Homebrew Amseiran - Hollowborn Species Details

I. Physical Characteristics
To encounter a Hollowborn in person is to be struck first by their stillness, and then by their strangeness. Their skin is pale and smooth, like porcelain that has never known sunlight. Beneath it, fine veins trace delicate patterns in shades of almost black violets and blues, barely visible unless caught in the right light. Their eyes are unsettling, pale and set into darkened sockets, unfocused, and too still, as though the soul behind them is watching from a great distance. Their hair grows in a narrow range of hues, from bone white to coal black, and lacks the lustre or warmth seen in untarnished mortals. Most wear it long or tied back, as if to mask the gaunt, almost corpse-like nature of their features. Their frames are slender, bones light and fine beneath the skin. In youth they tend to be unnervingly graceful, though this does not hold true in later years.

Over time, the body of a Hollowborn betrays their planar inheritance more starkly. As the resonance with Inferas deepens, black crystalline formations begin to develop along the bones beneath the skin. This phenomenon is known as the Bloom. At first, the signs are internal: stiffness, aching joints, or a strange tension in the limbs. But eventually, the crystals begin to pierce the surface in jagged protrusions, often at the shoulders, spine, or ribs. The severity and location of these eruptions vary wildly, and while some bear them stoically, others suffer immense pain. The crystals themselves are dark, lustrous, and unnervingly beautiful. It is these growths, more than anything, that set them apart physically from their mortal kin. By the time the Bloom fully manifests, there is no hiding what they are. I have seen one case where a young woman’s spine erupted with crystalline thorns over the course of a fortnight. She never walked again, yet she smiled with pride as she showed them to me.

“They’re proof,” she said, “that I belong somewhere — even if it’s not here.”

II. The Ephemeral Soul
The tainted soul of a Hollowborn is best described as ephemeral. It is thin, strained, and unstable, like a bridge half-spanning a chasm between two planes. This unstable essence grants them certain peculiar gifts. Primarily the ability to sense the flow of magic by tapping into their resonance with Inferas. However, this boon is laced with cost.

The average Hollowborn does not survive beyond five decades.Their deaths are seldom violent, though not infrequently lonely. It is widely believed that upon the severing of the flesh, their soul (or its remnants) is drawn back to Inferas, consumed by their progenitor in a final, grotesque act of inheritance. I have encountered no Hollowborn ghosts, no lingering spirits, no hauntings. When they pass, not a single spark of them remains.

III. Societal Perceptions
In my travels, I have seen the Hollowborn elicit a broad range of reactions, though fear remains the most consistent. In isolated communities, they are often regarded as omens of blight or madness, their very presence enough to sour milk or twist the weather, depending on who one asks.

I once visited a village where the locals, grim-faced and without irony, buried Hollowborn infants beneath cairns of salt and iron to prevent their “half-souls” from rising. In more learned circles, the response is often pity—measured, clinical, and sometimes uncomfortably patronising. While a handful of scholars have taken to romanticising the Hollowborn as tragic figures or reluctant heroes, I would caution against such indulgence. They are not allegories, nor curiosities to be admired from a distance.

Their unique planar attunement also makes them dangerously desirable in less scrupulous circles. I have found evidence of Hollowborn captured, traded, and used as living conduits in rituals or arcane labour. Among the more shadow soaked corners of our land, whispers speak of arcane researchers and collectors who prize them less as people and more as exotic, responsive material.

Amseiran - Hollowborn Traits

The traits of the Ifrir are wide and varied, due to their mixed heritages from many of Mortalkind.

Ancestral Melting Pot

Born from the crucible of draconic oppression, you retain many of the traits that once separated your ancestral races from one another.

Gain a Feat. Your pool of Feats include all racial options from the ancestor races of Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling and Orc.

Ability Score Increase

Choose an ability score to increase by 2, and an ability score to increase by 1.

If you gain more than one increase, you can’t apply those increases to the same ability score, and you can’t increase a score above 20.

Inferi Resonance

Your soul exists on the boundary between the Material Plane and Inferas, a realm of lingering spirits. This strange resonance heightens your awareness of magic but severs your fate from the cycle of life and death.

• Lingering Arcana. You can cast detect magic at will, without expending a spell slot or material components. Your spellcasting ability for this trait is Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (choose when you gain this trait).

• Beyond Resurrection. Your soul is anchored outside the reach of resurrection. You can’t be returned to life by any means short of a wish spell. Spells that communicate with the dead, such as speak with dead, still function at the DM’s discretion.