When the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide debuts in just a few months, it will contain the classic fantasy people for player characters: elves, dwarves, humans . . . the usual suspects.

This blog series of extra lineages doesn’t appear in the Player’s Guide . . . but if you like these, let us know here and in the Kobold Discord server. There’s potential for them to appear in an official capacity in the future!

The eonic drifter was introduced in Tome of Beasts 1 as a monster, of sorts. A human whose civilization was in danger, eonics traveled in time to try to find a way to save it. Unfortunately, the eonics got lost in time and now drift through the maelstrom of time, disoriented and unsure of how to get home.

The eonic savant arrived in Tome of Beasts 2, as a time traveling creature with a little more control. These eonics learned to harness the power of their past and future selves, but still struggle to find the correct series of actions that might save their doomed future civilization.

The lore of these monsters practically begs a GM to write adventures that use them. But what if a player wanted to play as one?

Eonic Humans

Eonics hail from a dying civilization in the far future. To save their people, a small number took to the timestream to get help from ages before and after their own. Their crystal belts allow them to travel through time, but a flaw in the belts’ construction prevents them from returning to their own time and place. They have become a displaced, desperate people.

Little is known for certain about the eonic civilization. Their people had apparently eradicated disease, overcome the limits of mortality, and conquered socio-economic-political ills such as war and oppression.

The nature of the disaster that befell their civilization is likewise unknown, though some speak of nova-portal reality destabilization, post-harmonic gravitic collapse, sunward drift, and other ominous sounding but inscrutable things.

Relatively few eonics left their civilization during the first search for assistance. However, increasing numbers of them appear outside of their own time, suggesting that their civilization experienced further collapse.

Eonics look like mummified humans. Although sometimes referred to as “eonic humans,” the rigors of their travel has made them a different kind of creature. They speak in a stilted, formal-sounding fashion, and many of them punctuate conversations with long pauses, as though deeply considering what to say next.

EONIC LINEAGE TRAITS

Your eonic character has certain hereditary traits dictated by their lineage.

Age. Eonics have endured time dilation of varying degrees. The effect this has on their lifespans is unknown, but it is assumed eonics are effectively immortal and cannot die of old age.

Size. Your size is Medium. On average, eonics stand between 5 and 6 feet tall.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Jittery. You are always on edge and prepared for the worst. Add your PB when you roll for initiative.

Practiced and Prepared. Before you set off through time, you learned as much as you could about the past. When you take part in events the GM determines will become part of the historical record, such as overthrowing a tyrannical ruler, you can leverage your knowledge of the past. Roll a d6 and add the result of the roll to one of your ability checks. Once you’ve leveraged your knowledge, you cannot do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

Wizened Flesh. Time dilation has caused your skin and tissue to age at different rates. Your skin appears mummified. You have disadvantage on CHA (Persuasion) checks, but you add your PB to your armor class.

In addition, wearing armor burdens you. While you wear armor, you gain a number of levels of exhaustion based on the weight of armor worn:

• Light armor (one level of exhaustion)
• Medium armor (two levels of exhaustion)
• Heavy armor (three levels of exhaustion)

You recover these levels of exhaustion immediately after doffing your armor.

Heritages

These heritages are open to characters of any lineage, but eonics are especially found among their numbers.

Time-Lost Drifter

Time-lost drifter heritage characters have a crystal belt. Dangling from it at irregular intervals are the crystals that give it its name. They also carry a collection of ephemera gathered from different ages. Most time-lost drifters come from the eonic lineage, but over time, crystal belts have fallen into other hands. Often, they are taken off the body of a fallen eonic, though rarely a time-displaced eonic bequeaths their belt to a person they feel is better suited to carry on the quest to save the future, and that person carries on the far-flung “culture” of the time-lost.

Indeed, the nature of being time-lost means that characters of this heritage don’t have a unified culture. They are scattered across time (and possibly space), though in some cases a handful of fellow exiles band together. Meetings between time-lost drifters look like scholarly debates with much viewing of shared objects and artifacts.

Crystal Belt. Your belt reflects your physical state. When you are not exhausted, the crystals shine with blue-white light, providing dim illumination in a 15-foot radius. The radius of illumination decreases to 10 feet when you have between one and three levels of exhaustion, and decreases to 5 feet, when you have more than three levels of exhaustion. As a bonus action, you can suppress the light from your belt until the end of your next turn.

When you take a short or long rest, you can expend hit dice to shed levels of exhaustion. Each hit die you expend decreases your exhaustion by one level.

Your crystal belt requires attunement. While you and your belt are on the same plane, you can summon it to your hand as an action.

Drift Backward. As an action, you summon a version of yourself from the future and gain 1d4 levels of exhaustion. Your future self has all of your statistics and your full hit points. It takes its turn immediately after yours. You gain one level of exhaustion at the beginning of each of your turns while you and your future self are present in the same time and place.

Your future self disappears if you or it are knocked unconscious or die. If your future self dies you must succeed on a DC 15 CON save or be stunned for 1 hour.

