Battle Born (5e Race)

Battleborn

“	War is a cruel parent. But as a parent, it educates in what it knows best: Kill your enemy, but first make it cry for mercy. Force the bastard to recon you as his last mistake. Never submit. Control your feelings and express them into your weapon. And finally, to remember the place before the armors clash. After they go silent, every place looks the same.	”
—Unknown. Attributed to Quoran, a battleborn general

Born from the ashes and cries of war, trained by the mind of the soldiers, fed with the blood and flesh of the dead, breathing the smell of corpses and rot, Battleborn are powerful beings raised not from magic, but from the strength of the battle, the anger of the combatants and their bleeding remains. Few things interest them, but none of them will be close to their origin: nothing will be close to the pleasure they get when watching anything die by their hands.

Physical Description

Property of Warner Bros Pictures

Although they are formed from mixtures of thoughts, pain and bodies, they are not merely a copy of the combatants: Not only do they look different, but even if they apparently know how to fight with every weapon they can grab and use armors and shields to perfection, each one has a prefered method to bring the pain, various strategies and even some form of personality.

In general, their physical appearance is very similar to big and trained humanoids, although battleborn keep a bunch of differences that distinguish them: They usually have no hair, or if they have it is short and trimmed or even ripped off of the skull. Their red, purple, black or other dark toned eyes, often heterochromatic, compliment the brutal appearance that their heavily patched skin gives. They appear heavily scarred, even if they have never been injured. It is not rare that they have only one working eye and/or they tend to lack part of an extremity, if not the whole piece or pieces. Abundant and discordant tatoos, scarrings, rings and other pieces of jewelry compliment their savage appearance. They also like to heavily pierce their bodies, and support a wild look in their eyes, like a man in the thick of battle. The scars on their bodies do not appear to hamper them in any way, not even when such injuries would be detrimental in battle. Some of them even adapt or are even born with weapons in the lost extremities: Swords inserted inside their arms, lances bolted to the bone, shields tied to their arms and blended with them by using fire or armors sewn into their bodies are not uncommon.

History

Battleborn are formed from what is better described as the chaos and destruction of the battlefield, with the first well documented case written about 2 thousand years ago. Although they are not born per se by the usage of magic, like zombies or skeletons, they have magic involved in their existance. Battleborn are born from the wills and anger concentrated into the combat. Basicly: The will of the combatants must be completely put into destruction just to have a chance for a battleborn to raise from the chaos, although it is posible that residual magic from spells may help in the formation, as the battlefields that have many bladesingers or battle wizards are much more probable to create one. As much as we know, their minds get formed from the minds of those in the field, their bodies from their flesh and metal, their blood from the rivers that gush from the injuries, their armors from the broken metal, their weapons from the piles that remain and the soul from pieces of the souls of the dead in combat.

Scarse in numbers, but more brutal than legions, this beings only care for war. Battleborns (or Warborns according to some other texts) are natural warriors and are known for surviving wounds that would bring down humanoid allies, if not even giant or aberration rivals. Some Battleborn are reported as being struck down only to rise and continue to fight while, as the reports say, "ignoring wounds through almost pure rage and willpower until not even willpower can keep their hearts beating. Then, they raise up again to keep the chaos going."

Some battleborn are known for slaughtering small armies almost single-handedly, like Crosian the knife or Fordiella the firemarked, called by some as the "Goddess of war". Their brutality was effective and mentally damning to such a disgusting detail that the few survivors "had to be put down like rabid dogs. They prefered to die than to be sent away with their memories alive. One of them tried to kill the Captain Dhoren with a small knife when told he would get a new house. The fucker got 16 bolts to the chest before stopping the screams from his throat." This is, by the way, most of the text that was not classified.

Despite sounding more like barbarians, berserkers or demons, many Battleborn are expert tacticians and generals, laying down tactics and controlling the battle with a few words. One tactic they will reject always, even if no other one is possible, is retreating. This tactic is not even in their brain. They rather fight themselves with a stick than going back one step.

