Shifters, sometimes called the weretouched, trace their lineage to distant human and lycanthropic ancestors. Unlike their lycanthropic ancestors, shifters cannot fully change form. Instead, they can take on animalistic features, an ability they call shifting.
A unique species that breeds true, shifters long ago founded their own culture and traditions. Never numerous when compared to the other races of Khorvaire, the majority of the shifter population lives in small villages and tribes throughout the Eldeen Reaches. Other shifters live across the continent within communities dominated by other races.
Due in part to the fifty-year crusade against lycanthropes conducted by the Church of the Silver Flame more than a century ago, shifters prefer the company of their own kind and often form enclaves or districts when living within a community dominated by another race. You will find within an insight into shifter culture, personality, and tradition.
A Day in the Life
Morai Sakala wakes carefully, remaining motionless for a few seconds and listening to her surroundings before she begins to move. After a few slow heartbeats, she opens her eyes. Dew coats her thin blanket and most of her clothing, but the slight chill in the air doesn't trouble her. Rising to a sitting position, she rests on the wide tree branch where she made her bed. She takes a quick breakfast of hard bread and cheese, wrapping the remaining portion for the journey yet to come.
Setting out slowly, Morai checks the two traps she set yesterday afternoon. As she expected, they are still empty, but Morai knows her chances of finding game will improve as she moves more deeply into the forest and checks traps that have been in place longer than these two.
The freedom of the forest seems to speak to the young shifter as she moves quickly among the trees. Keeping a steady gait never enters Morai’s thoughts as she moves in swift bursts, pausing after only a dozen strides. She smiles ruefully, thinking of the steady, plodding steps of the humans she traveled with last summer. Morning and midday pass quietly, and one of her many short pauses lengthens into a brief stop for a meal.
Early in the afternoon, Morai sets a new trap close to a clearing in the forest, thinking this might be a good spot to catch a squirrel or two. Just as she finishes setting the trap, Morai's ears catch guttural-sounding voices coming from the direction of the clearing. Morai doesn’t understand the words—she has never had a gift for languages—but she recognizes the sound of goblin voices easily enough.
Slowing her steps to a stealthy crawl, Morai moves ahead, peering into the clearing from the shelter of the trees. Unheard among the soft sounds of the forest, Morai sees three goblins from across the clearing long before they see her. Her stealth is for naught, though, as behind her the newly set trap snaps shut, the sound at once promising a fresh evening meal and alerting the goblins to her presence. Morai thinks at first that the encounter need not end in blood, but the goblins, crude spears in hand, come toward her in a rush.
As always at the beginning of a fight, a rush of emotion rises within her, threatening to drown her vision in a sea of rage. Morai long ago decided never to awaken that beast within her, however; she breathes out slowly to calm herself as she fits an arrow to her bow. She lets it fly, and the first goblin falls.
The rest of the goblins run toward her as soon as their companion hits the ground. In seconds, they are almost upon her; Morai realizes she'll never get a second shot off in time. She turns, the muscles of her legs compacting as her form becomes leaner and more feral. With a burst of speed made possible only by her newly strengthened form, Morai puts another fifty feet between herself and the goblins, then turns to down another with an arrow.
Seeing the shifter’s blazing speed and deadly accuracy with the bow, the last goblin turns to run. Without hesitation, Morai puts another arrow to string and fells the fleeing goblin—it can’t be left to menace the nearby shifter village.
That night, as she settles back into her chosen tree after the day’s final meal, Morai listens to the sounds of the woodlands settle around her. Tomorrow she’ll try to go even deeper into the forest.
Shifter Psychology
Many shifters carry overt traits associated with their animal natures. Some are boorish or crude, while others are quiet and shifty. In addition to these behaviors, shifters share three main aspects of their psychology: a struggle with their powerful emotional responses, a steadfast belief in the virtue of self-reliance, and a deep desire for personal freedom.
The Beast Within
Shifters have a raw connection to instinct that members of other races seldom understand. Fueled by their ancient legacy, shifters hold within them extremes of emotion that strive to dominate their thoughts and actions. This raw inner turmoil comes forth in some shifter warriors as a barbaric rage, enabling the shifter to perform berserk feats of strength when he enters combat. Other shifters suppress all emotion, dealing with their bestial instincts in their own way and remaining stoic in the face of any situation lest their powerful emotions overwhelm them.
