User:Orion/Ourania (3.5e Campaign Setting)/Races

Halflings: The Patter of Tiny Jackboots

The 3.5 PHB tries desperately to convince that halflings are nomadic thieves and tricksters. This makes some sense. They had to make Halflings not be Hobbits, so they just kept the same favored class and designed a society around that. And don't get my wrong — nomadic thieves can be cool PCs. I'm going to take them as the "standard interpretation" against which I rebel.

Fortunately, there's a lot of halfling baggage still in the books that doesn't fit with the current version. Actually, the PHB writeup is extremely weird in that it appears there WAS another way of handling halflings at some point that got erased. They keep using phrases like "some" and "on the other hand" to indicate that there are two kinds of halflings, but onyl delivering one. Look at the section of halfling land. Some halflings pick up and move wherever opportunities are; others make travel a way of life. WTF?

Anyway, Yondalla has a frickin cornucopia on her shield and is about defending the community. This is really obviously the goddess of a stationary, traditional, agrarian community. Can you smell the copyright infringement? So what we're going to do is ignore the gypsy thing and write up some agrarian halflings who aren't hobbits.

Too Late for the Pebbles to Vote

Halflings are tiny. Like, ridiculously tiny. Frankly, asking us to accept a 30 pound PC is ridiculous. They should be more like 80 pounds and 4 feet tall to be vaguely credible adventurers. But the point is, they don't eat very much and they don't take up much space. They are also usually lawful good. They all work together for the good of the whole, and they don't fight amongst themselves.

All this adds to up to ridiculous population densities. And that makes it easy for them to hold land. One halfling warrior might lose to a human in a fight. But the halflings can seriously outnumber any medium-size culture 5-to-1. And every one of them joins the militia. Nobody can win against those numbers. Furthermore, halflings are easy to equip. It doesn't take a lot of iron to field a huge number of half-plated halflings.

Halflings will tolerate ridiculous population densities, but eventually population pressure builds up all the same. Plus, they perceive their neighbors as lawless and therefore threatening; eventually someone from adjoining lands will raid or otherwise cross the halflings. If not, they remain the strongest army in the region. They may be the only power around that can repel a horde which ravages a nearby region. When any of these happens, the halflings expand. They move into a contested area and restore order. They set up the native king with "advisors" from the halfling capitol. They take half the land for themselves and settle it, thus outnumbering the locals 3-to-1. Then they build some roads and dams and start collecting taxes. All this leads to one, inevitable conclusion:

Halflings speak Latin.

Halfling Territory

"Known Space" is bounded at the bottom by the surface of the earth, at the top by the Astral, and at the cardinal directions by dragons. The halflings own a substantial portion of the interior islands, having crowded everyone else out to the edges. Their "core" territories are a large number of small islands orbiting the Blessed Isle, a lush forest paradise where many of the celestials live. The Blessed isle drains water from the Elemental Plane through portals, heating them to produce a continual stream of clouds that keep the homelands warm and fertile. In ancient times, the angels helped the halflings tether their islands together with flexible bridges of enchanted mithril. This was the beginning of unified halfling culture and the halfling bureaucracy and astronomy. This deed is honored to this day by the title of the chief halfling cleric, the Pontifex.

Their aristocracy wear togas and live in villas and do patriciany things. Traditionally, first children become administrators, second children become officers, third children become knights, and fourth children become clergy. The core territories look exactly like Italy and are very boring. We won't describe them much because PCs should never go there. Outlying provinces conform their architecture to local materials. They also have substantial numbers of nonhalfling mercenaries, contractors, and so on and tend to feel ironically more cosmopolitan than the homeland.

Halfling Air and Ground Forces

The Halfling Legions consist of huge numbers of tower-shielded, half-plated sword warriors. Actually they have way fewer full plate than soldiers, and would drop to chain shirts if they had to mobilize in force. A half-plated vanguard unit tends to inspire fear and break enemy lines though.

Their garrisons and militia, on the other hand, are scaleclad crossbowmen. It's assumed that the professionals will always be able to call up substantial reserves for ranged support. In both cases, massive AC due to equipment and racials gives them the advantage over warriors of any other race. Each legion has a small corps of warmages or gnome wizards charged with cracking hard targets. Whenever possible, every commander of more than 100 troops is assigned a Lantern Archon bodyguard, who uses Aid to soak stray arrows and uses teleport to deliver his orders.

The halflings have an enormous number of airships. When they must defend against aerial attackers, or when they are softening up a land-based target, they use their ships as launch platforms for strike teams of pegasus knights.

Halfling Adventurers

The Imperium makes great headway with strength of numbers, tight formations, and endless scale-wearing crossbowmen. But that's not really a viable role for a PC. A tiny guy in armor is not much of a melee threat, and PCs are supposed to fight as individuals. For a small character to credibly project presence he needs one of three things: spellcasting, bonus damage, or a way to get big or bring big friends.

