Race a Day: Talez

Talez

Stoic, wise dragons as solid and ancient as the mountains.

RACIAL TRAITS

Average Height: 6’4”- 10’

Average Weight: 600-2200lb.

Ability Scores: +2 Constitution, +2 Wisdom

Size: Medium or Large

Speed: 6 squares

Vision: Normal

Languages: Common, Common Draconic, Talez Dialect

Skill Bonuses: +2 Dungeoneering, +2 History

Stone Flesh: You gain a +2 racial bonus to AC.

Solid as a Mountain: You have resistance to melee damage of 5 + ½ level. This increases to 10 + ½ level at level 11 and 15 + ½ level at level 21.

Living Earth: You are a living piece of the earth. You don’t need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. You never have to make Endurance checks to resist the effects of starvation, thirst, or suffocation.

Earth Meld: Rather than sleep, talez enter a meditative state known as trance. You need to spend 2 hours in this state to gain the same benefits other races gain from taking a 6 hour extended rest. While in a trance, you are fully aware of your surroundings and notice approaching enemies and other events as normal.

Acid Breath: You gain dragon breath as an encounter power.

Dragon Breath                                                                      Talez Racial Power

The ground sizzles as a bit of saliva drips from your jaw. It is far too late for your enemies who melt as you spray them with a blast of acid.

Encounter ♦ Acid

Minor Action                                                                         Close blast 3

Attack: Ability modifier +2 vs. Reflex

Hit: 1d6 + Ability modifier acid damage and 5 ongoing acid damage (save ends).

Increase to +4 bonus and 2d6 + Ability modifier damage at 11^th level, and to +6 bonus and 3d6 + Ability modifier damage at 21^st level.

Special: When you create your character, choose one of the ability scores as the score to use when making attack rolls with this power. That is also the ability modifier you will use for the damage. This choice remains throughout your character’s life and do not change the power’s other effects.

            They live deep within the earth, hidden away in ancient and massive cites built from living stone. They are found in ancient cities on the highest peaks in the most treacherous mountains. They are the talez, the earth dragons. They are powerful, long lived, and they consider themselves the guardians of Joresch.

Play a talez if you want…

¨      to be a wise and patient leader.

¨      to be a powerful and ancient dragon.

¨      to be a member of a race that favors the avenger, cleric, fighter, invoker, and shaman classes.

  

Physical Qualities

Talez resemble humanoid dragons. They are large creatures, generally much bigger than humans, standing anywhere from over six feet to nearly ten feet in height. They are made of solid living rock, making them exceedingly tough and dense, and they can weigh more than a ton at larger sizes. They have extremely craggy looking bodies, with lots of sharp spikes and spines all over their body. In many ways they resemble armadillos or turtles with a hard gray, if spikey shell on their back and softer, but still rather tough scaled flesh of a more earthy brown on their front. Talez do not have wings, but do have large, spiked tails they can use to their advantage in battle. Their eyes are always one solid color, and generally seem to be made of gems such as sapphires or rubies.

            Talez mature very quickly, reaching full size at around age 18. After this they age incredibly slowly, remaining vigorous well into old age and can live to be over 4000 years old.

Playing a Talez

Living for several millennia, the talez are the longest lived race on Joresch. They are not technically dragons in the strictest sense, and are actually living pieces of the earth, given life, form, and souls. Their great life spans have allowed them to create vast, beautiful cities, forging them from the living rock, and, in some cases shaping the rock as it was made toward their own designs. There are two main cities for the talez, both in the Grey that split the world. The first is called The Quarry, and it is where the talez believe they were born. It’s a vast system of underground caverns that have been dug out, carved and shaped over several thousand years. This massive underground city starts six miles into the Gray from the Karlosh Sea and stretches under the sea, stopping just shy of the Academy of the World in Graywyn. Here you can find incredible structures and temples, a city sparkling in a permanent night where no natural light exists. The second, Teyr’s Landing, is built high in the middle of the Grey and the western continent where none can actually travel without magical means. It rises into the sky and spans several miles all around with grand, ornate spires and towers. The talez believe that Teyr himself once lived here. They believe these legends because their kind is nearly old enough to remember.

            The talez believe that they were given their long lives for a purpose, and that purpose it to protect. They believe they are the guardians of Joresch, remembering ancient evils that become myth and legend in the comparatively short lives of the other races. They watch for history to repeat itself, for signs and shadows of the past, and send out messenger and warriors to help fight the coming darkness they perceive. They devote their lives to learning incredible abilities to help them fight and protect those in need, prevent injustice, and above all other things, maintain the balance and keep the world in order.

