Ancestries: Manners of Men

There are humans everywhere. They have ethnicities, cultures, customs, bloodlines, all the normal Worldly things they are expected to have.

They also other facets. For some, these changes are minor. For others, the roots of their change run to their core. They are all, fundamentally, still human and considered so by most. Certainly, to say all these kinds treat each other as equals would be a naively charitable estimation (they hardly can among themselves), but they are understood, they are known factors, there are cultural procedures for their smoothest integration. Most of them, anyway.

There may well be more human kinds than this, as well, but these are the ones that are widely known.

Vulgar 

The normal, common human, five to six feet tall, prone to being changed by Un-Worldly influence and afflicted by Primeval Sin, but currently without the former. The most common lot, oft ruled by Primeval Sinners among your aristocratic strata. Lifespan is 70+1d20.

Start with two Skills: Smithing, Farming, Bartering, or another common trade.

Strength: You are Normal, the base by which all other humans, and in-human mortals, are measured. The dominant species, the teeming masses. Unless you are from a culture or specific realm at odds with the one you travel to, you are not leered at from the streets, are at no risk of arbitrary pitchforks and torches, and generally afforded a baseline sense of respect by other humans, even deference, unless you are the odd one out in a realm dominated by another mark. You won't be picked out as a scapegoat if things descend into chaos. Usually.

Weakness: When appropriate (after a traumatic event and there are dead bodies around, for example), test morale, then WIS or try to prepare human flesh for consumption. After preparation, test WIS at difficult again or consume. Repeat until passed, or opt to continue. Consuming 50 rations of human flesh gives you the Primeval Sinner template.

Barbarous

 

Just as the hog grows wild and bristled if removed from the pen, so can men grow strong and hirsute if taken from civilization and placed in savage and cruel environs, growing to six to eight feet tall. You may hail from a hunter-gatherer tribe or brutal border country aside an untamed wilderness. You may be a secret Pagan, venerating a primordial Daimon and praying that the divine engine of the days before man be restarted and your status as a holy beast assured. Lifespan is 60+1d10.

-reroll CON, take higher.

-reroll INT, take lower

Start with Skill: Survival, Hunting, or Foraging, and one primitive trade (any craft one person can do alone in the wilderness).

If you somehow manage to dwell in a large city for 10-1d4 years without ever leaving the teeming masses, you will slowly revert to a Vulgar form. In that case, discard your strengths and weaknesses and obtain the Vulgar ones. This knowledge is somewhat intuitive to you, but most Vulgar folk are unaware of it.

Strength: Choose a habitat (forest, plains, wetlands, tundra, etc) You are never surprised in that wilderness. Advantage on all rolls to forage or hunt for game. You can smell poison if you hold an object up to your nose and sniff it.

Weakness: You suffer disadvantage on any rolls pertaining to reading, bartering, or complex linguistic trickery (an orator can talk circles around you). When appropriate (after a traumatic event and there are dead bodies around, for example), test morale, then WIS or try to prepare human flesh for consumption. After preparation, test WIS again at difficult or consume. Repeat until passed, or opt to continue. Consuming 50 rations of human flesh gives you the Primeval Sinner template.

Pygmous

 

Humans of slighter stature than most, perhaps three or four feet. Not squat or hairy-footed, mind. People of the dense woods, tunneled depths, or greatest cities. There is always a runt of the litter, and in the days where Titans fed their kin the flesh of Pagan Gods the least of them were given the merest scraps. And when the Titans ate each other, that practice continued. These are not Vulgar humans born truncated either, as sometimes happens, but wholly formed without the oft-accompanying afflictions. They are a kind unto themselves, who scavenged while their fellows slaughtered. Lifespan is 60+1d20.

-reroll DEX, take higher.

-reroll STR, take lower

You start with Skill: Navigation for Forests, Caverns, or Megacities (and always mazes or labyrinths of any kind besides), and two common trades. If you take a single template in Primeval Sinner you are effectively a Vulgar human, but after that your growth will be increased until you stand taller than them.

Strength: You require half the rations as normal. You will never be targeted first in a fight if you aren't alone. Any rent you pay is halved if you dwell in a Vulgar realm.

Weakness: Disadvantage on strength checks unless nullified by a subsequent template. When appropriate (after a traumatic event and there are dead bodies around, for example), test morale, then WIS or try to prepare human flesh for consumption. After preparation, test WIS again at difficult or consume. Repeat until passed, or opt to continue. Consuming 50 rations of human flesh gives you the Primeval Sinner template.

