Homebrew Hellshire Species Details
There's Hellshires in these woods. Watch the trees and pray we have a cleric if you hear howling.
Hellshires are vile, savage rat folk with a sickening look that earns them a spot in the cautionary tales told to spook babes. They're well known for their stealth, greed, trickery, and violence. It's said their race was born when the first Hellshires ate their way out from within the putrid womb of their dead queen, a giant rat within the Shadowfell.
Hellshires are not feared without good reason. The rat beasts are known to operate at night, preying on weary travelers lost in the wilderness or coming down from their mountain dens to lay waste to near by villages, stealing peasants to work as slaves and devouring family pets.
Savage Traditions
Within Hellshire culture, they're restricted from producing anything of their own for both religious reasons and simple stupidity. They much instead prefer to feed off the work from others like notorious parasites, intimidating whoever they can into creating wealth for them instead. When resisted against, the Hellshires opt into violence. A typical saying within Hellshire clans is translated to, "The taste of a farmer's crops is not much different than the taste of the farmer's flesh."
House Hierarchy
At their core, the Hellshires are animals so they adopt animalistic tactics. Individually, they are quite weak which is why they instead opt to live in Houses. The hierarchy within a Hellshire House consists of (from lowest to highest): Curs, Highwaymen, Marauders (not including slaves which are typically at the bottom, below Curs). Within a large Hellshire House however, is a Count, the most powerful and wealthiest within the clan.
Strange History
As said before, it is typically believed that the Hellshires were born from the womb of a giant dead mother rat within the depths of the Shadowfell. In this dark and twisted place, they lived as savage mountain clans, before being discovered by the Raven Queen. The Raven Queen adopted the first Hellshire packs into her palace and they became infatuated with what riches they saw. From then on, the Hellshires took on aspects of the Raven Queen's court as their culture. They dress in blood-stained and tattered silk cloaks while raiding villages or adorn themselves with the jewels they've stolen from murdered parties. They adopted the Raven Queen's hatred for humanity as well, considering themselves above the "lesser man swine."
Since then, the Hellshires continue to worship the Raven Queen, amass whatever valuables or trinkets they can steal from others, and take on violent approaches to human settlements.
Hellshire Traits
Your Hellshire character has the following racial traits.Ability Score Increase
Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
Age
Hellshires reach adulthood at age 10 and live up to 100 years.
Alignment
Hellshires feed off the weakness of others to uplift themselves without any moral qualms. They tend to be chaotic evil.
Size
Hellshires are between 4 and 5 feet tall and weigh between 150 to 200 pounds. Your size is Medium. However, full grown Hellshires can grow up to 8 feet tall and weigh as much as 300 pounds.
Speed
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision
You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Quick Feet
On your turn, you can make a bonus action to dodge and take 1d4 less damage.
Feral Frenzy
When dropping below half your hit points, you can enter a feral frenzy once a day allowing you to deal an extra 1d10 bleeding damage on successful melee attacks. Afterwards however, you suffer 1 level of the exhaustion effect until long rest.
Sneaky
You are proficient in the Stealth skill. You also have advantage on Sleight Of Hand checks and saving throws.
Surprise Attack
If you surprise a creature and hit it with an attack on your first turn in combat, the attack deals an extra 2d6 damage to it. You can use this trait only once per combat.
Languages
You can speak, read, and write Common and Sylvan.
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