Grugach [Elf]

Grugach are wild elves related to the sylvan or wood elves, but shorter, slighter and strikingly pale. Away from their tribal camps they go about in leather armor tooled with leaves or the shapes of deep-forest beasts. Unless noted here, they follow the rules for wood elves and for elves generally.

Wood elves are known to be secretive and sometimes deadly to trespassers, but it is the grugach who earned them their name for merciless hostility to outsiders. A party that meets elves who cannot speak common should assume the worst: grugach know only elvish, the speech of treants and the languages of certain other woodland beings.

These are the strongest of all elves, broad-shouldered and ferocious, adding +2 to Strength (a 19 counts as 18/01 and a 20 as 18/51). The tangled old-growth forest leaves little room to swing a blade, so they are weaker swordsmen than other elves, but they gain +1 to attack rolls with both spears and bows.

Their true art is trapping. Pits and snares surround their lands, so well hidden that anyone walking past one has a 90% chance of setting it off. Travelers who slow to a movement rate of 3 and watch every step lower that chance to 30%. Whether a victim escapes a sprung trap depends on the trap and how alert the victim is, but as a rule allow a save vs. breath weapon at -2.

A typical pit is ten feet deep with an earthen floor and spikes below. A fall deals 1d4, plus 1d4+2 spikes that each strike for 1d6, plus any poison smeared on them. Snares usually loop around a victim and yank it into the air five feet or more. Deadfalls drop a heavy log for 6d6 damage and pin the victim beneath it. Poisoned spikes and deadfalls are generally placed where an intruder has already entered grugach lands.

There are no grugach wizards, but multi-classed fighter/druids are common. They fight to keep civilization out of the woods and strangers out of their territory.

Long ago a branch of the wood elves withdrew into the deepest forests to become the grugach. They tolerate no trespass, not from other elves and not even from druids or other forest-loving folk. Two old elven poems claim this devotion is why forest creatures treat them as with animal friendship, and grugach sometimes ride stags.

A band is made of roughly six families, each numbering five to ten elves, spread through a loose camp of huts on the ground or in the trees. Intruders who seem harmless and well-meaning are seized, drugged, blindfolded and led far into the woods to be released where they cannot betray the camp. Evil intruders, or anyone who fights back, will almost certainly be killed.

Grugach love platinum, which they think beautiful and ideal for jewelry. Treasure hunters sometimes stalk them for it, only to find they carry little wealth, and then to discover with horror how relentlessly the elves hunt down would-be robbers.

Grugach live in balance with their forest and are the only intelligent people in their part of it. Guarding the woods against every other thinking race is the purpose of their lives.