Tales of the Umbral Peoples

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

So... Back in QtR 28, some really cool person (AKA Jonathan Crawford) wrote an article called 'A Primer to the Umbral Peoples' presenting a ton of Ravenlofty playable species. It includes the (oversimplified but better than nothing) 5e conversion to the famous netbook caliban subraces, playable versions of monsters like carrionettes and Broken Ones, and a new category called Deathtouched (driven from 'Planetouched'), to describe half-undead (either as 'one of my parents was undead and the other was alive' or 'I was transform into undead only halfway').

Now, that article isn't perfect, but it's a ton of inspiration, and I have way more ideas for lore, characters and expanded rules than I can fit into one PC or one cohesive fanfic, so here's my dumping ground for random short stories or in-world texts. You can add your own if you want to.

[Hell_Born]

To be clear, I didn't make up the name "Deathtouched" out of nowhere. The term was taken from Dragon #313, which used the term as part of its article "Born of Death", which introduced four new Half-Race monster templates (the Half-Ghoul "Ghul", the Half-Zombie "Ghedan", the Half-Ghost "Fetch" and the Half-Vampire "Khatane") as well as the Mortif, which was a new PC race themed as being to the Half-Undead what Tieflings, Aasimar and Genasi are to Half-Fiends, Half-Celestials and Half-Elementals. That article used "Deathtouched" to refer to all five races (or "half-races") as a collective, and I simply appropriated it, while switching out Khatane for the more familiar Dhampir.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

To be clear, I didn't make up the name "Deathtouched" out of nowhere. The term was taken from Dragon #313, which used the term as part of its article "Born of Death", which introduced four new Half-Race monster templates (the Half-Ghoul "Ghul", the Half-Zombie "Ghedan", the Half-Ghost "Fetch" and the Half-Vampire "Khatane") as well as the Mortif, which was a new PC race themed as being to the Half-Undead what Tieflings, Aasimar and Genasi are to Half-Fiends, Half-Celestials and Half-Elementals. That article used "Deathtouched" to refer to all five races (or "half-races") as a collective, and I simply appropriated it, while switching out Khatane for the more familiar Dhampir.

Oh... I really thought it was original.
Were all the races in your article conversions of existing stuff, or were there inventions of your own?

[Hell_Born]

Oh... I really thought it was original.
Were all the races in your article conversions of existing stuff, or were there inventions of your own?

All conversions, in that they were all ideas that originally appeared in either official Ravenloft materials or previous Ravenloft netbooks. The article literally ends with a sidebar citing all my sources:
The Fetch, Ghedan, Ghul and Mortif originally appeared in the Dragon Magazine article "Born of Death" in issue #313.

The Braunchen originally appeared in the article "Lesser Breeds of the Arak II", in The Book of Secrets, written by Rene Littek.

Calibans originally appeared in the Ravenloft Campaign Setting for 3rd edition, but this iteration is inspired by the article "Brutes & Banshees" from Quoth the Raven #8, written by Uri "Shadowking" Barak.

Broken Ones were inspired by the article "The Making of Men" from the Book of Souls, written by John W. Mangrum.

Paka were inspired by the article "Races of the Mists: Paka" from Quoth the Raven #19, written by David "Jester" Gibson.

Ravenkin originally appeared as a playable race in the Dragon Magazine article "Half-Pint Heroes" in issue #262.

Carrionettes, Ermordenung, Lebendtod, Quevari, Bakhna Rakhna, Hebi-no-Onna, and Red Widows all debuted in the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendix.

I heavily reworked lore and mechanics to make many of them playable, since the monstrous humanoids from the RMCA in particular had extremely limited lore that literally made them just always chaotic evil sword fodder. But the basic concepts had roots, most of them in official Ravenloft material.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Oh... I really thought it was original.
Were all the races in your article conversions of existing stuff, or were there inventions of your own?

All conversions, in that they were all ideas that originally appeared in either official Ravenloft materials or previous Ravenloft netbooks.

