Kalashtar
The kalashtar are a compound race created from the union of humanity and spirits forcibly extracted from an unknown entity. These spirits are called quori. Kalashtar are often seen as wise, spiritual people with great passion for others. But there is an unmistakable alien quality to the kalashtar.
Two Minds, One Soul
The Kalashtar's origins lie at the center of the world, where The Dreamer continues his eternal slumber. Specifically, it lies with the fiendish beings from within his unfathomable mind, the Quori, who after being extracted from The Dreamer by beings unknown, required a host in order to continue to exist within the material plane. These spirits were able to acquire temporary shelter within the dreams of slumbering mortals. With only 49 of these spirits surviving, these Quori found salvation when their leader, Taratai, used this dream shifting to commune with the leader of a human monastery consisting of Shells. The head monk agreed to give them sanctuary in exchange for protecting the future generations of each family from being inhabited by Eternals. He gathered 48 of their brethren and a ritual was performed to not only allow the Quori to voluntarily possess them, but to permanently merge each Quori with its host, creating an entirely new creature. The Kalashtar ("Wandering Dreams") were literally born in that moment. As the human-quori hybrids had children, they discovered that their offspring were each mentally linked to the quori of their parents, effectively dividing each spirit between multiple hosts simultaneously. By the time the kalashtar had finished developing into a true race, the quori were effectively incapable of directly communing with their humanoid hosts or manipulating their bodies; each quori is a sort of collective subconscious, creating a hive mind for all the kalashtars of a specific blood lineage. Only when they sleep do kalashtar commune with their quori, as they spend their slumber soaking in the memories of their founding spirit - that is not to say that the founders cannot communicate with their blood lineage, just that it is difficult for them. When roused however, they can transmit information impossibly far, because each founder exists in the subconsciousness of each of its individual children, and is aware of everything that they know. What one kalasthar knows, others will soon know as well. In some regions, a new practice has risen that revolves around honing body and mind in order to strengthen the connection a kalashtar has to its ancestral quori spirit, imbuing it with a greater amount of quori powers. This process has had its physical side-effects on kalashtar. Kalashtar appear very similar to humans, but they have a grace and elegance that makes them seem almost too beautiful. They are slightly taller than the average human, and their faces have a slight angularity that sets them apart from the human norm, but these deviations only make them seem more attractive. Most notably, all kalashtars have an affinity for psionics, and are naturally telepathic. Most kalashtar use telepathy any time they are making a comment directed at an individual, and they speak only if what they are saying needs to be heard by multiple people at once. While kalashtar can use telepathy to convey words, they often use it to convey pure emotion; kalashtar art and poetry are telepathic constructs based around interwoven memories and emotions. In fact, kalashtar telepathy begins when the kalashtar is still in the womb; embryonic kalashtar spend roughly half of their gestation telepathically communing with their mother and bathing in the memories of their founding quori. Kalashtar children mature at a rate that members of other races often find disturbing, due to this strong telepathic link; at birth, a kalashtar is probably as cognizant as a 6 of 7 year old human child. In a kalashtar community, children are taught meditative and telepathic exercises before they can walk, and they begin the basics of martial training as soon as they have the coordination. A kalashtar child born into another culture might be confused and frustrated by the imbalance between his or her physical and mental development. Obviously, kalashtar are naturally intelligent, but they are not strictly logic-driven - in fact, they can't be; bathed in the womb in memories of a plane where dream-logic is reality, kalashtar are naturally inventive, and younger ones in particular are often surprisingly naive despite their advanced intellect, since they are still learning to separate memory-reality from life-reality. They are generally warm and compassionate, but their manners and ways of thinking are alien to the native races of Draumur, and they often use flowery scientific words which doesn't make them easier to understand. The centrepiece for kalashtar society is the Lineage, or the hive mind based around a specific quori founding spirit. Lineages are gender-locked, being in part a reflection of the original monk who first merged with the Lineage's founder. Thus, when two kalashtar mate, sons will be of the same Lineage as their father, and daughters the same Lineage as their mother. Because a Lineage shares a collective subconsciousness through its founder, Lineages are more central to traditional kalashtar mindsets than biological families. All members of the same Lineage will share distinctive physical and personality traits, although the latter category becomes vaguer as a kalashtar ages and its individual experiences enable it to assert its own persona separate to that of the founding spirit. With the quori being able to block out any attempt an Eternal spirit makes at possessing an unborn child, the Eternals have deemed the very existence of the Kalashtar a direct threat to the long term life and prosperity of the Eternals. This resulting in certain regions arresting or even killing kalashtar once they have been exposed.Kalashtar Names
A kalashtar name mixes a personal prefix to the name of the quori spirit within the Kalashtar. Each spirit has a gender identity but this might not match the gender identity of the kalashtar host. A female kalashtar may have what others would consider a masculine name, because she's tied to a spirit with a masculine identity. Kalashtar orphans are unlikely to know the name of their spirit and take names from another source. Male Quori Names: Hareth, Khad, Kosh, Melk, Tash, Ulad, Vash Female Quori Names: Ashana, Ashtai, Ishara, Nari, Tana, Tari, Vakri Kalashtar Names: Coratash, Dalavash, Dolishara, Halakosh, Khoratari, Koratana, Lanhareth, Molavakri, Nevitash, Sorashana, Torashtai, Valakhad, Vishara,Kalashtar
Ability Score Increase +1 Wis, +1 Cha and increase a different ability score by 1.
Size Medium
Speed 30 ft
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