Oread

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Oread

Standing like stone.

Origins

Oreads are an elemental race, a potent merger between the flesh creatures of the surface world and the mighty spirits of the Stone Beneath. Many ages ago, the first Oreads arose spontaneously during the Dawn Times. Some sages and scribes speculate that oreads arose as a consequence of the rise of Dwarves, and Dwarven tunneling activities in thos eons past essentially drove the Stone spirits to the surface. Regardless of the truth of this tale, Oreads and Dwarves have a rocky relationship at the best of times. Oreads live on the surface and feel that the Stone Beneath should be left undisturbed. Dwarves, obviously, live in the earth and dig and tunnel like no others. This leads to tensions aplenty, but Oreads are a rare race, while Dwarves are as plentiful as grains of sand in a bed of sandstone. So the Oreads usually simmer in discontent and let the affairs of Dwarves pass unremarked.

Culture

Of all the intelligent and civilized races, Oreads have the largest dimorphism between male and female. In most intelligent humanoids, the males are somewhat larger than the females. In Oreads, the males are much, much larger, and look quite different. Male oreads are towering things, extremely tall and massively muscled, with a typically rangy, craggy build like a rocky outcropping or a basalt stair formation. Female Oreads are much smaller, and as delicate as whiskers of crystal, combined with gently rounded contours like water-smoothed pebbles. Both genders express many stony features, with skin tones in males of rough granite, heavy basalt, refined jade (both green and mottled brown/white) and raspy sandstone, and in females skin tones resembling creamy marble, alabaster, jet, and most spectacularly, vivid turquoise or malachite. An oread's eyes are uniformly dull black, but few races notice because oread's eyes are phosporescent, giving off a mild glow in blue, green, yellow, or orange.

Oreads are quite alien, since they do not gain sustenance from food, as do other races. Instead, Oreads eat stone, the purer the better. A nice chunk of sandstone is a good meal, basalt is a little heavy, chert and flint are treats, coal and especially oil make them drunk, semi-precious stones are various intoxicating drugs, etc, etc. An Oread's stew is literally a pot of warm mud (clay is filling but a bit bland) mixed with pebbles and chunks of stone. An Oread's teeth are as hard as diamonds, but sadly (or luckily) have little to no value since they cannot be polished into beauty like gemstones can.

Oreads have no need for or attraction to soil, plants, or animals. They have no need of farms or herds, either. An Oread can eat normal food, and many oreads enjoy it, but they gain no sustenance from it. Oreads like bare stone lying exposed to the sky, and so they often live on barren rocky outcrops, stone deserts, and mountains, where there are few pesky plants to deal with. Oreads breathe air like normal, but Oreads do not drink water and do not need any liquids to sustain their lives. Oreads avoid water deeper than they are tall, since they sink like, well, stones. If oreads must deal with waterways, they build stone bridges over them of remarkable sturdiness and with very high railings. Weirdly enough, Oreads climb well, assuming whatever they are climbing can support their weight. Their hands and feet are so hard and strong they can find solid grips almost anywhere on almost anything.

Aside from their extremely weird physicality, Oread's are quite prosaic. They marry, have children, value family, all in the usual humanoid ways. Oread children are born from cairns of stone erected within a creche, usually excavated to the bedrock if they are not living on a stone outcropping already.

Oreads rarely live with other cultures, not because they are aloof, but because other races need water and plants and animals to live, which are all things oreads consider annoying clutter between them and the Stone Beneath. Where there are places close to or within cities that are good Oread habitat, they will cheerfully dwell close to other races and generally get along well with everyone except Dwarves. Oreads do not like Dwarves.

Growing Up Oread

Oreads live in homes made of split stone piled up without mortar, or more rarely, in log homes made of unfinished logs. Oreads dislike the feel of mortar and concrete in their tremorsense, and will never willingly use it. Oreads like bright light due to their weak vision, and their homes, despite being made of massive stones with thick slate roofs, are often brightly lit by many strategically placed small windows and many light sources. Oread families are strangely prosaic given how odd the Oreads appear, but seeing an Oread family at mealtime is such a normal spectacle it is almost jarring.

