Halfling

A harvest witch does a walkabout.
Nana-by-Tyne, Rhosgobel.

Halflings are a Humanoid species in the elven (Ur-Mera) lineage. They resemble most members of the group but are typically about half the height and with minor, vestigial amphibian features, like webbed feet/hands and high lung capacity.

A simple and unpretentious people, halflings generally prefer the pastoral-communal lifestyles of their remote villages, however a rare few are drawn to the open road or the noisy, scintillating complexity of tallfolk society, where they must not only contend with cultural differences but also oblivious pedestrians and carriages.

Proud musicians and storytellers, their art is highly sought after in human civilization, and halflings that can tolerate climbing high chairs and dodging oblivous, tallfolk pedestrians—though rare—can make a good living in human, elven and even arakh cities. Those rare few will often describe their clanfolk as stubborn and set in their ways.

Biology

See also: Halflings of Materia Image Gallery (External)

or: Korobokuru Image Gallery (External)

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Halflings are likely a basal branch of the Ur-Mera or elven line, whose merfolk roots explain their minorly aquatic features.

In addition, hobbits have a much more subtle feature. They are what some Eridún paragenesists call "Prone to Comedy" (PtC), the reverse of another condition called "Prone to Tragedy" (PtT). Species—sometimes even individual families—who are PtC experience more moments of extreme serendipity or "near misses" per unit time. The effect is subtle but statistically significant enough to be taken seriously in theoretical biology. Materia's hobbits are one planar subspecies of halfling to possess the PtC feature.

Egret eft'Oldlight, famed halfling paladin
of Aios hailing from Oldlightton, Rhosgobel.

On Waking Materia

Halflings are not a common Family on Waking Materia, likely originating as interplanar travelers and tradespeople in the First Age.

Society

The boggy, stilted townships and revered uplands of Rhosgobel, Voidward of the Broken Empire, is the largest remaining population. They maintain a cordial if cautious relationship with much of the predominantly human archipelago, and especially with the eladrin of Ilhalvalaut.

The Korobokuru of Marai distrust the Commonwealth and prefer the solitude of the rocky, windswept islands on the Coreward side of the archipelago, where they lead a spartan but peaceful existence. Life so close to the ocean has accentuated the amphibian features that are merely vestigial in other Materian halflings.

History

There is little record of halflings among the first colonial empires of the First Age, leading most scholars to believe they arrived gradually, among smaller organizations of tradesmen, pirates and the like, particularly during the the Dye Wars of the Middle First Age. Like most sapients of the time, halflings mostly populated central Materia in antediluvian times, and were thus decimated by the Deluge.