Homebrew Familiarkin Species Details

There are ten Familiarkin. No more have ever been created, and given that the facility responsible for making them was raided and destroyed, no more likely will be.

They were produced at the Aerie Institute, a floating research facility operating outside legal sanction in the Sunderplains. The process took standard arcane familiars and elevated them into sapience using souls harvested without permission from the Plane of Life. The result is a person. A real one, with genuine interiority, emotional depth, and the capacity for growth. Also a legal construct, classified as contraband under both Mortalum and planar law, on the grounds that creating persons with unresolved afterlife destinations constitutes cruelty.

Physically, they are humanoid with clear traces of their origin species. Digitigrade legs, species-appropriate fur or feathers or hide, reflective eyes, ears placed where the animal wears them. A stoat-type is small and fast and reads threat the way stoats do, with startling immediacy and zero hesitation. A fox-type processes the world primarily through smell and sound and tends to track movement before faces. The species is not costume. It is infrastructure.

They have no shared culture because there was no time to build one. The Institute was destroyed when the youngest of them was still very new. What they have instead is each other, or the memory of each other, or the search for each other. The sibling bond among Familiarkin is the closest thing they have to a foundation, and most of them are currently scattered across the continent.

The question of what happens when they die is one the Institute claimed to have resolved. No Familiarkin has died yet to confirm or deny that. The Plane of Life holds an unresolved claim on their souls. Abyssos has no documented intake process for constructed persons with unsanctioned origins. Whether they cycle through normally, return to the Plane of Life, or go somewhere else entirely is genuinely unknown. Most of them carry this knowledge quietly, without performing it.

Roleplaying Your Familiarkin

Your character has no inherited culture, no homeland, no ancestral tradition to draw from. Everything they are was built from scratch, shaped by the facility they were raised in and whatever life they have lived since leaving it. That is not inherently a tragedy. It is simply the situation. How your character feels about it is up to you.

Your origin species is not an aesthetic. It is behavior. Your character will orient toward doorways, track a smell across a crowded room, respond to perceived threat faster than the thought arrives. These things are not choices. They happen and your character has learned to account for them, or is still learning.

Your character knows they are constructed, or can discover it. They know their legal status. They know the facility is gone. What they may not know, and what your DM can confirm, is the exact state of their soul and what that means for them long-term. Some Familiarkin carry this as an abstract fact. Others find it surfaces at unexpected moments. You do not need to decide how your character relates to it before the campaign begins.

The sibling question is always present. Nine others exist somewhere. Your character may be actively looking, may have found some of them, or may be avoiding the search for reasons of their own. This is one of the most natural sources of long-term motivation available to this character and you are not obligated to use it, but it is there.

Your Were-Form and Familiar Form are your species, expressed. They are not transformations into something else. They are other versions of the same thing you already are.

Note: This race was created for lore revolving around a homebrew campaign setting. As such, you may need to make adjustments if you plan to use it in an official campaign.

Familiarkin Traits

As a Familiarkin, you possess the following traits:

Arcane Resonance

You permanently register as Conjuration and Transmutation magic to any detect magic effect. This cannot be suppressed.

Origin Instincts

You retain passive sensory and reflex traits from your base species. Work with your DM to define two specific instinctive traits.

Examples: a fox-type has advantage on Perception checks involving smell and hearing. A cat-type has advantage on Dexterity saving throws against effects they can see coming.

Familiar Form

While in this form you use the stat block of that creature with the following exceptions: your intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores do not change, you can understand all languages you know but cannot speak, and you retain your hit points. However, your Armor Class is set to 10.

You can remain in this form indefinitely and return to your humanoid form as a bonus action. 

Arcane Familiar

Spell casters within 15 feet of you can cast one 1st level spell without expending a spell slot. At level 5, this applies to 2nd level spells. At level 10, this applies to 3rd level spells.

This affect can only be used once per short rest. Starting at level 15, it can be used twice.

Were-Form

Once per long rest, you can enter your hybrid combat form as a bonus action. While transformed your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 + your Strength modifier in your choice of slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning damage appropriate to your species, your size becomes Large, and you have advantage on Strength checks and saving throws. The form lasts for 1 minute (10 rounds) or until you end it as a bonus action.