Greenhills Halflings
| Personality: A tribe of hunter-gatherer, Athasian-descended halflings that make their homes in the Beastlands. While not as savage as their Athasian cousins, greenhills halflings are more than willing to defend their territory from anyone they see as a threat. They have also kept their ancestors' semi-cannibalistic ways, though they have learned that many denizens of the planes aren’t safe to eat.By: Michael CrichtonImported from a previous version of Planewalker.com |
| Physical Description: Similiar to their Athasian cousins, although generations of comparatively easy living have weakened them: Many of them file their teeth into points, and can learn to use those teeth to deadly effect in combat. (Characters can take a racially specific feat allowing them to do either subdual or normal damage for unarmed attacks). |
| Relations: None |
| Alignment: Lawful Good |
| Lands: Their realm is an odd one: While they wander through the realm, the realm wanders through the plane’s three layers. Greenhills halflings can thus be encountered anywhere in the Beastlands. |
| Religion: They worship no Power, but they do engage in a ritualistic reverence for their ancestors, and have a unique relationship with the petitioners who form from their dead tribemates. Like most Beastlands petitioners, they take the forms of animals, but they keep more of their memories than most. During a funeral ritual for a greenhills halfling, his petitioner is drawn to the tribe, where the tribe’s shamans mystically “Mark” the petitioner as a sacred ancestral sprit, which then departs. From time to time thereafter, the petitioner returns to the tribe. These visits are viewed as omens, which can be interpreted as good or bad. Those whose returns are seen as good omens they are asked for blessings. Those whose returns are bad omens are hunted and eaten. Many of the greenhills halfling rituals, such as the coming of age, are marked by a halfling leaving the tribe to seek one of these petitioners, and either commune, or consume them. This is not an “Evil” act, since the petitioners see this as once more becoming one with their tribe, and it is an end they joyfully participate in, even as they try to evade the hunters (Some sages think the petitioners thus hunted then reincarnate as halflings again). |
| Language: Athasian halfling, which is not mutually comprehensible with other halfling languages. |
| Names: As per Athasian halflings. |
| Male Names: As per Athasian halflings. |
| Female Names: As per Athasian halflings. |
| Family Names: As per Athasian halflings. |
| Adventurers: Those few who leave the tribe to become adventurers almost invariably return after a few years. Those who adopt a faction are usually Sensates or Ciphers, though some are drawn to the Believers of the Source. |
| Racial Traits: Their stats are almost identical to those of regular halflings, but their favored class is ranger. |
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