Homebrew Deep Tortle (Water Genasi) Species Details

I explore a wreck

Each by floor I search the deck's

A fine place to Rest

—Deep Tortle haiku

What many Deep tortles consider a simple life, others might call a life of adventure. Tortles are born near cold sandy seabeds, but as soon as they’re able to walk on two legs, they become nomad survivalists eager to explore the seas, experience its many wonders, put their skills to the test, and make new acquaintances.

Life of a Deep Tortle

A Deep tortle hatches from a Peril thick-shelled egg and spends the first few weeks of its life crawling on all fours. Its parents spend the next two years training and telling stories to their offspring. Within a year, the young Deep tortle learns to speak and to survive on its own.

A young Deep tortle and its siblings inherit whatever tools, weapons, and gifts and training their parents gave them. Each young deep tortle is expected to fend for itself. It leaves the place of its birth and finds its own corner of the sea in which to hunt, catch fish, and get by. With each passing year, a tortle hones its survival skills. It forms friendships with its neighbors while also respecting their privacy. At some point, a tortle feels an almost overwhelming urge to venture far away from home and see the surface world. It gathers up its possessions and heads into the wilderness of the surface, returning months or years later with stories of its exploits and new skills.

When a Deep tortle nears 30, it seeks out a mate and procreates. Deep Tortles lay their eggs (numbering as few as one or as many as a dozen) in sea floor sands in a fortified compound enclosed by walls that are easily defensible. Inugaakalikurit and Water Genasi are favoured mates if no tortles are around. If no such compound exists for the offspring, they build one. The parents spend the next two years of their lives guarding the compound, defending their offspring, and sharing a lifetime of knowledge before their children leave. When the children are old enough to leave the compound, they pick up whatever weapons and tools their parents left for them and set out on their own.

Beliefs

Deep Tortles have their own gods, Deep Sashelas and Auril, they believe they were the result of an affair between these water gods and were locked beneath the deep water Ice. to hide the affair until the great Catholicism freed them and their existence could be blamed on wild magics.
A Deep Tortle Home stead sprouted form the desire to creating and maintaining airy caverns below the sea and finding locations which could be used in this way for the god Deep Sashela, Dolphins often live in Deep tortle reefs, which the Deep tortels maintain after returning from the surface. 

Deep Tortles tend to be most uncomfortable underground, they believe there must be creatures who move through earth like they do water and find it unsettling. 

Adventurers at Heart, Tortles have a saying: “We wear the sea on our backs.” The shells they carry around provide all the shelter they require.
But Deep tortles feel the need to root themselves in one place once it is theirs. A Deep tortle settlement is primarily Made of sunken ships and coral reefs that are situated close enough together.  where Deep tortles can socialise with one another, share useful information, and trade with under water strangers in the safety of greater numbers.
Deep Tortles don’t regard these settlements as places worth defending with their lives, unless the home itself is their own. Deep Tortles will abandon a settlement when it no longer serves their needs.

Tortles always know their way home, to the sea of the birth, so they always know what direction their facing

 

Most tortles like to see how other creatures live and discover new customs and new ways of doing things. The urge to procreate doesn’t kick in until the end of a tortle’s life, and a tortle can spend decades away from its native land without feeling homesick. Tortles embrace a simple view of the world. It is aplace of wonder, and tortles see beauty in the ordinary. They live for the chance to hear a soft wind blowing through palm trees, to watch a frog croaking on a lily pad, or to stand in a crowded human marketplace.

Tortles like to learn new skills. They craft their own tools and weapons, and they are good at building structures and fortifications. They marvel at the works of other civilized creatures, humans in particular, and can lose themselves for years in a city, studying its architectural wonders and learning skills they can put to use when building forts to contain their offspring.

Although they spend a considerable portion of their lives in isolation, tortles are social creatures that like to form meaningful friendships. They have no inbred animus toward people of other races. In fact, a tortle will often seek out friendships with non tortles to learn new customs and new points of view.

Deep Tortle Names

Deep Tortles use Tortle first names and use the naming conventions of the sea where they were raised.
They might later assume distinctive names to capture their heritage, 

Male and Female First Names: Baka, Damu, Gar, Gura, Ini, Jappa, Kinlek, Krull, Lim, Lop, Nortle, Nulka, Olo, Ploqwat, Quee, Queg, Quott, Sunny, Tibor, Ubo, Uhok, Wabu, Xelbuk, Xopa, Yog
Male and Female Last Names: Wave, Current, Splash, Salty, Brine, 
Male and Female Heritage Names: Rider, Stream, Falls, HMS "ship-name". Barnacle Bay 
 
A full name might be: Baka Wave Rider or Sunny Splash Barnacle Bay

Deep Tortle (Water Genasi) Traits

Your Deep tortle character gains traits that enable it to cope with the perils of a savage Sea and surface world.

Ability Score Increase

Your Strength score increases by 2,
Your Wisdom score increases by 1,
Your Constitution score increases by 2

Age

Young Deep tortles crawl for a few weeks after birth before learning to walk on two legs. They reach adulthood by the age of 2 and live an average of 200 years.
their skin and shell colour lightens with age

Alignment

Deep Tortles tend to lead orderly, ritualistic lives. They develop customs and routines,
Often tending to coral reefs that grow up around the ship wrecks they inhabit.
Becoming more set in their ways as they age. Most are Chaotic good.
A few can be selfish and greedy, tending more toward evil,
but it’s unusual for a Deep tortle to shuck off daily order in favour of true chaos.

Size

Tortle adults stand 6 to 8 feet tall and average 200 - 300 pounds. Their shells account for roughly one-third of their weight. Your size is Medium.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 40 feet.

Claws

Your claws are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with them, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.

Amphibious

You can breathe air and water. Deep Tortles are natural swimmers, and can remain underwater indefinitely.

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 17 (your Dexterity modifier doesn’t affect this number). You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield’s bonus as normal.

Shell Defense

You can withdraw into your shell as an action. Until you emerge, you gain a +4 bonus to AC, and you have advantage on Strength and Constitution saving throws. While in your shell, you are prone, your speed is 0 and can’t increase, you have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws, you can’t take reactions, and the only action you can take is a bonus action to emerge from your shell.

Survival Instinct

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

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Aquan, Common, and Primordial.