Setting:Unified Setting/Faestir
Faestir are a noble but desperate race, poised on the cusp of extinction. Once divided into two species, their culture has developed from a mixed heritage of chivalrous war and humble artistry. Faestir typically range from 5 to 7 feet tall and 90-120 pounds. Their short fur is usually grey, with only occasional individual possessing a very light sandy brown, but their heads are topped with hair that ranges between brown, grey and blond, and their eyes come in shades of grey, blue and green. Their hands are large in comparison to their lightweight bodies, with three long, clawed fingers and a thumb on each. Their clothing, designed amidst the grey overtones of their original home, comes in all manner of colors, with several styles depending on profession, from heavy coats to puff-sleeved shirts to voluminous robes. They do not wear shoes, though: besides being difficult to fit comfortably, the constant high-impact leaping that faestir are accustomed to using in order to get from place to place will wear them out very quickly. They may, however, wrap their feet with leather or cloth. Faestir have a strong sense of history and tradition, and tend to be formal and reserved; this cool demeanor, however, conceals a pride and determination fired by both their noble imperial heritage and their great losses, and they can be fierce and implacable enemies. Descendants of a once world-spanning empire, they value military virtues, and tend towards the Lawful side of the alignment spectrum. Faestir speak Common, though they once were native speakers of Draconic. Most Faestir encountered outside their home are Fighters.
Statblocks
Universal:
Height: 5'5"-7'10"
Weight: 70-130 lbs
DnD 3.5
Size: Medium
-2 Str +2 Dex +2 Wis
+4 Jump
+2 Perform: Dance, Balance
Quick Step: Whenever a Faestir makes a 5 ft step, they may move 10 ft instead
Natural Leaper: Faestir always count as having the needed 20 ft run up for making jumps.
Move speed: 30ft.
Favored Class: Bard or Fighter
DnD 4e
Ability Scores: +2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Low-light
Languages: Common
Skill Bonuses: +2 Acrobatics, +2 History
Leap of the Vaess: You can use Leap of the Vaess as an at will power
Leap of the Vaess
You spring high into the air, coming to rest high above your original position.
At Will
Move action Personal
Effect: You can jump up to your full move in any direction. Vertical distance counts, and going over another unit means you must use move equal to their height, and there must be enough space over them that you can pass. If you pass low enough to be within reach of an enemy, the enemy gets an attack of opportunity as normal. You can not turn mid-jump.
Racial Feats
Spear of Bahamut:
You leap up into the air and then come plunging down, impaling your target below you. This functions in all ways as a charge attack using Leap of the Vaess instead of moving normally, except that you can only use Spear of Bahamut when using a spear. This does not count as using a power, and it can be used with an attack power.
Evasive Leap:
Once per encounter, when an enemy misses you with a melee attack, you may use your Leap of the Vaess as an Immediate Reaction. In addition, when you use Leap of the Vaess, you do not provoke opportunity attacks for leaving the square you start your movement from.
Improved Leap of the Vaess: (Level 11, Evasive Leap)
The distance you can jump with your Leap of the Vaess power increases by two squares.
Death from Above: (Level 21, Improved Leap of the Vaess, Spear of Bahamut)
You may use your Leap of the Vaess power in midair. You no longer take damage from a fall, and you always land on your feet.
Faestir: the rise and fall
This is the fluff so far for the Faestir of the unified setting.
Many thousands of years ago Bahamut created Reis, the first of the Faestir, using his near-god-like magical powers. No one is quite sure why he did this; perhaps to prove a point, or just because he could. For whatever reason, the Faestir still pay tribute to Bahamut as the bringer of life and creator of their race. Later, Bahamut got into a war with some other Draconian sorcerers. To help him defeat his enemies, he created an army of creatures just like Reis and blessed them with incredible powers. He called them Vaess uth Bahamut, which is Draconic for Bahamut's arrows. The war raged for some time and eventually, Bahamut’s castle was destroyed and Bahamut disappeared.
After the war, the surviving Vaess left the Draconians behind and traveled into the desert to the northwest. Leviathan, the second of the Dragon Gods who were once draconians and goddess of rain and water, took pity upon Reis and granted her shelter from the harsh sun by leading her to Leviathan's own city, where rain fell without cease and ran over into the desert to create a fertile plains. She also gave Reis several hundred children, which some consider the true start of the Faestir race. The Faestir had begun to build a peaceful, artistic society in the desert, when the Vaess came and sought to join their kin. The Vaess protected them and eventually were integrated into their society as a separate caste of noble warriors.
The faestir were enamoured of the powerful Vaess and the insight into their origins that the great knights offered. When the Vaess, driven by a sense of duty to undo the damage the draconians' fall had done to the world, expressed the desire to venture out and bring sanity to other lands, many faestir took up their spears for the first time and set out alongside them. Trained by the Vaess, who were now the finest and most powerful soldiers in the world, the faestir began an era of conquest and reclamation that eventually saw them at the top of an empire that had reached to every continent in the world. Though their priority was to eliminate the dangerous artifacts and creatures left by the draconians, the faestir also brought civilization to many races, allowing them to form into tributary nations that were largely autonomous; it is from the faestir that most races today originally received the notions of government and military strategy, and because of them that Common was able to develop, evolving from the simple forms of draconic that they spread.