            The talez do not worship the Gods. They pay homage to them, knowing that they have a purpose, that they offer blessings and many follow the tenants laid down by several of the lighter deities, but in the end the talez believe in one thing above all others; the Great Wheel. The Great Wheel is the cycle of history that has no beginning and no end. It continues in it’s great arc bringing an age, watching it rise and fall, and then continuing to a new spoke bringing another age. History repeats itself forever until time ends, and the talez watch the Wheel with great interest, knowing that’s constant turn can bring clues as to what the future might hold and how they might act. They attach themselves to the Wheel through life quests. They believe that each of their kind has a destiny that spins along with the Wheel, and that they must find their destiny through hard work, dedication and perseverance. Few talez have realized what their life quest is, but none are ever ashamed or worried that they don’t find it, as the search and the drive is what is the important part of the quest.

            Talez are an extremely patient and tolerant race. They know that people are to be judged on their own merits and tend not to hold grudges, having seen that, over time, anyone can change. That being said, there is one thing that talez hate and fear and that is a chaos wizard. Talez see the world in waves and cycles, living long enough to see one cycle end and another being, or to see the wheel come back to the start and see things start all over again. The only thing that can stop the wheel, or break the wheel’s great cycle, or cause it to skip like a stone across the water is a chaos wizard. Such unpredictable behavior, such incredible deviation, such terrible power frightens and baffles them. They do not destroy chaos wizards, as that can break cycles as well and everything has it’s place, but if it is at all possible, a talez will spend it’s entire existence well away from chaos wizards, and very few ever actually meet one in person.

            Thoughtful and introspective, talez can seem cold or distant. It is not that they are distant, rather they are listeners. They enjoy watching the lives of others, seeing them live and laugh, sing and dance. Their joy comes from knowing that others are happy, from seeing the lives of other enriched and rewarded. Their happiness is in knowing that those who do not get such long lives enjoy what time they have. To be allied with a talez is to have a great measure of immortality and a staunch and loyal friend.

Talez Characteristics: Ancient, brave, determined, gentle, intuitive, kind, patient, perceptive, strident, wise

Male Names: Aggregate, Borax, Corundum, D’Ansite, Flint, Goethite, Jacobsite, Kyanite, Mica, Mendozite, Onyx, Samarskite, Slate, Titanium, Tychite

Female Names: Amber, Barylite, Brookite, Diamond, Emerald, Galena, Kaolin, Nephrite, Opal, Ruby, Sanidine, Sapphire, Topaz, Trona

Talez Adventurers

Three sample talez adventurers are described below.

            Kyanite is a careful fighter who has trained his entire life to become the perfect warrior. He senses darkness rising on the Wheel and wants to make certain he is up to any challenge that may present itself. He feels stifled however, as though he has met his limit and must find new ways to challenge himself. He knows that there are things out among the other races in the world that may challenge him, that may present him better ways to perfect his art and he knows that soon he must leave to find such challenges for himself. He has presented his fears to his elders and after careful consideration, he has been granted permission to find his way in the world and go on his life quest. With a purpose and world to explore, Kyanite sets out to find his place on the Wheel and to see what he may find in the world.

            Amber has access to great tomes and ancient texts and has become a powerful Avenger, aligning herself with Elysia. She sees dark shadows moving behind a great fire in her dreams, and she knows that Elyisia is whispering to her, calling her out to find these shadows and stop them from their dark purpose. Only a month after leaving her home and beginning her fight against the shadows, she comes across a village; decimated, razed and burning. Bodies litter the streets of every size and shape, and she turns her head from the dead too young to even speak, tears filling her ruby eyes. She fears that there is such darkness that can do this and as she begins a prayer for the dead she is shocked to find something; one person has survived. A lycan woman, bleeding badly and near death, feverish and hallucinating murmurs to herself as she desperately tries to crawl out of the city, clutching a strange patch of cloth in her hand. Amber knows what she must do and carefully scoops up the woman, heading to get help and to make certain that vengeance is brought to those who committed this atrocity.

            The great warlord Mica has led armies to victory over darkness time and again, but he senses something new is coming. He lives in the city of Quin’la and serves King Connel but lately something is bothering him. Connel has started making odd choices. Recently he has ordered troops to Orlan, claiming that his empire must expand. He has also enacted new laws that allow for and even support slavery. While he has no proof, Mica is certain that Connel is being controlled, or worse, that he is an imposter and the real king is dead. He has little choice but to continue in his duties and wait and watch, using his influence and wisdom to search for clues and to find the truth and restore Vormos to it’s true glory and to protect the world from a growing tyrant.