The Journey Yet to Come
Self-reliance has long been the most important virtue in the shifter mind. The greatest heroes of shifter folklore are often described as remaining constantly ready for surprise encounters and drawing on great reserves of inner strength rather than asking for help. Shifters refer to their constant state of readiness as 'preparing for the journey yet to come.' Shifters believe that life can change surprisingly quickly and that one should always be ready to move on to avoid the danger. Although they are not nomads, shifters prefer simple, well-made items that they can carry with them in a pinch. Even when they have permanent homes of their own, most shifters keep a simple pack loaded and ready for travel.
The Removal of Bonds
Shifters believe that the reward for self-reliance is freedom. No shifter is comfortable with those who forcibly impose their will on others. While shifters cannot break free of their own physical forms in the way that a true lycanthrope can, they still carry a physical reminder that even one's own form is a mutable thing, governed as much by choice as by nature. If self-reliance remains the greatest shifter virtue, the race’s greatest treasure is certainly freedom. This is in part why many shifters choose the freedom of life in the remote corners of the Eldeen Reaches over a more comfortable but more structured existence in the human cities of the Five Nations.
Shifter Life
Shifters emphasize nothing so much as the ability to survive. Their games, their training, and even their magic all have at least subtle ties to the shifters' keen survival instincts and well-known emphasis on self-reliance.
Leisure
Shifters enjoy leisure activities that stress self-reliance and hone much-needed survival skills in a more relaxed environment. Shifter games often stress speed or stealth; they have little use for purely mental games such as chess. Shifters might bet on athletic contests, especially their own performance, but they almost never gamble on things such as dice or cards, scoffing at games that rely only on luck.
Hunter and Prey: Although children of most cultures enjoy some variant of hide-and-seek, the simple game is appreciated by shifters of all ages, and many participate in the game well into adulthood. Besides its obvious utility in developing a young shifter's stealth and tracking abilities, the game stresses self-reliance in the wild.
Races: Shifters love to run over short distances. Sprints are a favorite form of competition in shifter communities, especially those races that include simple woodland obstacles such as fallen trees or narrow gaps. Whenever shifters gather, contests of speed follow; few competitors are ever willing to engage in such competitions in front of other races, however.
Hrazhak: Hrazhak is a rough sport played by two teams of six shifters. Each team tries to steal the other team's wooden idol and place it next to its own idol in the goal area. A hrazhak field is an obstacle course strewn with trees, streams, fallen logs, and other difficult terrain, requiring the players to make full use of their racial aptitude for climbing and jumping. Full body contact is an expected part of the game, with participants bringing any natural weapons they possess into play. Most teams include two longstride shifters, two cliffwalkers, and two razorclaws, with each shifter’s traits dictating his role on the team.
Art
Although shifters have little use for permanent or stationary art, they have perfected two art forms that accentuate their admiration for self-reliance and individuality.
Totem Braids: Shifters often have intricate and unusual braids. The braids are mostly used just for expression or looks, but sometimes a shifter associates a certain braid with an oath, a task, or a run of good luck. In these cases, the shifter keeps the braid for the duration of the task or until the oath is fulfilled, then cuts the braid off cleanly.
Shifter Tattoos: Shifters often use tattoos to symbolize important experiences or ties to other individuals or groups. Shifter tattoos are intricate affairs that differ greatly, but there are two broad categories of tattoos that all shifters recognize: morphic tattoos and static tattoos.
A morphic tattoo is rendered in such a way that its pattern and appearance change to a new, different image when a shifter uses his shifting ability. These tattoos are used to note individual accomplishments, especially great mental or physical trials that the shifter has endured.
A static tattoo is crafted to retain its look and design even when the shifter uses his shifting ability. These tattoos are typically used to represent a bond with another individual or a binding association with a particular group.
