Though their elder glory is long diminished, the Boshaari continue the honoured traditions that have kept their people aloft for thousands of cycles. Yet this hard-working fair folk can never stray far away from the cacophony of intrigues that plays out in veiled backalleys and darkest shadows.
Statblock
| Size |
Medium |
| Lifespan |
130-160 (stays relatively fit and youthful until 120, at which point health starts to degrade) |
| Magic Ability |
15-18% of the population are called Fae-Touched, meaning they are able to perform Spellweaving. Most Boshaari have a rough understanding of the outline of Arcana, even if they cannot perform it themselves. |
| Crownworld |
Aistanar |
| Major Faction(s) |
Boshaari Council |
| Language |
Aisnaya |
| Average height |
5′4″‒6′0″ (1.63‒1.8 m) |
| Average weight |
130‒170 lb (59‒77 kg) |
| Skin colour |
Lightly tanned to dark brown, often with ethereal or iridescent features |
| Hair colour |
Dark brown, autumn orange, mossy green, deep gold |
| Eye colour |
Blue, violet, green, with a general silvery hue |
Physical Description
Common Boshaari
The
Boshaari are bipedal humanoids noted for their keen, pointed ears and their silvery eyes. Lithe and slender, Boshaari skin colour varies a lot, from hues of purple and dark grey to warm brown and pale white. Many Boshaari sport natural iridescent features along their bodies, faintly glowing and usually forming elaborate patterns.
The Boshaari age relatively little over their long lives. The silver in their eyes becomes whiter, as does their hair; however, their highly resilient skin does not wrinkle much until very late into old age, and the Boshaari maintain a youthful appearance throughout most of their lives.
Historically, Boshaari dress styles have varied considerably by culture.
Yoni Arkcolonists, for their part, typically wear simpler attires than their ancestors in the
Pyxis Globula : more functional, consisting of flowy but durable garments such as long, graceful robes, or dusters and boleros made of hard leathers that embrace their figure while still providing protection from the elements on the various planets they reside on. Boshaari armour is bulkier, with rounder shaping and edges. Boshaari favour paler purples, browns, or yellows in more formal attires, usually in such fashion as to contrast with the excess of purple in their eyes, hair, or over their bodies. Boshaari living in urban centres in
Aistanar sport more exuberant features in their clothing, whereas a variety of styles and fashions is starting to emerge in further colonies, depending on environment and atmosphere.
The common variant of Boshaari are arcane-deaf and cannot cast magic under normal circumstances - the 15% of Boshaari that can are called Fae-Touched (see below).
The Fae-Touched
The
Fae-Touched are a powerful subset of the Boshaari species, culturally and biologically characterized by their ability to perform
Spellweaving. Unlike most, they are known - and sometimes feared - for their innate attunement to
Arcanic Energy and their deep, black eyes. Thus, of the 15% of Boshaari that can cast magic, all will be Fae-Touched (though other species and cultures often assume that all Boshaari can).
Their skin is also generally of more unnatural, wispy colours; they also seem surrounded by ethereal faery spots that constantly move and glimmer about their bodies. They age even slower than normal Boshaari, and less visibly. They emit a strong psionic field - the most powerful Fae-Touched are known to be able to directly interact with magitech using thought alone. Evidence suggests that the Fae-Touched are the result of an ancestral but usually dormant recessive strand of DNA present amongst all Boshaari, which explains their somewhat sporadic and random appearances across society.
Fae-touched often develop strange skills and obsessions despite not being able to explain why. There is a widespread belief that every Fae-Touched is given a purpose by the Void, albeit never explicitly; therefore, the quirks and oddities they develop over the years must subconsciously build towards the realization of their divine fate. The
Chantry of the Void holds that Fae-Touched are borne out of a spiritual bond with a local Æsimar. As such, they are usually taken away to be trained as powerful mages and telepaths.
