The Thirteen Peoples¶
The Hearth's creation story is the same for everyone: every people is a way of keeping fire in a body, and the differences the stat tables measure are, doctrinally, differences in how the fire is kept: blazing open, banked deep, flickering quick. No people is older than fire. Several claim otherwise.
The portraits below reflect the northern understanding: who these peoples are in and around the Frostspine, where the game is set. Every one of them has a larger nation somewhere warmer; the north draws the pilgrims, holdouts, specialists, and incorrigibles.
Human¶
The fire that spreads.
The theology writes itself: humans keep fire the way the Phoenix does, spending it fast and everywhere. Short lives, wide hands. Most of the north's settlers, carters, clergy, and determined second sons are human; Coldhollow is a human town in the way a crossroads is a human idea. The other peoples find them exhausting, indispensable, and — privately — a little contagious; there is a dwarven word for the specific urge to go do something right now that translates, literally, as "having caught human."
They favor: Solvane and Aude, plus whichever small god covers today's errand. Folk-saying: "Winters are short." (Human winters are not short. Human patience is.)
Giantkin¶
The fire that shelters.
Big as weather, and descended — their firekeepers teach — from folk who carried whole villages on their backs to the hot springs during the Long Winter, and got built to the task by it. Giantkin culture is carrying-culture: the strong exist so the rest arrive. Their families are herds, their tempers are slow and geological, and their word, once given, has foundations. In the Frostspine they are drovers, gate-wardens, and the people everyone else stands behind when the wind gets serious.
They favor: Kordran, Aude, and the Frostmaidens (respectfully, as one respects an in-law). Folk-saying: "You can set that down now." (The traditional giantkin greeting to anyone struggling.)
Elf¶
The fire that remembers.
Old enough to remember at least two Sagas, and it shows: elves keep fire like a lamp in a long room — steady, beautiful, and lighting mostly what is behind them. The northern elves came for the Wyrmlight, they say, though the Watch notes they arrive in numbers whenever the range stirs, as if keeping an appointment they will not describe. Ageless grace, famously mercurial discipline: a people with infinite time develop, the proverb goes, infinite ways to be late. Their grief is real and structural — they sang the orchards through the Long Winter, and remember the trees individually.
They favor: Vael, Verdessa, and long arguments with both. Folk-saying: "We planted this." (True unsettlingly often.)
Dark-Elf¶
The fire that studies the dark.
The elves who, when the Long Winter came, went toward the cold — down under the ice, to learn the enemy properly. Their halls under the far glaciers are real, old, and visited on invitation only; their scholars know more about the Long Dark and the Unkindled than the Lanternkeepers find comfortable, and their auras carry a permanent chill-burnish that other peoples feel before they can name. Distrusted out of proportion to their record — which is, the Quiet Order points out annually, cleaner than most. Wilful, brilliant, and finished apologizing.
They favor: Vael, Umbrel, and a courteous professional distance from everything else. Folk-saying: "The dark is only unlit." (A Lanternkeeper motto. The dark-elves say it differently.)
Wood Elf¶
The fire that moves with the seasons.
The birch-taiga's own people, who keep fire the way the forest does — banked all winter, riotous for six weeks, never twice in the same place. Wood Elf bands walk long slow circuits of the treeline, and the Piper is theirs the way a rumor can belong to someone. They are the north's best archers, guides, and disappearances; a wood elf who does not wish to be found has, for all practical purposes, stopped existing. Towns strike them as an interesting experiment that has run long enough.
They favor: Verdessa, first and always; Old Wisp, when the Piper is out of earshot. Folk-saying: "The path knows." (Infuriatingly, it usually does.)
Half-Elf¶
The fire that travels.
Born between hearths and raised on roads, half-elves are the north's connective tissue — carters, interpreters, fixers, the person at the wayhouse who knows both versions of the story. The Cairnfather is their god the way a road is a home: genuinely, and by necessity. Quick, charming, and restless in the specific way of people with two inheritances and no instructions; the elven half remembers too much, the human half wants to leave now, and the resulting compromise is often a saddle.
They favor: the Cairnfather, Old Wisp, and whoever runs the next inn. Folk-saying: "Both, of course." (The answer to most questions about themselves.)
Dwarf¶
The fire banked deepest.
The Deep Mother's people, who sealed their halls through the Long Winter and emerged having eaten their library bindings and kept the library. Dwarves keep fire so deep it barely shows — the famous poor aura is doctrine made flesh: their souls are close-banked, little heat spilling out as magic, all of it held as endurance, memory, and grudge. What they build, stays built; what they swear, stays sworn; what they are owed, stays counted. The Delvings are their unfinished business, and a dwarf will change the subject exactly once.
They favor: Kordran and the Deep Mother, in that public order and the private reverse. Folk-saying: "Stone keeps score."