Technology and Magic
Shifters believe in nothing as much as they believe in self-reliance, and they prefer tools they can carry with them at all times. Their technology, while not primitive, emphasizes the simple and portable rather than the grand achievements of the Five Nations or other cultures. While they have never reached the heights of magical power or architectural skill that have allowed other races and cultures to build great cities or cross mighty oceans, they never regard this as a failing. Instead, they look to the perfection of their own abilities and the development of the tools an individual needs to survive in the wild as the greatest possible accomplishments.
Shifter crafters are much more likely to spend their time and effort creating one masterwork weapon or tool that they plan on using themselves rather than a large number of lesser items to sell. The shifter race includes merchants and traders, but these individuals believe in keeping a small, valuable inventory rather than a large or diverse selection of less valuable items. Even the wealthiest shifter merchants limit their goods on hand to a small number of valuable, versatile items that they can carry themselves, remaining ready for the journey yet to come.
Even shifter magic emphasizes the personal and portable rather than the grand designs of other spellcasters. Almost all shifter spellcasters are druids, and these capable, self-reliant nature priests focus on crafting items and spells that help a single shifter survive a wide variety of situations and encounters. A shifter spellcaster rarely spends long periods creating magic items. Instead, he creates one item that will serve in a wide variety of situations and then moves on, perfecting his skill with that item and developing his own skills to complement the item’s powers before creating another.
War
Warfare has touched the shifter race in many ways throughout history, but shifters have yet to be the driving force behind the conflicts. The fiercely independent shifter communities of the Eldeen Reaches skirmish with each other and with other creatures on a regular basis, but even these long-brewing conflicts have never gone beyond limited engagements and guerrilla-style raids.
War truly came to the shifters sixty years before the start of the Last War, when the Church of the Silver Flame began its inquisition to destroy lycanthropes. At first, shifters were lumped in with lycanthropes, and quite a few fell in the first years of the crusade. Three years into the crusade, the Church recognized shifters as a separate species untouched by the taint of lycanthropy. Some believe that the Church took this step after making a deal with some shifters—a deal that required shifters to hunt down and reveal the locations of lycanthropes to the Church. Though only a few shifters cooperated with the Church in this manner, all felt shame and guilt over these actions. Whatever people individually thought of the Church’s crusade, the prejudice against lycanthropy spread throughout the continent’s subconscious. Some of this taint became associated with shifters, as well, but moreover, people saw shifters as betrayers of their own kind, despite the limited number of incidents and the fact that shifters and lycanthropes have a distant connection at best. Because of this, the crusade affected the thoughts and lives of every shifter in Khorvaire to some extent, leaving a lingering distrust between shifters and members of other races that still affects relations today.
While no other conflicts dealt as directly with shifters as the great crusade against lycanthropes, the great wars of Khorvaire’s history have almost always featured shifter scouts. These scouts are in such demand that both sides of a given conflict often employ them. Although they did not participate in the ancient wars that shattered the goblin empire, shifters have been involved in at least some small way in most of the wars that have occurred since.
Because they have been touched by so many conflicts without having a cohesive racial role, shifters look at war as an individual choice. Survival and self-reliance are the backbone of shifter culture and the center of a shifter’s self-image, and this means that shifters must decide for themselves whether they wish to be involved in a war or whether they’d be better served by just picking up and moving on to a new location untouched by the conflict. Because much of this process is internal, members of other races view shifters with suspicion, not trusting them to stick with a nation or community in times of war or conflict. While shifters have a high degree of personal honor, that honor is tied up in the individual’s decisions and self-reliance, and they regard the other race’s passionate views of nation and national warfare as somewhat weak and incomprehensible.
Shifter Society and Culture
Spread over many nations and nearly always a minority population, shifters struggle to maintain a sense of racial unity and a cohesive view of their society and culture. Despite the efforts of community leaders and others who work to preserve a uniform vision of shifter society, two distinct types of shifter communities have become prominent. The first, and by far the most numerous, is a small enclave of shifters within a larger community of some other race, most often humans.
These enclaves are welcomed by some shifters, since they give members of the oft-shunned race a sense of community and belonging much greater than what they receive from the larger populace. Others view these enclaves as subtle traps, preserving the rift between shifters and the other races. While these individuals see the virtues of encouraging the natural shifter inclination to associate with others of their kind, they also worry that the enclaves encourage other races to view the shifters as apart from the rest of society. In light of the unpleasant effects of the Church of the Silver Flame’s crusade against lycanthropes on the shifter populace, such concerns are well founded.
