Races
The last great empire, old Nerath, was ruled by humans, and it contained a place for all the common races. Even though it has fallen into ruin, the remains of the empire still serve as home to humans, dragonborn, tieflings, elves, dwarves, and others. Collectively they are called the civilized races—
they’re the ones found living together in the towns and villages of the Nentir Vale. Some of them are permanent residents, and others are travelers or wandering mercenaries looking for their next challenge.
The Nentir Vale is also a land of gender equity, where women can be found in all professions and ranks. The inhabitants of the Vale value skill and fortitude, no matter its trappings. Nobles are respected, even revered, but to the common person they are not untouchable. Respect must be earned, and nowhere in the world is there a people as ready to demand their due as in the Nentir Vale.
Adventurers and heroes can arise from these various peoples. If you’re a fighter, are you a stubborn dwarf monster-slayer, a graceful elf blademaster, or a fierce dragonborn gladiator? If you’re a wizard, are you a brave human spell-for-hire or a devious tiefling conjurer?
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Humans:
Humans are the dominant race of the Nentir Vale anywhere outside of the Dawnforge Mountains, the Harken Forest and the Stonemarch. Although humanity has developed rich cultures and styles of their own, they are also known for borrowing from others. The advanced construction techniques of the dwarves, the arcane mastery of the eladrin, and even the traditions of lost civilizations such as Bael Turath and Arkhosia can all be found in the human sphere. This leads to great variation in human architecture, clothing styles, and even religious iconography.
Physical Qualities:
The stereotypical humans from the Nentir Vale have fair to dark brown skin tone, and they cover the whole range of tans and browns in between. Their hair ranges from sandy blonde to nearly black, and their eyes are most often brown, blue, or hazel. Within those guidelines, they vary greatly in appearance.
Dragonborn:
Long ago, the dragonborn ruled over Arkhosia—a great and powerful empire that controlled vast stretches of the world. However, this prosperity would not last. Arkhosia fell into conflict with the tiefling empire of Bael Turath, and both empires destroyed each other. Today, only a few rootless clans of these honorable warriors remain to pass on their legends of ancient glory.
Their draconic heritage gives the dragonborn a strong connection to Bahamut and Tiamat, the gods most closely associated with dragonkind. A rare few dragonborn offer fealty to both deities or to other gods, but most believe that the two draconic gods represent a choice that every dragonborn must make, between Bahamut’s path of justice and honor and Tiamat’s hunger for greed and vengeance. For them, the only wrong decision is refusing to choose.
Dragonborn used to be rare sights in the Nentir Vale, with a few of them working as mercenaries or bodyguards for merchant caravans that hailed from the southern cities. However, their presence in the Vale increased when Dythan’s Legion—an army composed of about five hundred dragonborn—arrived to the region in search of past relics from their old Arkhosian Empire.
Dragonborn are still uncommon in remote villages, but their presence is more numerous in important settlements, such as Hammerfast or Fallcrest.
11 Physical Qualities:
A typical Arkhosian dragonborn’s scales can be scarlet, gold, rust, ocher, bronze, or brown. Rarely do an individual’s scales match the hue of a chromatic or metallic dragon, and scale color gives no indication of the draconic heritage a dragonborn has.
Drow:
In the Nentir Vale, the few drow that chose to abandon the Underdark normally reach the surface world through the Seven-Pillared Hall, in the Thunderspire Mountain. A few drow also dwell in the Harken Forest, members of the Hunter Spiders, a group of stranded drow from the Underdark city of Erelhei-Cinlu.
Physical Qualities:
Physically, drow resemble eladrin, with wiry builds, pleasing features, and midnight black skin that has a blue cast. Their eyes are fiery red, lavender, or blue. All drow have white hair, which most keep long and decorate with intricate pins and webbing wrought from precious metals.
