and a duskling who adopts her adventuring companions as a surrogate family is the most loyal ally her fellow adventurers could hope for.

Other dusklings manifest the racial tendency toward wanderlust in an extreme fashion and find even the loose bonds of family and clan too restrictive. These dusklings become adventuresome loners, or perhaps find company with similarly independent souls. These adventurers are motivated by nothing more than the need to be on the move and free from any kind of ties, and they view even their adventuring companions as temporary allies rather than lifelong friends.

As a race, dusklings are ambivalent about adventurers. On the one hand, their folklore is full of heroes who, cut off from family, perform heroic deeds and come to find a new family (usually a long-lost group of duskling relatives, in contrast to the reality of adventuring life). Dusklings truly admire these heroes of legend and hold at least a grudging respect for present-day adventurers whose stories mimic theirs to some extent. On the other hand, most dusklings are so terrified at the very thought of losing their families that they can feel little but pity for adventurers who find themselves cut off from even the minimal social structure the race possesses.

DUSKLING RACIAL TRAITS

+2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence: The duskling race's innate connection to incarnum grants them extraordinary health. Dusklings disdain strict education and learning, though no one is certain whether this is a cause or result of their slightly diminished reasoning capacity.
Fey (Extraplanar): As fey, dusklings are immune to effects that specifically target humanoids, such as the charm person spell. As natives of an Outer Plane, dusklings have the extraplanar subtype while they are on the Material Plane (or any other plane besides the dusklings' home plane). This makes them vulnerable to certain effects that might force them back to their home plane.
Fey (Incarnum): Dusklings are fey with the incarnum subtype.
Duskling base speed is 30 feet. However, a duskling can invest essentia to improve this speed. For every point of essentia invested in this racial trait, the duskling's speed improves by 5 feet. This enhancement bonus only applies when the duskling is wearing light or no armor and carrying no more than a light load.
Low-Light Vision: Dusklings can see twice as far as humans in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. They retain the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.
Essentia Pool: A duskling's essentia pool is permanently increased by 1. If she doesn't have an essentia pool, this trait grants her one with a single point of essentia.
Automatic Languages: Common and Sylvan. Bonus Languages: Elf, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, and Halfling.
Favored Class: Totemist.

RILKANS

Rilkans are rakish entrepreneurs and daredevils of fortune. They believe in drinking deep from the cup of life. Like skarns, they are descended from the enigmatic mishtai, displaying their heritage in the bands of semireptilian scales grace rilkan forearms and necks. For the rilkans, the skarn and mishtai goal of "perfection of form" is a false idol. They believe that perfection is to be found in the journey, not the destination, and they seek to relish every moment that they are alive. According to the skarns, it was this heterodoxy that thwarted the mishtai's efforts toward perfection, and the skarns have resented the rilkans for it ever since. In keeping with their reverence for gold and song, rilkans count numerous bards, merchants, and rogues among their number.

Personality: Rilkans are calculated risk takers. They adore emotion, and they find something heroic in both transports of joy and descents of misery. The rilkans are consummate seducers and seductresses. They enjoy business and creating wealth, both for the satisfaction of accomplishment and the style and pleasures that those riches afford them. Rilkans are at ease almost wherever they go. The only haunts likely to spook a rilkan are cemeteries or places with a large undead presence; the utter lack of hope in such places is anathema to them.

Physical Description: Rilkans can pass for humans if they cover their pebbly, corundum-hard scales. These scales range in color from turquoise to sapphire to ruby. In males, the scales are a single solid color; in females, they are patterned and polychromatic. Rilkan men are dashing and handsome, while rilkan women dress to accentuate their femininity.

Relations: While skarns look down on rilkans as secondplace finishers, at best, in the race to the mishtai's goal of "perfection of form," rilkans shake their heads and wonder why the skarns are still running that race. Rilkans harbor ill will toward the skarns because, according to legend, the skarns once formed half of a racial link similar to the Knowledge pool (this one supposedly consisted of war and combat skills). Rilkans blame the skarns for sundering this irreplaceable link after the skarns grew dissatisfied with the rilkans' progress toward "perfection." With races other than their fellow mishtai descendants, rilkans get along famously.

Alignment: Rilkans tend toward the chaotic, since they have a strong individualistic streak. Chaotic neutral is the most likely alignment for any given rilkan.

