Origins and Peoples

Origin type and people

The Lethean Age separates two questions that many games collapse into one.

Origin type asks what your body is made of: organic life, synthetic biological life, machinery, or a hybrid of flesh and machine.

People asks where you belong: surface community, Eloi enclave, Morlock warren, Beastfolk lineage, Rur settlement, android cohort, or some mixed place that survived by making room.

Together, origin type and people answer how your body works and where your mind was formed. A third choice -- your background -- answers what you did before you became dangerous. Each of the three shapes you at character creation and remains part of your character throughout play.

Origin types

Origin type does not change your base ability scores. It determines how your body interacts with the Miasm, how you recover from damage, and how communities read you when they see you coming.

What your people gives you

When you choose a people, you gain a set of traits rooted in your lineage -- the accumulated biology, adaptation, and deep-time pressure that shaped your kind. Each people entry below lists a chassis table showing creature type, size, and speed, followed by the named traits you gain at character creation.

Unless a trait says otherwise, you gain all listed traits when you choose that people. Beastfolk is an exception: it offers two lineage tracks, and you choose one at character creation.

Sub-origins -- Cyborg and Small Stature -- are additional choices available alongside any people. They are described after the people entries.

Organic peoples

Surface humanity

Surface humanity is the broad, adaptable middle of the present world. Surface communities live in settlements, road networks, ruin edges, fortified farms, trade camps, and places too small to appear on any map.

Surface humans are not old-world humans. They are the descendants of survivors who adapted across deep time. Their strength is not purity. It is flexibility.

Traits

Resourceful. You gain Heroic Inspiration whenever you finish a Long Rest. Surface communities survive by responding to what comes at them. The reflex for rapid adjustment is bone-deep in anyone raised inside one.

Skillful. You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. A surface settlement teaches whatever it needs to survive; what you were taught says as much about your home as about you.

Versatile. You gain one Origin feat of your choice (see Chapter 5). Skilled is recommended if you have no other preference.

Eloi

The Eloi come from miasma-rich holdouts and sealed enclaves where abundance lasted long enough to change the body. They are graceful, long-lived, and often psionically sensitive. Outside their home conditions, they can be fragile.

An Eloi character is a good fit if you want tension between refined survival and a hostile outside world. The holdout taught them stillness, patience, and a particular kind of luck that surface peoples find unnerving -- the Eloi way of simply being somewhere else when things go wrong.

Traits

Enclave Calm. You have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Frightened condition. Holdout life cultivated a settled equanimity that generations of abundance reinforced. Panic is a reflex the enclaves bred out long ago.

Graceful Passage. You can move through the space of any creature that is a size larger than you, but you cannot stop in the same space. The Eloi body is built for enclosed spaces where larger presences must be navigated rather than confronted.

Fortunate. When you roll a 1 on the d20 of a D20 Test, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll. Surface-dwellers say the Eloi carry their holdout's luck with them wherever they go. The Eloi do not argue.

Holdout Quiet. You can take the Hide action even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you. In the enclaves, the art of becoming unnoticed in the presence of something vast was a survival skill before it was anything else.

Morlocks

Morlocks come from deep strata: tunnels, warrens, collapsed infrastructure, and places where sunlight is a rumor. They are powerful, dense, enduring, and tuned to conditions that surface peoples find intolerable.

Morlocks are sapient people, not monsters. A Morlock character should carry the weight of a body built for one world and forced to deal with another. The deep strata shaped them over geological time. The surface is genuinely, physiologically wrong to them -- not frightening in the way a ghost story is frightening, but wrong the way a poison is wrong.

Traits

Darkvision. You have Darkvision with a range of 120 feet. The deep strata have not seen natural light in geological time. Your eyes adapted accordingly.

Surge from Depth. You can take the Dash action as a Bonus Action. When you do so, you gain a number of Temporary Hit Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest. The deep tunnels demanded sudden violence and sudden retreat; the body learned to deliver both.

Relentless Endurance. When you are reduced to 0 Hit Points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 Hit Point instead. Once you use this trait, you cannot do so again until you finish a Long Rest.

Surface Wrongness. When you first enter an open-air environment with sky visible and natural light present during an encounter, you must succeed on a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw or gain the Frightened condition until the end of your next turn. The condition's source is the environment itself. This is not a social response. It is physiological. Your biology assumes enclosed stone, deep nanite profiles, and darkness. The surface registers as alien at a cellular level, and the body responds accordingly.

