Talk:Planetouched—Verephim (3.5e Race)

Overhaul

This race is gonna go through a flavor overhaul soon. Here's some flavor text for integration into the page at a later date. There will also be a namechange, hence the placeholder "Verk" —Salasay ♄ 05:47, 27 April 2023 (MDT)

Verk tend to be quiet and reserved, not because of an especial tendancy towards introversion but because it is in their best interest to avoid acting rashly and in extremes. Their celestial and infernal sides are frequently at odds, and trying to repress or indulge either can manifest as physical discomfort, sickness, and pain. Generally, indulging too heavily in their infernal side will make their blood run hot, and indulging too heavily in their celestial side makes their blood icy. This has the interesting side effect that Verk in colder climates indulge their infernal side more readily, while the opposite is true in warmer climates.

It is important to remember, however, that Verk are as individual as any other race. How their internal conflict manifests, or if they have one at all, depends not only on the specific natures of their ancestries, but the environment they are raised in. Many Verk find that through luck or concious and deliberate philisophical reconciliation, their infernal and celestial sides are not entirely incompatible with one another, making it easy to integrate their disparate natures into a cohesive whole. Others are directly at odds with themselves, either crippled into constant inaction or plagued with erratic and seemingly contradictory behaviors and compulsions.

Moderately well-adjusted Verk will frequently have a carefully thought out personal code that they adhear to strictly. The code need not be written down, or even conciously acknowledged, but it serves an important role in keeping them even keeled and healthy--to deviate is to risk sickness and erratic compulsions to "balance the score". Interestingly, neither the poorly adjusted nor the very well-adjust Verk will follow such a code--the former may act on conflicting impulses freely, or refuse to take any meaningful action at all, while the latter has reconciled their infernal and celestial sides so completely that their natures are almost always aligned.

Thus, the better adjusted a Verk is the more they tend towards lawful, until they outgrow the crutch of strict principals.

All of this purely abstract and academic discussion of Verk internal conflict, nature, and the various manners in which they can manifest does risk giving the wrong impression. Verk who are impulsive and erratic, Verk who are meek and timid, Verk with obtrusive and convoluted moral codes--these are interesting and rare phenomena that are valuable to study and understand, and are usually far less extreme in practice than sensationalized stories might imply. A vast majority of Verk have spent their whole lives being Verk, and understandably have plenty of experience being who and what they are.

While one might expect that Verk would be prone to brooding, filled with self-hatred, and angsty to the extreme, such behavior is almost unheard of in Verk outside of childhood for the very simple reason that Verk who are prone to indulging in such self conflict rarely make it out of childhood--they learn to accept who and what they are, or they grow sick and die.