Although shifter parents are as dedicated to raising their children as members of any race, the family group is not the core of shifter society as it is among many other civilized races. Instead, shifters form their strongest bonds with a group of friends near their own age. These groups, although usually made up of shifters from many families, are often the strongest personal bonds that a shifter forms. When compared to the social interactions of other races, these peer groups are loose, disorganized affairs that emphasize the shifter’s self-reliance and personal space more than the cohesiveness of the group. In the individualized and reticent society of the shifters, however, they stand out as a vital and important social norm.
The second type of shifter community exists apart from the Five Nations, usually sheltered deep within the forests of the Eldeen Reaches. Whether driven by the inquisition of the Church of the Silver Flame, the repercussions of the Last War, their own traditions, or the simple desire to live free of the nations governed by other races, many shifters have gathered into barbaric tribes and scattered communities across the wild lands of the Eldeen Reaches. These communities reinforce the shifter’s preference for bonding with fellow shifters rather than members of other races, and the shifter enclaves in the cities of other races resemble these shifter-only communities more than they resemble the surrounding cities. While shifters are not isolationists, they greatly prefer the company of fellow shifters, for few members of other races understand that the shifter’s reticence and personal distance are respectful in their own way, and members of other races often seek out frequent social interactions—interactions that feel in many ways invasive to the shifter’s sense of privacy and self-reliant attitude.
Societal Roles
As with any race, shifters include a diverse and interesting mix of individuals, but a few important roles in shifter society are unique to the race.
Moonspeaker: From the rural communities of the Eldeen Reaches to shifter enclaves in the great cities of Khorvaire, the moonspeaker druids guide much of the religious beliefs of the shifter race. The moonspeakers perform a valuable role among many shifters: Because they often travel from one shifter community to another, they maintain the bond between the various communities. Moonspeakers provide a feeling of belonging to a group larger than the immediate shifter populace, a racial bond that the fragmented and often distrusted shifters find immensely comforting.
Ragewild Shifters: A fierce breed of specialized warrior provides protection and guidance to less civilized shifter tribes. These warriors blend their shifter abilities with berserkerlike fury. Legends of their prowess abound, and they hold themselves as examples of the strength and power of the shifter race. Unlike most tribal warriors, ragewild shifters consider themselves defenders of all shifter tribes, refusing to take part in intertribal skirmishes or disputes. Ragewild shifters have perfected a unique and brutal fighting technique that has since grown popular among other groups of shifters.
Loreguard: Perhaps the greatest secret of the shifter race, the loreguard serves as the race’s first line of defense against the suspicion and prejudice of other races. Lacking the numbers of other races and fearful of powerful forces such as the Church of the Silver Flame, shifters long ago began training some of their most gifted individuals to prepare their race to avoid and respond to such suspicion and hatred from other races. The legacy of this training is the loreguard, a secretive group of shifters trained to interact with members of other races, discreetly promote shifter interests, and above all ensure that nothing like the Church of the Silver Flame’s inquisition ever targets the shifter race again. Consummate spies, well-meaning diplomats, and deadly assassins all have places within the loreguard, but none is ever admitted without first proving that loyalty to the shifter race comes first and foremost.
Religion
Scarred by the suspicion that they endured during the crusade against lycanthropes, shifters remain suspicious of outside religions. Knowing their power to motivate members of other races, shifters view intense or conflict-prone religions as terrifying forces capable of causing great harm. Their own beliefs, perhaps in reaction to this mindset, are varied and mild. The most common shifter religion centers on the druid faiths of the Eldeen Reaches, and the most powerful shifter religious figures are an order of druids known as the moonspeakers. The moonspeakers tie great meaning to the movements of the moons, believing that the moons’ ties to the shifters’ lycanthropic heritage give them great power over the lives of shifters. Other shifters, particularly those living in enclaves within the cities of other races, revere Balinor and Boldrei of the Sovereign Host, and many shifter adventurers follow the ways of the Traveler.