I heavily reworked lore and mechanics to make many of them playable, since the monstrous humanoids from the RMCA in particular had extremely limited lore that literally made them just always chaotic evil sword fodder. But the basic concepts had roots, most of them in official Ravenloft material.

Of course, of course. I don't underestimate the creative work you had to do.
Actually, I'd like some advice in that regard. Can I message you in private?

[Hell_Born]

Of course, of course. I don't underestimate the creative work you had to do.
Actually, I'd like some advice in that regard. Can I message you in private?

What's on your mind?

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Of course, of course. I don't underestimate the creative work you had to do.
Actually, I'd like some advice in that regard. Can I message you in private?

What's on your mind?

Speedwagon and I are doing a new project expanding the lore on Bluetspur.
One of my core ideas for this project is that as the biggest problem with Bluetspur is that most of the domain is too inhospitable to humanoids for them to have the slimmest chance of surviving a campaign there, the logical thing would be to play in it as aberrations.
This means we need to make aberration PCs. I was thinking on Flumpfs, the famous good aberrations, and gnome ceremorphs, known to retain much of their original personality, alignment and memories.

[Hell_Born]

Speedwagon and I are doing a new project expanding the lore on Bluetspur.
One of my core ideas for this project is that as the biggest problem with Bluetspur is that most of the domain is too inhospitable to humanoids for them to have the slimmest chance of surviving a campaign there, the logical thing would be to play in it as aberrations.
This means we need to make aberration PCs. I was thinking on Flumpfs, the famous good aberrations, and gnome ceremorphs, known to retain much of their original personality, alignment and memories.

Okay... *cracks knuckles* let's discuss this. While I do get where you're coming from, aberration PCs are very hard to make work. For one, there's not much in the way of saner and more relatable species - flumphs, 5e's gnome ceremorphs, and that one race from 3rd edition's Lords of Madness are all I can think of. I'm not saying flumph PCs aren't a bad idea, but what I'd do is look to a different core racial theme.

For one, Bluetspur's gimmick is essentially that it's "the Underdark DoD". The surface is hostile, so life lives in the caves and underworld. We've known this since the first depiction of the domain. We know that the illithids actually keep entire underground farms producing food, and their escaped slaves survive by raiding these farms and stealing what they need - expand the underworld of Bluetspur, give it cavern networks well beyond the direct control of the illithids, and you give those same escaped slaves the territory they need to begin cultivating their own fungal crops and underground lakes, giving them independent food sources.

There's even a reason for the illithids to do this; in Spelljammer, it's noted that while the illithids have bred a "livestock" species called the Oortling, they still much prefer "wild" brains, because the intellectual stimulation of humanoids who are allowed to experience life and a full emotional range results in a tastier meal. Which itself builds on lore from the Illithiad, the first ever illithid sourcebook, that a major component of what the illithids actually take nourishment from is the memories and experiences they consume along with the brain tissue. So illithids might well permit "reserves" to exist because the taste of wild brains is just too maddeningly addictive to not have it, even if it does risk the safety of the colony. This would even tie into the God-Brain's curse; "domestic" brains are essentially empty calories, and only wild-caught brains can give it some sense of relief.

Speaking of Oortlings, you might also be able to do something interesting with them, and/or with brainmoss - this was a 4th edition exclusive bit of lore, where the reason that the illithids were able to form an empire in the first place was because they were able to cultivate this extraplanar fungus as a dietary substitute, reducing humanoid brains from literally their only foodstuff to a luxury consumable good. When their empire fell, they lost the ability to cultivate brainmoss, and that has prevented their numbers from rebuilding, because it's simply not plausible for a large illithid colony to successfully maintain all of the humanoids they need for food.

