Species: Humans
Humans
“Whatever breaks the sky leaves room for a bridge.”
Adaptive Flame
In a realm where gravity tilts at breakfast and dragons reshape weather by lunchtime, humans survived by becoming the most iterative people alive. They do not inherit sturdiness like dwarves or foresight like elves; they inherit the reflex to pivot. A human city studies an approaching crisis, pivots into a new craft-guild by dusk, and pivots again when tomorrow’s dawn arrives sideways.
Five Regional Strains, One Restless Thread
Centuries of living on very different kinds of floating land have produced observable divergences:
Stormveined
High-stream riggers whose cardiovascular systems literally pace with barometric swings; they feel a wind-shear in their ribs before it slams the deck.
Shardbound
Descendants of continent-sized islands treat a square mile like a parish and see the skyways only on pilgrimage.
Riftforged
Edge-dwellers hardened by dimensional static; nerves run hot with anomaly energy, giving them uncanny poise at rift-lip expeditions.
Element-Touched
Communities that grew up inside long-term elemental “weather” (lava rain, crystal blizzards, living thunder); their bodies acclimated the way desert nomads once adjusted to heat.
Momentsworn
Frontier settlers on chronal eddies; not time-mancers, but people whose families learned to cope when Wednesday sometimes arrives twice.
Together they prove the race’s unofficial motto: “The map is a draft.”
Origin & Myth
(from sky-campfire lore to academy syllabus)
“If you want to understand a human, don’t ask where their grand-father farmed—ask which way they ran when the sky cracked.”
— Vhel Osric, Riftforged historian
The Hammered Heart – First Forging
Long before the Sundering, two sibling Powers shaped mortal clay on an anvil of clouds:
Ignathar, the Steady Forge laid structure—bone, habit, the need to build.
Moridune, the Wild Ember struck sparks—impatience, wonder, urge to gamble.
Their final blow left a living fracture down the heart of each prototype.
Ignathar called it a design flaw, Moridune called it potential.
Humans call it Possibility Heat—the restless itch that pushes them off safe ledges.
The Shatterflight – Humans Meet the Air
When the Sundering sheared continents into drifting shards, most races clung to whatever landed closest.
Humans did the opposite: they moved toward the noise.
Families lashed scrap-wood into gliders and rode newborn Aetherstreams.
Miners lowered crystal cages into glowing cracks later named Rifts.
Farmers hiked inland until they struck elemental fronts—fields of ash-snow, rain that burned blue—and planted anyway.
In the epics this exodus is called the Shatterflight, but every sub-culture remembers it differently:
Sub-Culture
Their “First Survival” Story
Stormveined
A lead-blooded matriarch felt the aether-current in her temples and trimmed her sails seconds before the wind inverted, saving the first sky-caravan.
Shardbound
Twelve clans linked arms around a land-core the size of a kingdom and refused to drift. They still recite that refusal as morning prayer.
Riftforged
A hunting lodge near the Rift-scar stayed put when space wailed; they adapted instead—black static scorched their skin, but the children woke tasting anomalies on the air like spice.
Element-Touched
Border villages inside Emberon’s fallout learned to weave fire-rain cloaks from molten reed-grass; the pattern became their national crest.
Momentsworn
Settlers on a chronal eddy watched Wednesday repeat. Rather than go mad, they spent the second Wednesday practicing knife-tricks and negotiation, emerging a week wiser than their neighbours.
The Ledger-Fires – Knowledge That Walks
After the Shatterflight, parchment was scarce and time unreliable.
Human elders began the tradition of the Ledger-Fire:
Write everything you learned this season—crop notes, wind charts, lullabies.
Read it aloud as the solstice bonfire rises.
Throw the pages in. Remember what survives the flame.
Stormveined deckhands still mutter trim-angles they learned from flame-flicker shadows; Shardbound archivists paint wall-murals of each year’s best “fire-lesson” so it can’t drift away.
Founding of the Five Paths
Within three centuries PS (Post-Sundering) the flexible “human mass” had stratified into five recognisable survival schools—each tied to a landscape stress-test no other race dared adopt.
Stormveined built the first sky-tide charts and convinced Riftbulls to trust them.
Shardbound invented long-range echo-beacons so news could reach landlocked super-isles.
Riftforged mapped safe “ankers” inside anomaly belts where machines won’t melt brains.
Element-Touched founded Thermal Harmonies—rituals that bleed excess heat, frost, or static back into the soil.
Momentsworn codified the Verity Knot: a braid of three witnesses and one object that proves which day is real when clocks argue.
