Electric Wizard
First Post
How do you make PC or monster races your own? More than just humans with different crunch and a gimmick or two? Other sentient species have the potential for mental facilities, biological processes and cultural behavior completely alien to humans. From my experience, going the extra mile and adding fantastic details to certain races can make a campaign memorable and provide truly original adventures and characters.
Eladrin:
The race that most outsiders call eladrin refer to themselves "high elves" because they believe that they are born into the highest caste of fey. They owe their magical abilities and intelligence to complex secret rituals that are performed from their conception to their birth. Each eladrin culture has a different series of rituals, and even within a culture different rituals exist for different sub-castes. For example, the most elaborate and costly rituals produce children of the wise and long-lived Monarch caste while the simplest and least expensive of rituals produce children of the soldier caste.
Completing the proper rituals results in a healthy "high elf" child. If thes rituals are interrupted or fumbled, the mother produces a "whelp", an unstable fey creature. Whelps are seen as shameful and potentially dangerous, and most are sent far away from their parents as quickly as possible. If for some unthinkable reason an eladrin mother undergoes no rituals during her pregnancy, she produces a drow, a twisted, cruel mockery of eladrin. Because the eladrin race's survival hangs on the performance of lengthy, costly rituals, their families are rigidly planned and their population remains low. Each caste has wizards and warlocks devoted to mastering and refining their rituals, and their secrets are guarded with extreme jealousy.
Eladrin:
The race that most outsiders call eladrin refer to themselves "high elves" because they believe that they are born into the highest caste of fey. They owe their magical abilities and intelligence to complex secret rituals that are performed from their conception to their birth. Each eladrin culture has a different series of rituals, and even within a culture different rituals exist for different sub-castes. For example, the most elaborate and costly rituals produce children of the wise and long-lived Monarch caste while the simplest and least expensive of rituals produce children of the soldier caste.
Completing the proper rituals results in a healthy "high elf" child. If thes rituals are interrupted or fumbled, the mother produces a "whelp", an unstable fey creature. Whelps are seen as shameful and potentially dangerous, and most are sent far away from their parents as quickly as possible. If for some unthinkable reason an eladrin mother undergoes no rituals during her pregnancy, she produces a drow, a twisted, cruel mockery of eladrin. Because the eladrin race's survival hangs on the performance of lengthy, costly rituals, their families are rigidly planned and their population remains low. Each caste has wizards and warlocks devoted to mastering and refining their rituals, and their secrets are guarded with extreme jealousy.