Rilkan Lands: Rilkan lands are beautiful. Whether they choose ragged escarpments high in snowbound mountains, a tropical bay, or a glittering city with marvels of artifice on every corner, rilkans believe in the value of the moment. None ever suffer themselves to live in an environment that they do not cherish.

Rilkans are content to live in the settlements of other creatures. They enjoy elven tree villages, human cities, and even dwarven delves. Halfling burrow communities refer to the enlarged rooms in their taverns and town halls as "rilkan rooms." As a result of their natural talents for diplomacy and peacemaking, rilkans rise to places of prominence in whatever society they choose. In settlements where rilkans are the majority, other races are welcomed with open arms. This extends even to bugbears, orcs, gnolls, and other "monstrous" races, as long as they keep the peace. In one famous rilkan city, the head of the Sewer Workers Guild is an intelligent gelatinous cube.

Rilkan culture venerates merchants and bards. The rilkan knowledge pool awakens them to a sense of history that few other cultures share, and bardic tales of the heroes of yore fascinate them. Rilkans also believe in the power of trade as a means to enjoying the best that life has to offer. A common rilkan saying is, "Gold is the root of all good." In rilkan-majority communities, the most powerful organizations include trading guilds, adventuring companies, and bardic colleges. Rilkan governments, which limit their activities to little other than the courts and the city watch, take a distant fourth place.

Religion: The rilkan ethos teaches members of the race to seek out and experience the best that life has to offer. It does not embrace utter hedonism, instead placing emphasis on heroic struggle, grand passion, and epic strife. Religion plays a major part in rilkan society. Deities of wealth, beauty, and love are popular among rilkans - in the core pantheon, they favor Olidammara above all others. In contrast to the stories of other races, the heroes of rilkan epics are also traders, usurers, and oligarchs who generated great wealth for themselves, their families, and their employees. It is rare to find a villainous merchant in rilkan art.

Language: Rilkans love to talk. In a culture of bards, rogues, and traders, language is a specialty. Rilkan poetry is exquisite, and even nonbards memorize a number of their favorite passages. Rilkans delight in attaching belittling epithets to their nemeses and promulgating the use of these epithets across the land.

Names: Rilkan names are varied. Rilkan parents living in elf, dwarf, or human communities often adopt the naming conventions of their hosts. Equally often, because rilkans have a strong individualistic streak, rilkan parents attempt to find names that are not duplicated elsewhere.

Male Names: Aldwyn, Dallyster, Gorashedd, Hashlok, Mentriphiste, Merrik, Orl, Toskeyp, Tristan, Vao-rinh, Westlay.

Female Names: Alicine, Amaranthe, Bansebre, Cestrane, Karazele, Malisharme, Tarrenta, Tavneris, Tika, Tula, Ysati, Zaka.

Family Names: Arbuthian, Cerventa, Corundar, Gloranver, Harkedde, Klane, Lycriskan, Orbrandir, Shimboris, Themisint, Willet, Wotte.

Adventurers: More than perhaps any other culture, rilkans believe in the fundamental drama of life. Every day should have meaning, every night should bring passion. The path of the adventurer is replete with drama and thus highly respected in rilkan society. Unlike in other societies where a mother might scold her child for dreaming of swordplay, a rilkan family might actively seek out a noted duelist to tutor the young lad.

In an adventuring party, rilkans take the roles of leaders and spokespeople. Thanks to the racial aid ability, rilkans form particularly effective adventuring parties if there are two or more of their race present. Wise rilkans take care to observe fragile psyches in their company; more than one successful band of adventurers has broken up over jealousies, unrequited feelings, or broken hearts, all of which sometimes follow a dashing rilkan.

In addition to spell and sword, rilkans believe in the adventure of trade. Tense negotiations for land rights in a bulette-infested valley, the intrigue of contracts and forgeries, selling arms to the svirfneblin and delivering them past the drow's blockade: all these (and the pile of gold glistering at the end of every good deal) are the reasons rilkans approach business with the same passion, joy, and intensity that some reserve for religion or war.

