Quevari

Nothing marks a quevari as anything but human. They love bright clothing and wear flowers in their hair, and many visitors take them for a fair-skinned branch of the wandering fortune-tellers. Their native tongue is soft and melodious, with a lyrical grammar that lets words link easily into songs and verse, and nearly all of them know a couple of other tongues besides, so conversation is seldom a problem.

For most of the month quevari are pacifists who fight only to protect themselves. They fight with what they hunt with, slings and short bows, or with farm tools such as sickles and knives, and their reluctance to harm thinking beings gives them -2 on attack rolls.

When the moon is full, a time they name the bloodmoon's rising, they become killers with an assassin's polish and accept this as part of who they are. Anyone who knew them only in their gentle phase suffers -2 on initiative in the first round. Their agility soars: natural AC improves from 10 to 7, they gain +2 on missile attacks and initiative, they gain a thief's 75% chance to hear noise, to hide in shadows and to move silently, and they climb sheer surfaces with 95% success. Their weapons stay the same, but with familiar ones they now attack at +2; with unfamiliar weapons such as a polearm or war hammer they fight normally.

Quevari live in small farming villages that rarely exceed sixty to eighty people, settling matters by vote or through an elected council. Nothing sets such a place apart from any other hamlet before the moon turns full, so visitors suspect nothing. Quevari will not volunteer that they are not entirely human, and even when asked directly they never explain the dark cycle in their minds.

During those three moonlit nights their bodies and minds change in a way scholars compare to a lycanthropy of the mind. The quevari never discuss it and have learned to blank those nights from memory, so they never warn guests to leave beforehand. To them it is simply how things are; to an unlucky traveler it is a nasty surprise.

Most of the time quevari gather berries and nuts, work small farms, and hunt or fish for meat. During the bloodmoon they become ravenous cannibals who devour the people they kill.