Graveborn (4e Race)

Graveborn
Summary::You have no recollection of your former life... it's hard enough clinging to the memories you've made since your return. Upon arriving in the Shadowfell, you were overcome by terrible fear of the Unknown. What if your deeds were not enough to save you from oblivion? What if all you believed was a lie and you were headed toward certain doom? Through sheer force of will, you clawed your way back into the natural world and out of your shallow grave - a survivor haunted by unspeakable terror.

Graveborn have an unnerving presence about them that is as much a result of their cold flesh as their detatched cunning and determination. They have a supernatural way with words and often get what they want, but even so, they fear for their lives. Graveborn escaped death once, but only just. Above all else, graveborn fear the inevitable coming of the Raven Queen's servants to claim their wayward souls and deliver them to their unknown fate.

Haunted continually by the whispers of those who died and were burried in their vicinity, some graveborn seek to escape the voices by venturing into the wilds as barbarians. Others try to drown them out with arcane music or the more preferable, though demanding, voice of a warlock patron. Since they harbour no memories of their former lives and find it difficult to retain even recent memories, graveborn are often distant and unapproachable, even to those who have known them for decades.

Play a graveborn if you want...
 * to be an undead haunted by the fate you've fled.
 * to do whatever it takes to survive.
 * to be a member of a race that favours the barbarian, bard, and warlock classes.

Physical Qualities
Graveborn are usually similar in appearance to living humans, but occasionally resemble other races. Their skin is always very pale, sometimes almost grayish in hue. They are unnaturally gaunt and underweight, giving the impression of a weak or sickly person. Though they have no need for sustenance, food allows their undead form to re-knit itself in an imperfect semblance of life - particularly dead flesh, regardless of origin, and fungus. While they do not reek of decay, as many undead are said to, graveborn always smell somewhat stale. Even so, is not difficult to mistake one for a living person.

Playing a Graveborn
Graveborn attempt to blend in with the race they most resemble. As such, they take up names common to their surroundings. The ultimate goal of any graveborn is to avoid what they once escaped: death and the clutches of the Raven Queen. They seek the power to defeat those who would threaten their survival. They occasionally enter into an alliance of convenience with other adventurers, when they cannot accomplish their goals alone, finding grudging acceptance among those who do not fit in with accepted society. Sometimes graveborn find their cold hearts warmed by their living comrades and grow more willing to accept death, whenever it should finally come for them.

Graveborn Characteristics: Cunning, determined, detached, distrustful, manipulative, paranoid, secretive, survivor

Male Names: As humans, or whatever race they most closely resemble.

Female Names: As humans, or whatever race they most closely resemble.

Graveborn Adventurers
Everywhere there was civilization, wherever people had died and been buried, their spirits could be heard. The whispers were maddening. Jamell fled from cities and villages, seeking out the wild places of the world, where he hoped to find peace. He embraced the ways of the wild, finding comfort in the temporary madness evoked by his rage whenever he allowed the primal spirits to flow through his form. In communing with the spirits of nature, he has become more willing to release himself to death, to fall back into the cycles of nature, when his time comes again.

To Galebrook, the voices of the departed were not so much a cacophony as an orchestra without direction. He studied the interplay of art and the arcane as much to stave off madness as to give voice to these victims of the grave, none so lucky or strong as he, having escaped his fate. Life is a stage, one upon which he would perform eternally, for death had no claim upon his soul.

Sylene knew she could not defy the Raven Queen for long on her own. In order to maintain her existence, she would need to forge an alliance with entities beyond the natural world. Looking to the stars, she swore an oath to whatever power would hear her. Fortune smiled upon her - or did it? Perhaps the powers Outside are more to be feared than death itself. Only time will tell...