These feats anchor the pride—and the prejudice—each strain feels toward the others to this day.
Modern Fault-Lines
Humans never formed a world empire; they formed relay networks:
Aetherstream postal skiffs crewed by Stormveined navigators.
Shard-Spire exchanges where Shardbound scholars trade mineral rights for song-stories.
Riftforged staging hamlets that sell anomaly-proof gear (and rum) to reckless adventurers.
Element-Touched caravanserai offering temperature-safe rest for diplomats crossing fire-zones or void-frost canyons.
Moment-Fairs—midsummer markets set on chronal seams where barter lasts “all weekend” even if the weekend loops twice.
Ask ten witnesses who unites these disparate hubs and you’ll hear one answer:
“A human with a map that’s still blank on the edges.”
Cultural Pillars — Habits You Can Drop Into Any Scene
(Use these as ready-made levers: a GM twist, a PC back-story hook, a settlement’s signature festival.)
The Shardcall
Practice
When a skyscape storm cracks an island and exposes fresh resources, “Shardcallers” launch flares that paint the fracture in clan colours. Within an hour salvage crews, medics, and lore-scribes converge. It’s emergency response and gold rush rolled into one.
Adventure Hook
A Shardcaller’s beacon misfires—marking a Rift scar that shouldn’t be mined. PCs race rival crews to defuse the claim before the ground swallows an entire trade post.
Forged Names
Practice
Birth-names are clay; only deeds fire them. A storm-veined courier who outruns a cyclone might adopt “Valech Wind-Split.” Community recognises the new name if the story survives three retellings without contradiction.
Adventure Hook
A Momentsworn pilgrim insists your party witnessed her naming deed in a timeline you no longer remember—and she needs you to vouch for it at the upcoming Ledger Moot.
Debt-Chains
Practice
Humans track favours with knotted wire bracelets. Add a ring for each un-repaid boon; break a ring when the ledger balances. Cut the chain whole, and you declare yourself Anchorless—no obligations, but no one will front you credit.
Adventure Hook
A Riftforged salvage boss dies Anchorless. Her heirloom Debt-Chain winds up in the party’s pack as payment—along with every bounty hunter chasing unsettled knots.
Feast of First Fire / First Frost / First Flood
Every region celebrates the harsh element that shaped it:
Stormveined clans roast sky-eels the night the aether-currents shift to winter flow.
Shardbound cities host ground-parades when the island’s grav-engines finish annual calibration.
Riftforged camps hold silent vigils the first evening Rift-glow colours the clouds red—listening for instability in the lull.
Element-Tuned hamlets quench new tools in ritual flame / mist / brine / frost to ask the land’s blessing.
Momentsworn enclaves “skip” one meal entirely, banking the saved hour for use in crisis rituals.
Scrapwrighting
Practice
Nothing is junk. Bent sky-rail becomes storm-kite struts; cracked chronometer glass lenses a ranger’s sun-signal; spent dragonscale turns into lightning-ground for rooftop labs. Children are taught the Three-Cut Test—if an item still returns a spark, a sound, or a shard after three cuts, keep it.
Adventure Hook
A gnome artificer accuses a human scrapwright guild of cannibalising forbidden chronurgy tech. The PCs must track the black-market scraps before somebody “three-cuts” time itself.
Visual & Sensory Notes
Stormveined — Hair prone to static lift; faint ozone scent in adrenaline rushes; eyes reflect forked light when horizon clouds churn.
Shardbound — Sun-tanned or alabaster depending on elevation; palms calloused from stone paths that incline at dizzying angles; clothes incorporate counterweights—bronze hip bars, lead-lined hems.
Riftforged — Leather smells of burnt copper; pupils ringed by pale halo where Rift-flare once scorched the retina; tools strapped by quick-release magnets for zero-gravity slips.
Element-Tuned — Subtle chroma glow at pulse-points matching their primal allegiance (ember-orange, tide-teal, frost-white, storm-violet); breath steams or sparks in emotion spikes.
Momentsworn — Tattoos of minute hash-marks along forearms fade and re-ink with each “borrowed” second; voices carry an odd double-tap—word, half-beat, same word softer.
Table Impact
Lore hooks almost write themselves: find the Stormveined captain who can feel tomorrow’s wind but lost his sense of due north, or the Momentsworn broker selling yesterday’s sunset in a bottle.
Humans frame disaster as inheritance, not tragedy. When the GM says “the gravity just inverted,” expect the human PC to say, “I’ve practised this”— then improvise a rope-hitch nobody else has a name for.
