Guīmogoa
The hulking, armored race who dwells beneath the earth and consumes minerals to grow
Base Racial Traits
Ability Score Modifiers: (+2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution) Guīmogoa are incredibly tough and flexible thanks to their incredibly well-armored bodies and the flexible yet durable interlocking armor plates that cover their bodies. Size: Guīmogoa are medium sized. They stand close to 9ft tall, but often hunch when they walk so rarely raise to their true height. Type: Guīmogoa are monstrous humanoids with the Guīmogoa subtype. Base Speed: Guīmogoa are hulking creatures who move slowly but steadily, and possess a 20ft base land speed that is unhindered by encumberance as well as a 30ft burrow speed. They may choose to leave tunnels behind with their burrow speed if they wish. Vision: Guīmogoa have Darkvision 60ft. Languages: Guīmogoa begin play speaking The Regional Language(See Languages of Zheng-Kitar) that reflects their origins, and Terran. A Guīmogoa with high INT can choose from the following languages: (Common, Tenebran, Ezdhûlian, Draconic, Necril, Palespeak, and Aklo) Rockspawn: Guīmogoa carry an innate connection to primordial earth, and can hear the voice of the rock and ground. They have tremorsense 30ft. They can detect mineral and ore deposits within this range as easily as they can living creatures. Diamond Body: The Scales of the Guīmogoa are legendary for their durability and hardness, said to rival even adamantine. They gain a +4 natural armor bonus that, unlike normal natural armor bonuses, applies to their touch AC as well. Airtight Scales: Whenever they would be subjected to a continuous, ongoing elemental effect that would deal HP damage to them, Guīmogoa take no damage on the first round of exposure, half on the second, and full damage every round after the second. This does not apply against elemental effects that deal damage in a single burst such as fireball or scorching ray, but walking into a pool of lava would trigger this ability. Deadly Claws: Guīmogoa gain two Claw Attacks as primary natural attacks that begin at 1d4 damage as normal for a medium creature, but crit on a 19-20. Guīmogoa ignore 20 points of hardness when attacking objects with their claw attacks and deal double damage to structures and objects(Excluding Undead and Constructs) with their claw attacks as well. Defensive Curl: Guīmogoa can, as a standard action that does not provoke AoO, curl up into an armored ball. They lose the ability to make any attack or cast any spell with Somatic or Material Components(Including abilities such as or similar to Kinetic Blasts), but can make a slam appropriate for a creature one size category larger than them. While curled up in this way, they lose their burrow speed but gain an additional +20ft to their base land speed, and their natural armor bonus doubles(going to +8 by default). If they have no natural armor bonus, it rises to +2. Exiting the defense curl is a swift action that does not provoke AoO. Nimble Survivors: Guīmogoa gain a racial +2 bonus on acrobatics and survival, and one is always a class skill for them(Player Choice). Mineral-Eaters: Guīmogoa bodies are built to digest and process raw minerals, rocks, ores, and gemstones, and as a result they resist poisons with ease. They gain a racial +2 on all saves made vs poison, can process ores into ingots by ingesting them, and can at will choose to shine light from the minerals and ores encrusting their backs as a torch.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Guīmogoa are hulking creatures that stand on two hind legs, with two massive forelimbs that extend to a nearly freakish length. Their bodies support this massive bulk, overwhelming muscle mass, and the weight of their intricate and incredibly protective scaly hide through incredibly thick bone structures, with legs nearly as thick as medium sized tree trunks and very broad bodies to help them support their large size. Because of their immense bulk they have trouble standing fully upright, but can do so if needed for short periods of time. Their eyes are partially blind, and their normal eyesight is relatively poor, especially aboveground, and they rely more on being able to use the vibrations emitted by themselves and other creatures to detect shifts in the terrain around them.
Biological Traits
The most unique biological trait of the Guīmogoa is their ability to consume gemstones, minerals, ores, and geode deposits and grow in strength and/or gain new powers depending on which stones they ingest, though this process is most keenly seen during early childhood, where Guīmogoa parents will feed their child gemstones to influence their growth, scale color and tint, and the strength and size of their child. As such, Guīmogoa can typically be identified by the geode, mineral, and ore deposits encrusted onto their backs as leftover evidence from their eating habits as a child, with Iron, Bronze, Copper, and the like being relatively common with rarer ores such as Adamantine, Mithril, and other gemstones and geodes typically rare and reserved for the lucky or better off Guīmogoa families.
Genetics and Reproduction
Though they are scaled, Guīmogoa are not reptilian creatures to the surprise of many scholars who have studied their species in the past. Instead, they reproduce just as other non-reptilians do through producing live offspring, where male Guīmogoa will couple with females of their kind to produce a child the female will carry to term in six to nine months, then birth as normal.
Growth Rate & Stages
Guīmogoa age just as humans do, and once they are born they reach their teenage years around 13 or so years old, and are commonly considered adults by their people around their later teens, though some villages change this to early 20s, depending on cultural traditions. Once they hit adulthood around age 20, Guīmogoa reach middle age around age 35, hit middle age around 53, and become venerable at age 70 and die 2d20 years later.