Oread women are very small compared to oread men, but bearing children is easy for them, since 'pregnancy' for an Oread woman involves she and her mate creating a 'loci' in her stony flesh, which she then transfers, over a period of nine months, into a carefully made stone cairn within a stony creche in their home. 'Birth' happens when the loci quickens in the stone cairn, and an oread child spends the first few years of its life as a cheerful little creature of animated rubble. Oread children are remarkably durable, and Oreads view the delicate children of other races with horror.

At the age of ten an oread child sheds its rocky coat and assumes it's adult gender. Every year, between the ages of ten and twenty, the Oread slowly accrues another heavy shell of rubble, and then sheds it again, which is the process of growth among the oread. Between the ages of ten and twenth, Oreads gradually become less stony and more fleshy, until at physical maturity their flesh is of typically Oread makeup. Oreads are absolutely flesh and blood creatures, their skin is relatively soft, they bleed, breathe, and perspire, but their flesh is quite dense compared to other races. Oreads are tremendously heavy, even though they may appear relatively slender.

Oreads are fully physically mature at the age of twenty and cease this whole-body accumulation and shedding behavior, although oread's will continue to accrue stony 'hair' upon their heads for their entire lives. A 'haircut' for an oread involves hammer and chisel to shape the relatively soft crusty accumulation upon their head into a pleasing fashion, and they use oils, dyes, and lacquers to achieve a large variety of pleasing shapes, surfaces, and colors, especially among Oread women. Oreads are mentally adults by the age of forty.

Oreads who live with other races do make some efforts to integrate, and will often send their children to schools, and the adults will often mingle and socialize with other races. Oreads can eat and drink normal food and some oreads enjoy it greatly, although the only thing they find nutritious about normal food is the salt and bones. In a pinch, an Oread can eat an entire salt-shaker and get some sustenance that way, and many oreads consider beef knuckle bones with the marrow in them great treats and eat them with relish.

Oreads worship Gods, typically of the earth and the sky, and will graciously interact with other races in such worship.

Oreads are physically immortal. Their bodies never age, and never die. Their minds, however, are completely mortal, and eventually die, leaving their bodies behind, inert but intact. Oreads live a very long time, roughly a thousand years, but once they reach the age of five hundred, their mental processes start slowing down and they will enter torpors. These torpors grow longer and longer, until one day, they never wake back up again.

Economy

Oreads are excellent craftsmen and artists. Oreads, despite their typically poor vision, have a highly refined artistic sense and often love arranging stone and light into remarkably strikng forms. Oreads make trememendous architects, and their distictive piled-stone contruction is instantly recognizeable. Oreads dislike concrete and mortar for reasons they have difficulty explaining, except that they 'feel grotesque' to their tremorsense, but they can certainly use such materials in building for other less sensitive races.

Oreads do not like mines and will not willingly disturb the Stone Beneath. That said, open pit quarries and mines are perfectly fine. Oreads can live in extremely harsh environments and as a result are often suppliers of building stone, natural gravel, and such high-quality stone products as split-slate sheets, marble, dimension-cut limestone, and other materials. That said, Oreads are not deeply integrated into the economy of other races, simply because an Oread has fewer needs than most races. Oreads eat stones and drink nothing at all (no one is really certain how they make perspiration), and they have no need for plants or animals at all. Aside from their contributions with stone, Oreads have little need or desire to trade with others.

That said, there is an unfortunate tendency among Oreads to barter labor with other races for oil, coal, and gemstones. It is an open secret that Oreads are intoxicated by such things, and there is a minority of oreads who can have severe problems with such materials. Oreads cannot mine oil and coal on their own, as they quickly grow too inebriated to work in such conditions, so they have to buy such things from other races, who are often all-too-willing to supply them.

Oreads find a lot of work among other races wherever there are deserts. Oreads love deserts, they are nice, quiet places where the Stone Beneath can gaze upon the sky in peace. Oreads gain employment as caravan guards, guides, and often serve as caravan masters. As a result, probably the largest contribution Oreads make to other races is in transportation. Oreads do not like to travel, but they are very good at overland travel. The more hostile the route, the better Oreads like it.

Oreads tend to wear clothing made of metal and leather. Oreads have dense flesh and are not subject to chafing, so light chainmail and heavy leather is as comfortable to them as the softest silks to other races. Oreads intensely dislike wearing any plant-based materials for reasons they can't really explain, aside from they 'feel terrible.' Cotton, linen, hemp, etc, is never willingly used as clothing by Oreads. Silk, strangely enough, is fine for Oread clothing, although silk is considered a little risque because of its lightness.