For another, the illithids of Bluetspur are heavily invested into biomancy. Even if you don't use the God-Brain's backstory as a mad psionicist who came to view the illithids as the key to a higher state of being from the Books of S (which I would, personally, because it's the best interpretation of the God-Brain we've ever gotten), it's canon that the illithids meddle with biology using psionics, surgery, and alchemy; Thoughts of Darkness relies on their psionic broken one ex-slaves, and the Thaani ethnicity in Barovia have always canonically been descendants of escaped human slaves from Bluetspur.

So, personally, if I were going to give bluetspur a native race array to draw PCs from, my theme would be "Pulp Underground Mutants". Creatures that naturally thrive in this pseudo-Underdark and/or which make sense as the creations or by-products of illithid fleshcrafting experiments. Obvious candidates would be calibans and broken ones from other Ravenloft, as well as other "degenerate troglodytic demihumans", such as grimlocks, lerara, derro (who even have a backstory of being artificially created human/dwarf hybrid slaves in Greyhawk), or skulks. If you want to get more fantastical than those, some of the playable races from 2e that spring to mind would be...

If you include brainmoss in your altered Bluetspur lore, failed attempts to recultivate brainmoss by infecting human brains with fleshcrafted psycho-reactive fungus could have resulted in the creation of Mold Men (aka Vegepygmies; sapient, humanoid fungus-creatures created when an alien mold consumes a humanoid corpse) and/or Sapromnemes (aka "fungal ghosts"; floating sapient fungi that resemble human brains with eyes and jellyfish tentacles; these gain sentience by growing on a humanoid corpse, absorbing the memories and personality of the body, and suffering quite an identity crisis as a result).

Chitines and Troglodytes could easily make sense as particularly stable strains of broken one, an attempt to create a more "productive" domesticated human by crossing it with a fast-breeding egg-laying animal that didn't go as their creators planned. They do overlap a lot with calibans and broken ones, though, so I'm just mentioning these to be complete. Alternatively, they (and Aspis, a communal species of beetle-people) could represent races that were native to the underworld and which are fighting back against the illithids as malevolent colonizers - this would make them a nice spin on the Spiders of Leng and the Serpentful of the Hyperborean Age, two of the more obscure Mythosian monstrous races. Come to think of it, Nagas in the "snakes with human heads that rely on magic/psionics to compensate for the no-limbs thing" sense would be another interesting byproduct of illithidic fleshcrafting...

Gibberlings actually did have PC stats in 2nd edition, and being based on the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Lurking Fear", would be a fitting addition to the Bluetspur menagerie as examples of how much the illithids can degrade their slave-stock with their fleshcrafting experiments.

The Fraal - an alien race based on the Greys, which were originally part of TSR's Alternity sci-fi RPG, but were converted in an AD&D monster and PC race - could be repurposed as a "gone horribly right" attempt by the illithids to engineer tastier slave-stock, only to instead end up with hyper-intelligent psionic powerhouses that fought their way free and have been fighting the good fight ever since.

And lastly, Flumphs. Nobody knows where flumphs came from. But they hate the illithids, and they are some of the best allies that the various free-folk tribes have, because they eagerly assist them in every way they possibly can. The illithids revile them.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

