Heritage Traits

The Heritage Traits Page, is part of the bigger Abilities and Proficiency System. Heritage Traits are a set of things you can do as your character, often unique to your character design. Most of these will be out-of-combat oriented and used purely to flavor roleplay or set the stage for your storytelling. Because this page is long, we recommend you use the Table of Contents on the right, to navigate to the necessary sections you want to source. Each Heritage Trait Section will also be accessible on the Heritage Wiki, found in the Infobox (top right).

Heritage Trait Rules

All Heritage Traits are designed to fit both a Magical and non-Magical Character. If a Mechanic has dubious magical aesthetics, you may decide if this is something biologically innate to you, or whether it is something they achieve through Magic. Not all other Mechanics are created equally or usable equally. We aim for storytelling design, not exact complete equality between all designs.

When designing a Mixed-Heritage character, choose one dominant and one lesser Heritage. The dominant Heritage determines the first two Mechanics, which cannot be swapped. For the remaining three Mechanics (every set has five), you can mix and match between both Heritages, but must keep their chronological order. For example, a 4th Mechanic from one Heritage can't replace a 2nd Mechanic from the other. Choices are always between two Mechanics in the same numerical position.

Some Heritages have complex or niche Mechanics listed on their own pages rather than here. This page focuses on transferable, daily-use Mechanics, often shared with other groups like Godborn or Mortisphages. Detailed Heritage Mechanics, called Capabilities, are found in the Expanded Lore and can only be used in mixed-heritage characters if from the dominant Heritage.

Consent

It is also necessary to declare here what Consent means, both from an IC and OOC perspective. We distinguish a difference between IC and OOC consent, the former is easier to explain, so that one will be discussed first. IC Consent is often required for long-lasting changes to a person, and so for them to apply, such a person would need to be in their right state of mind, without altered effects or coercion, or having their actions controlled by third parties. Consent IC can only be granted if a person is not being mind-controlled, influenced, under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, or otherwise impaired, threatened, or blackmailed into agreeing with something.

OOC Consent is a bit more complicated. OOC Consent means a written agreement (preferably on the server so it can be tracked, or screenshotted on Discord), where a player communicates agreement to certain things happening to their Character within bounds. For example, I can consent to you, that you are allowed to mind-control my character, and thus have limited control over my actions. Limited here infers that I can set constraints, for example, "You can mind-control me, but you are not allowed to force romance-rp on me". OOC consent can be given broadly, or with lots of ifs and buts, but importantly it can always be revoked at any time if you feel someone else is abusing that trust and OOC Consent.

OOC Consent also applies in some lesser form to the idea that others should not misuse Mechanics in ways they were not intended, or in ways that result in non-rp. For example, the first Selvath mechanic that allows them to speak with Animals should be used in a pro-RP way, not to validate in-roleplay metagaming. If someone for example use this mechanic to have a squirrel tell them about something off-screen and reveal your character's actions while they weren't present, you can call that out as being stupid, and you do not agree with the usage of the mechanic that way. If the other person continues to be a problem or in any situation concerning Consent where arguments or disagreements start, make a Ticket for Lore Staff to intervene, but try to solve the problem yourself first by talking. If someone gives you bad RP you are encouraged to call it out.

Selvath Traits

Your Selvath character has these Traits.

1. Animal Masters: You can communicate with wild animals in your presence, but they cannot have plot-relevant information or information that would otherwise be metagaming or character-revealing. You can summon a plant and bark-matter mount from the forest anywhere, or call upon a Regalian deer to stride to you as a mount. Finally, you can turn wild beasts into temporary familiars. This may not work on Event Animals.
2. Forest Masters: You can (within reason), change how you are perceived, or how others perceive the forest around you while out of Combat. This can include producing animal sounds that imply the presence of predators, disappearing in the canopy as you jump from tree to tree, and generally making the forest a hostile place to be for unwelcome guests. Whatever is done, cannot confer combat benefit or pre-combat positioning.
3. Wood Singer: You can use song, music, or hand gestures to reshape wood and other plant-like materials in any shape you like, for example, jewelry or weapons. Other good applications for this are as furniture or decorations inside houses, or to address in-the-moment needs while in the forest, for example by creating wooden bowls, or chairs to sit on that sprout from the roots in the soil.
4. Capitalism Free: You cannot be Aristocratic or Nobility in Regalia, but you don't need to either. While Regalians need money to buy things, you can just get anything and everything from the forest for free. You never need to buy clothes or food, and even alchemical ingredients and medicine can be regularly sourced from the woods. Money has no meaning to you and you can extract value for yourself. You have defeated John Locke.
5. Beast Becoming: You can use a ritual/ consume/ sacrifice any part of an animal to adopt aspects of it, for example consuming the flesh of a jungle-cat and taking on their hind legs and tail, or sacrificing the pelt of a bear and transforming your arms into bear-claw hands. These changes are temporary (however long you want them to be), can change any body part but never the head, and cannot grant other mechanical uses such as flight.

Yanar Traits

Your Yanar character has these Traits.

1. Altered Self: You may create two versions of yourself that you can transform between. Each can have a different design, Proficiency spread, and personality (however, Charisma Proficiency must be the same across both). You must declare both Proficiency sets on your Character Sheet. Swapping can only occur out of Combat, while no Cooldowns are active, and force you to stay transformed for at least a week.
2. Emotion Sense: You can sense the emotions of others, even the ones they try to hide unless they have a Mechanic that would block their emotions from being read. Additionally, you can copy their emotions and feel them yourself, you can heighten or lessen their emotions, or encourage other emotions in them with mere eye contact. Changing someone else's emotions requires OOC Consent, however.
3. Wood Singer: You can use song, music, or hand gestures to reshape wood and other plant-like materials in any shape you like, for example, jewelry or weapons. Other good applications for this are as furniture or decorations inside houses, or to address in-the-moment needs while in the forest, for example by creating wooden bowls, or chairs to sit on that sprout from the roots in the soil.
4. Seed Singer: You are deeply in tune with nature's growth and diversity. You can control the growing speed of plants and flowers around you, and even cross-breed plants at will to create unique new plants, and even reshape existing plants with new foliage, color, shape, and so forth. You can grow food nearly anywhere, so long as there is a little bit of soil, water, and sunlight present to stave off hunger.
5. Dream Singer: You can control the dreams of anyone who is either sleeping in your Rental Region/ Base/ Estate or anyone who is sleeping in the same scene as you. You can see their dreams, alter their course and their experience, and prevent them from waking up or forcibly waking them. You can also enter their dream subconsciously and speak/ interact with the person, and make them forget what happened in the dream after.