The Craven were built as servants. Human handmagicians set out to make an intelligent, obedient race and made instead a people clever enough to turn terrible cruelty back against the very bindings meant to hold them. These crow-headed humanoids with their clawed hands and feet possess brilliant minds trapped within bodies compelled to obey any direct command, unless they have somehow broken free of this curse.
Created through dark magic that bound their souls to servitude, the Craven cannot directly or knowingly kill any living thing—attempting to do so results in their own instant death. However, centuries of slavery have taught them to work within these constraints with horrifying creativity. Those still enslaved dream of freedom while carrying out their masters' commands with perfect obedience. Those who have broken free, the "Unchained," often become masters of indirect violence and psychological torture.
Their corvid features—black feathers, sharp beaks, and glittering dark eyes—combined with their reputation make them feared across Alaria. Even freed Craven struggle to find acceptance, as their appearance immediately marks them as either dangerous slaves or vengeful Unchained.
The making
The maker has a name the Craven have not let themselves forget: Velmaro, a handmagician of the Great Expansion who wanted servants that could think but could never refuse. He worked in titan-bone Deoric, the one medium that holds a command for good, and cut three things into the stock he built. The crow-headed body. An obedience that cannot be reasoned out of. And a bar against killing so absolute that a Craven who takes a life drops dead on the spot. Deoric is paid in life, and a working that thorough took most of Velmaro's. What he did not intend was the durability of his success. He had built them to be made, not born, and yet the Craven breed, because the command copied itself so deep that it rides in the blood now and passes from parent to child with no one to renew it. Every Craven since is born already owing the obedience, already barred from the killing, carrying a dead man's working at the center of itself. The servitude needs no master to keep it running. It runs on its own, one generation handing it to the next.
Aspects
- Bound by magic, freed by will
- Vengeance is best served indirectly
Vitals
- Size: Medium
- Height: 4.5-5.5 feet
- Weight: 80-140 pounds
Game mechanics
Take No Life
Passive ability. You are magically prevented from directly or intentionally killing any living creature. If you cause a death through direct action or knowing inaction, you instantly die with no possibility of resurrection.
Insatiable Mind
Passive ability. Your brilliant corvid intellect absorbs knowledge at an extraordinary rate. For every 7 XP you gain, gain an additional 1 XP.