Verdan
The verdan owe their existence to chaos. Descended and transformed from a large clan of goblins and hobgoblins, those who became the verdan were simply living their lives, doing goblinoid things. But then passing through the Mist of Charneaults dark-elves changed them forever. Now the newest race to call Etharis home, the verdan do their best to find their way in an unfamiliar world.
When the power of the dark Mist mutated the verdan, their skin was turned the color of jade and their blood began to flow black. Their ears grew pointed, and they gained a limited form of telepathy — but at the cost of forgetting their history. The underground homes of the goblins were places of terror to the new creatures those goblins became, and the verdan quickly fled to the surface and into the sunlight.
When they arrived in the new lands of the surface, the verdan found that they were often mistaken for smaller, green-skinned half-elves. Attracting curiosity but no real questions, they have thus been able to make their way reasonably freely in the world.
Because the verdan have not dwelled long in the world, they are still discovering new things about themselves. Chief among these discoveries is that their physical forms change as they age, signifying that the mutative power of the mist is not done with them. The first verdan emerged from the Underdark as creatures of goblin stature. But they soon learned that their kind were fated to eventually undergo a dramatic, painful, and random growth spurt that sees them transformed to hobgoblin size over a period of days.
At the same time, many verdan undergo changes in coloring as they age. Male verdan typically have little to no hair, while females sport shocks of wiry hair that they try to tame in a variety of styles. But the color of any verdan’s hair, skin, and eyes can transform from their original jade tones to pale white, deep ebon, or any other shade in between. A verdan’s ears also undergo numerous spontaneous alterations over their lifetime, from the typical range of point and peak seen among the elves, to huge ears that sweep back from the head like wings, and which are often pierced behind the head with a single ring to keep them from flapping about.
Changes in gender are also a known and accepted part of verdan life. These fluid aspects of form and identity are seen as blessings, allowing an individual to experience more of the world and grow in empathy and understanding. There is no pattern to any verdan’s mutations, as verdan from the same family can shift in drastically different ways. The verdan assign no cultural or biological relevance to any particular coloration, physical features, or gender.
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