Vashar

Vashar are one of two races that originated in the Book of Vile Darkness for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. As you might expect from the title, they are an ultra-edgy, super-evil race, so utterly foul and wicked that it honestly comes off as kind of stupid. Vashar are a vile offshoot of the human race, created from a failed prototype of humanity and determined to kill the gods for creating them.

Official Fluff

There is a legend that few tell of a race known as the Vashar. Intelligent beings do not speak of the legend not only because of the darkness involved but also because of the shame.

When the gods set out to create humanity, they formed the first man and gave him life. According to the legend of the Vashar, the first man immediately began hunting in the wilderness while the gods watched their new creation with curiosity. The man found an animal and killed it with his bare hands. The gods were surprised by the brutality, but they continued to watch. The man ate the animal’s flesh and tore away at its guts until he found some large bones. It lashed these bones together with tendons and sinew, demonstrating a cleverness that further surprised the deities.

Then the man broke one of the bones so that it had a sharp point, creating a weapon. He immediately turned upon his creators and attempted to kill them, snarling his first words—curses and death-oaths. The deities were in no danger, of course, but they were disgusted by what they had wrought. They destroyed the man and left. They would return in later eons to create humanity, learning from the mistakes made in their first attempt.

After they left, a demon gathered the remains of the first man and spirited them away to a hidden location—an impossibly high plateau accessible only through a series of underground catacombs filled with foul corruptions of nature. There, the demon resurrected the man and created a woman. The demon bestowed upon them the ability to procreate, then disappeared back to the Abyss with an evil grin.

Many versions of the legend name the demon Graz’zt, before he became a demon lord, as the one whose dark hand fashioned these two. A few others call the fiend an ultroloth. One version describes the demon as a succubus who actually gives birth to the man’s children, imbuing the race with demonic blood.

This, it is said, is the origin of the Vasharan people.

Vasharans are humans, but they are to other humans as drow are to elves. In a normal human society, evil individuals are mixed amid the neutral and good people, but Vasharans are evil as a race. Vasharans rarely call themselves evil, but they do not object to others putting that label on them. They claim to be beyond such terms.

All Vasharans are born out of rape, anger, and pain. They understand only hate, selfishness, and greed. Yet as much as they love to kill and maim, one goal fuels their souls even more strongly: deicide. The Vasharans want to kill the deities that created them. This burning hunger for goddeath keeps them bound together as a reluctant society.

While Vasharans sometimes kill other Vasharans, it is a rare act despite their bloodthirsty, destructive, and utterly immoral nature.

Personality: Vasharans do not understand concepts such as mercy, kindness, or love—not even toward each other. These concepts are so alien to them that they rarely think to use the emotions of others as leverage. For example, only a Vasharan with years of experience among other humanoids would kidnap someone; most would not even consider that the victim’s friends might actually value her life. Vasharans also show no revulsion for creatures or acts that other humans find repellent. They have no aversion to gore or filth, they have no taboos against rape and incest, and they have no distaste for creatures such as insects, serpents, and worms. If a Vasharan believes that eating maggots will somehow help her, she won’t hesitate to do so.

Physical Description: A typical Vasharan stands a little more than 6 feet tall and weighs from 175 to 210 pounds. The males are noticeably taller and heavier than the females. Vasharan skin shades range from fair to very pale, their hair is straight and black, and the men generally have facial hair. Like humans, Vasharans have short life spans, achieving adulthood at about age 15 and rarely living beyond a century.

Relations: Other races generally treat Vasharans as they do other humans, because few know the difference. While abroad, Vasharans treat other races as humans do.

Alignment: Any evil.

Vasharan Lands: The plateau of Vashar is extremely well defended, with traps and enslaved guardian monsters filling the cavern entrances. The Vasharans leave to capture slaves or to steal items they need (though they rarely need anything from the outside world). Captured Vasharans may speak of a terrible plan, in the works for centuries, that is finally nearing fruition, but they know no details. Given Vasharan history, the plan likely involves deicide.

The people of Vashar have evolved into a fairly sophisticated and organized culture, despite their collective destructive demeanor. A council of elders elected through democratic means rules Vashar—the Vasharans would never abide a despot and would all die before submitting to tyranny. The council members are simply administrators, because Vasharans have few laws. They do what they want and take what they want, and each defends himself as well as he can. Somehow, this system of government works—mostly because of the hatred that binds the Vasharans together and their utter incomprehension that life could be lived any other way.

Religion: None.

Language: Vasharans speak Common. They typically learn other languages, including obscure ones. In addition, they are particularly likely to pick up a few lesser words of the Dark Speech.

Names: As humans.

Adventurers: Vasharans favor arcane magic. Many take up the wizard class, and many others are born into sorcery. Vasharan spellcasters thrive on corrupt spells and evil magic, and they develop new spells all the time. Despite their distaste for divine magic, the Vasharans do have a few clerics of a sort, called ur-priests. These individuals do not channel power from the gods—they steal it. The Vasharans claim that the proper role of the cleric is not to serve, but to take. Vasharan fighters, rogues, assassins, blackguards, shadowdancers, loremasters, warriors of darkness, cancer mages, vermin lords, and diabolists are also common. A very few Vasharans are rangers or demonologists. Vasharans are never druids, bards, barbarians, or any of the disciple or thrall prestige classes.

Crunch

Vasharans are identical in every way to the humans described in the PHB, except that instead of receiving a normal bonus feat at level 1, they receive a vile bonus feat. Since there are FAR fewer vile feats than normal feats, this makes them objectively worse.