Dwarves:
In time of Nerath, most of the dwarven kingdoms and city-states were absorbed into the rule of the human-controlled empire. Over countless years, dwarves spread across the most remote regions of this realm, and they can be found throughout the former lands of Nerath to this day. A few dwarven strongholds still survive from ancient times, or have been rebuilt since the fall of Nerath. In the Nentir Vale, many dwarves live in human towns, but dwarven communities can be found to the east, the most important of all is the citadel of Hammerfast.
Physical Qualities:
Dwarves of the Vale have the same variety of skin, eye, and hair colors as humans, although red hair is more common among them. Male dwarves are often bald and braid their long beards into elaborate patterns. Female dwarves braid their hair to show clan and ancestry. Dwarven attire and equipment, including weapons and shields, are decorated with bold geometric shapes, natural gems, and ancestral faces.
Eladrin:
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The eladrin originated in the Feywild, a strange realm of verdant forests, unfettered magic, and boundless wonder. Long-lived and strongly tied to the Feywild, eladrin have a detached view of the world. They often have difficulty believing that events in the mortal realm are of much importance to them, and they consider courses of action that can last for centuries. Eladrin are close cousins to the elves, and while they favor the Feywild and arcane magic more than elves do, the two races hold each other in high regard.
Eladrin are not often seen in the Nentir Vale, and are occasionally called high elves or gray elves by common folk. Some of the old manors in the Moon Hills and the nearby lands of Fallcrest were the homes of well-off eladrin families during the Nerathi Empire, and recently some younger eladrin have come from the Feywild to reclaim them. Feycrosses also dot the Harken and Winterbole Forests, and eladrin adventurers normally use them to explore the World.
Physical Qualities:
Eladrin are of human height. They are slim, and even the strongest simply look athletic rather than musclebound. They have the same range of complexions as humans, though they are more often fair than dark. Their straight, fine hair is often white, silver, or pale gold, and they wear it long and loose.
Their ears are long and pointed, and their eyes are pearly and opalescent orbs of vibrant blue, violet, or green, lacking pupils. Eladrin can’t grow facial hair and have little body hair.
Elves:
In time of Nerath, countless elven tribes were part of the human empire. Today, elves can be found in many human settlements, ranging from few individuals in small villages to entire elven communities in big towns and cities. Other elven tribes continue to wander the wilderness, though they face increasingly violent raids by orcs, goblins, and worse. In the Nentir Vale, such tribes are mostly found in the Harken Forest. Most of Harken elves are members of the Woodsinger Clan.
Elves revere the natural world, and prefer the primal power of the natural world to the arcane magic their eladrin cousins employ, but they are equally adept in its use.
Physical Qualities:
Elves are much like eladrin, but their complexions tend more toward tan or brown hues. A typical elf’s hair color is dark brown, autumn orange, mossy green, or deep gold, and they favor a wild and loose look to their hair. Their eyes are vibrant blue, violet, or green.
Gnomes:
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Gnomes are very rare in the Vale proper, although a few individuals can be seen in communities of other races. However, they have a few gnome-only communities in the Dawnforge Mountains, near Hammerfast.
Physical Qualities:
Gnomes are smaller even than halflings. They have a wild look, particularly in the hair that sprouts from their heads in random directions. Some male gnomes sprout tufts of hair from their chins, but they otherwise lack body hair. Gnome skin tone ranges from a ruddy tan through woody brown to rocky gray. Their hair can be virtually any color, from stark white to blond and various shades of brown to autumnal orange or green. Their eyes are glittering black orbs.
Goliaths:
Goliaths are mountain-dwelling nomads who see life as a grand competition. Their scattered bands have never been major adventurers in the politics of the lowland world, but they have wandered the mountain ranges of the world since the primordials first shaped the peaks and valleys. Tall and massive, goliaths revere the primal power of nature and use it to enhance their own strength.
Goliaths are driven by a fierce love of competition. Anything that can be conceived as a challenge invites goliaths to keep score, tracking their progress against both their comrades and themselves.
In the Nentir Vale, goliaths are very rare on the lowlands, but are numerous in the Dawnforge Mountains. From time to time some goliaths go to the Vale to trade with lowlanders or to work as mercenaries or bodyguards.