Racial Bonus
Basic Boshaari gain +2
WIS, +2
CON
Fae-Touched instead gain +2
WIS, +2
INT or
CHA (pick at character generation)
Racial Foci
Petty Sorceries (Fae-Touched)
All Fae-Touched Boshaari are capable of producing minor effects in line with their general style of magic: phantom sounds, small and obvious illusions, non-damaging puffs of energy or light, minor physical transformations, or any other trifling magical effect that fits with their tradition and isn’t so powerful as to cause damage or directly affect an unwilling target. The caster can invoke these abilities freely for flavor and role-playing style, but they can only be concretely useful in play once per game session. The GM decides whether or not the concrete use proposed for an effect is appropriate in scale.
Feylore Ancestry
Boshaari receive a +1 level bonus to
Know Magic, Notice and
Perform. In addition, even arcane-deaf common Boshaari can work out what a specific piece of magitek or spell does.
Low-Light Vision (non Fae-Touched)
Boshaari that are not Fae-Touched can see in dim light as if they were in normal light, except in monochrone.
Society & Alignment
Main Article : Boshaari Council
Homeworld
The Boshaari tend to claim the
Second Orbit of Elpis System. The Council loyalists and inner-worlders called
ara'balai live on Aistanar; frontier Boshaari and those living outside of Council law, the
neni'balai, can be mostly found on the lunar colonies
Yanta and
Vala, on
Nevael, or in specific cities on the
Hiderid Coalition of Stars world
Hakaria.
Communities
The Boshaari as a whole have always existed as a splintered people - long-split along lines of customs, politics, nationality, arcana and affiliation (but most notably, not religion). The rift
du jour is the cultural divide that separates the ara-balai from their distant, less well-off neni-balai brethren.
Ara-balai communities are tightly-knit, inward-focused groups, often united by past cultural ties, who mingle and gather around shrines and symbols of power. Most settlements on Aistanar are packed tightly around a religious monument that also serves as a town office. Some settlements blend the trends of the past and congregate around up-and-coming noble houses, and usually sit near rare resources that are exploited for political and financial gain. Ara-balai buildings make heavy use of curves and are taller than they are wide, with intricate rooms, small but lavish gardens, and finely-carved details around even the lowliest prefab housing unit. Pipes and other utilities are often visible as a symbol of self-sufficiency or to play with the perception of a building’s true dimension. Public squares are often adorned with beautiful statues and magical ornaments; spires rise to collect gravcars and zeppelins that fly gracefully through and above the urban fabric. Whilst the majority of Boshaari toil away at simple if beautiful, faithful lives, in dark alleys and mist-filled rooms, conspiracies are rife amongst the wealthy and powerful, who use their maze-like cities as backdrops to subtly plot against one another and secure influence for themselves.
In the frontier colonies of the neni-balai, where life is slower and rougher, or the exiled settlements of the kalushel, each settlement drastically differs from the next; desert towns are nested within cliff-sides of sandstone and frigid colonies are cleverly half-buried in ice. Shrines play an important role there too, and often feature prominently. Such colonies experience considerably different challenges and organize accordingly. It is said that neni-balai are almost as different from each other as they are from ara-balai, though they remain united by religion, defence against kalushel raiders operating from their open prison, and general animosity against the Senate and the arrogant and privileged Ara-Balai who assigned them on such uncomfortable worlds to begin with.
Boshaari of all walks of life are often known for their elaborate board games and sports activities, which came into being millennia ago to mediate disputes, entertain the masses and avoid wars. Such board games often serve a metaphorical role for the cunning prowess of an ambitious noble seeking to topple her rivals. A popular Boshaari sport is the ball game
Korlon.
Many Boshaari are religious and often known as such; most worship a temple of the
Chantry of the Void though a few follow more esoteric religions. The Boshaari are known, as a whole, as a spiritual folk with countless rituals that change depending on the town, the time of day, and the kind of temple followed.
To remedy the growing rift between Boshaari communities and ensure a healthy supply of workers across the Senate’s semi-planned economy, a Pilgrimage is organized every five years as a religious ceremony to the glory of the Inheritor, her myriad Æsimar, as well as a secular census. All citizen Boshaari, including neni-balai, seek to attend the ceremony. Feasts and prayers are held, and any Boshaari that has come of age within the five years also takes part in a “naming ceremony” which asserts (or most usually re-asserts) which of the five classes he or she will officially belong to. Older Boshaari instead attend ceremonies in which they receive more rights as citizens. For instance, in Council space, the right to vote for local patreons is obtained at the second Pilgrimage attended, barring any convictions or other barriers.