Ogrish

 

Sometimes the child of a Sinner (pure and Vulgar, that is) carries their might, but without the divinity to allow such a form to exist without cost. Sometimes it is the child of a monster, one whose indulgence in primeval sin took them along a path different than ought to be traveled. And sometimes such progeny breed true. Stooped, bow-legged, heavy-headed, thick-boned. You may be a squat, muscled six or a malformedly tall nine, or something betwixt, aside from health-looking. You hail from an insular clan, a backwater village, a local militia. You mostly live among the Vulgar, and always are held at arm's length. Your deformations do not hinder, but they make you easy to spot. Lifespan is 40+2d20.

-reroll STR, take higher.

-reroll INT, take lower

Start with one common trade Skill, and automatically unlock the Flesh Eater monstrous class. 

Strength: You have advantage on all STR tests and intimidation tests against other mortals or things that are smaller than you.

Weakness: When appropriate (after a traumatic event and there are dead bodies around, for example), test morale, then make a difficult WIS or try to prepare human flesh for consumption. After preparation, test WIS again at epic or consume. Repeat until passed, or opt to continue. Consuming 50 rations of human flesh gives you the Primeval Sinner template.

Tenebrous

If an undead monster takes a spouse, it will sometimes breed true. In places where the living dead gather, such children will be born such even from Vulgar parents. At best they are sickly and feverish like one struck by consumption, at worst they are like victims of famine or blight, deathly gaunt and half-necrotic but burning with a spiritual vigor that belies their apparent weakness. You have grim, quiet kingdoms of your own in places none else would take, but more often you are confined to a ghetto or isolated village in a realm of Vulgar folk, with a tragic history behind it. Lifespan is 50+2d20.

-reroll WIS, take higher.

-reroll CHA, take lower

Death-Bound: You automatically gain access to any monster class with an Undead variant, but must take the Undead variant if you opt into it. If killed, 5-in-20 chance to rise as a Revenant in 1d4 days, 10-in-20 if the environment already causes such an effect. This is common knowledge to most humans, and they will try to burn or eviscerate your body if they can. Even your own kin would, if they are of a True Faith and your rising is unsanctioned.

Strength: Advantage to reaction rolls from intelligent undead, 2-in-6 chance of being ignored by unintelligent undead during an encounter. 

Weakness: You count as undead for any effects which specifically target them (in a negative way). When appropriate (after a traumatic event and there are dead bodies around, for example), test morale, then WIS or try to prepare human flesh for consumption. After preparation, test WIS again at difficult or consume. Repeat until passed, or opt to continue. Consuming 50 rations of human flesh gives you the Primeval Sinner template.

Oneiric

 

Not changelings, but their children. Marked by subtle strangeness, most typically pointed ears or features slightly off or approaching the point of caricature, but not quite reaching it. A touch of the unearthly. Their passions are greater than those of normal men, but tuned to no particular facet of the spirit. You dwell in hidden villages and towns nestled in the deep wilds above or below the ground, within a smattering of itinerant peoples, or as a rare breed of aristocrat or burgher. If part of a Vulgar culture, you are probably almost a caricature of it.  Lifespan is 80+3d10.

-reroll CHA, take higher.

-reroll WIS, take lower

Templates described as Changelings start as unlocked for you. Start with a skill in an art of your choice (dancing, poetry, painting, etc). When carousing, suffering from broken morale, trauma, or other emotionally charged event, roll 1d20. On a 20, you have attracted the attention of an Oneiric spirit. You may choose randomly or determine it based on whatever heightened emotions were involved at the moment. It is (d10) 1-9: a lesser spirit. it wants you to do that again or just continue to feel the way you are right now and it will leave you alone, otherwise it will inconvenience you such as giving away your position or doing HP, stat, or exhaustion damage, or 10: a major spirit, it wants you as its Changeling or to perform a major service for it, such as throw a festival, traumatize someone, drive a village crazy, ruin a great festival, start a blood feud. Refusal could be fatal, or it will just leave, or it will stick around and continue to randomly show up, for better or worse.

If you appease the Oneirian, it will owe you a Favor. Whatever creature the DM conjured up can now be called upon one time to perform 10 minutes (hours if Greater) of labor, 1 turn (10 turns if Greater) of combat, or heal [sum] damage as per its MD. These favors do not decay, but may be unavailable if you stray too far (beyond an adjacent overworld hex perhaps).

