Three races of men call Loun home (and call the others upstarts, has-beens, intruders, or squatters):
Ass Men
Miserable, miserly, jockeying and Faustian - believe themselves to be the descendants of the giants that once ruled Loun uncontested, now reduced to their current stature by bad breeding and spiritual pollution.
Ritually purify themselves and their belongings with sprinkles of amber rosewater. Practice ancestor-worship that is also descendant-worship - they have fallen, but will rise again - in delicate shrines like uprooted trees made of wire.
Ruled by the Old Houses, families with the clearest claim to blessed heritage, who have no clear hierarchy between themselves and so feud constantly. When they go to war they do so with short spears, heavy shields, and javelins. When they go to fancy events they wear tall hats that branch and curl like horns. Each House holds a fortified manse and the village around it - well-to-do villagers aspire to being adopted into their ruling House.
Ass men are afflicted by a curse in the form of a buzzing fog that infects them with an unclean hunger, making their teeth fall out to be replaced by flesh-tearing fangs, compelling them to eat meat instead of their untainted vegetarianism.
GLOG Stats
Reroll CON
Tough - Advantage on death & dismemberment rolls
Stubborn - Save to deviate from plans
Tit Men
To be a tit man is to die, and be reborn again a tit man, apart from the soul-clamouring of gods and devils but much too swift in the cycling.
A thousand-year wandering of tit men by chance landed in Loun, and discovered the herb-medicines there that would delay their maturation, giving them time to enjoy a childhood, and extend their senescence, giving them time to get to know their children. They guard Loun jealously from others of their kind, knowing knowledge of the herbs would bring enough to the land to exhaust their supply within a generation.
Every community of tit men has two mostly-secret councils - the Gleaming and the Gloaming. The Gleaming handles what is meant to be done in the light: pilgrimage, commerce, feasts, and suchlike. The Gloaming handles what is meant to be done in darkness: war, sex, dreams, and suchlike. Where there is overlap between the councils' jurisdictions a twilight contest is convened, and each brings their champion to solve a riddle, win a race, or whatever else.
Tit men are afflicted by a raptorial curse that causes them to grow excess grasping talons and become possessed by insatiable kleptopathy.
GLOG Stats
Reroll XHA
Jump twice as high/far
Brittle - save or be stunned for a round after taking blunt damage
Feet Men
So named because they are no taller than two feet in height. Generally reckoned to be stinking (for the muds they slather themselves with to cover their scent, and so evade predators) cowards (because when you are very small you win very few direct fights).
They live in caves and wellish pits. They know where the herb-glades of the tit men are hidden and where the sacred ruins of the ass men lie, and use this knowledge to play their enemies off each other.
When there were giants in Loun there were feet men scurrying about their feet and behind their walls. The land belongs to no one, least of all the feet men, and when the land was done with the giants it swallowed them up and spat out shadows. When the land is done with the ass men and the tit men the feet men shall use their bones for mummeries.
Feet men are afflicted by a curse of shrinking, which steals away even their meager stature. They shrink and shrink until they are nothing but a mote, a mutagenic spore that can walk in and among the micro-machinery of the body and make it dance to their tune.
GLOG stats
Reroll DEX
You are very small, and can fit through small spaces
You are very small, and things made for normal-sized people will be unusable by you
The bite on this commentary draws blood
ReplyDelete