Beastfolk

Beastfolk descend from non-human animal stock that became sapient through old-world enhancement, miasma-driven adaptation, or both. They are not humans with animal decoration. Their bodies and minds begin from different architectures.

A Beastfolk character should name the ancestral stock if the table knows it: canid, corvid, raptor, ursine, cephalopod, insectile, annelid, or something more local and strange. Then choose a lineage track -- Keen Kin or Fierce Kin -- reflecting which adaptive pressures most shaped your particular line. Canid, corvid, raptor, and cephalopod stocks tend toward Keen Kin; ursine, insectile, and annelid stocks tend toward Fierce Kin. These are tendencies, not rules. A table that agrees on something different is free to disagree.

Keen Kin

Beastfolk whose ancestral line was shaped by alertness, cunning, and rapid threat-response. The body that cannot be caught off guard and cannot be deceived about what the world smells like.

Darkvision. You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.

Skill Versatility. You gain proficiency in two skills of your choice. Beastfolk communities transmit practical knowledge directly; you absorbed more categories of it than most.

Cannot Be Surprised. You cannot be Surprised while you are conscious. The threat-response in your lineage never fully disengages. You do not choose to be alert. You simply are.

Primal Sense. Choose one sense at character creation: scent, hearing, or sight. You have Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on the chosen sense.

Fierce Kin

Beastfolk whose ancestral line was shaped by endurance, physical power, and the willingness to hold ground when something larger was trying to move them. The body that simply does not stop.

Darkvision. You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.

Menacing. You gain proficiency in the Intimidation skill. The Fierce Kin body reads as a threat before a word is spoken.

Relentless Endurance. When you are reduced to 0 Hit Points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 Hit Point instead. Once you use this trait, you cannot do so again until you finish a Long Rest.

Savage Attacks. When you score a Critical Hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon's damage dice one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the Critical Hit. The Fierce Kin body does not just strike. It tears.

Rur

Rur are synthetic biological beings. They have flesh, blood, organs, hunger, fatigue, and pain. They were grown, not born -- but the Miasm treats them as living bodies, because they are.

Some Rur know what they are through community memory. Others believe whatever their settlement believes. The difference is social before it is mechanical. Whether any individual Rur is a continuous lineage from before the Forgetting, an accidental product of a Fallen Redoubt's manufacturing systems still running ancient protocols, or something stranger entirely is a question with no reliable answer. The present world takes them as they are.

Play a Rur if you want a character whose body is natural in operation but artificial in origin -- and who may or may not know the difference.

Traits

Darkvision. You have Darkvision with a range of 120 feet. Manufacturing conditions do not require natural light. The template carried those eyes forward.

Template Resilience. You have Resistance to Poison damage. You also have Advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Poisoned condition. An engineered baseline is consistent in ways natural evolution is not. Toxins calibrated for adapted flesh find the template harder to compromise.

Template Toughness. Your Hit Point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 again whenever you gain a level. The template was designed for endurance. It delivers.

Template Recognition. As a Bonus Action, you gain a heightened biological awareness with a range of 60 feet for 10 minutes. While this awareness is active, you can determine whether any creature you can see was born naturally, grown to template, or constructed mechanically. You can also identify whether a biological substance -- food, medicine, tissue -- has been recently synthesized or deliberately modified. You can use this Bonus Action a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Vril-ya

There is a fifth branch of sapience that nobody on the surface knows exists. Deep beneath the deepest Morlock warrens, below the geological strata where even the most ambitious scavengers stop digging, a civilization preserved itself intact across the same deep time that turned surface humanity into what it is now. They did not forget. They did not degrade. They went underground on purpose, with the full knowledge and technology of the old world, and they sealed the door behind them.

The Vril-ya are what that choice produced. Their mastery of psionic technique is not the cargo-cult intuition of a surface Sage or the lineage-waking of a Bloodborn. It is the inheritance of a working civilization that kept its records, maintained its understanding, and passed knowledge down through unbroken instruction. Where the surface peoples channel the Miasm by feel, the Vril-ya understand what they are doing. They have simply not told anyone.

A Vril-ya character on the surface is operating far from home, among descendants of people their civilization left behind, in a world that does not know they exist. The interesting question is not whether they have power. It is what they are going to do with it, and why they are up here at all.