RILKAN RACIAL TRAITS

+2 Dexterity, -2 Strength: Rilkans are naturally lithe and graceful but also physically weak.
Humanoid (Reptilian): Rilkans are humanoids with the reptilian subtype.
Medium: As Medium creatures, rilkans have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Rilkan base land speed is 30 feet.
Racial Knowledge: The rilkan race is linked through the power of incarnum to the accumulated knowledge of their entire people. This manifests in two ways. First, all Knowledge checks are treated as trained skill checks for rilkans, regardless of whether they actually have ranks in the skill. Even without formal instruction, a rilkan naturally absorbs learning from the accumulated knowledge of her people.

Second, rilkans gain a competence bonus on all Knowledge checks and bardic knowledge checks. This bonus is +1, but increases by an additional +1 for every two soulmelds currently shaped by the rilkan, since each soulmeld contains a small portion of the collected souls of the rilkan race.
+2 racial bonus on Bluff and Diplomacy checks: Rilkans are talented at saying the right word at the right time.
Racial Aid: Because of the incarnum bond that knits together all rilkans, at any time that a rilkan succeeds in using the aid another action to assist another rilkan, she adds +3 to the ally's roll, rather than +2.
Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Any (other than secret languages, such as Druidic). Rilkans enjoy learning a wide range of languages, as befits their nature.
Favored Class: Incarnate.

SKARNS

Skarn are strong, sophisticated warriors of intellect. Like the rilkans, they are descended from the vanished mishtai progenitor race, which long ago infused all mishtai with incarnum in an attempt to achieve "perfection of form." Skarn appear human except for the five or six vertically aligned reptilian spines that project from the anterior of each forearm, posterior of each calf, and the upper back. Skarn society is insular and demands both mental and physical achievement. They are a proud race - some would say arrogant - and they boast soulborns, paladins, rangers, and fighters of other "hybrid" classes that exemplify perfection of both mind and body.

Personality: Skarns are well-mannered fighters and aristocrats with fierce but tightly controlled passions. Open display of strong emotion is frowned upon at skarn courts, where a veneer of civility is considered the hallmark of urbanity. Skarns have diverse interests and are very much at ease in a one-on-one discussion. As soon as a third person is introduced, a skarn becomes conscious of the tacit social hierarchy and modifies his behavior accordingly.

Skarn children spend equal time playing with wooden swords and testing each other at games of mental acuity. The twin ideals of mental and physical perfection carry over into adulthood. A skarn aristocrat seeks to support these goals through philanthropy; a skarn adventurer seeks to exemplify them directly.

Physical Description: Skarns are about as tall as humans, but they are much more solidly built. They average 6 feet tall and 210 pounds. They appear human save for their most salient feature, their spines. These spines grow to six to twelve inches in length and range from turquoise and aquamarine in females to navy and sapphire in males. The spines are not retractable, but they can be held flush against the skin with little effort. At social occasions, the spines are layered with chiffon or gold chains. Spine jewelry and grooming are as important to a skarn as beard braiding and knotting are to a dwarf.

Relations: Skarns do not get along well with others. They hold that the other races are generally inferior to the races of the mishtai. It is not that skarns dislike the other races; they simply consider the other races misguided for not believing that "perfection of form" is achievable. The one exception to this indifference is the rilkan race. Skarns blame the rilkans for ruining the mishtai's racial experiment. The story goes that the mishtai were close to forming the perfect body coupled with the perfect mind when a faction within the mishtai meldshapers arose, advocating the pursuit of goals other than physical and mental perfection. These libertines, who gave rise to the rilkan race, fomented such social upheaval that the intense focus demanded by the great goal could not be maintained, and thus the mishtai fell short of their aspiration.

Alignment: Skarns are usually lawful. They count an equal number of adherents to the ethos of good and evil among their race, but chaotic skarns are rare. Chaotic skarns are nevertheless tolerated and even welcomed into skarn society, since they are still skarns as opposed to members of some lesser race. Such free-spirited skarns cannot stand to remain with their fellows, however, where they are typically treated as amusing black sheep rather than serious iconoclasts.

Skarn Lands: Skarns prefer artifice to the vagaries of the natural, favoring large cities over undeveloped locales. Potential sites for skarn cities include defensible positions on bluffs overlooking river junctions, deepwater ports, or fertile land reclaimed from the sea through a complicated dyke system.