Lyra was pretty sure she'd merged with the blanket at that point. It's been eight days since she got out of bed, or had seen the sunlight, or ate more than a few bites. Everything was too much on weeks like that: the faintest glimmer was too bright, the quietest whisper too loud, even the simple action of reaching the bedside table with her hand too tiring. Like her body was one of those cranky 'websites' on Aunt Ashley's 'computer' (Lyra's mother's side of the family came from another world. Usually she wouldn't believe that nonsense, but there was no other explanation for the artifacts they brought with them.) that got stuck saying 'the user sent too many requests' even if you only pressed one button. So while the other kids debated whether to go to the Nocturne party in the town hall or celebrate with their families, Lyra was could only choose between lying on her back or on the side.
It won't be like that forever, she reminded herself. She had flares like this before. They passed after a week or two. Most of the time she wasn't that frail. Needing a cane at the age of fifteen wasn't a walk in the park (though frankly, she rarely had the energy for one of those), but she was making the best out of it. She was doing fine. But then, once in a while, she'd start getting the impression she actually is fine, thinking herself mighty enough to try running or dancing or staying outside all day - only to wake up the next morning back as a little ball of pain and fatigue. She couldn't escape the feeling it's her fault somehow, like she should've known better than trying to have fun - which was strengthened by the fact none of the doctors her father called could find a physical cause to her ailment. Few could resist the mysogynistic temptation to suggest she's simply being hysterical. Van Richten seemed to finally form a hypothesis last time he examined her, but then shook his head, saying 'One who has a hammer in hand thinks every problem a nail'. She'd strangle the bloody man with her bare hands if she had the strength to.
More than anything, she hated how bitter this situation made her. She wasn't the type that wants to strangle people who are just trying to help, not normally. But if she spends another day stuck in this darkness, with no one but the pain and shadows for company, she'd go mad.
Except that one of the shadows was... Moving?
A black blur emerged from beyond the curtains, hovering under the ceiling, drawing nearer and nearer to her. Lyra wanted to scream, but the voice wouldn't come out. The thing loomed over her, sending smoky hands toward her throat. There was nothing she could do, except -
Lyra let herself fade.
Her body was already falling apart, so why not let it? She felt her limbs dissolving into puffs of smoke, until she was not unlike the shadow itself. The world whitened around her, and she let herself fall into the mattress, hiding inside the straw.
How did I do that?
Her relief was short-lived, as the darkness followed her in.
Are you Death? Did you finally come to get me? The inevitable thought popped in her mind. That would explain everything. Or am I simply going mad?
The shadow seemed a little more solid on this side of reality, and Lyra could see the silhuette of a head over a shapeless body. It shook its head, nodded, and shook again.
No, yes, no.
Lyra was suprisingly relieved it's not Death. After all this time in agony, she started thinking she might welcome the Reaper when it comes. Her will was far stronger than she believed, apparently. Which was good. She'd need that strength right now, for the spirit was coming to get her.
She couldn't stay any longer in this form. Not knowing how, she fell further through the bed, materialising just as she landed on the floor. She felt like there was a joke about the monster under the bed to be made, but there was no time.
Now, what do I know about ghosts? Her solid-once-more muscles strained as she crawled, but she pushed through. How is it, that in all those appointments with Van RIchten, we only ever talked about medical stuff? I don't need tips about pacing now, I need to know what to do when there's a ghost in my bedroom!
She could try to reach the door. If someone sees her, they can pull her out, and then then ghost would be someone else's problem. Someone who can actually do something.
She forced herself to move, elbow after elbow, then the torso, with some help from the legs. Elbows, torso, legs, repeat. It shouldn't be that hard, right? She just needs to make it to the door... Just one more foot -
But the thing was already diving toward her, and the dead ride fast.
The smoke wrapped around her, blinding her to whatever little light remained in the room. She tried to stretch toward the door, but her hand wouldn't obey. She was tired beyond any normal human limit.
Lyra gasped, preparing for the end, but it never came

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and she kept lying on the floor for all eternity, which wasn't much worse than what she'd done so far

