Ghostwise Hin
The Shadowy forest floor is soft beneath our feet, as pale beams of moonlight cut the canopy of the oak and ash trees that abound around us. Sounds of crickets and other insects assail our ever step into the deep wood. The villagers had told us tales in the Tavern that this forest had long been a place few dared enter for fear of never seeing their homes again, but that simply made us wish to find out more.
A clearing came into view with a single massive oak dominating the space,and we stepped forward thinking this may be a good spot to rest and make camp for the night.
Whispers came to our ears as we set a small campfire, and our tents, little did we notice the sounds of so many hours of the nights denizens had gone silent.
A sharp crack filled the air, as we spun about looking for the source, as several shadows swooped down from the upper branches to stop twenty feet from us, a rough hewn stone laying at our feet, the cause of the crack was now known.
As our eyes took in that which lay before us, a shiver ran through us all. The shadows were actually Giant Owls with wide circular eyes reflecting our small fire. But the owls were not what caused our nervousness.
Seated on their feathered backs, clad in hides and fur, decorated with partial skulls, and other bones, were ominous small figures. A loaded sling in one hand, reins of their Owl in the other, and a spear in view within easy reach, we had found the reason for the tavern tales.
We were treaspassers, and the territory we had entered belonged to a clan of Nightgliders. We were looking at the Ghostwise.
Class Features
Many Ghostwise Player Characters are barbarians, but rogues, druids, rangers, and clerics are also common.
As clannish nomads, Ghostwise have little need for society’s trappings, but the barbarian’s skills and class features are essential to survival in their forest homes.
- Ability Adjustment:
- Favored Class: Barbarian
- Language: Hin, Common
- Weight: 30-50 pounds
- Height: 3-4 feet
- Typical Alignment: Neutral
- Small stature: +1 size modifier to attack rolls, - +1 size modifier to AC,
- +4 size bonus to hide check
- Skill affinity (move silently): +2 racial bonus to move silently checks
- Skill affinity (listen): +2 racial bonus to listen checks
- Lucky: +1 luck bonus to all saving throws
- Fearless: +2 morale bonus to saving throws against spells and effects of the fear subtype
- Good aim: +1 racial bonus to attack rolls made with throwing weapons
Description
The Ghostwise are easily the most uncommon of the three subraces of halfling living in Faerûn. They are elusive and do not welcome strangers to their lands. Instead, they prefer to pursue a nomadic way of life within their adopted homeland, the Chondalwood, associating mainly with those of their own clan. Those who seek out the ghostwise most often fail to achieve their goal, the fortunate among them live to regret their intrusion into hin territory.
Ghostwise Society
Because clan is the focus of the Ghostwise culture, it is not surprising to find it the central factor in their society as well. The wanderlust that is one of the most readily discernable traits of both the Lightfoot and Strongheart subraces still survives in the Ghostwise, but on a more limited scale.
The nomadic wanderings of the Ghostwise clans are confined almost exclusively to the Chondalwood and its environs, where the few remaining survivors of the Ghost Wars settled after departing their native homeland of Luiren.
Each clan of Ghostwise has adopted a segment of the Chondalwood as its territory. Clan territories vary in size from less than fifty to several hundred square miles. The clan travels together as its leader directs. A number of factors influence exactly where the clan travels within its territory, including the presence or absence of hostile creatures and the relative abundance of game. There is ample room in the vast forest for all the Ghostwise clans, and so their territories are only loosely defined.
Many clans designate a natural feature—a distinctive rock, a lightning-struck tree, a stretch of a particular stream—as the center of their territory and base their wanderings on their relative distance from this place. Some clans carry a tiny portion of this central feature with them as they travel, to reinforce their spiritual connection with their territory and their homeland.
To lose or misplace one is a mistake requiring that the transgressor atone in a manner designated by the clan leader. If the Ghostwise who makes the error is a cleric or druid, the penance is assigned by a representative of his faith.
The act of atonement— often a quest or other dangerous mission or errand—must be completed successfully before the Ghostwise may obtain another portion of the clan’s central feature.
Willfully destroying a clan token is a grievous crime, punishable by exile (a fate far worse than death in the culture of the Ghostwise).
The only permissible use of the tokens is when a member of the clan falls in battle.
In that event, all nearby Ghostwise who share the same clan as the fallen scatter their tokens, be they wood, water, or stone, around the corpse. The Ghostwise believe that doing so calls the attention of He Who Must Be and ensures that no fell spirits will disturb the body of their fallen clan member until it can be attended to properly.