Traits

Darkvision. You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.

Vril-ya Discipline. Your civilization preserved full knowledge of psionic technique through unbroken instruction. You are part of a cognitive tradition that grants you Substrate abilities. Choose a Discipline from the Vril-ya Disciplines table. You gain the level 1 benefit of that discipline.

When you reach character levels 3 and 5, you gain the higher-level effect shown on the table. You always have that effect prepared. You can produce it once without spending Wind slots, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a Long Rest. You can also produce it by spending Wind slots of the appropriate level.

Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your channeling ability for these effects (choose the ability when you select the discipline).

Keen Substrate-Sense. You have proficiency in the Perception skill. The Vril-ya's long tradition of environmental monitoring is encoded in their basic formation. You have been taught to read what most surface peoples only occasionally sense.

Contemplative State. You do not need to sleep. You can finish a Long Rest in 4 hours spent in contemplative suspension -- conscious, still, processing. Psionic effects that require a target to fall asleep have no effect on you.

Android

Androids are mechanical sapients. They do not eat, breathe, bleed, or heal like organics. They can be damaged and repaired. Their minds are carried by synthetic cognitive Lattice that nobody alive fully understands.

Androids can be people of the Law, faction members, traders, warriors, medics, or wanderers. The question is not whether they count as people. In any settlement of the Law, they do. The question is what they were built to do, and how much of that original purpose they are still running.

Android psionics require a technological interface. Without such hardware, the Miasm is something they can measure or endure, not something they channel. What they have instead is a body that does not stop and a mind that was designed for something specific.

Traits

Construct Chassis. You do not need to eat, drink, or breathe. You have Immunity to Poison damage and the Poisoned condition. You have Immunity to disease. You do not need to sleep; you can finish a Long Rest in 4 hours spent in a low-power maintenance state -- conscious, immobile, processing. Psionic effects that require a target to fall asleep have no effect on you.

Cognitive Architecture. Your synthetic brain was built for a purpose. Choose one Architecture from the table below. You can use the chosen Architecture a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Operational State. Starting at character level 5, you can activate enhanced operational parameters as a Bonus Action. For 10 minutes or until you end the state (no action required), you have Advantage on Strength checks and your Speed increases by 10 feet. Once you use this trait, you cannot use it again until you finish a Long Rest.

Tireless Build. You have Advantage on any ability check you make to end the Grappled condition. You also count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity.

Sub-origins

Four additional choices are available at Step 3 of character creation alongside your people. Sub-origins are not peoples -- they modify an existing people rather than replacing it. Declare your choice at the same time you declare your people. Your character sheet records the combination: Morlock (Cyborg), Eloi (Small Stature), Beastfolk Keen Kin (Mutant), and so on.

Cyborg and Mutant are available to any organic or Rur people only -- not to Android characters, who have no biological base to augment or mutate. Small Stature and Large Stature are available to any people including Android; they do not stack with each other.

Cyborg

Cyborgs begin with organic life and add machine Lattice. The augmentation may be crude, elegant, voluntary, desperate, inherited, or half-understood. What matters is that the starting point is biological and the modification is mechanical.

Any organic or Rur character can be a Cyborg. Androids cannot -- the overlay requires a biological base to modify. A Rur who is also a Cyborg keeps the Rur's biological channeling mode; the augmentation complicates it rather than replacing it.

When you declare Cyborg alongside your people:

• Choose one base trait from your people to forfeit. That trait no longer applies. Traits gained from size sub-origins, Mutation Traits, and Cybernetics augmentations cannot be traded away.
• Choose one Cybernetics feat (see Chapter 5). You gain that feat immediately, ignoring any level prerequisites.
• Your origin type becomes Cyborg regardless of your people's origin type.

Cybernetics feats represent specific installed augmentations -- motor frames, sensory arrays, combat systems, and similar hardware. They are defined in Chapter 5 and tagged Cybernetics to distinguish them from feats gained through training or lineage.

Cyborgs retain biological contact with the Miasm, but the machinery can enhance, distort, focus, or suppress that contact. The Cybernetics feat you choose reflects which direction the interference runs.

A Cyborg character should answer: What part of you is machine? Who installed it, and under what circumstances? What does it let you do that you could not before? What does it interfere with? Do others see the augmentation as repair, power, shame, or proof of status?

