Hej-kin

Hej-kin are ugly humanoids from the natural caves and tunnels beneath the desert world. They have round, chubby faces with big noses, small slanted eyes, and short pointed ears covered in thick fur. Skin ranges from deep red to dark mossy green, most often reddish or orange, and a whole clan typically shares one shade. It is thick and tough, like softened leather.

Their language mixes hand signs with low, mumbling speech. Few surface folk know it, since it is very hard to learn: anyone trying to speak or understand it suffers -3 on the language proficiency check.

Hej-kin travel through the earth with a unique psionic power that lets them phase through rock at movement rate 3. They use it to ambush anyone who threatens their homes, imposing -2 on opponents' surprise rolls. In melee they rake with the claws of both hands, 1-4 damage each.

As capable psionicists they also attack with the mind (Psychometabolism: life draining; biofeedback, heightened senses, body equilibrium. Telepathy: mind link; contact, send thoughts, psionic crush, thought shield, intellect fortress, post-hypnotic suggestion). Like many creatures of their world they have natural psionic defense modes that are always active, even while they fight physically, as long as they have PSPs to power them.

Clans of four or five families, each of three to six members, live in caverns beside underground streams for water. Each family occupies a smaller side cave linked by tunnel to the main cavern, and runes on the outer walls mark the homes. Hej-kin never dig tunnels or caves, since disturbing the earth would violate what they hold sacred. They are omnivores, eating mostly underground plants and small subterranean animals.

Clans include warriors, priests and mages. Contact with other races is so limited that warriors and mages seldom reach 7th level or higher, and every mage is a life-respecting wizard because of the race's earth worship. Priests, all devoted to the earth like every hej-kin, often climb to very high levels and are the only ones who visit the surface, usually to investigate some danger to their home or to the earth itself. Because other races abuse and ravage the earth, hej-kin regard most of them, above and below ground, as enemies.

Hej-kin live 40 to 45 years. A clan usually stays in one spot for up to ten years before migrating. Dust ground from the dried eyes of dead hej-kin serves earth-worshipping priests as a material component for many earth spells.