Dec 14

Varags



A human, varag, and goblin. All wield the same dagger and shield; the human and varag wear the same armor.

[NOTE: A "prestige race" is similar to prestige classes in that they must be "unlocked." A prestige race cannot be chosen for a player's first character in TKL. However, a player's second and any subsequent character applications may be a character with a prestige race. Prestige race characters are subject to more scrutiny during the application process.]

Barghests, Goblins, and Varags (oh my!)

Barghests are unique among the denizens of Hell. They are one of the few fiends who can travel from Hell to The Known Lands of their own volition, without needing a portal or a summoning. Perhaps more unique is why they journey to the material plane: to mature.

The barghest in its humanoid form resembles a large goblin. It can also assume a lupine form which resembles a war dog or a large wolf. They possess a multitude of innate spell-like abilities.

According to the songs of many a goblin bard, a barghest female always gives birth to a litter of six pups. When the pups come of age, which is shortly after they have been weaned, the mother is somehow able to send them to The Known Lands. They are usually sent to a goblin tribe, who treats such an arrival as a blessing. The young barghests' every needs are catered to, until they are ready to go out and hunt.

The young barghests go out and kill intelligent humanoids. While they eat the flesh of these creatures, what truly nourishes them is the souls of those they slay. These souls are devoured by the barghest, unable to be resurrected ever again. This soul-devouring strengthens the barghest, making it more powerful. When enough souls have been devoured, the barghest reaches full maturity; having attained adulthood, it gains the power to return to Hell, where it rejoins its family and leads armies of fiends in the neverending war against the forces of Heaven.

Goblins do not disturb the barghests when they hunt, but they will sometimes point them in the direction of suitable prey. This usually happens to be members of an enemy tribe. Barghests will not attack goblins or hobgoblins, but they will hunt any other intelligent humanoids. When the barghests finish a hunt, they will return to the goblin tribe, where the goblins treat them like kings - clean them, feed them, tend their wounds, and basically attend their every need.

These needs are sometimes carnal, in which case the goblins are happy to oblige, offering up their most handsome, beautiful, or otherwise worthy tribesmen (what constitutes as handsome, beautiful, and worthy among goblins is a subject for debate elsewhere). These unions sometimes cause pregnancies. When the female is a goblin, she will bear the pregnancy for the normal goblin gestation period, which is a few months. When the female is a barghest, she always gives birth before returning to Hell; in some cases she is only pregnant for weeks or days. Either way, the result is the same - the female gives birth to one or two half-breeds, which the goblins call varags.

No one knows how or why this strange maturity process came about. According to the goblins, barghests are the souls of goblins who did so many good deeds in life that when they died they were sent to Hell and instantly elevated to powerful fiend status. (What constitues a good deed in the eyes of a goblin, and why these are rewarded with a trip to Hell instead of Heaven, are also subjects for debate elsewhere.) They claim that barghests can assume their particular animal form because goblins have been dog- and wolf-lovers since the dawn of the Third Age; they point out the creation of the worg, brought about by goblin selective breeding, as proof of this. They return to The Known Lands to mature because, well, they are still goblins at heart and miss their fellow goblins. Thus far no one has been able to proffer a better theory.

Feeding & Caring for Your Varag Pups

Barghests always leave the varag babies behind, forcing the goblins to take care of them. In the early centuries of The Known Lands, receiving such varags was considered a blessing. But the goblins slowly came to realize that the varags were often more trouble than they were worth. The varags were like worgs, but smarter, wilder, and harder to control. Some were elevated to the role of chief or shaman or sorceror, but most varags either had no interest in leading or would lead their tribe to the brink of extinction. The rest of the varags wanted to spend most of their time alternating between having sex and hunting. When the goblins tried to corral the varags into some form or organized combat against rival tribes, it almost always was a total disaster. And when the varags reached adulthood, they were substatially more powerful than the strongest goblins in the tribe, and many refused to take orders from anyone. (And varags can become powerful indeed - like their barghest parent, varags can assume a lupine form which resembles a worg, though only temporarily - but usually long enough to tear any goblin to pieces.)