Cultural Pillars: The Ledger-Fire
Humans record every adaptation—recipes, pulley designs, local lullabies—then toss the lot into communal bonfires at solstice, memorizing what matters as the pages burn. It trains new generations to absorb and let go: if a plan can’t live in the mind, it will die when the wind changes.
Risk as Currency
In VeilRift markets you pay a human not just in coin but in opportunity stakes: promise them first pick of salvage when the sky-reef calms or naming rights on the trade-wind they chart. They accept, because gambling on the unknown is the one heritage every sub-culture shares.
What This Means at the Table
Human PCs are the party’s crisis-swap: the wizard’s spell fizzles, the dwarf’s rope snaps, the elf predicts a dead end— a human grabs spare parts and makes Plan C before the silence settles.
NPC factions expect humans to volunteer for the untested path; some admire the nerve, others call it hubris, but everyone budgets for a human wildcard.
Core Identity — “Built in the Blast Zone”
Restless Middle-Weight
Humans balance two instincts that rarely coexist anywhere else:
the urge to nail something down (Ignathar’s legacy)
the itch to kick the nail free (Moridune’s spark)
Give them a secure harvest and they’ll invent sky-sails before winter. Trap them on a drifting shard and they’ll map every pebble before lunch.
Possibility Heat
The fracture left by the Sundering did not bless humans with prophecy; it cursed them with options. In play a human PC is the first to say “What if—” and the last to accept “That can’t work.” Other races call this impatience; scholars label it the Heat—a metaphysical fever that flares whenever the future feels larger than the present.
Trial by Terrain
Where elves tuned themselves to cadence and dwarves to memory, humans tuned to stress-points in the land. Hotspots of wind, rift-static, time slip, or elemental backlash sculpted five distinct survival cultures. Each views failure as tuition, not shame, which is why a human settlement looks like a prototype workshop—messy, functional, always one upgrade from collapse.
Humans stand apart from the long-rooted peoples of VeilRift not by age, strength, or elemental pedigree, but by momentum. They are the race most willing to jump first and catalogue consequences later. Where dwarves bolt islands in place and elves bend with the melody of time, humanity’s genius is iteration—take whatever the world hands you, break it into parts, and rebuild until it almost works.
Three drives shape every human culture:
Reclaim broken ground—whether that ground is stone, sky, or story.
Repurpose every shard of power that falls within reach.
Reinvent identity whenever risk promises a better tomorrow.
The four bloodlines—Stormveined, Shardbound, Riftforged, Element-Tuned, Momentsworn—are living proof. Each emerged where danger lingered longest, and each turned that danger into a survival tool rather than a tombstone.
Societal Presence — Lives Woven Into the Broken Sky
(Concrete details you can drop straight into a map, a scene description, or a supply-list.)
Stormveined Settlements – “Ports that speak the language of wind”
Typical terrain.
Natural harbours where aetherstreams descend toward sea-level, often flanked by columnar basalt cliffs.
Construction.
Stone quays are drilled straight into the cliff face, then cross-braced with copper ground-bars to bleed off static. Every roof carries a pivoting weather-vane linked to a barometric dial inside the house; a five-point swing means pull the shutters and coil the mooring cables—lightning is thirty seconds out.
Daily life.
Dock crews start before sunrise, checking tension on sky-sails and replacing blown fuses in the turbine racks. Teenagers learn to ride stormboards—flat planks with collapsible air-foils—on the gentler side eddies; the city watch issues them as emergency rescue craft once they prove they can land without breaking bones.
Why people stay.
Salt-air fisheries pay well, the windmills run smithies for free, and the next trade galleon is never more than two shifts away.
Shardbound Domains – “Country sized islands that pretend the sky never broke”
Typical terrain.
Continental-class shards—rolling farmland, long rivers, entire mountain ranges—held in place by gravity roots deep beneath the crust.
Construction.
Roads are broad and paved; bridges use reinforced trusswork because a shard’s slow tidal roll can shear lesser arches. Watch-towers mount drift markers—iron poles with hanging plumb stones that swing if the gravity vector drifts more than two degrees.
Daily life.
Bureaucracy is the local religion. Registry halls record births, harvest yields, and sky-navy recruit quotas with near-dwarven precision. Children attend state schools until they are sixteen, then choose university, guild service, or officer candidacy in the Sky-Fleet.
Why people stay.
Predictable weather, acreage to inherit, and the prestige that comes from living where maps rarely need revision.
Riftforged Frontiers – “Mining towns one tremor from evacuation”
Typical terrain.
The lips of active rifts—ragged canyons lit from below by molten aether-ore.
Construction.
