Homebrew Calatante Species Details

Masters of the Wastes

The Calatante are the indigenous people of the third planet of the Farsied system, a desolate desert world that was once covered with a life-sustaining global ocean. Ever since the planet's magnetic field was shattered and its surface robbed of water, those organisms that remained had to adapt fast to a harsh, unforgiving environment. The Calatante are survival experts, able to persist and prosper in some of the most unforgiving environments known to mortal-kind.

Calatante resemble hard-shelled cephalopod and seem to constantly defy gravity, drifting over the hot silt wastes using gases within their unique helical shells. The nacreous carapaces have adapted specialized chambers for storing their locomotive gasses and reserves of lifegiving water. Hard, leathery hoods shade the creatures' delicate bodies and allow them to shut themselves within their protective shell in times of peril, only their flexible eyestalks extending from within. When things get particularly dicey, Calatante can expel air from siphoning valves in their armor to propel themselves over the ground for a speedy getaway.

Though perfectly adapted to the harsh desert environs they inhabit, the Calatante's true strength comes in their group mentalities and phenomenal ingenuity. Calatante villages consist of tight-knit extended families in which each member of the community carries a shared burden. These villages are nestled into the crevices of what many would assume to be rocky mountains jutting from the Farsied-3 wastes. In actuality, these are the colossal shells of Pangaeroids, better known to the Calatante as "Sanctuary Beasts," titanic crustaceans that burrow within the wastes and absorb nutrients from deep underground. The relationship of the Calatante and the Panagaeroids is symbiotic, with the small mollusk-folk tending to the beasts and cleaning them of parasites. In return, the Calatante are granted a stable shelter for their villages, along with protection from the many terrifying predators that stalk the silt-strewn badlands beyond.

Short-Lived Storytellers

The Calatante live short and meaningful lives, with the most venerable elders rarely making it past 50 Concordance standard years (still stubbornly held to, despite Farsied-3's much smaller orbital path than the Concordance homeworld). In their final years, most venerable Calatante go into what is known as the "Dreaming," withdrawing into their shells and becoming dormant, save only for the vibrant chromatophore patterns that flash across their carapace, said to reflect their final journey through the dreaming world. Eventually, the elder passes, and fall to the ground, gasses spent, with one final dream pattern. This visual death rattle is recorded by their next of kin for interpretation and remembrance.

In addition to carrying on the final images of their deceased, Calatante place a great importance in carrying stories and myths from generation to generation. Young mollusk-folk are immersed in their family's oral history as part of their schooling, expected to carry these ancestral narratives into their adulthood so they might add to the ever-growing tapestry of their cultural heritage. Calatante are well known for their phenomenal memories, and is only in recent times, with Farsieder scholars began taking interest, that their oral histories are being recorded through written word or audio format. The mollusk-folk are just happy to share their deep volumes of lore to any who would listen.

Eyes of the Colonized

Among the most scholarly of Calatante, there is still much debate over the impact of Farsied-3's failed colonization efforts on their culture. No Calatante oral histories predate the arrival of the Concordance colonists, suggesting that the Calatante had not yet developed a means of communicating such complicated concepts prior to their planet's colonization. Some argue that the Calatante would have never discovered language and culture if not for their first contact with the colonists, but others among their kind vehemently insist that Calatante civilization would have reached far greater heights if the invaders had never appeared in the first place.

Regardless of their stances on this issue, all Calatante can agree that relations with the Farsieders have been strained at the best of times, oppressive in the worst. Many locations sacred to the mollusk-folk were destroyed or stolen by the expansionist leaders of the colonization efforts, including such modern cornerstones as the wealthy trading port of Starfall Hollow. Wars of expansion have been waged by some of the worst outsiders, killing countless aboriginal folk through superior weaponry and plagues of extraplanetary illnesses. The era of rapid decline that met the stranded colonists brought these aggressions to a necessary end, but the cultural memory of these atrocities remains strong among the surviving Calatante and their kin. An inherently peaceful culture by nature, many of the Calatante have advocated to put old grievances behind them, to forge beneficial relations with their colonizers. A task far easier said than done, one that overlooks several centuries of violence and injustice.