Some shifters responded to the inquisition against lycanthropes by adopting the faith of the Church of the Silver Flame and wholeheartedly participating in that crusade of extermination. A lingering sense of guilt persists in many shifters because of that complicity. Some shifters still remain active in the Church of the Silver Flame, their faith standing as a bulwark against the scorn of their kin and their own feelings of guilt.
History and Folklore
Recent shifter history has been shaped and tainted by the terrible zealotry of the Church of the Silver Flame. When the Church began its great crusade to rid the world of lycanthropy, it made little distinction between the rare and powerful true lycanthropes and their more civilized offshoots, the shifters. Although the shifters had long since become their own race, their ability to shift their forms, the trappings of their moon worship, and their relatively small numbers made them ideal targets of the Church’s zeal. Compared to true lycanthropes, which are decidedly difficult to find and track and exceedingly powerful, shifters were easy for the Church to find and attack. It’s little surprise, then, that most of the Church’s early “successes” were at the expense of the shifter race.
The Church used its efforts against the shifters as proof that its crusade against lycanthropy was both right and destined for success. Although it reversed its view on shifters in the early years of its crusade and later acknowledged that shifters are a separate race, the damage was already done. Some of the Church’s less than honorable leaders used the crusade as an excuse to pursue private vendettas against shifter communities or to gather great profit at the expense of shifter lives. In war-torn Khorvaire, it’s unlikely that such pain and suspicion will find healing or resolution soon.
More recently, shifters—as all the peoples of Khorvaire—were touched by the violence and pain of the Last War. Whether in small units of their own kind, as individual scouts, or as members of larger mixed-race units, shifters fought on the side of every nation that is taking part in the war. Even though the majority of the shifter populace are not taking part directly in the battles and sieges, the decades of strife touched shifter communities within the great cities and smaller towns of Khorvaire. Even the most sheltered communities in the Eldeen Reaches had some of their number involved in the distant battles.
As the conflict grew, shifters were sought more and more frequently as scouts and trackers. With the spellcasters of every nation caught between the pressing needs of building the magical tools of warfare and bringing their spells to bear in battle, they had less and less opportunity to spy out enemy troop movements with magic, and the role of mundane scouts and outriders became ever more important.
Much of shifter folklore has been reshaped by the events of the Last War, but most of the tales and heroes integral to the shifter race deal with either its persecution at the hands of the Church of the Silver
Flame or its bond to animals and lycanthropes.
Bennin Silverclaw. One of the shifters most responsible for the decision on the part of the Church of the Silver Flame that shifters were, in fact, a separate race—not part of the evil that was inherent in all lycanthropes according to Silver Flame doctrine—was a powerful warrior and tracker named Bennin Silverclaw.
When the Church began its crusade against the werecreatures, Bennin joined in the effort with a zeal matched by only a few of the most fervent human converts. Bennin’s extraordinary abilities as a tracker and his claws coated with magical silver made him a terrible foe of all lycanthropes. The annals of the Church say that he found and killed no fewer than fifty lycanthropes of various types.
As with many other crusaders, Bennin found his end in violence. Attached to a large force of knights and clerics loyal to the Church of the Silver Flame, Bennin traveled deep into the Demon Wastes. The mighty expedition was aimed at a particularly powerful cult of lycanthropes that had long used its distant location and growing numbers to become a focal point of those opposed to the Church’s efforts to destroy lycanthropy. Such a lofty goal came at terrible cost.
Hunger and the dangers of travel decimated the expidition, leaving them vulnerable. By the time they found the mighty enclave, they also stumbled into a carefully laid ambush that nearly finished the group for good. One of their number, infected by lycanthropy, led the expedition into the lycanthropes’ trap. Through the efforts of Bennin and the bravery of a few knights, a remnant of the mighty expedition escaped the trap.
Fueled by his hatred of the lycanthropes and still stinging from the betrayal, Bennin led his small band in a desperate assault on the cult’s stronghold. Although the expeditionary force was wiped out entirely, the cult was broken by their final efforts. A final sending told of Bennin’s lone battle against the three most powerful leaders of the cult. Whether the expedition wiped out the cult entirely might never be known, but Bennin and the other brave warriors ensured that it would never again serve as a focal point for resistance against the Church.
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