Camps start as prefab steel frames sheathed in lead-lined canvas. As profits rise, frames get swapped for riveted sheet-metal bunkhouses and a reinforced infirmary. All structures sit on shock-sleds—broad, greased runners that let a building slide a meter or two when the ground convulses instead of crumpling.
Daily life.
Shifts run six hours on, twelve off; longer exposure breeds Rift Fever. At the end of every shift miners strip in spark-chambers where copper brushes dump lingering charge before it reaches the tavern stills. Scars are common and respected—each one proof you paid your tuition and came back alive.
Why people stay.
Hazard pay triples merchant wages, and the thrill of drawing raw aether-ore—VeilRift’s most valuable export—never loses its shine.
Element-Tuned Hamlets – “Villages hammered into shape by something primal”
Typical terrain.
Pockets where one elemental force—heat, frost, storm, or magma, light, or darkness—dominates everything else.
Construction examples.
Fire enclave: basalt blockhouses with chimney-stacks that feed into communal heat-exchangers—residents heat water and smelt ore off the same vent.
Ice enclave: triple-walled longhouses of resin-sealed pine; windows inset with treated crystal that channels sunlight but reflects killing cold.
Storm enclave: buildings hug the ground; roof-beams are lashed, not nailed, so the wind can flex them instead of ripping them free.
Daily life.
Children learn element rules before they read—never face the vent at dawn, always carry anti-frost grease, tap the roof twice before entering during a lightning surge.
Why people stay.
Crops and crafts no one else can match—fireglass blades, storm-spun silk, or ice-fermented spirits that never warm above freezing.
Momentsworn Enclaves – “Towns that budget time the way others ration grain”
Typical terrain.
Natural chronal eddies where minutes loop or stretch like pulled taffy.
Construction.
Half the buildings appear brand-new, the other half weathered to ruins—the street plan grows in fits each time a loop resets unfinished projects. Central plazas anchor a time-beacon: a quartz obelisk that rings when the local loop wobbles more than five seconds.
Daily life.
Residents carry time chits—thin brass tokens stamped with the enclave seal. Spend a chit at a Second Bank and you “buy” up to ten extra heartbeats, drawn from collective surplus stored during slack hours. Out-of-towners must leave a sworn memory as collateral.
Why people stay.
A baker can pull a loaf a minute after it goes in, a hunter can taunt an ambush cat, rewind, and set the trap properly, and a single well-timed heartbeat can mean the difference between merchant success and sky-pirate ruin.
These regional snapshots give you clear architecture, work rhythms, and reasons to adventure in each human homeland. Drop a visiting PC into any of them and they’ll have ready hooks—stormboard races to win, drift markers to recalibrate, flare whistles to beat, vent forges to stoke, or time chits to repay.
Relations & Reputations
(Use these lightning-quick judgments as role-play fuel; flip them on their heads for instant character quirks.)
Dwarves
Human take – “Rock-promise folk: give them a blueprint and they’ll die before they miss a line.”
Dwarven retort – “Nail-Chasers—start five projects before breakfast, finish one by winter.”
Chronoseed Elves
Human take – “Walking déjà-vu— great for tomorrow’s forecast, terrible dinner guests; they edit the menu while you chew.”
Elven nickname – “Heartbeat Hustlers—mortals who sprint through measures we haven’t even counted.”
Orcs
Human take – “Drum in a skin-sack; march beside them and you’ll reach the fight in perfect stride.”
Orcish jab – “Cloud-Talkers—swagger until the rain starts, then blame the weather.”
Gnomes
Human take – “Spark in a teacup; keep them busy or they’ll busy you.”
Gnomish sigh – “Big-Button Fingers—slap the console, wonder why it smokes.”
Halflings
Human take – “Luck on sandals; hire one, double-check your purse, then thank them when it’s fatter.”
Halfling tease – “Hurry-Tall—run everywhere, arrive just as late.”
Dragonborn
Human take – “Portable furnace; always tip the smith who can breathe his own bellows.”
Dragonborn quip – “Ash-Breathers—hack and cough the moment things heat up.”
Tieflings
Human take – “Consequences with nice horns; if they join the raid, the payout’s worth the scorch marks.”
Tiefling judgement – “Second-Chance Addicts—burn the plan, beg for another draft.”
Half-Elves
Human take – “Best of the high note and the backbeat—if they choose a side.”
Half-elf reply – “Whole-Note Dreamers—swear every verse is theirs to sing.”
Half-Orcs
Human take – “Storm before the storm: calm till the blade flashes.”
Half-orc label – “Tin-Tambours—clatter loud, dent easy.”