Physical Qualities
Goliaths tower over even dragonborn, standing between 7 and 8 feet tall. Their skin is gray or brown, mottled with darker patches that they believe hint at some aspect of each goliath’s fate or destiny. Their skin is speckled with lithoderms, coin-sized growths of bone that appear like pebbles studding their arms, shoulders, torso, and head. A bony ridge juts over their gleaming blue or green eyes. Male goliaths are bald, and females have dark hair they typically grow long and wear in braids.
Half-elves
Half-elves are a race originally descended from the union of elves and humans. Many half-elves are the direct offspring of human and elf parents. However, half-elves produce half-elf offspring among themselves, and some members of the race can trace their mixed ancestry back for generations.
Half-elves combine the best traits of both their lines, mixing the wisdom and long-term perspective of the elves with the energy, ambition, and ingenuity of their human parentage.
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Half-elves are most common in places where elves and humans live in close proximity. The uncertainty that has arisen in settled lands since the fall of the human empire of Nerath has seen countless elf and human families relocate to the settlements of the other race. In such mixed communities, half-elves are an increasingly common sight.
Physical Qualities:
Half-elves tend to be sturdier of build than elves but more slender than most humans. Half-elves have the same range of complexions as humans and elves, and like elves, half-elves often have eye or hair colors not normally found among humans. Male half-elves can grow facial hair, unlike male elves, and often sport thin mustaches, goatees, or short beards. Half-elves’ ears are about the size of human ears, but they are tapered, like the ears of their elven ancestors.
Half-Orcs:
When Nerath collapsed, the frontier territories such as the Nentir Vale were the first to fall into ruin.
Marauding tribes of orcs, previously held at bay by imperial armies, quickly encroached on settled human lands. Though isolated skirmishes between the races were the norm in the first decades after the fall of the old empire, orcs and humans were eventually forced to ally against the monstrous threats of the ancient frontier. Moreover, primal power provided a common cultural grounding between the tribes of both races, which began to forge a common culture and blood ties over time.
Physical Qualities:
Half-orcs favor their human lineage in appearance, but are distinguished by skin that tends to various shades of gray, broad jaws, and prominent lower canine teeth—though these are still a far cry from the jutting tusks of orcs. On average, they are taller and stronger than humans as well. Their hair is usually black, though it grays quickly with age. Most half-orcs who live among humans favor human styles of clothing and hairstyle, but a few adopt orc traditions, tying small bones or beads into long braids or bunches of hair.
Halflings:
Halflings are the second most numerous people in the Nentir Vale, like humans can be found nearly anywhere, and they come from any walk of life. Halfling adventurers might be related to the Halfmoon, Ostermans, or the Thistletons families from Fallcrest, or the Featherton family of Harkenwold. Halflings descended from the traders can be members of the Swiftwater, Swiftriver or Reedfoot clans.
Physical Qualities:
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They resemble small humans and are proportioned like human adults. Halflings have the same range of complexions as humans, but most halflings have dark hair and eyes. Halfling males don’t have beards, but many have long, full sideburns. Halflings of both genders often wear complicated hairstyles, featuring complex braiding and weaving.
Hamadryads:
Hamadryads are the incarnate spirits of living oak trees. Part flesh, part wood, and part fey spirit, they are the granddaughters of the seasons and the wind, and the supreme manifestations of nature’s wild beauty. Hamadryads stand at an intermediate state between playful nymph and fierce dryad. Bound to a living tree, a hamadryad ardently protects the forests of which she is a part.
Typically, a hamadryad is bound for life to a tree home that somewhat resembles her feminine shape. However, rare hamadryads are able to break the connection to their tree home by some twist of fate or destiny. Some do so in the course of surviving the destruction of their tree homes by natural disaster or monstrous forces. Others are drawn far from their forests in the name of undertaking quests meant to save those forests. Some hamadryads dwell close enough to the settlements of other races that they take up the struggles of those races. Answering their heart’s yearning call, they uproot themselves from the earth and leave all they know behind-seeking the wondrous perils and delights that are the stuff of mortal knowledge and emotion.