The Ghostwise clans cremate their dead rather than inter them.
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While Ghostwise clans keep to themselves, they do not shun one another when they meet in their travels. Instead, they exchange news and information about the forests’ conditions and creatures.
The Nightgliders
Certain of the Ghostwise clans enjoy a close association with the giant owls that make their home in the Chondalwood. It is common among these clans for some of their warriors to become nightgliders, a type of mounted defender who rides these majestic nocturnal birds. In some clans, particularly those in which the number of hin greatly exceeds the number of available mounts, the nightgliders are a hereditary class, and nearly the equivalent of warrior-nobles.
In other tribes, especially those that enjoy a much narrower ratio of hin to owl, nearly every adult Ghostwise is a nightglider. All the clans have a distinctive ceremony (The exact details of which are often influenced by the clan’s choice of patron deity) in which the new nightgliders are required to participate before taking to the skies.
Language & Literacy
Ghostwise do not learn tongues other than their own with as much frequency as other races.
The Matriarchs and Patriarchs of the various clans are apt to learn, in addition to their native language, Chondathan and Sylvan, while clerics and druids most commonly speak in Sylvan. The typical Ghostwise clan member, however, speaks only those languages that the race receives automatically (Common and Hin on Arelith).
No ghostwise are literate, except for individuals with player character classes other than barbarian.
Ghostwise Magic and Lore
Most ghostwise halfling spellcasters are clerics or druids — sorcerers and bards are rare, and wizards more so because so few Ghostwise regularly use a written language.
Spells and Spellcasting
Like the wild elves, Ghostwise sometimes add extra components to their spells to further emphasize their connection to the land. Ghostwise favor divination spells that help them safely learn about threats beyond their land, and illusion spells that keep them well-hidden.
Ghostwise Dieties
The Ghostwise acknowledge and give due respect to all the deities in the halfling pantheon.
Each clan, however, tends to adopt one specific hin deity as its patron and venerates that power above all others.
Because of their nomadic lifestyle, the Ghostwise do not build permanent temples to the gods. Rather, they maintain small shrines throughout the Chondalwood and carry symbols of their clan’s patron with them as they wander the reaches of the forest.
Two deities are of special significance to the Ghostwise: Sheela Peryroyl and Urogalan.
The Green Children, as the clerics of the Watchful Mother are called, encourage the Ghostwise clans to maintain a harmonious relationship with their woodland home. They do their best to ensure that the clans treat the forest with the respect it deserves.
The druids among Sheela’s clergy are frequently at odds with the more aggressively militant druids dwelling in the Chondalwood and warn the clans that associating with such individuals could lead the Ghostwise to commit the same grave error for which they are still trying to atone.
Worshipers who select He Who Must Be as their patron deity are more common among the Ghostwise than among the other hin subraces.
During their long period of atonement, the Ghostwise of the Chondalwood looked to Urogalan for guidance, and they strove to be worthy of his final judgment.
To this day, adventurers and travelers venturing through the great forest speak of the disturbing sounds they sometimes hear in the forest depths: quiet, somber chanting and drumming that rises and falls throughout the length of an evening in eerie counterpoint to the natural sounds of the wood.
Even those who recognize this noise as the Ghostwise ceremony in honor of Urogalan find it disturbing.
Animals and Pets
In addition to the giant owls ridden by the nightgliders, Ghostwise also associate with several other types of creatures found in the Chondalwood.
Dire Bats: A few adventuring parties who have returned recently from expeditions to the deeper parts of the Chondalwood have claimed that they were attacked by groups of ghostwise halflings mounted not on giant owls but dire bats.
According to these rumors, the bat-mounted hin were of a particularly aggressive and hostile demeanor, giving rise to speculation that perhaps not every trace of feral bloodlust has been extinguished among the Ghostwise clans.
Relations with Other Races
Most Ghostwise would prefer not to have relations with other humanoid races unless it’s absolutely necessary and clearly to the benefit of the clan.
Encounters that cannot be avoided must be tolerated with as much patience as the clan can muster, and they do not bother to mask their distrust of outsiders.
No Ghostwise will, under any circumstances, abuse or attack a guest who has the sanction of the clan Matriarch or Patriarch: To do so would be an unforgivable offense against the clan’s honor.
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