Riftbulls
Human take – “Keel and canvas in one body; shout a course, hang on.”
Riftbull slang – “String-Hands—need rope for tasks we handle bare-horned.”
Velari
Human take – “Night eyes, soft steps; the scout you never notice until they’re carving meat for breakfast.”
Velari warning – “Tale-Collectors—trade a promise for a story, misplace both.”
Feralith
Human take – “Raw instinct plus stone-club logic—point at target, yell ‘fetch.’”
Feralith dig – “Paper-Skins—bleed ink, cry rules.”
Half-Giants
Human take – “Mobile cranes; pay them in food and watch the fortress rise.”
Half-giant chuckle – “Pebble-Kings—tiny crowns, tall orders.”
Mechanari
Human take – “Toolbox with opinions; brilliant until a gear misquotes scripture.”
Mechanari tag – “Flesh-Firmware—patch one bug, grow two.”
Virelan
Human take – “Libraries with leaves; ask one question, prune four hours.”
Virelan aside – “Storm-Seeders—scatter ideas like thistle fluff.”
Tessarim
Human take – “Echoes in crystal—remember the details we sold for lunch.”
Tessarim murmur – “Silt-Minds—shift shape when the current changes.”
Umbralith
Human take – “Shadow with a handshake; light the lamp and trust anyway.”
Umbralith hush – “Pulse-Flares—hearts so loud they drown the quiet.”
Scorviir
Human take – “Kiln in a cloak—stand near one and your cold steel learns courage.”
Scorviir remark – “Rain-Runners—seek clouds just to cool their panic.”
Sprinkle these snap-judgements into tavern banter or negotiation scenes. They show how VeilRift’s human versatility is admired, feared, and occasionally roasted by everyone sharing the sky-lanes.
Sub-Races — Five Ways to Survive a Broken Sky
(Each entry follows the same pattern used for elves and dwarves: Role & Mythic Theme → Cultural Practices → Guardianship → Lifestyle → Appearance → Table Gift → Role-playing Seed.)
Stormveined — “Read the Wind, Ride the Risk”
Role & Mythic Theme
First aether-navigators. Their ancestors lashed rafts to the newborn jet-streams and felt the current in their veins until pulse and wind matched tempo.
Cultural Practices
Spine-Stone Ceremonies – adolescents press a sliver of magnetite against the nape; if it hums they are “wind-true” and join the deck schools.
Keel-Whisper Oaths – captains swear to translate what the hull groans at night; breaking the oath forfeits command.
What They Guard
Trade lanes, storm charts, the unwritten etiquette of giving way in tight cloud-canyons.
How They Live
Families cluster aboard treetop dock-cities, sleeping in hammocks tuned to sway at the same frequency as passing gusts. A quiet night feels wrong.
How They Look
Weather-cured skin, salt-flecked hair that floats just before a pressure drop, lightning-thread tattoos along the jaw (personal barometer).
Gift in Play — Aether Sense
Once per long rest, ask the GM: “Where will the wind—or similar hazard—shift in the next minute?” Gain advantage on the first action that exploits that answer.
Role-playing Seed
Stormveined heroes tap the rail before speaking strategy; if the wood answers with a creak they change the plan.
Shardbound — “Hold the Ground That Holds You”
Role & Mythic Theme
Stewards of the mega-isles—floating land-masses large enough to host rivers, kingdoms, and complacency. Their identity is the opposite of wanderlust: you keep the shard alive, it keeps you alive.
Cultural Practices
Bedrock Festivals – every solstice they retell the story of the day their island stopped drifting, stamping the rhythm so hard the soil remembers.
Wall-Garden Ledgers – harvest tallies and birth dates are carved into terrace retaining walls; when walls crumble, history literally erodes.
What They Guard
Stable crops, deep-root aquifers, cliff elevators that haul trade goods to passing sky-ships.
How They Live
Villages sprawl outward, not upward, mapping fields by old river bends even after the rivers dry. Travel permits are formal—leaving the shard is leaving the family tree.
How They Look
Sturdy builds, sun-browned, calloused palms from terrace work. Clothing features weighty copper buttons hammered from local ore—proof of “true soil.”
Gift in Play — Stone Kinship
Place a bare hand on any natural rock. The GM gives one useful fact: recent seismic stress, hidden voids, or if it was quarried from another shard (and roughly when).
Role-playing SeedA Shardbound PC instinctively plants both feet before every major decision, as if waiting for the island’s opinion.