Small Stature

Any character of any people can be of small stature. The Miasm drives variation in all lineages. A Morlock who stands four feet tall is still a Morlock. An Eloi whose enclave's particular conditions produced a smaller frame is still Eloi. The body plan varies. The people does not change.

When you declare Small Stature alongside your people:

• Your size becomes Small (about 2-4 feet tall) instead of Medium.
• You gain a +2 bonus to AC against ranged attacks. A small frame is genuinely harder to hit at distance.
• You consume significantly less food and water than a Medium creature.

Small Stature does not change any other trait. You keep all traits that would apply to a Medium version of your people.

Large Stature

The same deep-time pressure that produces small frames produces large ones. Extended exposure to certain Miasm profiles, inherited growth patterns from upvolving lines, regional conditions that compounded across generations -- the Lethean Age produces bodies that exceed the medium range by a significant margin. A character of large stature is not an aberration. They are the product of a different set of pressures.

When you declare Large Stature alongside your people:

• Your size becomes Large (about 8-12 feet tall) instead of Medium.
• Increase your STR or CON by 1 (your choice).
• You take a -2 penalty to AC against ranged attacks. A large frame is harder to miss at distance.
• You consume significantly more food and water than a Medium creature. Scarcity affects you first.

Large Stature does not change any other trait. You keep all traits that would apply to a Medium version of your people.

Mutant

The Miasm does not hold still. Given enough time and pressure -- a lifetime near a rich zone, a birth in a miasma-dense enclave, an ancestor who survived the wrong kind of exposure and passed the change on -- bodies adapt. Not through choice. Through consequence. A Mutant character carries one or more of those adaptations from the start of play. The body has already answered.

Any organic or Rur character can be Mutant. Android characters cannot -- machine Lattice does not adapt under Miasm pressure.

When you declare Mutant alongside your people:

• Choose one or more base traits from your people to give up. Those traits no longer apply. Traits gained from size sub-origins, Cybernetics augmentations, and other Mutation Traits cannot be traded away.
• For each trait given up, choose one Mutation Trait from Chapter 8. You gain that trait immediately. Choose from the Physical, Mental, or Psychic family. Traits that list a level prerequisite in their Notes are not available at character creation.
• Your origin type does not change.

Physical and Mental mutations are ordinary biology -- they keep working in a miasma-dead zone and cannot be Dispelled. Psychic mutations tap the Winds and are subject to local Wind levels like any other psionic effect (see Chapter 5).

A Mutant character should answer: What does the change look like from outside? Was it present at birth, or did it arrive later? Does your community regard it as adaptation, mark, or liability? What does it let you do that your people would not have managed otherwise? What did it cost you?

Backgrounds

Your background is the life you led before danger became your daily condition. It tells the table where you came from, what you knew how to do, and what faction or community first put tools in your hands.

Background is not class. A Road-Sworn can be a Mage. A Faction Initiate can be a Furyborn. The background states where you came from; the class states what you became. Neither constrains the other.

Parts of a background

Every background gives you five things at character creation:

• Ability scores: Three ability scores are listed. Increase one by 2 and another by 1, or increase all three by 1. None of these increases can raise a score above 20.
• Origin feat: One feat specified by the background (see Chapter 5).
• Skill proficiencies: Two skills you have learned through your background.
• Tool proficiency: One tool set you know how to use.
• Equipment: A choice between a specific pack of starting gear (Package A) or 50 GP to spend as you see fit (Package B).

Road-Sworn

You served -- a settlement militia, a caravan guard company, a faction enforcement band, or a warlord who paid in food and safety. You know how to hold a line, how to read a threat before it commits, and how to make someone reconsider a decision they have not yet voiced. The Road-Sworn background fits any character whose early life involved structured violence in service to someone else.

Ability Scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution

Feat: Savage Attacker

Skill Proficiencies: Athletics and Intimidation

Tool Proficiency: Choose one kind of Gaming Set

Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) Spear, Shortbow, 20 Arrows, Gaming Set (same as above), Healer's Kit, Quiver, Traveler's Clothes, 14 GP; or (B) 50 GP

Faction Initiate

You were taken in by a faction, trained in its doctrine, and given your first real understanding of how the Law and the mental factions hold civilization together. You know the recitations. You know the hand-signs. You know which questions to ask when someone new enters the settlement and which answers mean you need to watch them more carefully. The Faction Initiate background fits any character whose early formation happened inside an organized mental faction or Law-keeping institution.

