The Yngli are a squat, one-eyed people born with an inborn attunement to force, which they once turned to fine work in the great forge-halls, accelerating hammers and moving tools with a thought alone. Their own telling holds that one of their number betrayed a guarded secret of the smiths they served, and that the masters of those halls answered by binding the whole Yngli line to silence with a Deoric curse. Whatever the truth of it, the silence is real, it took hold in one stroke, and it has bred true ever since: no Yngli has spoken a clear word in living memory.
Now the Yngli struggle as second-class citizens across the Western Isles and Kura. Unable to negotiate, explain, or defend themselves verbally, they are easily exploited by those who separate them from their kin. Only when united under a rare telepath of their kind can they organize effectively, forming silent unions that communicate through gesture and force manipulation.
One refuge stands apart. In the Foggy Isles of the northern Western Isles, the Veilkeepers take in Yngli who slip away from the masters who work them, and put them to the work the order trusts to no one else: holding the secrets it collects from everyone who buys sanctuary behind the fog. A people who cannot speak a confidence aloud, bound by the same curse in every Yngli born, make the surest keepers a secret could have. Behind the veil, for once, the silence is the qualification and not the handicap.
The making
The Yngli are cyclops-kin. Like the Belgron and the rest of that one-eyed branch, they trace back to the giant-kin Gaea shaped from her own flesh, and the force-attunement that lets an Yngli accelerate a hammer with a thought is the native gift of that line. The curse gave them none of it and took none of it away. The silence came later, and from outside: a Deoric working spoken over the whole line at once by the forge-masters their own telling blames, which closed their speech and has held it closed in every Yngli born since. Force they kept. Voice they lost. A people who can shift iron across a room by will alone yet cannot say one clear word to the men who profit from them is a people built for exactly the exploitation they suffer, and whoever cut that working got a far larger and more lasting result than the single traitor it was meant to punish.
Aspects
- Forever silenced
- Natural force wielder
Vitals
- Size: Medium
- Height: 4-5 ft
- Weight: 90-140 lbs
- Max Age: 50
Game mechanics
Forceborn
Passive ability.
You gain a paragon level attunement to force.
Speechbroken
Passive ability.
Long ago, a terrible curse was placed on all yngli, preventing them from ever speaking. Although they can produce sound with their mouths with enough concentration, the sounds that come out are garbled and incoherent.