Ecology and Habitats
Guīmogoa are primarly creatures that dwell beneath the earth in sprawling underground villages and cities, but have learned and adapted to often traveling aboveground to visit surface-dweller cities and towns as well to sucha degree that many Guīmogoa can now be found living on the surface permanently, having settled down alongside other surface-dwellers and gotten used to life aboveground. Generally, in traditional underground Guīmogoa settlements they act much like burrowing moles, carving out vast caverns and burrows to settle their people in while finding nearby mineral deposits to foster future generations of Guīmogoa children, and to provide valuable resources to the village.
Often, Guīmogoa settlements are fairly reclusive and isolated and take care to avoid stumbling upon other creatures of the underground, though in times of need or danger they become deadly armored juggernauts capable of flattening even heavily-armed and armored Dwarven strongholds.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Guīmogoa primarily survive on a diet of solid rock and stone mixed with Gemstones, Minerals, Ores, and other Geodes. They derive sustenance from raw ores and the like, and with ores in particular the process in which they "eat" them acts as a natural forge that refines even the sturdiest metals into ingots, compressing them down into bars as they digest the energy and material produced during the process. They are quite fond of gemstones and minerals, and often eat such things whole as they can quite literally feed off of them and grow larger, stronger, and more colored in the process.
Biological Cycle
The biological cycle of the Guīmogoa is a thing almost unnoticable to the average onlooker, as the only sign of a Guīmogoa's age is the coloration of their scales, and the depth and intricacy of the striations that run across their bodies like a geological site...as they age these striations grow more and more pronounced and grow more layers as their scales are broken and regrown over the course of their lives. The mineral, ore, and geode deposits encrusted upon their backs become bigger and more pronounced as they age, and the most venerable Guīmogoa resemble walking crystal formations or mineral deposits than scaled creatures...though often, these deposits are trimmed and harvested to prevent them from weighing down a given Guīmogoa and causing bodily harm to them as they age.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Guīmogoa are nearly blind in the traditional sense, and while they can see with their eyes they rely much more on their innate tremorsense for conventional sight, as their eyes are much more accustomed to life beneath the ground than aboveground, which allows them to see incredibly far in the dark.
They are innately in tune with the vibrations in the ground, but unlike other creatures they are capable of not only detecting the vibrations made from other creatures, but they can use the vibrations they themselves, with their looming and massive forms, put out and use those vibrations to detect specific objects that those vibrations hit...specifically minerals, geodes, gemstones, ores, and the like that they are so fond of consuming as delicacies.
Alternate Racial Trait List: Guīmogoa Alternate Racial Traits
Racial Feat List: Guīmogoa Racial Feats
Lifespan
70 Years
Conservation Status
Guīmogoa are a plentiful people present all over Zheng-Kitar, though they are most commonly found in hilly or mountains areas, as well as beneath the ground, so many might not commonly see overwhelming numbers of them.
Average Height
6.98ft - 8.98ft (2.13m - 2.74m)
Average Weight
352.7lbs - 407.85lbs (160kg - 185kg)
Average Physique
Guīmogoa are titanic, towering creatures that can stand nearly 30% taller than the tallest human or similarly sized race, their bodies covered in scales as hard and as unbreakable as adamantine but as flexible and dexterous as silk with rippling muscles, powerful jaws, and stomachs capable of dissolving most anything, including gemstones, rocks, geodes, and the like. They are imposing beings who often walk and move at a hunch due to their size and girth, sometimes using their massive forelimbs to assist their locomotion.
Related Ethnicities
Related Materials
The Hulking Beasts of the Underground
Perhaps one of the most populous races on Zheng-Kitar, the Guimogoa are a race seldom seen, but exist in numbers uncountable beneath the surface of the world, burrowing away and carving out their tunnel homes with the same patient diligence as their rivals, the Dwarves. The sprawling cavern-cities of the Guimogoa are things of wondrous beauty and incredible splendor - adorned with countless gemstones, ore deposits, and built from stone bitten and burrowed away by the Guimogoa themselves, each of these wondrous cities is a place guarded viciously by the ponderously slowly behemoths, as there are many who hunt them for the bounty of their corpses, and the treasures that they guard. Their settlements are often nearby Dwarven Cities or outposts, and the two races feud often, though it is often good-natured and rarely truly violent - as both races are denizens of the underground, they have formed a natural rivalry over the eons as they skirmish over mineral and ore deposits, though it has only rarely come to all-out rare war. Unless provoked, Guimogoa tend to lean towards seclusion and isolation - though they have fearsome physical prowess Guimogoa rarely care to use it unless others prove themselves enemies or decide to actively hunt them down. Thanks to their natural abilities, Guimogoa are also incredibly useful as walking forges - their bodies naturally ingest ores and minerals as nutrients, and they excrete the resultant pseudo-ingots onto the rock formations that grow from their backs as they age - allowing them to function as portable forges that even the greatest Dwarven Craftsmen would be jealous of. This, combined with their natural habit of burrowing to further expand their cavern and tunnel warrens and cities, has allowed them to naturally accrue a great wealth of minerals and ores that they don't often fully use. Though something many claim to be naught but a tall tale, rumors persist of great Guimogoan beasts of burden and war tactics designed to utilize their natural ability to burrow through the earth to create tunnels beneath populated areas - tales that tell of them being provoked, and digging enough tunnels beneath a city to sink it below the ground by causing a local collapse of the ground through tunnel creation. Myth it may be, but it serves effectively to make others hestitate before attacking a Guimogoan colony.
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