Alignment
Most Boshaari are some element of Lawful as holders of order and tradition, though whether they use the rules for the betterment of their kind or to get themselves ahead in life is often a mystery to all but themselves.
Neni'balai in particular tend to be more Chaotic and drift towards the Good descriptor.
Playing a Boshaari
Boshaari likely…
...seek wisdom and seize opportunities to learn, especially from native races, and are surprisingly xenophilic and adapt well to other customs and peoples.
...act highly expressively, and seek out works of beauty and magic items for their innate worth.
...maintain peculiar religious customs and seek to consecrate natural or artificial features such as shipwrecks, stars, mountains, craters, asteroids, and their own colonies, platoons, navies as possessing their own divine spirit worthy of worship and appreciation
...eat fussily, as many foods do not agree with Boshaari metabolisms, and a lot of Boshaari food must be prepared in specific ways.
...meddle and plot complicated intrigues against one another, and secretly admire the Hiderid's cut-throat politics whilst dreading the profit-driven
Hiderid Coalition of Stars's inherent godless chaos.
...maintain, in some cases, surprisingly close ties with the
Hhrot Dominion out of a mutual need for protection and economic development, and opposition to hegemonistic Hiderid corporations.
Other species likely…
...do not understand Boshaari veneration of natural features, their understanding of the Inheritor, or how their belief system and Chantry ties together.
...have little patience for the needlessly complicated level of politics that plays out at every level of society, between different Ways, Great Houses, Cities, Shrines, and so on.
...are either intrigued or exasperated by Boshaari tendency to exagerate emotions.
...respect your species’ culture and tenacity, as well as how your belief system, mythos, and general civilization survived at least within the Ark despite the effective end of your galaxy. They might be fearful that you seek to revive a domineering Empire.
...misunderstand and fear your psionic or technological ability based on their knowledge of the Ark, unaware that it predates Boshaari civilization, or on your descriptions of the Great Sacrament and the wanton destruction it inflicted, or on rogue Fae-Touched burning out.
Relations
Boshaari are generally friendly, if slightly wary, to other races.
New Fallanism dictates that all sentient species are the children of the Inheritor and thus must be treated with dignity.
Boshaari dislike the loud ways of the
Hiderid Coalition of Stars and
Hiderid as a whole, and what they perceive as opportunist scrappiness - though more than one Boshaari Great House, and officially even the Council, has also welcomed them with open arms.
They are fairly closed to the
Mewei Domain and to the
Hhrot Dominion.
Naming Convention
Boshaari names are varied. They are usually composed of two, if not three names, at least one of them is a given name. Names are typically descended from the maternal lineage.
Male Names
Samblar Quisatra
Mythanar Umevyre
Giullis Elaxidor
Yalathanil Xyrfina
Illianaro Ravasalor
Lyari Wranrora
Female Names
Arilon Nerikian
Ikeshia Yesbalar
Aelynthi Helewenys
Ysildea Olotris
Enania Trazorwyn
Sana Caiyra
Adventuring
There are a few reasons for Boshaari to wander far from the Ark.
...they may be exiled from the Ark for political or common crimes (Wayward)
...they may have forsaken or distanced themselves from the Chantry and the authoritarian and traditionalist rule of the Hierarch and of the
Runewarden.
...they may be Fae-Touched or Wayward, made to feel unwelcome within the Ark and its colonies.
...they may seek to learn from an entirely unknown galaxy, full of magic and wonders
...they may seek to spread their faith of the Void Mother and/or discover more natural and artificial wonders, and more alien races, worthy of being the Void Mother’s divine creation
...in rarer cases, they may have never even seen the Ark, being the children or grandchildren of colonists who left the Ark for reasons above and having never been part of the Hyporian community.
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