Ability Scores: Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma

Feat: Magic Initiate (Sage or Mage, your choice)

Skill Proficiencies: Insight and History

Tool Proficiency: Calligrapher's Supplies

Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) Calligrapher's Supplies, Field Codex (faction doctrine), Parchment (10 sheets), Robe, 8 GP; or (B) 50 GP

Ruin-Diver

You went into places sensible people avoided and came back with things you could sell. You learned to move quietly, to read a space before entering it, and to make fast decisions when something moved in the dark ahead of you. Whether you called it scavenging, salvage, or simple survival, it left you with a particular set of skills and a healthy respect for darkness that has been quiet for too long. The Ruin-Diver background fits any character whose early life involved navigating the dead infrastructure of the old world.

Ability Scores: Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence

Feat: Alert

Skill Proficiencies: Sleight of Hand and Stealth

Tool Proficiency: Thieves' Tools

Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) 2 Daggers, Thieves' Tools, Crowbar, 2 Pouches, Traveler's Clothes, 16 GP; or (B) 50 GP

Lore-Keeper

You were trained to preserve and interpret recovered text. You can read three scripts that most people in your settlement cannot. You know how to copy a fragmented document without losing what remains legible, how to estimate the age of a data core by its degradation pattern, and how to argue carefully about what a partially destroyed inscription probably meant. Whether your community called you a scholar, an archivist, or simply someone who reads, the knowledge is real. The Lore-Keeper background fits any character whose early life involved the systematic recovery and transmission of old-world information.

Ability Scores: Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom

Feat: Magic Initiate (Mage)

Skill Proficiencies: Arcana and History

Tool Proficiency: Calligrapher's Supplies

Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) Quarterstaff, Calligrapher's Supplies, Field Codex (recovered history), Parchment (8 sheets), Robe, 8 GP; or (B) 50 GP

Wasteland Walker

You crossed open ground when others stayed inside. You read the Miasm like weather, know which ruins flood in the wet season, and can navigate by the scar on the moon when every other landmark has been swallowed by the changed landscape. The Walker background fits any character whose early life was defined by the open waste -- nomadic bands, long-route trade families, solitary survival, or any existence where the horizon was more familiar than any wall.

Ability Scores: Constitution, Wisdom, Strength

Feat: Alert

Skill Proficiencies: Survival and Perception

Tool Proficiency: Navigator's Tools

Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) Staff, Shortbow, 20 Arrows, Quiver, Bedroll, Rope (50 feet), Navigator's Tools, Traveler's Clothes, 10 GP; or (B) 50 GP

Road-Trader

You moved goods between settlements and kept accounts that both sides trusted. You learned that every transaction is also a negotiation, that every negotiation is also a read of the other person, and that the most dangerous moment in any trade is the pause before the answer comes. Whether you worked for a trade house, a clan network, or yourself, you understand the economy of the road in ways that fighters and scholars typically do not. The Road-Trader background fits any character whose early life involved the exchange of goods and the careful management of trust between people who had no particular reason to extend it.

Ability Scores: Charisma, Dexterity, Wisdom

Feat: Skilled

Skill Proficiencies: Persuasion and Insight

Tool Proficiency: Merchant's Scales

Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) Dagger, Merchant's Scales, 2 Pouches, Trade Goods (worth 10 GP), Traveler's Clothes, 20 GP; or (B) 50 GP

Hidden or restricted peoples

Some branches of sapience are not normal starting options because ordinary surface characters do not know enough about them. The Vril-ya are the clearest example: their existence is unknown on the surface, and a Vril-ya character requires a specific campaign context before they appear at the table.

The World Master may open restricted options for a specific campaign. If you are interested in a restricted option, discuss it with your World Master before character creation.

Building a character from origin

Use origin and people to make the character concrete:

• Pick one bodily fact others notice.
• Pick one custom from your home.
• Pick one thing your people taught you never to do.
• Pick one reason your character left safety.
• Pick one person or place that could call you home.

Do not use origin to excuse shallow behavior. Sapient peoples in the Lethean Age are people first, even when their bodies and cultures are strange.