So Halfling rogues are still a big deal. Most of them are trained as scouts or spies by the Strategos. But this is a warrior culture, and those elite warriors tend to be knights. It doesn't matter how big you are when your mount is Large, or how high your strength is when you're rolling challenge damage. Most patricians send their third children to join the pegasus knights, who red horsehair crests spell "victory" to every halfling flatfoot.

Halflings are not so big on spellcasting, relying on thier alliance with the gnomes for magical backup. They do have an order of griffin-riding paladins who guard and control the wizard school. Those halflings who study there tend to pursue a specialized and battle-ready path of study, becoming warmages and summoners. Finally, the imperial cult ordains a great many clerics.

Halfling Equipment and Enchantment

Halfling soldiers use reinforced, heavy stabbing swords alongside their shields.

• New Weapon: Halfling Estoc (use Elven Thinblade stats)

Easily obtained halfling magic items include Horsehair Helms of Harisma, Magic Magic Togas (sic), Bridles of Blurring (for their pegasi) and Terror Estocs. Feather-Fall Spurs are also issued to all cavalry above the very lowest rank.

Halfling Religion

(Note: in this setting, divine casting is not "granted" by anyone. It's a learnable skill that works for anyone with the Wisdom and the practice)

The Halflings venerate powerful celestials in much the way the Orthodox celebrate saints. Every halfling has a patron angel based on his birthday and another based on her occupation. Prayers and offerings are directed to various angels at chapels constructed by military chaplains. Since they don't believe in a God, they actually worship the angels themselves. Hound Archons and the like pop down on a regular basis to give instruction in divine magic. Conquered peoples are required to tithe but otherwise free to practice whatever they want.

Halfling Clerics should seriously pick an angel from real-world demonology. Michael has Fire, Strength, and Protection. Gabriel has Air, Travel, and War. Uriel has Death, Water, and Knowledge. Etc.

Halfling Campaign Hooks

For the Halflings: Pax Minimibus

The PCs homelands was recently conquered. The PCs are recognized as unusually talented and respected members of their communities. People of power and influence. Naturally, they were too dangerous to leave in place. But murdering them would piss off the locals. So they offered them a job. A diverse group of PCs from various client states is sent to a province of high unrest to stabilize the situation. Their mandate includes driving out spies and rivals armies, subduing local resistance by force or bribery, and investigating the local officials for corruption.

Sample Adventure: During the conquest the orc priests were killed and their temples were burned. Now the enslaved orcs want to rebuild, and they'll riot over it. Meanwhile, a few priests have turned up in the countryside preaching sedition. Either kill them and crack down on the orcs, dig up a priests who can be convinced to preach a pro-halfling sermon, or fight for orcish independence.

Against the Halflings: Brave Hearts

The halflings have rolled into the neighborhood and started taking stuff over. Your people don't live in the rich farmland so you were spared the first wave. But you do have something the halflings want — mines or something. Keeping your independence means chasing out war parties, brokering trade agreements, killing monsters to keep the mines running, and forging a coalition with your neighbors.

Gnomes: Who Are Those Guys, Anyway?

You don't need me to tell that that 3rd edition Gnomes always kinda got the short end of the stick. First they had a favored class: illusionist, which was stupid. Who gets 1/9th of a favored class? Then they got bard, which was even worse. Okay, trickster, kind of a rogue/caster, fine. But the music thing didn't fit, and mechanically it was useless. Favored Class is a mechanic for multiclass characters, and bards have even less reason to multiclass than wizards do.

But the real problem is that the design space was crowded. You could do a gnome rogue, but would anybody who wasn't metagming realize you weren't a halfling? No. At least until your DM ran "In the Lair of the Badger." You could play up the gnomes' magic roots, but then you just had a race of skinny, nature-loving mages. IE Elves. Then there's the tech thing, but there never really *rules* for that, and I don't like consigning a whole race to being comedy heroes.

So the new deal is that Gnomes are going to have favored class: Wizard, and elves will be re-written to deemphasize arcane magic. Gnomes will be the go-to race for wise old masters of arcane power. They even invented wizards.

Curiosity Killed the Cat...

The forest gnomes are a dwindling race, consisting of a few embattled and underpopulated clans of forest nomads. Since before anyone has records, they stalked the woods and hills on the edge of limbo, quietly gathering herbs and whatever valuable the chaos spewed forth. Dragons ruled the borderlands then as now, but in the old days gnomes were beneath the dragons notice. Then the gnomes made the choice that changed everything.

The history of the gnomes begins on the day they stole magic from the dragons. Employing utmost stealth, they studied the dragons long enough to transcribe several entire creatures into their newly formulated alphabet. Then they developed a grammar which allowed them to use their stored dragonwords for magic. Eventually they began a program of archeology and archiving, seeking out lost words and incorporate them into their spellbooks before they could grow into dragons. That was their mistake. Rendered unable to reproduce, the enraged dragons struck back. First they scoured the forests and captured most of the gnomes. They took them back to their caves and began to rename them, eventually creating the kobolds. These they unleashed to hunt and slay the remaining gnomes.

