Bolandi

Bolandi stand four to five feet tall, slender yet strongly built, with smooth brown skin, brown hair and brown eyes. Their long fingers and toes make them superb climbers, and they dress in loose linen. Besides their own tongue they speak the language of the mage-folk who share their island, though badly, since their voices are shrill and barking.

Warfare is not their way, but they defend themselves well with bow or spear. From the mage-folk they borrowed powder bombs: one dropped among foes affects everyone within 10 feet, and each target must save vs. poison or suffer sleep, paralysis or blindness, depending on the bomb, for 2d4 rounds. Weapons are sometimes coated with a paralytic that evaporates after two rounds; a creature hit must save vs. poison at +2 or be paralyzed for 2d4 rounds. Tree villages are guarded by nets dropped onto intruders.

Every adult can displace itself like a cloak of displacement once a day from maturity at 15, and twice a day from age 40. One in five has magical talent and can advance as far as 10th level as an illusionist, trained by mage-folk wizards who occasionally wish they had not bothered.

Mischief is their highest art, and crafting the flawless practical joke is the finest thing a Bolandi can achieve. The mage-folk taught them reverence for life, so their pranks never deliberately injure anyone. Villages perch among the branches, built of vines, reeds and rope woven from jungle plants.

Their roots are uncertain; they may be distant kin of the fair ogres. Centuries before the great cataclysm they lived on nearby islands of the same chain, until dark ogres arrived with brutish slave warriors. Many died, and the survivors fled to their present jungle island, where the mage-folk took them in and gained allies against the ogres. A few still live on other islands, wilder and more neutral in outlook, with no magic, having never fallen under mage-folk influence.

They live about 60 years and bear 1-3 young per decade between ages 15 and 35, though a third of infants die. Bolandi prefer plants but can eat meat when they must. Griffons, evil dragons, tigers and other hunters of man-sized prey are their natural enemies, and the dark ogres and their slaves sometimes capture Bolandi to hunt for sport.