Halfling¶
The fire that feeds everyone.
The people of the shared pot — which they will tell you, correctly, is the true technology that survived the Long Winter. Halflings keep fire communally or not at all; their households are alliances of kitchens, their politics are seating arrangements, and their courage is the quiet logistical kind that has dinner ready after the battle. Small, quick, and constitutionally tougher than they look (the pot did that too). In the north they run the orchards and river-trade around Emberford and hold, collectively, most of the Tallyman's goodwill.
They favor: Aude above all; the Tallyman at market; Umbrel with the good dishes out. Folk-saying: "There's more in the pot." (There is. There always is. No one knows how.)
Mothkin¶
The fire that crossed the dark of sleep.
The moth-winged people, and the north's newest: refugees not from another land but another side — they crossed the Veil of Moths itself, following the Moth-Queen's lanterns out of a homeland their songs describe only as going out, one light at a time. The crossing marked them: gray-sheened wings, Veil-touched patience, and a discipline other peoples find almost eerie, learned where losing focus meant losing the light. They settle high, quiet, and gratefully; the Frostspine's cold does not frighten a people who have seen actual dark.
They favor: the Moth-Queen, wholly; Vael, warmly; loud gods, from a distance. Folk-saying: "We keep the lamp lit." (Every mothkin household does. You will never be told which lamp.)
Town Gnome¶
The fire in the works.
Town-gnomes: the fixers, tinkers, clockmakers, and lock-arguers of every northern settlement, keeping fire the way a workshop does — in twenty small useful places at once. Town gnomes hold that the Kindled built the world and therefore maintenance is worship; their shrines have workbenches, and the travelling tinker's wagon circuit is, by their lights, a religious procession with inventory. Brilliant, curious, physically unsuited to everything the north throws at a body, and entirely untroubled by that fact: that is what leverage is for.
They favor: Kordran (the craft), Vael (the manual), Old Wisp (the warranty). Folk-saying: "It's not broken, it's early."
Forest Gnome¶
The fire hidden well.
The other gnomish answer to a dangerous world: not leverage — concealment. Forest gnome steadings hide in plain terrain so thoroughly that the north's standard joke is that there are either forty of them or forty thousand. They keep fire small, warm, and invisible, know the green world nearly as well as wood elves and the small gods better than anyone, and surface to trade, midwife, and deliver exactly one warning when a neighbor is about to do something the land will not forgive. Wise, kind, and gone the moment either quality stops being useful.
They favor: Verdessa, Aude, and several small gods no register has caught yet. Folk-saying: "Seen by whom?"
Half-Skorl¶
The fire that survives the floes.
Children of two coasts: the skorl — the blue-skinned reaver-sailors of the far floes, Morvach's hardest congregation — and the shore peoples they raided, traded, and occasionally, history admits, married. Half-skorl inherit the floe-blood's cold-proof vigor and the shore's willingness to come indoors, and belong comfortably to neither, which is why so many end up in the Frostspine: the one place where "hard to kill and beholden to no one" is simply a résumé. Blunt, loyal once earned, and silent on the water in a way that unsettles river-folk.
They favor: Morvach, paid in silence; the Drowned King, cursed by; Aude, eventually. Folk-saying: "The sea doesn't care. Be the sea."
Ashari¶
The fire at rest.
Pilgrims from the far sunward east, where their contemplative houses have spent lifetimes on a single question: what part of the fire does not burn? — what in a person survives the spending, Saga after Saga? They call it the unburnt truth, and the Frostspine, standing on the world's oldest wound, is their tradition's holiest field-site. Ashari radiate a calm that other peoples find almost physical; their discipline is gentle and total; and their monks' hands are the north's standing reminder that "at rest" and "harmless" are different words.
They favor: the Phoenix directly — the rare tradition that does — with Vael and Umbrel as respected colleagues. Folk-saying: "Ash is also fire."
At a glance¶
| People | Keeps fire... | Drawn north by |
|---|---|---|
| Human | spending it | land, chances, the road itself |
| Giantkin | sheltering others | work worthy of the shoulders |
| Elf | remembering | the Wyrmlight, and an unnamed appointment |
| Dark-Elf | studying the dark | proximity to the subject |
| Wood Elf | moving with seasons | the taiga; they were always here |
| Half-Elf | traveling | every road ends up here eventually |
| Dwarf | banked deep | the Delvings, unfinished |
| Halfling | feeding everyone | the river trade, the orchards |
| Mothkin | across the dark | high quiet country; gratitude |
| Town Gnome | in the works | everything here needs fixing |
| Forest Gnome | hidden | no one knows; they were noticed here |
| Half-Skorl | surviving | the one coast that asks no questions |
| Ashari | at rest | the world's oldest wound, holiest field-site |
Stat modifiers and mechanics: Character Creation.