| Andrew Bigwood |
Knocked this up this afternoon as draft for including Dvati in our Pathfinder games. Obviously could use a bit of work and I don't know about retaining bard as favoured class but what do you think??
Andrew
The Dvati in Golarion
Today the enigmatic race known as the dvati of Golarion are a people in real danger of extinction; a remnant of a darker time when the unusual traits possessed by this secretive people were necessary for survival in a much changed world. What follows is all the information I have able to obtain in regards to this tragic people….
In the years before the Age of Darkness when Xin left ancient Azlant to found Thassilon, a human tribe calling itself the Dva-te lived a simple life of hunting and gathering in the wide valley between the easternmost end of the Kodars and the Southernmost tip of the Tusk Mountains. Relatively secluded the Dva-te were largely unaware of the founding of the ancient world’s second great empire until sometime towards the end of the Age of Darkness when two of Ancient Thassilon’s warring Runelords both attempted to lay claim to the Dva-te homeland. Armies of the rival Runelords marched across the wide valley heedless of the small Dva-te villages in their path. In the months and years that followed the Dva-te people were driven before the two opposing forces, occasionally pressed into service and on more than one occasion simply eradicated as an unpleasant nuisance. The remaining tribespeople were driven deeper and deeper into the mountains as the sounds of battle raged unchecked across their traditional lands.
It was around this time that a leader arose amongst the Dva-te, or more precisely two leaders. A young warrior named Thel began preaching to the surviving Dva-te that had taken refuge in the Kodar range. Thel was possessed of an infectious fervour and he rallied the disparate Dva-te to him with promises of a reclamation of their homeland and a return to the Dva-te way of life. within a short space of time a small army of dispossessed tribespeople had formed in Kodars with Thel at their head. Through pure chance (or perhaps divine will) as Thel was preaching his message of revolution in the Kodars another young warrior named Meth was rallying the Dva-te that had fled into the Tusk Mountains.
The two young prophets’ plans for the reclamation of their valley home proceeded in unison for several months until, as the day of the attack dawned, two small armies of Dva-te warriors emerged from the safety of the mountains onto the open plains of the valley floor. Today we number this year -5293AR (the year of Earthfall). The two Dva-te forces fought valiantly but were hopelessly outnumbered by the Runelords’ armies. Despite the odds the two Dva-te armies managed to meet amidst the swirling melee. Thel and Meth fought side by side as the dwindling Dva-te began to crumble. The two warrior leaders grasped each other in a warrior’s salute ready to sell their lives for their people….and then the world went dark!
A brilliant flash from the southwest had preceded it. The sudden blackness sewed havoc amongst the Runelords forces who fled the field in horror. The surviving Dva-te warriors (numbering less than one thousand) gathered about their two leaders, fear filled their eyes but they did not run like the Thassilonian rabble.
“What are we to do,” one warrior cried.
“Few have stood against many,” the two leaders spoke as one; their voices filled with divine power, “that is all that matters. We have restored the honour of our people”. A soft glow had begun to illuminate the two figures as they spoke.
It was Apsu himself that had intervened. The great creator had been watching the battle and had been impressed by the tenacity and bravery of the Dva-te. The voice that now emanated from the two Dva-te warriors was no longer their own.
“Perhaps it is the destiny of your people to diminish. Perhaps your race is doomed to extinction. But it will not be this day. Bravery such as I have witnessed this day should not go unrewarded. I will give your people the chance to thrive; I will double your number, remake your bodies so that you may survive in the blackness that will dominate this world. The rest is in the hands of fate”.
As the assembled tribespeople watched the features of their two leaders began to change subtly until one was indistinguishable from the other. The glow encompassing the pair spread to envelop all the Dva-te and as it did so the shadows the tribespeople cast grew until they stood beside their creators. Each warrior had become two. Identical in their new forms. As Apsu had promised their new bodies were well suited to the all-encompassing night. Alabaster skin, large blue eyes and (curiously) three-fingered hands now dominated the assemblage. Despite their strange new appearance all eyes turned skyward to watch as Thelmeth ascended to the heavens; a demigod in Apsu’s service.
Xartan and Xatas
Last Chronicler of the Dvati people
This story I discovered on the walls of a tomb complex beneath the Storval Plateau. Apart from this scrap of evidence, following any record of the Dvati can be likened to following a trail of breadcrumbs during a locust plague. All that can be proven is that the roots of the race lie somewhere in the Age of Darkness and it is a tragic story to hear. They are a people whose history is fraught with persecution, death and loss. Dwarven records from the Age of Anguish describe a race of white-skinned, ‘paired’ people that were driven from their homeland by the hordes of Belkzen. Fractured records from Ancient Osirion talk of celibate twin bodyguards for some great pharaohs, records from the Tian Xia emperors record visitors who ‘walked with their own ghosts’ and even the Ulfen people speak of twin foundlings whose skin matched the snow in which they were found. All of these myths I believe refer to the Dvati. My research would seem to indicate that a wide-ranging diaspora occurred following the arrival of Belkzen’s orcish hordes that led to the state we see the Dvati people in today; a loose collection of wanderers living alongside but never really being apart of nearly every nation on Golarion. I would suggest there are less than a thousand sets of Dvati twins on Golarion at this time. It would seem that (if their own creation-myths are to be believed) that Apsu succeeded in forestalling the ultimate demise of the Dva-te but not preventing it. Nearly ten thousand years and five ages later and the race is once more reduced to less than a thousand. They are a people to be pitied.
Aeridius Paulus
Pathfinder Chronicler
