Wyrmkin [Dark Sun]

Wyrmkin are a young race, made when the undead dragon king devised a way to remake humans in his own draconic image so he would have worthy servants. They are tall, lean and hairless, with scaly hides, clawed limbs and tails but no wings. The first generation fell short of his vision: their claws are ragged, their scales blotchy and uneven, and their bodies slightly stooped and warped. The second generation are nearly copies of the dragon king himself, with proud draconic heads on long necks, rows of straight ivory teeth in long jaws, leathery scales in many colors and long, whiplike tails.

Both speak the tongue of the ancient fallen city, the first generation in a cruder dialect. Neither knows any language spoken in the region today.

First generation wyrmkin are ferocious brawlers. Crude leather and hide armor gives them AC 6, and they usually carry a bone long sword (40%) or bone club (60%). They can also make two claw attacks (1d6 each) and a bite (1d4) in one round, and their strength and sharp senses grant +1 to attack and damage with these natural weapons.

The second generation are far less fierce. Ordinary citizens rarely train for war and simply summon the templars when trouble comes. The templars are a different breed: they wear fine hide armor for AC 5, mostly carry metal weapons, and gain +1 to attack and damage with weapons made by their own people. Second generation wyrmkin have the same claw/claw/bite, but citizens consider it far too primitive to use, and templars fall back on it only when they have no choice.

Most second generation wyrmkin with character classes are templars of some kind, though a defiler who dons templar robes is still only a defiler and gains no priest spells. Those of the fire-caverns can be clerics, fighters, psionicists or thieves, but wizardry is unknown and incomprehensible to them. Those of the buried city may follow any class, defilers included, but none are preservers.

The first generation were cast out of their maker's domain long ago and now scrape out a living in the ruins of the fire-caverns, held together by a clan father named Hesk. They still worship the undead dragon king as their god even as they hate him for rejecting them. Clan elders teach them, and the high priest Vashadar occasionally visits to preach the dragon king's word. They consider themselves superior to their replacements, whom they distrust without hating, and they pray to be taken back one day.

The second generation live comfortably in the buried city among the bones of dragons. The templars guard them and tend their spirits, so ordinary folk can work and rear children in peace. Every one of them is expected to fight in the dragon king's army on the prophesied day of ascension, but until then only the templars drill for war. They see themselves as the chosen and regard the first generation with scorn and loathing.

Every wyrmkin distrusts surface folk, and the second generation are taught to hate them. Their master has declared that demihumans are to be despised and slaughtered while humans deserve pity until they can be remade as wyrmkin. This continues the great purges he and the sorcerer tyrants waged in ages past, and if his plans succeed, the surface will suffer a new round of them with the second generation as his soldiers.

The dragon king's elite troops ride vault-crawlers, savage predatory insects found in the caverns beneath his realm. For now they patrol the ceilings of the buried city, watching the streets below. Most citizens loathe them because their mounts are so vicious; a vault-crawler has been known to tear the arm off a passing citizen for no reason, and even riders struggle to rein in their bloodlust.

Four squadrons of 25 riders currently serve, destined to spearhead the invasion of the surface and outfitted with the best of the dragon king's vast magical arsenal. Each rider is a 5th-level templar with a magical weapon, usually a long sword +1, wearing enchanted armor of vault-crawler hide and carrying metal weapons or weapons carved from dead vault-crawlers' limbs. Officers are usually 8th-level templars with metal weapons enchanted up to +3. Every squadron also has a defiler of 1d6+4 level from a sorcerous college attached, carrying five random magical items from the standard tables; reroll anything too powerful. Rider and mount are trained to fight as a team, both attacking the same foe in a round, and their relentless aggression gives them +2 to initiative.

Wyrmkin are omnivores who need plenty of meat. In the fire-caverns they hunt beasts their maker released into the caves or that live naturally in the deep tunnels, and gather roots and wild fungi along the lava rivers. In the buried city they farm livestock, grow fungi and fish the black river.