The Golyatsin
Remnants from an age and time where stone giants once meandered the volcanic island of Aagdhara and the continent of Barid itself, the Golyatsin are the descendants of these primal beings. They traditionally were a pastoral folk, herding their reindeer-like Orkhunek (Or-kuu-nyek) between fertile grazing grounds and settling during the unforgiving winters. They would trade their meats for outsiders' goods that wouldn't have been readily available in their regions. The Golyatsin have an armored skin comprised of dark volcanic rock, enriched by their diets in the regions they rove, lending them a boulder-like appearance until they move. As a result of this armored skin, they are very difficult to harm directly. Their size and stature tends to trend towards the half-giant size, just shy of being too large to fit in most hominids' abodes. They are actually quite friendly, despite having such hardened exteriors.
The Golyatsin living in Barid saw the fall of the Generation Ship, Ymir; they watched with awe and terror as it burned brightly on reentry. They considered it the end of the world but they had no idea what was about to happen afterwards. The second shockwave's fallout ensured that they were fighting newly mutated monsters that would hunt their livestock with impunity. The formidable Aksul Khashan, a serpentine mutated wyvern that could camouflage itself in the snow and change colors to match its surroundings, would spring up and grab the unsuspecting Orkhunek with its giant fangs and then snap its neck in a death spiral, only to drag it away and disappear into the surroundings. Another foe of the Golyatsin was called the Tuuran Khokoor, a fearsome needle-furred, patterned massive carnivorous felid that would stalk the herd until it could guarantee that a singular long sprint would allow it to sweep up several Orkhunek in its jaws at once at lightning speed. This forced the Golyatsin to change their lifestyle and seek contact with outside groups in exchange for weaponry.
The Golyatsin, since time immemorial have chosen the greatbow as their primary weapon, bearing the tremendous strength required to draw and wield the massive weapon. The Golyatsin greatbow, otherwise called a Chadarka, fires arrows with as much kinetic energy as javelins launched by a ballista. They used the greatbows to hunt predators that would stalk their herds, with the arrows sending the target flying, and possibly pinning the creature once it had struck. They fire these Chadarka, from atop hexapodal, herbivorous proto-mammalians that bear armor like the Golyatsin, referred to as Khüchinyak. The Khüchinyak and Golyatsin have had a mutually beneficial relationship ever since they domesticated the creatures, providing food and shelter for the Khüchinyak while the creatures provide a means of getting around and more effectively protecting their herd.
Golyatsin have a profound connection to the land they come from, being very literally raised on the land itself. The types of rock they consume, the minerals in their bodies, all of this affects how they look and even to a degree, how they might act. Golyatsin that travel far from home might miss the mixture of flavors they had in their homeland. They might be found across the world but the largest communities of Golyatsin are near the Vettir, having formed an alliance and communal bond with them despite some early misunderstandings and difficulties during first encounters.
Adaptations
The Golyatsin, first and foremost are most easily recognized by their volcanic, rocky exterior, but these rocky exteriors start off as simple stony platelets embedded in the skin of the young. As they grow, their platelets also grow into full on plates of rocky armor. They flake off but grow back faster than most keratinous or calcium-based armor, surprisingly enough. The composition of the plates varies from region to region, being highly dependent on the composition of the soil and volcanic rocks in the region. Some Golyatsin can have armor like obsidian, or others may grow pumice-like structures, while others build up basalt. Their bodies process the minerals as a form of biomineralization, transporting the newly-absorbed minerals from their digestive system into their cells, to be transported and redistributed, not unlike Volcano snails from Earth. They most readily absorb the minerals once they've been broken down by their robust digestive system, but powdering the minerals is the preferred method of ingestion for easier metabolizing, especially as that makes it easier to integrate into their other nutritional intakes.
Their skin frequently greys as they mature and build up more minerals in their bodies, but they start off with a vibrant red tone at birth. Some areas of their bodies still retain this reddish tone, usually around the mouths, eyes, ears, and their hands and fingers. Usually the areas that the stony armor does not manifest. Like other hominids, they are also warm-blooded.