Strength: You have advantage on all CHA tests, and on reaction rolls with Oneiric beings (even an extremely dangerous Oneirian will not kill you outright if drawn to you via your racial trait).

Weakness: You take double damage from steel or iron weapons. When appropriate (after a traumatic event and there are dead bodies around, for example), test morale, then WIS or try to prepare human flesh for consumption. After preparation, test WIS again at difficult or consume. Repeat until passed, or opt to continue. Consuming 50 rations of human flesh gives you the Primeval Sinner template.

Cultivated

A vat-grown man, clever and frail. You are like porcelain in the shape of a person, smooth and delicate. The stewards of autarkic clockwork citadels and great ticking machines. You are of insular relics of a far greater and more refined time, preserving your Worldly arts and vulnerable bodies from a cruel world. Lifespan is 100+5d10 if kept inside a Cultivated autarky, minus 1 additional year for every year anywhere else otherwise.

-reroll INT, take higher.

-reroll CON, take lower

You start with Skill: Clockwork Technology or Skill: Medicine, or in any intellectual field. If you go to a place ruled by your people you may pay 100 GP to be made into a Clockwork Golem. You know this. Other people might have to prove their worth but for one of their own it is a flat fee. You can also get clockwork tech for half price, but if you start selling it to just anyone this will stop. It is a gift for one of their own, not for the womb-born.

You may designate a weapon or armor you start with as a +1 item of clockwork make, but does not harm the intangible. Each attack it makes, or each time it is struck (as appropriate, it expends a charge of energy requires an hour of winding to regain it. It is otherwise unusable. You start with 10 points of stored energy, the item's maximum. If you do not have armor or weapons at start, or want something different it is a d6: 

1. Expensive watch, perfect timekeeping, also a compass. Needs 1 hour of winding every week.

2. As large backpack with clockwork legs, will try to stay within 10 feet of you at all times, or still, 30 feet of movement, 3d6 HP, 4 hours of winding= 1 hour of activity. Can be carried as backpack.

3. Concealable gearlock pistol with 1d4+1 cartridges. (not clockwork, just a good pistol)

4. Clockwork lockpicker, 4 hours of winding= 1 charge. Picks locks in 1 minute.

5. Clockwork exoskeleton, advantage on STR checks. 8 hours of winding= 1 hour of use.

6. Bellows Mask- A beaky gas mask/visor thing that wouldn't look out of place on a knight helmet. Immunity to toxic gases and the like, but only an hour's worth of filter. Must be restocked at a city.

Strength: Advantage on any historical or scholarly topic so long as it is a mundane one (ie no occultism, arcana, etc).

Weakness: Disadvantage on saves against disease, and on rolling on the death and dismemberment table. When appropriate (after a traumatic event and there are dead bodies around, for example), test morale, then WIS or try to prepare human flesh for consumption. After preparation, test WIS again at difficult or consume. Repeat until passed, or opt to continue. Consuming 50 rations of human flesh gives you the Primeval Sinner template.

Malignant

A child of fell Chthon, the cancerous and hateful perdition below the earth. Or rather, a distant descendant. You may have irregular, stubby keratinous horns, tumorous lumps, polycorian pupils, or more rarely a spade-tipped tail, pointed nails, sharp teeth, or keratinous, hoof-like feet instead of normal ones. You bear a festering, intrusive will inside you, perverting you to its ends, pushing you away from your fellow mortals, though it can be resisted by clinging to your humanity. You may resist or embrace it, as it pleases you. You are an exile, a hermit, an orphan, or a refugee from a place terrible enough to make a populace of your kind. Lifespan is 50+3d10

-reroll CON, take higher.

-reroll CHA, take lower

You cannot become a Demititan, but the Chthonic monster template is unlocked for you by consuming 50 rations worth of human flesh.  Most people do not know what you are, but will instinctively perceive you as "unclean" "dangerous" or "bad" in a way they cannot articulate.

Strength: You possess a dim, hateful spirit inside your body. It will make you like itself if you let it. Roll 1d10 for one of these abilities. Every time you level you can roll on this table again instead of taking a class template.

