The Grayls are among the most melancholic beings on Alaria, wooden humanoids whose backward-bent knees and perpetual sadness mark them as fundamentally different from other races. Born from ancient trees through a process that even they don't fully understand, Grayls emerge fully grown from specially prepared sacred groves, their consciousness arising from the accumulated experiences of the forest itself.
Their gray, bark-like skin and wooden flesh contain properties that make them valuable to magic item crafters, leading to a history of hunting and exploitation that has only deepened their sorrow. They find the sounds of civilization—especially human voices—physically painful, causing them to retreat ever deeper into remote forests. The Grayls move and think at a pace that matches the trees they come from, taking days to make decisions that others make in moments.
Many Grayls have found refuge in the Walking Forest, where they can move with their home as it travels, never having to abandon the trees they've come to know over decades or centuries of patient observation.
The making
A Grayls does not grow from a seed or a womb. It wakes, full-grown, out of an ancient tree in one of a handful of old groves, and that waking is the last working of a craft most of Alaria has forgotten. The elder druids who shaped the elves from wood and stone shaped slower things as well. In a few deep forests they set a working into the heartwood of the oldest trees, so that a grove which had stood long enough, and watched long enough, would gather its own accumulated awareness and stand up in a walking body to carry it. That was the whole purpose. A forest needs no memory while it stands, but a felled forest takes its centuries of watching down with it unless something can walk that memory out. The Grayls are that something. Their sorrow runs deeper than any mood. It is the accumulated weight of everything a grove remembers, set walking in a body the rest of the world keeps trying to cut down for the very wood it is made of.
Aspects
- The fast world brings only pain
- Patience measured in seasons, not moments
Vitals
- Size: Medium
- Height: 6-7 feet
- Weight: 200-300 pounds
Game mechanics
Wooden Flesh
Passive ability. Your body is made of living wood. You have +2 natural armor and take half damage from piercing weapons. Fire damage against you is doubled. You need only water and sunlight to survive—1 hour of direct sunlight counts as a meal. Wood harvested from your body (dealing 1d6 damage to you) functions as a level 2 magical crafting component with the "neutral" tag.