This was especially true on Kwsantu, which seemed to get more than its share of barghest visits for some unknown reason. So about seven hundred years ago when word got out that the thouls were building something called a city and were buying up ogrillon babies, a lot of goblin tribes got the same idea, and they started selling their varag infants to the saurial dracosaur meat caravans, who would in turn sell them to the thouls.

Rise of the Mjintean Varags

In varags the thouls had themselves yet another eugenics challenge. Firstly, all varags are born male; a female varag has yet to be born in over three thousand years of barghest-goblin copulation. On top of that, despite their unquenchable libidoes and the fecundity of their goblin cousins, varags are sterile; no varag has ever impregnated a goblin (nor any other race), though not for lack of trying. This meant that the only way to breed varags was to have a steady supply of both goblins and barghests.

The thouls were able to make some astute assumptions and observations. They assumed that the barghest mothers in Hell were able to choose where they sent their pups - otherwise they would not arrive at the goblin tribes with the high frequency that they do. Then they observed that, to a hungry barghest, not all souls are created equal - they prefer demihumans (dwarves, elves, halflings, gnomes) to humanoids (gnolls, orcs, lizardmen, etc.), and consider humans a delicacy. So the thouls set up a system by which they could attract barghests into sending their pups to Mjinte. They built a coliseum, and began buying human slaves, sometimes from as far as the western Known Lands. Whenever goblins were stupid enough to attack Mjinte (which was fairly often), they would keep ones with suitable traits for their barghest harem.

The thouls' system worked. Barghests began sending their pups to Mjinte. The pups would fight against humans in the coliseum, to the delight of tens of thousands of spectators. When barghests tired of the coliseum, the thouls would release groups of armed humans into the desert outside of Mjinte and send the barghests after them. In the downtime between these staged hunts, the barghests would be escorted to the harem, where they would find all manner of beautiful (to a barghest) goblins to entertain themselves with. These captured goblins were no longer captives and slaves, for once they found out they had both the honor of attending to barghests and also had lives of leisure for life, they had no reason to try and escape.

The thouls now found themselves with a steady supply of varag children, many from the harem and more sold to them by goblins. They had these varag boys be taught by varag men, many of whom had quit their goblin tribes in search of something more fulfilling. And they found it in Mjinte. Free from goblins worshipping them, holding them back, and otherwise pissing them off, the varags bonded together into an all-male pack. Those who shared the same mother would often forge an even more intimate clan, helping to rear their younger brothers and keep them out of trouble. Which was no easy task, since the thouls have yet to breed the wildness out of varags. The thrill of the hunt seems to cover not only prey and females, but also objects - many varags are borderline kleptomaniacs. So it was only natural that the varags would end up forming Mjinte's only thieves' guild, a group so secret and tightknit that it doesn't even have a name (who needs one when you're the only thieves' guild in town?). Just as Mjinte literally translates as "the city," Mjinteans refer to the local thieves' guild as simply The Guild (or on occasion, Those Damn Varags).

Varag children go to school with thouls and the rest of the races in Mjinte, but afterwards they are usually part of a separate, varag-only education system, one which consists of picking locks and pockets. Varags are especially nimble*, and their ability to transform into an animal which runs faster than any two-legged creature helps them to escape when their nimbleness fails them. Eventually, most young varags end up becoming members of The Guild.

A lot of Mjinteans wonder why the government doesn't just stamp out The Guild. The prevailing theory among the non-thoul, non-varag minority is that since thouls are varags are loosely related, in a third cousin twice removed sort of way, that the thouls cut them some slack. The truth is more complicated. It is more likely that the thouls prefer having one group of organized crime as opposed to rival factions, or even worse, completely unorganized crime. The Guild is relatively nonviolent, except when defending their territory (all of Mjinte) against incursion by non-Guild thieves. It is also likely that the government bribes The Guild to not rob certain offices and residences, either with money or the reduction or removal of jail sentences when thieves do get caught.

Not every member of The Guild is a varag - exceptional non-varags are admitted from time to time. Likewise, not all varags are in The Guild. Varags take the same aptitude tests that ogrillon do when they complete their education, and many are tapped to become city wizards, sorcerors, bards, clerics, and warlocks (though some accept such positions as a cover so no one will suspect they are a Guild member). Some volunteer to join the army, where they excel as scouts. Some even join the city watch, where they end up crossing swords with fellow varag in The Guild.