They too, like the hominids that their common ancestor branched from, have hair, but the hair is often harder to work with because of the mineral contents making it more inflexible, but still malleable. Their hair is most concentrated atop their heads and their groin regions, and is typically white but sometimes colored by the rocks they eat. The hair on their bodies, amidst the stony armor helps insulate against the cold. The combination of air pockets in their armored structures on their skin and the hairs helps with insulating against the cold but they still bundle up.
Golyatsin teeth are incredibly resilient and sit at a 10 on the Moh's hardness scale, allowing them to crush rocks with their teeth, but they prefer to grind the rocks down to a fine powder with a mortar and pestle to mix them with their food as it makes it easier to digest. They have a wide range of teeth types as well, from grinding teeth to teeth meant to cut into food. Golyatsin have especially tuned tastebuds so they can identify whether a rock is good to eat or not just by licking it. If their teeth fall out due to injuries or otherwise, it only takes a few days for a replacement tooth to fill in. Golyatsin, when they are injured, scab over quickly and grow rocky like structures that break away over time, revealing that the wound has healed completely underneath.
Their rocky armor regrows quite quickly relative to the timescale for keratinous structures in other species, somewhat at odds with their overall slower metabolism.
Culture
Golyatsin, for the most part are comprised of insular communities of tribes that have their own herds of Orkhunek, but there are many individuals that seek to explore and rove the lands. A good concentration of them wound up living side-by-side with the Vettir along the Verkovian coastline after they had made landfall, integrating with the scientific communities and sharing their wisdom and supplies in exchange for tools or weapons. It was not always this way, though for the Golyatsin and the Vettir.
They, at one point were hostile to one another, but were forced to band together to survive against the onslaught of strange and dangerous mutated monsters that emerged from the Verkovian forest. The Vettir and Golyatsin saw a need to band together to fight the creatures, and the Vettir came to realize they'd prefer to work alongside the Golyatsin rather than against them. There was a truce initiated between the two species, and later on, trade agreements. The Golyatsin allowed the Vettir onto their island, which was now connected to the continent via the Leirlendi mudflats. It's where the Vettir established Halsavik, and started farming using Golyatsin techniques and shared their technology with them.
The Golyatsin elders are still extremely leery of the Vettir's eagerness to trade, with prior trade agreements with the Dragonborn not going well.
The Golyatsin would often celebrate the coming of Spring and Summer with large trade gatherings and festivals where they would exchange the goods they had accumulated or made over the winter months. Messengers of the most centralized families would travel to the furthest Golyatsin to arrange the gathering. Once they'd reach their intended destination, they'd share news and crucial information, along with written information recorded on bark, then after dinner, they'd share samples of the goods from the central tribe to be exchanged with the satellite tribes, and frequently stay for 3 or more nights to regale their hosts with stories, then return when the spring festivities were meant to start.
Despite being massive and extremely heavy, the Golyatsin also do coastal hunting to diversify their diets and obtain more food sources, bone, and fats to sustain themselves when farming is not an option. They would build larger boats out of multiple logs, sealed with resin and bonded using interlocking notches in the logs themselves. Usually these watercraft were limited in occupancy and scope of travel because of the Golyatsin's overall bulk counteracting the buoyancy. They would use these to travel between the various coastal islands to gather food, and their largest boats were used to hunt whales and sharks.
Golyatsin cuisine is usually comprised of warm meals, stewed meats, and smoked goods that keep well during the winter. There are sometimes grains and greenery incorporated into their dishes, but it is more often wild edibles, berries and mushrooms.
Architecture
The Golyatsin, being pastoral and nomadic prefer to keep their homes easily relocated, especially as the grazing grounds and wild Orkhunek movement changes every season. Their yurts are often outfitted with a means of cleaning oneself, with a centrally located portable stove that can be magically or electrically powered to boil water or ice to allow for sponge bathing, but it also acts as a convenient heating method. Usually their beds and furniture line the outer walls, and the central opening allows plenty of light in. The floors are often lined with colorful tapestries depicting great hunts, herds, or other individually important events. Assembling and disassembling a Golyatsin yurt takes roughly 2 hours. Transporting them takes maybe two of their Khüchinyak to carry the yurt itself and a few Orkhunek to carry the rest of the possessions.
