This is the third article looking at the lineages in the Tales of the Valiant game, not as fantasy stereotypes but as if they’re alien species similar to what you’d find in science fiction.
The point of this is straightforward: your character’s lineage should be a cornerstone of deep roleplaying, not just a mechanism for gaining some bonuses you’d like to have. Elves, dwarves, smallfolk, and the crew aren’t just humans with pointy ears or lush beards. Like everyone, you and me included, they are products of their culture, their upbringing, and their genes, which are very different from one lineage to another: one might even say alien. They don’t think, act, or view the world the way humans do—and that’s a fascinating roleplaying challenge.
The Assumptions
This article looks at beastkin with the typical, recommended heritage of wildlands or, to a lesser degree, slayer. Some of what’s stated here won’t apply to beastkin with different heritages—and it might apply fully to other characters with the slayer or wildlands heritage. In general, wherever we state “beastkin,” we mean “typical wildlands beastkin.”
The traits ascribed to beastkin in this article aren’t exhaustive or universal. You’re free and encouraged to devise your own cultural details for your character, using these as a guide. But make it different, thought provoking, and most of all, a solid hook for a unique roleplaying experience. If you want to play your character like a human, play a human.
Wildlands Beastkin
The two most common heritage choices for beastkin are slayer and wildlands. The slayer heritage implies an upbringing that’s not too far off from simply being raised to be an adventurer. For this article, we’re going to focus on beastkin with the wildlands heritage, which is practically tailor-made for beastkin.
Beastkin is a new lineage that ToV brings to the table, and it feels unique. And anything that’s unique is inherently fascinating. What makes them unique? What characteristics make them so different?
- Most beastkin have physical features that identify them as something different from humans, elves, dwarves, and other branches of humanity. Those features can startle or even terrify people who aren’t accustomed to seeing beastkin.
- Many beastkin have short lifespans; only a few decades, in many cases.
- The communities where wildlands beastkin are born and raised exist between the civilized and the wild. This isn’t simply a remote or rural setting. It’s an ill-defined region where the mundane world and the fey world overlap. Wildlands beastkin belong to both realms yet don’t fully belong to either.
- All beastkin are prone to primal, animalistic urges. This can cause problems in civilized places with laws, customs, and moral codes very different from the beastkin’s home region.
Getting Comfortable in My Skin
Beastkin don’t look like you or me or your odd cousin. They don’t look like anyone you’ve ever met or ever will meet. They resemble creatures of myth, monsters that frighten children, or even nightmares.
We might think a strange, bestial, or even frightening appearance is no problem in a fantasy world because people would be accustomed to seeing unfamiliar, mythical, and anomalous creatures.
The exact opposite is more plausible; in a world with real, live werewolves, gnolls, satyrs, harpies, shapeshifting hags, demons, and countless other animal-like monsters that would tear your arms off just for making eye contact, common folk are more likely, not less, to assume anything that looks even remotely like a monster IS a monster.
Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation must treat dangerous-looking strangers as threats until they prove otherwise. Anything else can get you and your family killed, or worse.
The fact that the hulking, shaggy elk-headed creature is accompanied by a human, an elf, and a dwarf says nothing about its good intentions. If anything, it throws suspicion on the human, the elf, and the dwarf.
This problem is exacerbated by the tremendous variety in beastkin appearance. Beyond a basically humanoid shape, beastkin features follow no consistent pattern. A human who’s dealt with half a dozen beastkin before can still be unsure what sort of creature or monster they’re seeing when they meet number seven.
Further, living apart from civilization makes beastkin rare in populated areas. Anywhere they go outside their own communities, they may be the first beastkin to visit. In every new place they go, they might need to prove their good intentions before being welcome.
As the player of a beastkin, how you react to that treatment is a fundamental component of your character. Do you shrug it off? Try to be an ambassador for all beastkin? Or are you just damned sick of people judging you solely on your appearance?
Carpe Diem
A few beastkin live long lives, but most have only a handful of decades in this world. Unlike the short-lived animals they resemble, beastkin are well aware of their mortality. Time always presses on them, and they dislike wasting it.
Some beastkin deal with this by adopting a “live in the moment” philosophy. Others, however, realize that a short lifespan is best served by taking a long view. A creature that lives a century or more can afford to slowly build up knowledge and experience. A beastkin needs to learn as much as possible during its short childhood and adolescence to make the most of its lifetime.
Beastkin learn tradition and the ways of their ancestors while young and confidently follow those lessons through life. They don’t have time to waste experimenting with customs or learning ethics by trial and error. Beastkin can seem rigidly tradition-bound to those who don’t understand where these traditions come from or how they equip beastkin to deal with confounding foreign societies.
Between Two Worlds
All beastkin are closely tied to the natural world, and wildlands beastkin are even more so. To them, the merging of nature and community is as fundamental as breathing. It is, in every possible sense, the natural order of things.
Other creatures that gather in cities and call themselves civilized don’t see it that way. Nature and civilization are separate and distinct. Some go so far as to see nature as something to subdue, conquer, and bend to the will of civilization.
These opposed viewpoints are bound to come into conflict. Beastkin don’t reject civilization, but they might not understand how or why other seemingly intelligent creatures split the world into two camps.
That confusion can cut in both directions. A hermit who lives alone in a cave, surviving on frogs and moss, makes no more sense than a wealthy city merchant who burns down forests to expand cotton fields or poisons a thriving stream with mine tailings. To the beastkin, both of those lives are grossly, sickly out of balance.
As above, different beastkin characters can react to this in different ways. What’s important is for the player to decide what that reaction will be and how it affects the character’s relationship with the broad, contradictory, paradoxical world outside their community. Does it make them sad, confused, or angry? Does it have anything to do with why they became an adventurer in the first place?
Living with My Inner Animal
Beastkin society is a unique mix of civilization and savagery. They have laws and culture and tradition, but inside each beastkin is also a wild animal with a longing to race headlong through thick forest, or stalk prey, or soar above the treetops before plunging earthward to the kill.
This is not a mere passing “oh, that’d be cool” feeling but a primal need, an instinctive urge. Just because beastkin are “civilized” doesn’t mean they suppress this urge. It’s a fundamental part of who they are both as individuals and as a culture. They can resist it, but why should they?
Much of what young beastkin learn from their ancestral traditions is how to use their savage urges not as beasts do—simply to eat or survive—but as intelligent, planning creatures do, to further their own goals and causes and to protect what they hold dear.
Roleplaying Your Beastkin
Beastkin are complex, paradoxical creatures, which makes them a fascinating roleplaying challenge. To get the most from your roleplaying experience, keep these ideas in mind:
- You will often be mistrusted, disliked, suspected, feared, or even attacked for no better reason than your appearance. Whether you treat that as a challenge or an injustice is your choice; both are valid.
- Life is short, but your ancestors left you powerful traditions to help you make the most of it. You decide what those traditions are, but once decided, cling to them as if your life depended on it. In many ways, it does.
- The rest of the world sees nature and civilization as opposing forces. To you they’re inextricable, two sides of the same coin. Splitting them makes no sense. Steering others to that understanding could be your calling.
- The wild beast in you can’t be denied or suppressed, and it shouldn’t be. But it can be steered toward serving a greater purpose than simply surviving and reproducing without losing any of its wildness.
Follow those precepts, and your beastkin character will be one to remember.