.
No point in draining you. She thought she heard the shadow whispering. She felt hatred from the thing - creature - that was all around her. Unadulterated loathing for everything and anything alive. If one could make ink out of it and write with it the word 'hatred' over and over again over a thousand papers, it would still not fully convey the way every little thing we do, however small, made its incorporeal equivalent of skin begin to crawl. It'd be like scraping oatmeal leftovers from the bottom of a bowl, when there are so many full ones on the table, up for grabs, fresh and hot...
Right! Lyra thought, encouraged. You don't want to eat me! I'm not tasty at all! I'm all skin and bones, and I'm on, like, five different medicines by now...
Then she realised what 'so many full bowls' had to mean.
Stay away from my family! She gritted her teeth.
How will you force me, when you don't have even the energy to make a sound?
With the power of love? IDK, but I'll come up with something.
She concentrated on the thought of her little siblings. Imagined Ginny's face, Ben's laughter - it gave her the willpower to move one more inch, than another one.
Why are you even trying? The shadow mocked her. They weren't there for you in your darkest hour. Why would you be in theirs?
They weren't because they couldn't. They'd only make it worse. As much as I hated the soltitude, conversation would be using reserves I didn't have. She explained. She was almost there. It's stupid, how the things that make you happy are suddenly the ones that hurt most. Even seeing the sunlight would be a torture to me right now.
And all at once, she felt something new from the ghost. The hatred was still there, but there was also... Understanding?
Of course, dumbass! It's an undead, they're sensitive to sunlight!
But what could she do? She was almost near the door - start crawling to the window on the other side of the room now? She had a knack for illusions, but she never managed to create light itself.
Ezra, she really did have to do this with the power of love.
I know what it's like, She said mentally. to spend your days alone in the dark, feeling like the world itself is set against you, starting to think of life as of something that happens to other people. I know it's the worst nightmare we don't even realise we have. I know how easy it is for this situation to turn you bitter and hopeless and hateful, eaten by envy of all the people who still walk in the light. But I also know we can rise above it. Fate can take away our health, beauty, intelligence - life, in your case - but it can never take away our kindness. And it matters, even if it doesn't seem like you can do much with it.
The shadow swirled. Reconsidering, perhaps?
I see your pain. I share your pain. But this is excactly why I beg you: do not inflict it on others today.
Lyra thought she'd seen the air clearing before she fell asleep.

"Lyra? Are you alright? Why are you on the floor?" Her father loomed over her.
"I didn't have the energy to get up..." She murmured. "Is it gone? The shadow? Is everything okay?"
"Shadow? What in the mists are you talking about, child? Why were you on the floor to begin with? Did you fall? Did anything break?"
"Ugh... Sort of? Long story, don't ask."
And suddenly Lyra realised she had a long story to tell. She spoke to a ghost. Saved her family from a ghost. Turned into a ghost, for a moment.
She probwbly had a more interesting Nocturne than anyone else in town.



____________________

This fic was inspired by the 'Fetch' (half-ghost) species, by the 'research' (if watching a few videos on the topic can be called that) I did a while ago about the lives of people with severe chronic illnesses for a different project, and a little bit by Michael Jendalis' backstory.

I'm not sure if Lyra is having a telepathic conversation with the shadow in a medium-y way or just rolling a nat 20 on a few insight checks, nor how exactly her familiy came to ravenloft or where did her ghost side came from. Do you have an idea?
To me, the story really just bloomed from this single moment of a girl and a ghost bonding over the shared sorrow of watching life from the side as it happens to other people.

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

I know a few people who struggle with chronic fatigue, so that part spoke to me. I liked how Lyra used her struggle to empathize with the spirit and temper its malice.

I think I spotted a small word mix-up. I assume the spirit is talking about scraping the bottom of a bowl, not a bowel. The subsequent line about "full bowels" makes it sound like Lyra's family is constipated.

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

I know a few people who struggle with chronic fatigue, so that part spoke to me. I liked how Lyra used her struggle to empathize with the spirit and temper its malice.

I think I spotted a small word mix-up. I assume the spirit is talking about scraping the bottom of a bowl, not a bowel. The subsequent line about "full bowels" makes it sound like Lyra's family is constipated.

Mists of Death....
English isn't my first language... I cracked up laughing right now...

[TheArcaneWeirdo]

fixed it.

[ArcticPine]

This sounds like a great idea for a thread. The Deathtouched concept especially feels like it has loads of room for different stories without every character needing the same origin or tone.

I also like the idea of doing it through short in-world pieces rather than trying to turn everything into one huge setting document. That usually makes this kind of lore feel a lot more alive.