Skarns prize architecture dearly. It is their first and most loved art, and their cities reflect this passion. A skarn city is a celebration of styles, a harmony of building and landscape flowing from one city gate to its opposite. In general, skarns prefer powerfully built, tall buildings with skyway arches and caryatid buttresses. These buildings can rise to ten or more stories. A skarn city always includes several huge amphitheaters and public squares for speeches, elections, and spine-fighting rituals.

Governments in skarn cities vary from oligarchies to feudal monarchies to representative senates, but they all share three characteristics: they are strict, active, and powerful. Unlike in some towns, where council members might be puppets to the thieves' guild or the local temple, the skarns' penchant for social order guarantees that the lawfully invested government remains the uncontested supreme authority in the city. Outside of the government, skarn aristocrats and decorated military officials wield considerable influence.

Religion: The skarns believe that they have almost attained "perfection of form" without any help from the deities - only from incarnum. Hence, skarns honor incarnum before any god. This is not to say, though, that skarn are irreligious. Temples to Wee Jas in particular are common in skarn communities.

Language: Skarns never forget to include a title when addressing a peer or noble. Their speech at social functions is always proper and might strike others as contrived or overly courteous.

Names: Skarn names reflect the race's urbane belligerence. Given names are often polysyllabic while family names are generally monosyllabic. The goal of parents in selecting a child's name is to find one that implies both sophistication and strength. Reflecting the race's social awareness, titles often precede or follow a skarn's name. The high value that the skarn place on art extends to poetry, and skarns are frequently named after heroes from ancient epics.

Male Names: Alekk, Ikkilis, Imre, Morgalle, Mydrinn, Ogava, Rotenh, Stergan, Teruska, Trakkisin, Vinnik, Vorlance.

Female Names: Aci, Adra, Arethe, Chariss, Dyssilka, Mish lyrren, Myrivist, Ormykka, Shallimtan, Shyvrandil, Theliram.

Family Names: Arsh, Bas, Dal, Drott, Mak, Mish, Mys, Rus, Tark, Thon, Thull, Wylle.

Common Titles: Esh (marks a petty aristocrat), Kourin (crafter), Leshvar (merchant), Uthman (laborer), Kavval (servant).

Adventurers: Skarns adventure to advance their social standing. Their sophisticated warrior culture places great value on proof of mettle. When a soulborn skarn returns to his Ward Perfect's headquarters with the tusks of the orc chieftain that had been raiding nearby farms, he is guaranteed to rise in the esteem of both the Perfect and his peers.

Other skarns might develop a chaotic bent and find life in the stratified city too restrictive. Neutral or chaotic skarns are happy to join a band of adventurers, finding solace in what is often the first community they have known that does not conform to the rigid rules of skarn society.

Still other skarns adventure as part of the skarns' great racial quest: to find what became of the progenitor race and to complete its work. Most other races, especially the rilkans, scoff at the idea that the skarns will ever achieve the venerated concept of "perfection of form." But the skarns believe perfection is possible, and many have taken up their swords and ventured in search of their forebears, their purposes, and their fate.

SKARN RACIAL TRAITS

+2 Strength, -2 Dexterity: The hulking skarns are extraordinarily strong, but tend to be slow.
Humanoid (Reptilian): Skarns are humanoids with the reptilian subtype.
Medium: As Medium creatures, skarns have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Skarn base land speed is 30 feet.
Natural Weapon (Spines): A skarn can make one attack with his arm spines each round, either with his primary hand or with his off-hand (taking the normal penalties for fighting with an off-hand weapon). This attack deals 1d6 points of piercing damage; if it is used as an off-hand weapon, the skarn may add only one-half his Strength bonus to the damage roll. A skarn can't attack with his spines and a weapon wielded by the same arm in the same round. If a skarn makes a spine attack with an arm carrying a shield, he loses the shield's bonus to AC until the start of his next turn.

If the skarn has a soulmeld bound to his arms chakra, his spine attacks are treated as lawful-aligned for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. See Chakra Binds.
+2 racial bonus on Intimidate and Climb checks: Skarns learn quickly how to use their spines to create a display of ferocity. These same spines aid skarns when they climb.
Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Elf, Celestial, Abyssal, and Infernal. Because skarns consider themselves slightly improved over the average mortal race, they learn the languages of those they consider to be their approximate equals.
Favored Class: Incarnate.