Over the centuries, the blood of the Vaess was passed into many of the families of the faestir. By contrast, the full-blooded Vaess were becoming fewer in number with each generation, for although they were without age, only the skill of Bahamut had ever been able to make more of their number.
Thousands of years later, a horde of kobolds attacked the Faestir lands. The last handful of Vaess uth Bahamut managed to defeat the kobold warlocks leading the tribe to war, but the army did not lose momentum. All but a few of the Vaess perished in the war, and Opossokarthel was ransacked by a huge kobold army. The desert became kobold territory, and the Faestir survivors fled the ruins of their ancient home. Those faestir who had lived abroad, never populous, returned to Lindwurm to support the rest of their race, and within a few decades the faestir's empire was no more.
Along the coast close to the ruins of Bahamut's city-palace, the survivors founded the settlement of Bejwaere in a series of natural caves. Their numbers began to swell once more, but Reis' blessing of fertility had waned greatly since the ancient times. The blood of Bahamut ran in every family, granting the Faestir a taste of his incredible power. The last of the pure-blooded Vaess passed on the secrets of his trade to a common warrior, who took it upon her young shoulders to resurrect the nigh-perished order.
Culture
Bejwaere is a small settlement founded in a series of coastal caves north of the ancient ruins of Bahamut's castle, surrounded by dense wetland forest. It is in a relatively remote part of the world so not many know it even exists, and fewer have ever been there. The inhabitants keep mostly to themselves. Vaess are the most likely to ever leave their homeland, questing the world in search of anything that might help the Faestir build a prosperous nation once more.
Because of the subterranean nature of Bejwaere, as well as the perpetual rain of Opossokarthel, Faestir have developed low-light vision. The darkness, combined with the verticality, of these places, makes them very hard for non-Faestir to traverse. Faestir will often jump twice their height while simply navigating the damp stone of Bejwaere.
Faestir care greatly for hats and other headgear, to the extent that not wearing one is worse than being naked in their society; the presence of other clothing being secondary to whether or not one is wearing a hat.
Faestir shun selfishness, seeing it as the greatest sin, and the one which caused the fall of the Draconians. The Faestir will not directly request anything, nor will they directly deny any request. To do either is a gross breach of decorum. A Faestir faced with a situation in which another race would request aid will instead merely hint that such aid would be appreciated. Other Faestir will understand this, and most will help if at all possible, but outsiders are often unaware anything has been requested of them. This leads the Faestir to view other races as crude and selfish, and outsiders to view the Faestir as unassuming and weak-willed.
Despite these pretensions, Faestir are just as likely to act out of their own self interest as any other race. They merely avoid acknowledging it.
In Opossokarthel, the Faestir had a significant class divide to their society. The upper class traced its roots to the Vaess and the purity of their blood in being descended from them, but had adopted many individuals who had distinguished themselves in the military; wealthy merchants and successful artists could also see themselves introduced to the upper echelons of society through marriage. For the most part, the upper class held power through a monopoly on the "educated" professions such as medicine, law, politics and so on, as well as the army, the leaders of which were always of the upper class either through birth or the aforementioned adoption. The middle class of Opossokarthel was small, mostly composed of artists, treasure hunters, lesser military officers, merchants and other individuals who acquired wealth and power through interaction with foreigners. Finally, the lower class (colloquially referred to as "rainies" due to their outdoor work and their habitation of less waterproof homes) was derived mainly from the labouring professions.
Now, the Faestir have become to few in number and too closely knit for class distinctions to be maintained. Signs of class bias and differentiation remain (such as the distinct accent and rhyming slang previously used by the lower class), but the race's situation as a whole is too precarious for such things to survive much longer.
Religion
As creations of the Draconian race, most of the Faestir faith is descended from that of their precursors. However, in modern times, most of the traditional beliefs are all but forgotten. Contemporary faiths worship Bahamut, who is seen as a creator in the most literal sense, and Reis as the origin of the entire species has become a "mother goddess" figure in Faestir culture. Very few still worship Leviathan.
While all worship is tolerated, the Regent Ministers of Reis are the only ones with political power. The Regent Ministers are the closest thing to true government that the Faestir have, and arbitrate disputes. Theoretically, they could also call the Faestir to action, but they have not done so since Bejwaere was freshly settled.
The Regent Ministers are a matriarchal hereditary regime, with the firstborn daughter of each member becoming a member. The original Regent Ministers are said to have been Reis' assistants.
Economics
Bejwaere is small and not particularly important on a global scale, but it does have one asset. Bejwaere is full of bees. As such, the Faestir produce much of the area's honey. But a more important asset is the wax. Unique to the bees inhabiting the caverns north of Arsonis Vex, this wax can be melted into cloth or leather. This waterproofs the cloth, while allowing it to remain supple. This is far more pleasant than the animal fat otherwise used, which smells, causes leather to crack, and is not entirely effective. This is the primary export of the Faestir, and in exchange they receive metal goods and food to supplement what they grow.
Honey, wax and waterproof textiles, while highly valued, are not the only export of Bejwaere. The Faestir devotion to hats has created a number of interesting styles novel to outsiders. Faestir millinery is prized by both the fashionable and wealthy for its excellent construction and cunning style. Few such hats are exported as the local demand more than meets supply, and making one suitable for outsiders requires custom work. This only makes them more prized as a status symbol elsewhere.
See also
- Burmecian The inspiration for the race, including a gallery.