Varags have other customs not associated with theiving, one of which is The Harem Hunt. Varags are not monogamous; few marry. But varags are extremely territorial, and loathe sharing women with their brethren. The result is that each varag attempts to gather a harem of three to five women. When a varag reaches adulthood, he is sent out to find his mates, and cannot return until he has acquired at least one of them. Over the years he will go out and get other women to add to his harem, and will sometimes have to replace them when one leaves (something which incurs a great loss of honor, for being unable to control one's woman) or dies. Traditionally, varags have gone in search of goblin women, which were easy catches since goblins practically worship varag and the varag would take the women back to Mjinte, where life is infinitely easier compared to the wastelands of Kswantu. Desperate varags would bring back wolves, dogs, or other canine or lupine animals. In recent years, especially now that Mjinte has links to the western Known Lands, it has become fashionable for varag to bring back exotic and unusual mates - halflings, werewolves, etc.

Varag have other reasons to leave Mjinte. Some tire of the city life and wish to go "back to basics," and will live among goblins like all varags did many centuries ago. Some are sent out by The Guild to make contacts with other thieves' guilds, to learn from them and maybe set up business deals. Some are sent out by the army or government of Mjinte to scout out foreign lands. And as mentioned above some leave simply to find exotic mates for their harems.

* - over the years the thouls have been able to pair goblins with barghests such that especially dextrous varags are born. However, they haven't been able to eliminate the varag's greatest weakness - their weak constitution. Some thoul eugenicists have come to the conclusion that this weak constitution is the result of their possible hybrid lupine/goblinoid/demon nature.

More on Varags

Varags look somewhat similar to goblins, but are more muscular. They stand about three to four feet tall, and weigh between forty and fifty pounds. Varags are hairier than goblins, and their hair is always jet black, as it is in their worg form. They also have olive green skin, presumably from their barghest parent, as opposed to the yellows, oranges, and reds of most goblins.

Personality Traits

Feral - Varags have a wild streak in them, something that makes them want to go out and run and chase things. Perhaps they have some distant relation to wolves, as the goblins say. Some varags are able to control this urge better than others.

Libidinous - Somewhere in their half-breed genetic makeup some wires must have gotten crossed, because despite their complete inability to produce offspring, varag are obsessed with sex. Thoul biologists think that it is part of their hunting instinct. As with their wild streak, some varags control their sexual urges better than others, but a desperate few literally live their lives roaming from one sexual partner to the next.

Sexist - The vast majority of varags think that women exist to cook, clean, and have sex. They don't hate women or think of them as inferior, they just think that those are their roles in life. Varags are aware that some races, like saurials and urds, have little gender distinction, and some races, like humans, pretend not to. But those systems simply don't work for varags. This is not a problem when dealing with goblin women, who are taught from birth to practically worship varags. But it can create some awkward situations with other races, especially when varag are in foreign lands.

Classes

Barbarian - barbarian varags have usually left Mjinte to go live with a tribe of savages in the wastelands of Kswantu, where the goblins pay them great respect close to worship. Alternately, barbarian varags are from an island other than Kswantu, and have lived their whole lives as part of a goblin tribe.

Varag Stats

Ability Adjustments: +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution

Darkvision: Varags can see in the dark up to sixty feet.

Small Size: Like halflings and gnomes, varags count as small size creatures. A varag gains a +1 size bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Hide checks, but uses smaller weapons than medium-sized creatures use, and lifting and carrying limits are three-quarters of those of a Medium character.

Keen Senses: Varags can track by Scent like minotaurs, gray orcs, and wolfeylves.

Worg Form: Once a day a varag can polymorph into a worg. The duration of this polymorph is a number of turns equal to the varag's Hit Dice. As the varag progresses in character level, his worg form becomes stronger; the worg form gets an upgrade at 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, and 26th level.

Martial Ability: Varag excel at attacking on the run, in either their humanoid or worg form. They gain Spring Attack as a bonus feat.

Demonblood: Varags are directly related to barghests, a type of demon. As a result, they gain Fiendish Heritage as a bonus feat.

Favored Class: Rogue.

Effective Character Level (ECL): 1

OOC Notes:

- Varags in TKL are slightly different in origin and abilities from the varags found in standard D&D.



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