New Race: Arclings

As part of my game, I created two new races for players to choose from.  Here, I present the second of the two: Arclings.

Arclings

Arclings are living beings with magic in their blood.  Though are known for their wanderlust and their adventurous spirits.  Like gravekin, arclings reproduce with other races.  Any offspring of a union between an arcling and another creature will usually be a normal member of the non-arcling race, with only a ten percent chance for such a union to produce another arcling.

Unlike gravekin, arclings do not have their own culture and society, and always leave their children in the care of another race, even when the child has two arcling parents.  Although arclings might, in rare circumstances, raise children, they never raise their own.  If a parent attempts to raise their own child, the young arcling will run away at their first opportunity.  Even arclings do not know why they feel such a disjunction in their familial relationships.

Personality: Arclings are quick to laugh, easy to befriend, and almost always in a good mood.  Their natural positive nature tends to mean they have many friends, although few close ones.  Although arclings have great ambition, they often lack follow-through.  Their morals tend to be shaped by the culture that raised them.  However, all arclings tend to view the world as being far more interesting than it is.  To them, every argument is an epic struggle, every battle is life and death.  At best, this makes them interesting story-tellers and passionate companions.  At worst, it makes them attention seekers and drama queens.

Physical Description: Arclings tend to look like tall, slender humans.  If born from non-arcling, non-human parent, they will tend to look like a tall, slender specimen of whatever race spawned them.  Regardless, every arcling has a physical feature that marks them as otherwordly and strange, such as iridescent skin, eyes with no whites, hair that moves as if alive, or some other bizarre feature.  Typically this additional feature only serves to make them exotically attractive.  Arclings tend to adopt whatever fashions are prevalent in the culture that raised them.  Arclings age like normal members of their parent race (becoming adults at age 30 if born from two arclings) and afterwards age like elves, meaning their natural lifespan is very long.

Relationships: Arclings tend to get along well with most races.  For the most part younger arclings are found in the company of humans, as their passions and zeal tend to be better received amongst the races of men.  Older, more subdued arclings tend to find the company of elves far preferable, since both races tend to find themselves of similar temperaments after centuries of life.  Halflings enjoy the company of an arcling, and consider them to be great fun.  Gnomes tend to view arclings as too loud and boisterous, although the friendly nature of the arclings means that any who do encounter gnomes tend to get along well.  Arclings not raised amongst dwarves tend to find them unfriendly, and the two races have little in common.

Alignment: Arclings follow whatever alignment their parent culture teaches, although arclings left to their own devices usually wind up being chaotic.  Of all the alignments, law is the hardest precept for an arcling to adhere to, and the rare arcling raised in  lawful societies (such as dwarven ones) only remain lawful so long as they remain in the community.

Arcling Lands: Arclings have no lands.  They have no culture or society of their own.  History has never found any mention of any arclings ever forming a community of their own.  Most anthropologists theorize that the spotlight loving arclings cannot stand the company of their own kind for long periods of time.

Religion: Arclings can be found in almost every religion, although they tend to follow the sweeping, dramatic ones.  Kagorak, the god of destruction, is popular god for arclings, as well as Exus, the god of magic.  Priests of Exus claim that Exus created the arclings to help him build the Loom, and that when their task was finished, he released them to the material world.  Some arclings believe this, others find it a silly story meant to convert them.

Language: Arclings speak all manner of languages.  For the rare dealings amongst each other, they tend to speak Draconic.

Names: There is no unifying factor in Arcling names.  Most arcling parents choose a name based on the culture they intend to leave their child with.  Usually the name they pick is one which is an acceptable name within that culture, if a little strange.  Other parents just abandon their children and let the new parents name them.

Adventures: Arclings are usually motivated by the thrill of the adventure itself.  They long to be part of epic stories of great events.  They tend to be the more visible type of hero, and most of them are paladins, mages, and bards.

Racial Traits

• -2 Strength, +2 Intelligence, +2 Charisma: Arclings are often self assured and have a gift for learning, but their physical form is slender and not built for great force.
• Medium-size: as Medium-size creatures, arclings have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
• Arcling base speed is 30 feet.
• +2 racial bonus on Spellcraft and Knowledge (Arcana) checks.  Arclings have a natural gift for magic.
• Automatic Languages: Common and the language of their parent race, or regional language if raised by humans.  Bonus languages: Any regional or racial.
• Arclings with an Intelligence score of 10 or higher may cast the 0-level spell Prestidigitation once per day as a wizard of their class level.  See the spell descriptions on page 238 of the PhB.
• Favored class: Bard.  A multiclass arcling’s bard class does not count when determining whether he suffers an XP penalty.