Their furniture is usually made to be easily collapsed and transported. Most of the time, it'll be made of balsam or pine wood for ease of portability. To ensure things stay pristine, they paint them in colorful patterns that would protect them from the elements.
Technology
Prior to their contact with the Vettir, the Golyatsin mostly kept to themselves, choosing to live using subsistence farming and shepherding methods to sustain themselves. Sure, a few folks would travel to the extreme Northerly reaches where they lived, but they largely remained undisturbed. They may have traded for some exotic goods in exchange for meats and furs with other species, but didn't really push to develop beyond what they needed at the time.
Needs changed after the Cataclysm, and they were compelled to learn quickly. They adopted a lot of the survival-oriented technology that the Vettir produce, and began sharing their schematics amongst themselves. They also adopted steelworking to design larger firearms for defense against super-predators and mutated fauna.
Unique Weaponry
Chadarka - A gargantuan hunting weapon that the Golyatsin use, the Chadarka is a greatbow that requires immense draw strength to even be able to fire. Their half-giant stature allows them to wield these weapons. When wielded by a Golyatsin, the Chadarka can ignore armor, and can send the target flying backwards up to 30 feet, pinning them to whatever surface it might hit in the process, even another creature. It is not the arrow itself firing that makes the most noise, but the arrow hitting its mark.
Kharakh Bugan - A heavy mechanically-augmented steel maul that can be enhanced with a thermal expulsion system, generating a fiery shockwave on impact but can also generate a kinetic energy burst on hit. A post-contact invention that the Golyatsin co-developed with the Vettir to fight the mutated Khara-Khorkhon, the Ashen Consumptors. Its powerful bludgeoning capabilities are enough to crack the hard exterior.
Khötöl-Sülgür (Хөтөл-Сүлгүр, lit. Gate of Thunder) 14.5mm Heavy Machine Gun - the Khötöl-Sülgür, or KS-14 for short, is an adaptation of a stolen Dragonborn Anti-Air HMG but refitted in such a way that the Golyatsin can simply port it around without a care in the world and fire from a standing position. It fires an overpressured high power cartridge with explosive tips, so firing the weapon gets quite expensive after a short period of time, but more often than not, there's nothing alive left standing when the smoke clears.
Tsakhylgana-Sürleg (Цахилгаан-Сүрлэг, lit. Electric Might) 10mm MPRG (Man-Portable Railgun) - The Tsakhylgana-Sürleg is a scaled up railgun weapon adapted for Golyatsin hands, built by the Vettir for defeating G-Class monsters and armored landships in defense of their settlements. It needs a full 12 seconds to charge before it can fire at a target, but it only needs one shot to take something down.
Species Features
Age
Golyatsin reach maturity around their mid twenties and live to roughly two to three centuries due to abnormal metabolisms.
Golyatsin Bulk and Size
Golyatsin range from 6 to 8 feet tall in their adult stages, reaching half-giant sizes, though they are still considered medium in gameplay. Their weight can range from close to 500 lbs all the way up to 1500 lbs, depending on their height and mass.
Creature Type
Golyatsin are an offshoot of a common hominid ancestor, and are classified as Humanoid
Size
Medium
Speed
Your walking speed is 30 feet
Boulder's Might
You have proficiency in the Athletics skill, and you count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift. If you are going to be knocked prone because of Poise damage, you can instead brace for free, preventing knockdown, once per short or long rest.
Resilient Physiology
Golyatsin have cold resistance and do not suffer exhaustion effects from extreme cold temperatures, additionally, they can be acclimated to extreme elevations without issue thanks to their enlarged lungs.
Volcanic Durability
When you take damage, you can spend your reaction to use this feature to reduce the damage taken by the Dice Specified + Your Constitution Modifier. You can use this feature as many times as your proficiency bonus per long rest, with all charges being restored once the long rest has been finished. Each time you use this feature, the next charge is one dice size smaller. When your proficiency bonus increases, the dice used also changes, going up one size, i.e. from a 1d6 to a 1d8. This applies to most Proficiency Bonus increases except for when you reach +6 proficiency, where the 1st usage is 2d10.
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