Lifespan and Burial

As an Oread ages, he or she sleeps longer and longer in periods called 'torpors'. Eventually, they fall into a sleep and their theirs minds gutter and flicker out, which is death for an oread. However, their bodies are completely immortal, and continue to breathe and exist, indefinitely.

As you can imagine, this makes the whole death and burial process very difficult for oreads. Is your grandfather finally gone, or might he wake up again? It might take a few centuries to know for sure, and there is always some nagging doubt.

Perhaps even more terrible, what do you do with all those empty but immortal bodies? Oread bodies will never decay, but if they do no eat regularly an oread slowly calcifies until they become quite rigid. But even when fully hardened, they might wake up at any moment, even after decades of torpor, and eat again and become limber once more.

The decision to 'get rid of' an Oreads body is a difficult one, and the source of much of the trouble in Oread families. A beloved uncle may be kept around for centuries, in the stubborn hope he might awaken once again. Oreads tend to keep their relatives around, often in niches in their homes, where they can see them and keep them in good order, dusted and in good repair. This is often viewed by other races as ghoulish in the extreme, and few people will go to visit an Oreads house willingly, seeing as how it is usually decorated with dozens of life-size oread statues that aren't statues at all....

When all hope is lost and an Oread family is certain that a relative is finally gone for good, their body will be taken to a graveyard, where they are usually embedded in a clay fixture and exposed to the sky and allowed to erode away. A fully calcified Oread body is quite soft, and usually erodes in a matter of a century or two. As a note, most Oreads consider the sight of partially eroded Oread bodies gruesome in the extreme, and visiting an Oread graveyard is a terrible trial for most Oreads which is not undertaken lightly.

Starting Height and Weight

Gender	Base Height	Height Modifier	Weight	Weight Modifier
Male	5 ft. 9 in.	+4d6 in. (6 ft. 1 in. - 7 ft. 9 in.)	350 lbs.	+(2d8×30 lbs.) (410 - 830 lbs.)
Female	4 ft. 0 in.	+2d4 in. (4 ft. 2 in. - 4 ft. 8 in.)	120 lbs.	+(2d8×10 lbs.) (140 - 280 lbs.)

Starting Ages

Adulthood	Intuitive	Self-Taught	Trained
40 years	+3d6 years (43 - 58 years)	+5d6 years (45 - 70 years)	+7d6 years (47 - 82 years)

PC's

Oreads have no class or alignment restrictions.

Standard Racial Traits

All Oreads have the following Standard Racial Advantages:

• Attributes: Oreads may choose to gain one of the following ability score bonus sets when creating their character. No ability score may ever be modified above a 20 or below a 7.
  • +2 to two different stats, -2 to one stat
  • +2 to one stat, +1 to three different stats, -2 to one stat
  • +4 to one stat, -2 to two different stats

• Size: Oreads are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.

• Type: Oreads have the Humanoid type, with the Oread subtype.

• Base Speed: Oreads have a base speed of 20 feet, but their speed is never modified by armor or encumbrance. Oreads cannot perform the Run maneuver, or jump or swim, at all. Oreads can never place ranks in Jump or Swim skill. However, oreads ignore all rough terrain.

• Languages: Oreads begin play speaking Common and Terran. Oreads with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Dolmen, Dwarven, Giant, Grum, Quell, Waug, and Yestermine. See the Languages page for more information about these languages.

• Senses: Oreads actually have quite poor vision, and all range modifiers are increased by fifty percent if they are targeting via sight. (IE, -3 per range band instead of -2.) Oreads do possess tremorsense. As long as they are in contact with bedrock, they have tremorsense to a range of twenty feet. If they are in contact with earth, soil, pavers, etc, they have tremorsense in their own square and all adjacent squares. The above ranges are increased by ten feet at tenth level, twenty feet at twentieth level and thirty feet at thirtieth level. Note that if an oread can target at range using tremorsense, they never take range modifiers at all.

Major Racial Traits

Choose one of the following Major Racial Traits:

• Elemental Affinity(add character level to effects with their element in it),

• elemental artistry

• Avalanch Base speed increased to thirty feet, add +2 to bull rush manuevers

Minor Racial Traits

Choose one of the following Minor Racial Traits:

• Stand like the Mountain

• Keen Eyed