Homebrew Ashe Risen Species Details

Often mistaken for Changelings, this race can shift their forms with a thought. Many use this gift as a form of artistic and emotional expression. It’s also an invaluable tool for grifters, spies, and others who wish to deceive. This leads many people to treat them with suspicion.

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A Hidden People

Wherever humans live, they reside also; the question is whether their presence is known.

Ashe Risen are born to one of three paths. A few are raised in stable communities where their kind are true to their nature and deal openly with the people around them. Most are orphans, raised by other races, who find their way in the world without ever knowing another like themselves. Others are part of nomadic clans spread across the Five Nations, families who keep their true nature hidden from the single-skins. Some clans maintain safe havens in major cities and communities, but most prefer to wander the unpredictable path of the god known as the Traveler.

In creating an Ashe Risen adventurer, consider the character’s relationships with people around them. Does the character conceal their true nature? Do they embrace it? Do they have connections to others like them or are they alone and in search of companions?

Masks and Personas

In their true form, the Ashe Risen are of shimmering almost burning translucent orange/red color, with colorless eyes and colorful hair. It is rare to see them in this form, for typical Ashe Risen change their shape the way others might change clothes. A casual shape — one created on the spur of the moment, with no depth or history — is called a mask. A mask can be used to express a mood or to serve a specific purpose and then might never be used again. However, many Ashe Risen develop identities that have more depth. They build an identity over time, crafting a persona with history and beliefs. This focused identity helps them pinpoint a particular skill or emotion. An Ashe Risen adventurer might have personas for many situations, including negotiation, investigation, and combat.

Personas can be shared by multiple phoenixes; there might be three healers in a community, but whoever is on duty will adopt the persona of the kindly old medic with the name Kol. Personas can even be passed down through a family, allowing a younger changeling to take advantage of contacts established by the persona’s previous users.

Names

A changeling might use a different name for each mask and persona and adopt new names as easily as they change faces. The true first name of a changeling tends to be simple but holds deep meaning to its owner. When they are resurrected it is often that their name will change to fit the new persona they portray. 

Ashe Risen have a fluid relationship with gender, seeing it as one characteristic to change among many (they are often "resurrected" into a different gender as well).

Ashe Risen True Names: Aero, Arlen, Ikel, Oz, Pax, Tru, Zyron, Toth

Ashe Risen Resurrected Names: Noemai, Anouk, Edwige, Zira, Valyr

Ashe Risen Traits

Your character has the following traits.

Ability Score Increase

Your Charisma score increases by 2. In addition, one ability score of your choice increases by 1.

After the resurrection, your insight and intelligence score increase by 3.

Age

Ashe Risen mature slightly faster than humans but share a similar lifespan—typically a century or less.

While this race can transform to conceal their age, the effects of aging affect them similarly to humans.

However, upon their resurrection they hold the age at which they had previously died, never aging immune to the effects of time becoming immortal until they are killed by another being. 

Alignment

Phoenixes tend toward pragmatic neutrality and few embrace evil.

Medium

Your size is Medium. To set your height and weight randomly, start with rolling a size modifier:

However, because of the way this race can change their appearance, they are able to change heights at will.

 

Speed

Your base walking speed is 40 feet and your base flying speed is 20 feet

Shapechanger

As an action, you can change your appearance and your voice. You determine the specifics of the changes, including your coloration, hair length, and sex. You can also adjust your height and weight, but not so much that your size changes. You can make yourself appear as a member of another race, though none of your game statistics change. You can’t duplicate the appearance of a creature you’ve never seen, and you must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs that you have. Your clothing and equipment aren’t changed by this trait.

You stay in the new form until you use an action to revert to your true form or until you die.

Ashe Risen Instincts

You gain proficiency with two of the following skills of your choice: Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and Persuasion.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Common, Infernal (after consuming demon blood at resurrection), and two other languages of your choice.