Society

Ironically, most societies respect and are afraid of Battleborns in similar levels. If given into their bloodlust, most battleborns will accept to be a general or even a soldier in an army as long as the blood doesn't stop flowing, doesn't matter if criminals, enemy soldiers, animals, their own soldiers or citizen's blood. For them, war is enough a reason to exist. As they are scarse, no society of them has ever been known. They rarelly engendrate descendants, as sex is not on their interests unless there is nothing else to do; and they are, if not incapable, at least not very loving. Their descendants tend to be apparently from the race not being a battleborn, but as brutal as their battleborn parent. As they grow up they start losing hair and grow up exagerately, but never losing completely their original appearance. This mixed battleborns tend to be slightly more levelheaded, but they are also always sterile.

When 2 or more battleborn find their way into a battlefield, they will ally immediately... and they will fight against anyone else that is not a Battleborn, including the armies they command. For battleborns, only other beings created by chaos like them can be fought if there is no one else to fight. This is what happened in the 3 nations war, when the nations of Redilo and Silden decided to send their respective battleborn (Virnelten the bolted and Qoten the unbreakable, respectibly) and their armies into combat. After they ripped 56 thousand soldiers in between them, they fought on top of a literal pile of corpses for 4 days, without rest, until both of them grabbed each others head and ripped it out from the neck. This permited the nation of Delder to attack both nations unopposed and the conflict finished in less than a month, starting the story of the Delder Empire and their first empress: Sulima the Soft.

Battleborn Names

Battleborn name themselves after their creation. They are born as adults and their names tend to be brutal sounding or to fuse multiple particles of other races names. It is not rare that they get a nickname, often from a body modification they did or were born with, a mention of their prowess or brutality, or a rank.

Male: Boldin, Firulwintr, Guirtelner, Kiosfur, Mirtern, Xenorip

Female: Altellea, Ceditil, Hilwinker, Niviler, Yiltren, Zixiwummer

Battle Born Traits

Rivers of blood. Piles of gore. Endless slaughter of enemies. All in a day's work for the Battleborn: the engendration of chaos of the battlefield.
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength, Dexterity and Constitution scores increases by 1.
Age. Battleborn do not have childhoods, thus are "born" adults. Sons and daughters of battleborns are extremely uncommon, but they appear to have an accelerated growth. They are considered adults at 15 and they tend to live around a century. Natural Battleborns have been reported to live 150 years, but they typically die before they reach 20 years old as their lifestyle is unforgiving.
Alignment. Battleborn tend towards Chaotic as they can only lust for war, though a few can wrench themselves away from the imperious need to fight and have a neutral alignement. Only a couple have been reported as lawful, all of them generals. They are usually evil, as they have few interests besides following their instincts and desires.
Size. Battleborn are massive beings that average 6 to 8 feet tall and weight from 190 to almost 400 pounds, mostly because of the metal they insert in their bodies. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Warring Thoughts. Your thoughts are most of the time focused into chaos and battle, making you mentally unstable. You have disadvantage on all Wisdom related checks and saving throws.
Born from thoughts. Being born in the battlefield from the anger and thoughts of soldiers, you learned some of their abilities, although not always one helpful in combat. You are proficient in using two weapons, vehicles, or tools, of your choice.
Undying Warrior. Whenever you reduce a creature to 0 hitpoints, you can use your bonus action to gain temporary hitpoints equal to your level. You can do this once, regaining the use on a short rest.
Unerring Watch. You are always prepared for battle. You do not need to sleep during a long rest, and can preform light activities during a long rest, such as maintaining equipment, foraging for food, or keeping watch.
Languages. You can read, speak, and write Common.

Random Height and Weight

Base Height	Height Modifier*	Base Weight	Weight Modifier**
5′ 8''	+3d8	180 lb.	× (1d6) lb.
*Height = base height + height modifier **Weight = base weight + (height modifier × weight modifier)

3.25

(4 votes)

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