Calatante Names

The Calatante language is complex mixture of vocals, shell-whistling, beak-clicking, gesturing, and chromatic displays. A much simpler dialect of the language exists to communicate with other beings, but it remains no less difficult for most mortals to comprehend and repeat. As such, most Calatante take both an "origin name" in their native tongue, and a nickname for non-Calatante folk to refer to them by.

Origin Names: Squoolkekket'vhee-Red-Purple-Red, Tekgok'leee'worl-Grey-Black, Mloolbluk'fwoothtwee-Speckled-Brown, Phlii'phlii'yraldek-Iridescent-Green, Zulblurek'chii'chii-Yellow-but-not-quite-Yellow, Arlhakarl'fii'lii'hak-Orange-Orange, Klekdakbwurlb'myiii-Heliotrope, Prii'proo'bekvhrelehbok-Polkadot-Pinstripe

Nicknames: Rojo, Hollin, Motaedo, Jadeita, Orina, Clementina, Rosso, Payasa

Calatante Traits

Your Calatante character gains traits that enable them to cope with the perils of a savage world.

Ability Score Increase

Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.

Age

Young Calatante are born with all the gasses they need to achieve buoyancy upon hatching, immediately floating into the air to take in the world around them. They reach adulthood by the age of 15 and live an average of 45 years.

Alignment

Calatante culture has a heavy focus upon community and tradition, and helping their peers to survive in the harsh wastes comes naturally to them. Most Calatante tend to be Lawful Good. Some Calatante communities are much more cloistered from their long-shared remembrances of violence and oppression, and may take hostile stances to outsiders. These more wary Calatante gravitate toward Lawful Neutral.

Size

An adult Calatante's shell reaches an average of 2 to 3 feet in diameter, and with their tendrils extended to the ground, they tend to "stand" at 3 to 4 feet tall. Due to the buoyant gasses that allow them to hover off the ground, Calatante tend toward an average weight of 15 pounds. Your size is Small.

Floatiness

When grounded, your base walking speed is 5 feet. You have a base flying speed of 30 feet, but cannot ascend more than 5 feet from the ground. When above this height, instead of falling, you can descend at a rate of 60 feet per round, as if under the effects of a Feather Fall spell.

When dashing, you expel jets of air from syphon valves in your shell to propel yourself forward. You gain no mechanical benefit from shouting "Wheeee" when doing this, but are encouraged to do so regardless.

Desert Dweller

You automatically succeed on Constitution saving throws to avoid gaining levels of exhaustion in conditions of extreme heat. Additionally, you have advantage on Survival checks to find food and water in arid environments and Animal Handling checks to influence the dispositions of familiar desert-dwelling beasts. Calatante are uniquely adjusted to surviving in harsh wastelands where most mortals would shrivel and die.

Natural Armor

Due to your shell and the shape of your body, you are ill-suited to wearing armor. Your shell provides ample protection, however; it gives you a base AC of 15. You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield’s bonus as normal.

Withdraw

You can withdraw into your shell as an action. Until you emerge, you gain a +3 bonus to AC, and you have advantage on Dexterity and Constitution saving throws. While in your shell you can’t take reactions, and the only actions you can take are a Dash action or a bonus action to emerge from your shell.

Survival Instinct

You gain proficiency in the Survival skill. Calatante have finely honed survival instincts.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Calatante and Common.

The ancestral Calatante language is a complex mixture of vocals, shell whistling, beak clicking, gesturing, and chromatic displays. It is extremely difficult for most outsiders to learn fluently, though simplified dialects exist to this end. Conversely, Common is harsh and clumsy through mollusk-folk airways, and most Calatante can only speak it aloud in a stilted, grammatically incomplete dialect. For this reason, translation technology is highly coveted by Calatante settlements.