NanayaDarkweald
Government Form:
Bugbears occasionally form bonds with other bugbears, or have similar enough interests that they live in the same space, there is however no government to speak of
Demographics:
bugbears: perhaps thats a term someone called them? In some half-remembered dream. The bugbears that live within the darkweald today are quite different from whatever they started as, in some half-remembered epoch. Some seed was planted in their minds long ago, perhaps it was a god who gifted it to them, or perhaps it was psychedelic moss they ate one time, or perhaps they dreamed something once…or perhaps their wondrous minds had always been an attribute of bugbears, but finally flourished in the darkweald.
Physically the bugbears are usually large for hominids, though exact size varies between populations.
Bugbears can live quite a long time, but not to a supernatural extent, and rate of aging seems to vary between individuals.
They sometimes have symbiotic fungal and lichen strains on and within them.
Their eyes sometimes glow with a very dim light, disturbingly, those who close their eyes while staring into the eyes of the bugbear will continue to see the eyes through their eyelids.
Sunlight exposure (and some other comparable phenomenon) can make bugbears ill, the precise effects are often different when exposed to suns in different planes depending on the level of magic available. In the nexus they often report lethargy, strange hungers that grow even as their symbiotic lichen has a feeding frenzy, causing them to gorge themselves. The symptoms of sunlight sickness can be treated with fairly lowtech medicine (or magic) but an unprepared, or deprived bugbear might end up being a monster
Racial Traits: (1 Pro, 1 Cons)
Pro: Beautiful minds: The bugbear mind is a thing of wonder, sometimes alien to that of other hominids. Their minds are always active, always contemplating many things at once, able to mentally keep track of many details. Much of bugbear activity perhaps, is an attempt to organize their thoughts, so they dont have to keep everything in their head at all times. They talk with themselves far more than they talk to eachother. The mind of a bugbear lends itself quite well to the strange logics of magic, and they are pretty good at technology too, but their approach is more artistic than scientific.
Con: Due to a variety of factors bugbears can be a little solitary at times, and reproduction tends to be less frequent, they also often have difficulty communicating with eachother, but determined bugbears can form relationships with one another. The main effect of this is low population
Con
light exposure (and some other comparable phenomenon) can make bugbears ill, the precise effects are often different when exposed to suns in different planes depending on the level of magic available. In the nexus they often report lethargy, strange hungers that grow even as their symbiotic lichen has a feeding frenzy, causing them to gorge themselves. The symptoms of sunlight sickness can be treated with fairly lowtech medicine (or magic) but an unprepared, or deprived bugbear might end up being a monster. The psychological effects are far more severe, if a bugbear looks directly at a sun, their mental processes are overloaded to the point of destruction of its beliefs, personality, memories. Bugbears will be able to create a new “self” after witnessing the sun, but their life until that point is mostly lost…but those that saw the sun might gain new insights..unfortunately these insights are rarely kind ones.Population:
Stone Age:
1200 bugbears
Bronze Age:
Iron Age:
Medieval Age:
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Plane Description: The Darkweald might be described by some as a primordial plane, perhaps it is younger, or perhaps it has simply remained in a ‘primitive state’ for eons on end. Regardless, it is a murky place, many areas do not experience a difference between “light and dark” but instead have an ambient “luminous darkness”
Plane Traits:Pro: Magically active: The plane is teaming with magic, both a base “background” magic and small and non-physical creatures (perhaps termed spirits?) that harness magic as a part of their lives, many creatures in the darkweald have magic properties, plant analogues use arcanosynthesis rather than photosynthesis and curses behave almost like diseases in other worlds.
Con: dangerous zones: some areas of the plane have dangerous magical properties, it can cause magic to behave unpredictably (and strange phenomenon are often reported in these zones) while magic might be more powerful, the delicate magic that the bugbears tend to prefer is overwhelmed in these zones, making it hard for them to cast spells.
Con:Low metals: metals are not unheard of in the darkweald, but its relatively metal poor compared to many other realms (possibly due to the lack of a sun?) most metal that exists is trace amounts created by some lifeforms in alchemical processes, often hard for a primitive civilization to extract
History: The time before arriving and the time of arrival is murky in the convoluted tales of the Bugbears, as of right now, they havent really focused on sharing history, they sometimes form theories to explain the ancient cave paintings (or the cavepaintings that might have been made by their own parents, some have attributed the paintings to be created by divine agents, or created in a manner that a person trained in ‘classical’ understandings of the world would have no idea what they are talking about.
Culture and Society: -the most common form of education for bugbears is lengthy partnerships (sometimes these annoy bugbears as trying to understand another bugbear is time not spent on understanding everything else), and the transfer of information between parent and child, children are taught how to survive, and some of the magical and tool making skills of their parent.
-tools often end up imbued with some of the memories of those that used them, for this reason, a bugbears tools are an important thing, and children will often cherish the tools of their parents. The imbueing of memories also allows those who use a tool to learn from the memories stored within, for now, a lot of the memory fades if the original holder is destroyed (or stares into the sun) but perhaps with more sophistication, the imbued memory might persist after death
-for this reason, gifts of arts and crafts are an important part of bugbear communication, a bugbear perhaps learns more from a bugbears tools than they do from direct communication.
-bugbear worldviews tend to be highly individual, religion is not usually a social affair, religions of sorts occur naturally in bugbears as a part of development of organization information in their minds, they tend to be animistic with numerous cosmic forces interacting with one another to explain phenomenon.
-Most bugbears do not believe in souls/personalities/minds as unified things and culturally there is often not the same self/environment line in the sand, the environment is a part of the bugbear and the bugbear is part of the environment.
Culture Traits: Pro: Artifact learning, the magics used by bugbears can be used to encode information in objects that can be extracted and utilized by those who use their tools.
Con: Little common ground: There is no overarching religious or social narrative in most bugbear lives, they each have their own idea of how things work, which can make group activities difficult.
Con: Alien: the bugbear are alien in mindset to many other mortals and thus might have difficulty initially communicating with other races they havent studied
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Governance and Politics: (Like the government form field, but more room for detail. Tell me if your monarchy is slowly being subsumed by the merchant classes. Or, if your people are organized in such a way that they don't even have a government or politics anymore, then this is also a good place to talk about that.)
Technology and Magic:
Pro: Medium magical development, The Arts and Crafts: Bugbears have learned a variety of little magic tricks, while they might lack the raw power of some other mages, bugbear magic has a subtle versatility while having a fairly simple basis. Most bugbear tools make use of materials (often once parts of living things) that have a high magical permeability, they use this to embed information into the environment (and objects) everything that the has just a little bit of life to it, in D&D terms they can have effects similar to thaumaturgy or prestidigitation cantrips
Cantrips.
Con:Poor governance: Bugbears are pretty smart and can, imagine various different systems of societal organizations but…actively implementing them? Due to bugbears independent natures practical government is very difficult to construct
Con:Poor mining, the Darkweald is a little low on metals, especially in areas currently explored by bugbears, so mining for metals is pretty hard.
Military Overview: No organized military, there are hunters, which could be potentially dangerous, and some bugbears might use violence to get what they want, but no armies.
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Additional Info: youtube.com/watch?v=tKE1hC9mz7Y