...So I Reanimated It

A few stubborn forest gnomes stalk the ancestral homeland to this day, having forsworn wizardry to better conceal themselves. The wizards, however, elected to flee. However, dispute over where to flee to divided the race. A popular necromancer proposed that they settle the lower islands and the ground. Even back then, ghosts and spectres were common sights in the lower levels, and it was known that among the few things dragons feared were incorporeal creatures with ability damage touch attacks. Under his guidance, they established the Midnight School, a hidden academy devoted to the advancement of necromancy and illusion.

Others refused to seek the dubious comfort of the haunted surface. They traveled inward until eventually encountering the halfling empire. Well, no empire gets far without its scholar and mages, and the expansionistic halflings saw an opportunity. They took in the gnomes, and over time the cultures grew close, though not identical. These days halflings have names like Marcus Secundus Aurelius and Gnomes have names like Markos.

Gnome Territory

The largest population of gnomes are the slave class of the halfling regime. They can be found everywhere in the Halfling territory, but the only territory they can be said to control is the Lykeion or White Tower. The world's premier school of wizardry occupies an island of its own, with visitors discouraged by the halfling paladins who both defend and monitor the resident wizards. The lower levels of the tower function as a monastery where massive numbers of monastic venerate the angels from behind vows of silence. Their restraint from language and pursuit of ecstatic experience is believed to prevent the wizards' magic from destabilizing the island. The wizards, monastics, and paladins collectively comprise the White Rose Order, an LG group dedicated to advancing the universal good, inside and outside of imperial territory or approval. The school's faculty are of sufficient power and influence to operate mostly autonomously, even enacting a number of policies which actively displease the emperor. (Foremost among them, offering temporary scholarly residencies to any knowledge seekers who are not Evil).

The surface gnomes, meanwhile, assert authority over relatively little land. Their demand for raw materials is very slight, and mostly fulfilled by contracting out services to the warlords of various marginal societies. What they do have is an enormous network of "waystations," small shelters and caches concealed by illusion, maintained and defended by animated undead. The White Order has recently attempted to imitate this network but with less success and fewer undead staff. The largest settlement of surface gnomes is a trade outpost near the mouth of Hell, where gnome representative engage in trade with both the devils and the vampire lords.

Allies and Enemies

The surface gnomes are fighting a bitter, genocidal war with the kobolds. They also have a strained relationship with the vampires that includes small amounts of trade and large amounts of distrust and covert warfare. They have an ad hoc but mostly hostile relationship with the surface orc,s although their interest intersect rarely. They have allied with the dark dwarves against the sunworshippers. Further afield, they often dispatch individual agents as mercenaries and advisors to goblin, gnoll, and ogre tribes.

The imperial gnomes are part of the empire and conduct themselves as such, with the exception that the Lykaion maintains friendlier ties to the hobs and aasimar than the empire at large does. Additionally, the White Rose are committed to supporting most inhabitants of the surface, but especially the drow.

Gnome Adventurers

If you're a gnome adventurer, you're probably a graduate of the Lykeion. This usually means that you're a [b]Wizard[/b] but it doesn't have to. They have another program of study. Long ago, a committee of gnome sages compiled a book called the [i]Liber Mortifaciens[/i], which contained, in coded [i]and[/i] ciphered Greek, how to kill or neutralize every creature of the known world, along with condensed formulae of spells deemed useful for the task. The White Council that governs the school has [b]Assassins[/b] running out their ears. They train some [b]Beguilers[/b] too.

Other than that, career options are pretty limited. You can be a more specialized arcane caster, but then you won't get into a good gnome frat, and every will laugh at you behind their back. Unless you are a [b]Dread Necromancer[/b] studying with the Dark Gnomes, of course.

Gnome Equipment and Enchantment

Both major gnome societies have massive stockpiles of minor magic items. Notable surface gnome creations include the Tarnkap ([i]+hide cloak, with hide from undead[/i]), wands of Disrupt Undead, and "wall grenades" (enchanted pebbles which make an sustain a [i]silent image[/i] of a cartoon wall whever they land). Imperial gnomes are known for their Defending Quarterstaves, Collars of Intellect (symbolic slave collars), and Flare Guns. (hand crossbow with bolts of hypnotic pattern, used to signal or set up an escape.)

Gnome Religion

Surface gnomes aren't terribly religious by nature. Those interested in divine magic tend to follow the practices of the dark dwarves. Imperial gnomes practice the halfling cult but often send additional prayers to celestials perceived by many as "fallen" or even to particularly noble devils.

Gnome Campaign Hooks

For the Gnomes: To Plant a Flower

something something missions for the white rose order take you across the surface and to the edges of known space.

Against the Gnomes: Born Conspirators

something something gnomes have placed an illusionist advisor in nearly every power center of the region the empire has selected for its next province. Hunt them down one by one and expose the web of bribes and secrets tying them back to the shadow school.