Riftforged — “Make the Wound Your Workshop”
Role & Mythic Theme
Frontier prospectors and anomaly salvagers whose towns cling to the very lips of open Rifts. Generation after generation their bodies absorbed stray arcana, their customs hardened around the idea that nothing stable lasts—so turn instability into craft.
Cultural Practices
Flux-Brand Baptism – newborns’ footprints are pressed into still-cool Rift-slag; when the glass sets it becomes a personal talisman that flares if local reality distorts.
Salvage Truces – rival crews trade safe-pass ribbons before diving the same Rift-shaft; break a ribbon-oath and the Rift itself is said to learn your name.
What They Guard
Raw anomaly ores, void-glass that remembers light, and the code of “no corpse left untethered.”
How They Live
Settlements are scaffold webs over chasms, houses numbered by how many rebuilds they’ve survived. Even tavern tables are on winches—ready to haul clear if the floor shears.
How They Look
Skin freckled with star-like motes; eyes catch light in hazy rings. Leather long-coats stitched with retractable pitons, sleeves burned by crack-sparks.
Gift in Play — Rift Instinct
When a trap, spell, or terrain effect would tear, teleport, or planar-shift you, roll a d6. On a 5–6 you fall 1 category short of the danger (remain adjacent instead of over the edge, half inside a glyph rather than fully). Once per short rest.
Role-playing Seed
A Riftforged hero marks time by rebuilds, not birthdays: “I’m on my sixth frame of walls.”
Element-Tuned — “Breathe the Land, Bear Its Mark”
(regional name varies: Ember-Tuned in fire belts, Tide-Tuned on water shards, Frost-Tuned in Cryonax drift, etc.)
Role & Mythic Theme
Children of shards saturated by a single runaway element. They did not bargain with dragons; they adapted to the collateral magic left in the wake.
Cultural Practices
Pulse-Bath Rites – monthly immersion in the element (lava pools, glacial vents, charged storm mists) resets the body’s tolerance and keeps the blood humming.
Element Dowsing – reading minute shifts (smell of copper before lightning, taste of ash in morning dew) to predict resource boons or eruptions.
What They Guard
Geothermal wells, storm condensers, ember-grain that feeds half the sky-route caravans.
How They Live
Architecture mimics their element: fire enclaves use basalt domes with cooling vents; frost societies carve mirrored ice halls that refract lethal glare outward.
How They Look
Subtle chroma-veins: ember folk glow ember-orange at pulse points, tide folk show rippling teal under nails. Hair often bleached by constant elemental wash.
Gift in Play — Element Kin
Pick one element keyed to your homeland (fire, water, lightning, cold, force, etc.). You gain advantage on a single check per long rest to endure, track, or manipulate natural instances of that element (not manufactured spells). Also you can produce a minor harmless cantrip-level effect—sparking tinder, cooling a drink, condensing mist—useful for role-play but not combat advantage.
Role-playing Seed
Element-Tuned PCs judge strangers by how they treat that element: a fire-tuned smith respects a careful cook more than a brash warrior.
Momentsworn — “Count the Heartbeats You Borrow”
Role & Mythic Theme
Lineages birthed on micro-time eddies where seconds loop like eddies round a rock. They do not wield grand chronomancy; they carry tiny rents—single beats of déjà-vu they can spend or save.
Cultural Practices
Glass-Hour Journals – every evening they tip sand from a miniature hourglass onto a page, sketch the day’s key moment into the grains, then funnel it back—resetting personal continuity.
Borrow-Pledges – families trade moments the way others trade coin; a parent might gift their last “reserve” second so a child avoids a fatal slip.
What They Guard
Local clock-shrines, calibration stones used by Chronoguards, and the unspoken rule: never hoard more moments than you need.
How They Live
Villages ring bells at irregular intervals to stay sync’d; weddings involve partners swapping hourglasses for one full lunar turn before vows.
How They Look
Iridescent freckles that drift subtly over months; some sport spiral tattoos marking each borrowed second spent.
Gift in Play — Second Sight
Once per long rest you may declare “I’ve lived this heartbeat.” Immediately re-roll a failed ability check, attack, or save you just rolled. You must keep the new result.
Role-playing Seed
Momentsworn heroes habitually pause mid-sentence, checking an inner cadence before committing to words.
Shared Rite — The Draft-Line Convocation
“We redraw the map, then we walk it.”
Every five years, when comet-shards from the broken tail of Axivor drift low enough to be lassoed by sky-ships, delegations from all five blood-branches converge on a neutral shard known simply as Draft-Line.
The islet is little more than a slab of basalt hovering in mid-current, but for this one week it becomes the editing desk of mankind.