Time Shunt. If you are reduced to 0 HP, but not killed, your crystal belt sends you into the future to avoid further harm. You gain 1d4 levels of exhaustion, to a maximum of five levels, and disappear into the timestream. While floating in the timestream, you gain the benefits of taking a short rest and then reappear in the place you departed from 1d6 hours later than you left.

Languages. You know Common and Eonic.

Inheritor of the Future

 Characters of the inheritor of the future heritage bear one of the time-warping staves developed by eonics. Most are eonics granted their staff before setting out to save their people, though these artifacts have fallen into other hands over time, and the bearers carry on the mantle.

Regardless of lineage, inheritors are keenly aware that disaster awaits, and the actions they take now might well stave off the coming collapse.

Inheritors of the future rarely coexist easily each other. Each has a differing opinion of what actions will forestall the coming doom, and the squabble or even commit violence about their different understandings.

Given the vast scope of the future, characters of this heritage are not even necessarily from the same era. They share common assumptions and understandings, but an individual inheritor is most likely to form close-knit bonds with others who can be convinced of the importance of their goals.

Forward Thinking. When you take the Help action, the recipient of your aid can roll one additional d20 and choose the best of the 3 results.

Time-Warping Staff. You carry a time-warping staff created by the eonics at the height of their civilization. This magical quarterstaff has a number of charges equal to half your PB, rounded down (minimum 1). When you take the Attack action and hit a creature with the staff, you can use a bonus action to warp time rather than deal damage, sending your target 1d4 rounds into the future.

The creature reappears in the same location. If another creature or object is in that space, the returning creature reappears in the nearest safe space. The creature must then succeed on a CON save with a DC equal to 8 + your PB + your CHA or CON modifier (your choice). On a failure, the returning creature is stunned for 1 minute, but can make a new saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the condition on a success.

The damage you deal with the staff increases to 1d8 (Versatile [1d10]) at 5th level, and to 1d10 (Versatile [1d12]) at 11th level. Your time-warping staff requires attunement. While you and your staff are on the same plane, you can summon it to your hand as an action.

Languages. You know Common, Eonic, and one other language of your choice. Typical inheritors learn Giant or Sylvan.

Mirror Worlder

Characters of this heritage are not native to the world they live in. Through some event, intentional or accidental, they emigrated. Their true home shares the same name and largely the same geography as this one, but the histories differ in subtle ways.

The first mirror worlders were eonics whose time travel abilities malfunctioned, setting them adrift. The phenomenon repeats randomly as tears open in reality, suck beings through to a different world, and then close. Mirror worlder characters can be difficult to differentiate from native residents of an area. Often the difference between their home reality and their new one is so slight that it takes time to realize they are no longer in their original home. Their friends and loved ones aren’t quite the ones they remember. Things they know to be true aren’t quite anymore.

Mirror worlder characters primarily adventure for one of two reasons. Either they want to find a way back home or they want to explore their new world and find out how different it is from the one they are used to. The former tend to be secretive and a bit paranoid. The latter tend to be energetic and gregarious, keen to see what is over the next horizon.

Object Impermanence. While you use your Skim the Parallels feature, as an action you can pluck a single object you see in the reflection into your hand. An object taken in this way must be nonmagical, have a value of less than 20 gp, weigh 20 pounds or less, and be able to be carried in one hand. The item remains in your possession for a number of rounds equal to your PB before returning to its proper reality. You can extend the duration by 1 hour by gaining a level of exhaustion.  

Alternately, you can take the Interact with an Object action using the reflection. You can manifest that interaction in your world by making a successful DC 25 CHA (Persuasion) check to overwrite your reality. For instance, if you are faced with a locked door in your world, you can Skim the Parallels to find a reality where that door is unlocked, use your Object Impermanence feature to open the door, and make the CHA check to effect that change in your world.

You can’t use this feature if any creatures other than yourself are reflected in your viewing surface.

Skim the Parallels. As an action you can look into a reflective surface, such as a mirror or a basin of water, and see a mirror world version of your location. While you do, you can use your action on each of your turns to change the image reflected to a different mirror world. The more times you switch the view to a different world, the les subtle the differences are.

Many mirror worlds appear to be the same as the world you reside in, except a door may be unlocked, or open instead of closed, or different items lay on a table in view. You can view parallel worlds through the reflective surface while you maintain concentration, for up of 10 minutes.

You can use this feature to find a particular object or circumstance. When you do so, roll percentile dice. The result is the number of different worlds you must skim to find what you want. Once you have used this feature, you must finish a long rest before you can use it again.

Warped History. When you make an INT (History) check, roll a d4 and subtract the number rolled from your check total. When you make a CHA (Perform) check to tell a story, roll a d4 and add the number rolled to your check total as you add details from your own world’s history to strengthen your narrative.

Languages. You know Common and two additional languages of your choice. Typical mirror worlder characters learn Draconic and Giant.

Looking forward to the Tales of the Valiant RPG? So are we! The Player’s Guide and Monster Vault will be out later this year!
You can get PDF and VTT implementations of the new game at Kobold Con May 10!
Visit the Kobold Press Discord for more info!