Sheikah
The mortal descendants of the Goddess's celestial army, the Sheikah are a secretive people who live in the shadows of civilization. They once served nobility as bodyguards and secret agents, but the leaders of Olimandias have driven them out of their former social roles due to religious differences. Where Olimandias answers only to the divine guidance of Diel, the Sheikah are still loyal followers of Hylia and the Golden Goddesses and refuse to sacrifice their ideals for the sake of 'order above all.'
They now find themselves as part of the greater resistance against Olimandias, though some Sheikah take a more mercenary approach to life and avoid the world's higher power struggles.
Player Information
- Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.
- Age. Sheikah mature at the same rate as humans, but they can live up to 160 years.
- Size. Sheikah have the same range of height and weight as humans. Your size is Medium.
- Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
- Darkvision. Blessed with a radiant soul, your vision can easily cut through darkness. You have 60ft darkvision.
- Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Sheikah.
- Celestial Resistance. You have resistance to necrotic damage and radiant damage.
- Stealthy. You find stealth to be second nature, granting you advantage on Stealth checks.
- Invoke Duplicity: As an action, you create a perfect illusion of yourself that lasts for 1 minute, or until you lose your concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell). The illusion appears in an unoccupied space that you can see within 30 feet of you. As a bonus action on your turn, you can move the illusion up to 30 feet to a space you can see, but it must remain within 120 feet of you.
For the duration, you can cast spells as though you were in the illusion's space, but you must use your own senses. Additionally, when both you and your illusion are within 5 feet of a creature that can see the illusion, you have advantage on attack rolls against that creature, given how distracting the illusion is to the target.
You may use this ability once per long rest.
Variant: Yiga
The Yiga clan is a "fallen" offshoot of the Sheikah. They primarily worship the Demon King, a dark god of malice and conquest, and work against society. Much in the same way conventional aasimar can fall to evil. Some of the Yiga do not pay any heed to the higher divine struggles of the world, however. They may instead choose to commit evil or amoral deeds for strictly personal gain. Yiga characters will still use the abilities provided above.Civilization and Culture
History
The Sheikah are descended from the Goddess's celestial host, who originally arrived on the Material Plane to assist the Goddess and protect her people. Though technically aasimar, the Sheikah are not the products of one-off trysts between celestials and mortals. Their starting population was large enough to produce a self-sufficient society, and so they have developed unique traits and abilities that set them apart from other celestial descendants.
After the Goddess left the world, the Sheikah viewed themselves as the protectors of life. They initially served monarchs as bodyguards and secret agents, hunting down evil within fledgling Hylian kingdoms. They soon extended this protection to all other early cultures. The sight of a single Sheikah warrior entering town was a sign that the people would be safe from harm -- or that local corrupt leaders would soon meet the business end of a blade.
As the holy city of Olimandias gained power and began to bring more nations under their control, the Sheikah were banned from serving as royal protectors or roaming justicars. The Lord of Olimandias at the time felt that the Sheikah were "a risk to the authority of Diel" and would undermine the Great City's laws.
Since then, the Sheikah clans have lived in isolated villages beyond both mountain ranges of Verden. Yet still, individual warriors return to civilization in secret. Some become mercenaries. Others still uphold the code to protect society from harm. Watching. Waiting. Intervening when necessary. Always from the shadows. Because not all things that hide in the dark are cruel.
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