The Arrival Order
Stormveined skippers moor first, their deck-flags painted with fresh wind-data. They plant copper weather-masts that will log every pressure change during the moot.
Riftforged caravans crawl up next, winching scaffold piers over any stress-cracks they spot. If the rock can’t hold, the moot relocates—no argument.
Shardbound barques unload crates of scribed ledgers and calibrated plumb-stones. Anything they record here becomes the baseline for the next five-year census.
Element-Tuned processions arrive by element: ember clans march across heat-cables, frost clans surf ice-sleds down cold up-drafts, storm clans ride insulated glide-sails. They tap the ground, checking that Draft-Line’s aura is still neutral.
Momentsworn envoys always appear last, often through a time-ripple nobody else can see. Each carries a sealed hour-glass—the official clock of the Convocation.
The Three Working Days
Day of Bridges – Cartographers erase defunct sky-lanes and ink proposed routes on a single hide map that covers the whole plaza. Stormveined pilots argue wind vectors; Shardbound auditors demand tonnage limits; Riftforged scouts insist on hazard markers. A route unseen by all three factions does not get drawn.
Day of Fires – Element-Tuned crews ignite controlled burn-pits, frost-fumes, or static pillars (depending on region) to test how new trade proposals will disrupt local elements. If a draft corridor scorches too hot, ices too wide, or over-charges the air, it’s struck from the hide.
Day of Seconds – Momentsworn officials up-end the master hour-glass at dawn. All negotiations must close before the last grain drops. If a clause remains disputed at the final tick, that clause is declared “Anchorless” and no one may enforce it for five years—an incentive to finish the deal.
Sealing the Draft
At sunset the hide is cut into five equal segments.
Each branch takes one home, swearing to honour the lanes as drawn, not remembered.
The sixth “negative space” left on the plaza floor is torched—Ledger-Fire style—so only the memorised compromises live on.
Immediate Setting Ripple
New sky-lanes open the very next week; prices and piracy routes shift accordingly.
Aether-couriers, drift beacons, even elven chronodance judges all treat the Draft-Line Map as gospel until the next Convocation.
Any faction caught defying a marked route risks every human settlement tearing up their Debt-Chains—commercial exile on a continental scale.
Hooks for Play
Map-Snatch – A rival power hires the PCs to steal one segment of the fresh hide before the delegations depart, throwing half the sky into navigational chaos.
Anchorless Clause – Your patron discovers a needed sky-bridge fell into Anchorless status. Convince four stubborn delegations to reopen negotiations—within a Momentsworn micro-loop—before famine hits an isolated shard.
Element Crash – A meteor from Axivor lands off-course, tipping a fire belt into a frost stream. Element-Tuned wardens beg for cross-branch aid to prevent a chain reaction that could nullify the year’s entire Draft.
Iconic Figures
Captain Valech Blue-Trace
Stormveined courier who mapped the three fastest drop-lines through Cyclonix’s outer gyre. His right arm crackles with residual static; he snaps fingers to ground a charge before shaking hands.
Matron Salda Hearth-Steady
Shardbound magistrate whose court literally pivots: a grav-gear dais that tilts toward whichever litigant’s evidence outweighs the other—proof must carry mass.
Karn Rift-Weld
Riftforged salvage-smith famed for forging “echo-steel” blades cooled in Rift-flare; each weapon thrums if swung near hidden fault-lines.
Ashlen Ember-Breathed
Element-Tuned fire dancer able to walk molten slag while telling fortunes in rising sparks; rumored to channel whispers from Emberon’s brood-scales.
Chronicle Jex Time-Stolen
Momentsworn historian who single-handedly evacuated a hamlet by “buying” ten minutes from his own future. He has lived there since, on borrowed time—heart ticks audibly like a distant clock.
Language, Names & Slang
Spoken Tongues
Trade Common – lingua franca; humans mutate it fastest.
Shardcant – clipped bureaucratic dialect spoken on heavy isles; every clause ends with a directional tag (“sun-ward,” “core-deep”).
Stormsign – fingertip semaphore used by couriers on aether-rigging; also works as thieves’ cant in crowded ports.
Riftwhisper – hush-tone code of miners: vowels swallowed, consonants tapped on metal so speech won’t echo into unstable cracks.
Naming
Given Name – quick, punchy: Kael, Mira, Jask, Lyra.
Legacy Tag – ties to deed or locale: Skystep, Flintreach, River-Span.
Claim-Mark – earned after a life-defining salvage, sprint, or bargain: Storm-Drawn, Shard-Sure, Rift-Bound, Ember-Breathed, Time-Stolen.