In the Nentir Vale, a handful of Hamadryads are bound to trees in the Harken and Winterbole Forest.
Physical Qualities:
Born of the power of nature, all hamadryads are female, and they present themselves in two aspects. In their nymph form, these creatures are idyllic paragons of fey perfection and physical beauty. Their hair and eyes match the colors of autumn leaves, from green to russet, gold, orange, red, and brown. Autumn leaves and acorns might dangle from a hamadryad's hair, and her eyes are clear orbs of green, white, or gold. The dryad aspect of a hamadryad is not dissimilar. However, when a hamadryad draws on her dryad strength, her features take on the appearance of skillfully carved wood, the patterns of the grain manifesting across her form like ripples on the surface of a pond.
Inside their forest homes, hamadryads walk unclothed in their dryad aspect, blending easily into the background of bark and foliage. When they appear before mortals and civilized creatures, hamadryads favor light, gossamer clothing. Adventuring hamadryads who set out to right the world through physical force favor armor made from natural materials such as leather or hide. Those who don heavier protection prefer the light mithral armor crafted by the eladrin and elves.
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Minotaurs:
Minotaurs present an enigma to other races. Though many minotaurs are civilized, they suffer suspicion and hatred from other races. Animosity stems not only from monstrous appearance, but also from infamy. Who can say how savage a heart beats behind a minotaur’s ribs? The minotaurs’
preference for labyrinths is legendary, but their connection to mazes is more than a quirk. It is central to their beliefs and how they see the world around them. The labyrinth is the physical representation of the spiritual and psychological journey each minotaur must undertake to make peace with its conflicted nature.
The ancient minotaur kingdom of Saruun Khel dominated the Nentir Vale before the Nerathi Empire began to colonize the regions. While Saruun Khel fell long ago, minotaurs still inhabit the Vale in significant numbers.
Physical Qualities:
Minotaurs combine the features of human and bull, having the build and musculature of a hulking humanoid, but with the cloven hooves, a bovine tail, and, their most distinctive feature of all, a bull’s head. Minotaurs take pride in their horns, and sharpness, size, and color speak to the minotaur’s power and place within its society. Fur and skin coloring runs from albino white to coal black, and everything between, though most have red or brown fur and hair, with lighter tones underneath.
Labyrinthine patterns are important to minotaurs and such decoration appears on minotaur clothing, armor, weapons, and sometimes, on their hides. Each pattern is particular to a clan, and its size and complexity helps minotaurs identify family allegiance and caste.
Pixies:
Legends of the mortal realm say that because the Feywild is the bright reflection of the world, pixies are a reflection of humanity. As the bards tell it, whenever a human child is born, a pixie also comes into existence.
Pixies are almost non existent in the Vale. A handful of individuals can be seen living in communities of other races, but all of them hail from the Feywild and came to the Vale in recent years.
Physical Qualities:
Barely over a foot tall, pixies resemble diminutive eladrin with gossamer wings. These wings sprout from their backs like those of dragonflies or butterflies, but are grander and more beautiful than either. Pixie wings come in as many colors as there are shapes to dreams. Despite their almost insubstantial quality, they are as bright as the clear dawn and as luminous as the full moonrise.
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Satyrs:
A race branded by folklore as tricksters, hedonists and charlatans, satyrs only partially deserve the dark aspect of their reputation. Satyrs first came to the mortal realm when the world was young and had not yet fully healed from the destruction of the Dawn War. That war drew the Feywild closer to the mortal realm, connecting the two worlds through rifts in the fabric of the planes that the inhabitants of the natural world would come to call fey crossings.
In the Nentir Vale, Satyrs live among the humanoids of the Winterbole Forest, and are pretty
In the Nentir Vale, Satyrs live among the humanoids of the Winterbole Forest, and are pretty