1. 2x 1d4 claw attack (1d4: 1. bestial claws. 2. raptorial talons. 3. long, jagged nails. 4.exposed fingerbone-blades)
2. 1d8 bite attack (1d4: 1. prominent fangs/tusks, 2. beak, 3. snout, 4. elongated teeth)
3. See in mundane darkness as day
4. Can heal 1+[Level]/2 HP every hour, in even increments of time (apply retroactively)
5. Vomit bile in a 10 foot cone, 1d4 damage to all caught inside and also yourself.
6. Do 1d8 damage to yourself to remove a tumor which someone else can eat, healing 1d8+[level] HP. If the eater is of a True Faith, they take 1d8+[level] damage instead. If they aren't, 1% chance to become a Malignant human. You know both of these facts intuitively.
7. Ungainly bat wings, movement speed same as ground speed, must end turn on solid ground or take fall damage.
8. Barbed, poisonous tail. If hit, target must make a difficult CON save or take 1d4 damage for [level] turns
9. Can eat rotten or poisonous food.
10. Your digits are webbed, double your swimming speed, can hold your breath for [level] hours.. 

Weakness: Disadvantage on all reaction rolls if alone. Disadvantage to persuasion for other mortals. Whenever you are in a situation to commit an act or say words of cruelty or degradation to another, make a common WIS save or do it. If it will have lasting consequences or is in front of people you care about, roll at advantage. If you are alone, surrounded by people you hate, or have recently suffered trauma (and not among your loved ones), disadvantage.

Empyrean

 

If a person eats the flesh of a Daimon of Heaven, they become a False Angel, a profane combination of sinner and celestial effluvia. If that manages to find another of its kind, they may produce a child. That is you. Your kind breed true, but if so it is often inbreeding. Rare it is to find a healthy lineage. You are a rare, precious thing, and may be a pampered scion of a Great Faith, an aristocrat's favored pet, or an escapee from a magus's tower or a circus or slave pen run by apostates. It is said in some places your kind rule as nobles themselves. Lifespan is 200+5d10.

You have a pair of white feathered wings. You may fly at the rate of your movement speed on land. You cannot become a Demititan, but the False Angel class is available for you if you eat 1 ration's worth of flesh of a true angel, either found in the wild or performing the Rite of Communion in a church of a True Faith. A priest of the Pytausic Gospel will openly offer you this and try to recruit you, others will be open to it if asked, or may bring up the idea if you are already a friend to them. Normal people will generally treat you as slightly holy if they are of a True Faith, and with suspicion, disdain, or curiosity if not.

Strength: You possess a fragment of heaven, roll 1d10 for it. You may perform a minor miracle aligned to general principles of Heavenly Gospel. Instead of taking a class template you can roll again on this table.

1. Heal 1d4 HP via touch, [level] times per day. This includes yourself. These die can be spent all at once, or separately. Die replenish at a rate of 1 a day.
2. Cure [level] diseases per day, but doing so drops the person to 0 HP. Alternately, grant [level] people immunity to disease for [level] hours. You may spread the hours out or concentrate them on specific individuals.
3. Emit a sphere of warm white light for [level] hours, as torch, and [level]/2 times simultaneously. It follows above or aside you, and can be "stuck" onto anyone you wish.
4. Manifest [level] rations of a flaky white disc about the size of your hand. It is bland but nutritious. You must gently tease it out from fertile soil or mud, an act which takes one minute.
5. Every week, accumulate a 1d6 "smite die". You may use these to deal damage to someone within line of sight, ignoring non-magical armor. The amount you can store is [level]. You can use them all at once, or one at a time. Anyone with a template in True Faith is immune.
6. [level] times a day, you may communicate 100 letters worth of information to a sapient being as a forceful wave of raw information, via line of sight. This works even if the target does not speak your language, does not speak any language, or is psychologically debilitated.
7. You may pass through [level]x5 feet of flame, acid, gas, water (if it would suffocate you), or other damage-causing terrain unharmed, so long as you end your turn in a safe space. If not, take damage, but this effect re-activates the next time you move.
8. You may purify food and drink for consumption, [level]x5 rations worth, [level] times a day. Purified human flesh cannot sate a Fixation or add to a Primeval Sinner or Demititan's class levelling system.
9. You can soothe [level] Worldly, mundane animals for [level] turns if they are not already in combat, [level] times a day.
10. You can make your eyes glow faintly for [level] turns, which you may use all at once or spread out. When active, you can see spirits and invisible creatures. You gain your uses back after a short rest.

Weakness: You are almost certainly inbred. Roll 1d6 on this chart, twice. If you hit a duplicate ignore it, you were luckier than most.

1. Reroll STR, take lower
2. Reroll DEX, take lower
3. Reroll CON, take lower
4. Reroll INT, take lower
5. Reroll WIS, take lower
6. Reroll CHA, take lower