Example: Mira Flintreach, Storm-Drawn
Idiom Clips
“Burnbright!” – praise or curse of reckless courage.
“Anchorless fool.” – someone ignoring obligations.
“Count the sparks.” – make every second pay back.
Storm-Dock Guttercant
“Flash me the blue,” means show safe passage through a stream-wall. “Ground-kiss,” a sneer for landlubbers.
High-Shard Bureaucratese
“Tilting left,” indicates the project is over-budget. “Stamp the keel,” final approval.
Crack-Field Minersign
Thumb taps on metal pipes: one tap stay clear, two taps haul line, three taps rift-flare incoming!
Element-Hearth Patiospeech
Swear by local hazard: “Ash on my tongue” (fire zone), “Frost on my breath” (ice zone).
Moment-Market Whisper-math
Numbers spoken twice: “Seven-seven minutes” = a genuine time deal, not counterfeit seconds.
Lore Hooks & Plot Threads
“The Clockless Heist”
A Momentsworn enclave’s Second Bank is robbed; thirty stored hours disappear. Stormveined raiders? Riftforged black-market? PCs must chase seconds bleeding into wrong moments—streets where noon blinks to midnight.
“Shardquake Parliament”
A continental island trembles. Shardbound engineers need a Riftforged crew to descend fault-guts, a Stormveined scout to monitor wind-stress, and an Element-Tuned frost-adept to cool magma pockets—before the land flips like a coin.
“Element-Tuned Exodus”
Cryonax advances; an ice-bonded village must migrate onto a flame-scarred shard. PCs broker peace between fire-tuned settlers and frostwalk refugees whose auras cancel camp-fires.
“Rift-Bloom Carnival”
Every decade Riftforged miners harvest bio-luminescent crystals that bloom only during Nepturon’s deep-thunder phase. Smugglers want the haul; Stormveined entertainers want the lights; scholars fear the bloom predicts a Rift surge.
Mythic Timeline Touch-Stones
(Drop these dates straight into session intros, handouts, or NPC monologues; each one explains why a human settlement looks the way it does today.)
Year 37 PS — The First Draft Line
Stormveined skippers string a rope of lightning-kites through the Broken Gulf, proving aetherstreams can be “drawn” into predictable lanes. Half the modern trade grid still follows those crackling mile-markers.
Year 184 PS — Splinter-Thaw Accords
After an entire continental shard shears into three nations, Shardbound scribes invent the Three-Claw Charter: every isle must keep a written exit-plan for when—not if—plate drift divides the land again. The Charter is why Shardbound courts feel like engineers’ workshops.
Year 611 PS — The First Rift-Forge Bloom
Riftforged prospectors refine flare-glass—a living crystal that stores kinetic heat. Within months frontier camps add glowing forge-lanterns to every tool handle; it becomes the sub-culture’s visual shorthand.
Year 1,204 PS — Ember-Blood Exodus
Cryonax’s cold wave crashes into Emberon’s fire streams. Entire Element-Tuned clans migrate, splitting into separate heat and frost sects. Their divergent architecture—arches of basalt glass vs. spires of ice-steel—dates to this sundering of kin.
Year 2,450 PS — Tick-Tithe Revolt
A Momentsworn borough refuses to repay loaned seconds to a Time-Bank syndicate. When collectors arrive, the citizens “lock the district at noon” for six days. All temporal lending now requires third-party escrow (and an elven chronodance judge on retainer).
Current Year 2,910 PS
Comet Axivor returns on a 700-year loop. Starseekers say its tail is slanted three degrees off record—evidence the Core Dragons’ territories are drifting. Stormveined captains smell richer winds; Riftforged shamans taste deeper fractures.
Design Note for Players & GMs
Humans shine when the scene is wobbling:
Give them moving parts. Collapsing sky-docks, mis-timed portals, tempers that flare mid-negotiation—those are playgrounds for Spark of Adaptation.
Reward risk. Offer the long shortcut through a Rift gorge, the untested grav-kite, the handshake deal sealed only by a Debt-Chain loop. Humans should want the bigger swing.
Let bloodlines color solutions, not supersede class. A Stormveined wizard still casts fly, but she also knows which gust will double the spell’s reach. A Riftforged barbarian still rages, but senses when the floor will fracture under a dragon’s stomp.
Play the Heat. Humans act first, worry later. When a player hesitates, remind them: “Your ancestors built gliders out of barn doors.”
Use them as the sparkplug character in mixed-race parties—the hero who elbows the story off the cliff confident they’ll jury-rig wings on the way down.
