The Sennites are a pragmatic and often reviled clan of dwarves residing in Sennos. With slimy green skin and webbed fingers, they adapted to life in Ennros Lake after a desperate magical pact saved them from drowning when their underground home flooded. They are viewed as untrustworthy backstabbers by other dwarves, but in truth, they simply value survival above honor.
The making
When the old Sennite delvings broke into Ennros Lake and began to flood, the clan did not pray to Krondeum or Gromnuul, who had no answer for drowning. They bargained instead with the thing already living in the lake's deepest trench, a drowned power the Sennites name Orghul. Orghul knew Deoric, and for a price it spoke the clan into a shape that could live in the water: green slick skin, webbed hands, lungs that take the lake as easily as air. The price was not paid once. Deoric costs life, and the working that lets a Sennite breathe has to be fed, so every generation tithes a measure of its own years down into the trench to keep Orghul speaking. Stop paying and the gift closes; the lake they were remade to live in becomes the lake that drowns them. They were saved and caught in the same breath, and other dwarves are not wrong to call them bound. They simply think drowning is worse.
They are proficient in Deoric magic, having traded forbidden secrets with entities of the deep to survive in their watery prison. Their settlements are built half-submerged in the lake's murky waters, accessible only to those who can breathe beneath the surface. The Sennites have long memories and longer grudges against those who abandoned them to drown.
Aspects
- Survival over honor
- Lake-locked