Jakkai
Personality: Jakkai are best described as spunky. They possess a potent combination of abundant energy, stubborness, and aggressiveness. Among jakkai, affectionate play-fighting and smack-talk is common and even expected. Jakkai new to human societies sometimes find their ‘violent’ tendencies start more serious fights than they expect.
Physical Description: Jakkai are small, usually standing between two and a half and three feet in height. They stand on double-jointed, kangaroo-like legs. They have thick, muscular, prehensile tails that are just about as long as their bodies, longer in some cases and shorter in others. The tails are actually strong enough that a jakkai can actually stand on the end of it to look medium-sized creatures in the eye. They have large, flexible ears. Jakkai have small gripping claws, not really useful for attacking, but helpful for climbing through their forested homes. Jakkai have golden-brown fur with dark patches over their hands, feet, and stripes down their back and tail. Jakkai have dark parrterns over their cheeks which are unique from jakkai to jakkai. In the winter, they shed their summer fur for a white and gray winter coat. Jakkai lay eggs, despite their mammalian appearance. An average jakkai reaches maturity at 20 years, and will live to see 100.
Relations: Jakkai usually live in their own villages, largely separate from the rest of the world. There are a few settlements where jakkai and humans live side by side, but these are relatively rare. Jakkai settlements will sometime visit other settlements for festivals or to trade goods, but most don’t allow outsiders to enter the village proper.
Jakkai live in a very communal setting. So much so that most Jakkai have absolutely no idea who their actual parents are. All the eggs of the entire village are placed in one large house or nursery. The eggs are put together in a large, hidden nest until they hatch in the summer. The hatchlings are nursed by the mothers of that year's children, even though the mothers do not know which child is theirs by blood relation. Then, for the next decade the Jakkai children grow up together in the same house. They are not raised solely by their biological parents; they have no idea who they are. They are raised by the community as a whole, with designated members of the village and rotating volunteers in charge of the hatchling's house.
Alignment: Jakkai are usually neutral, but there’s a wide variance among them.
Lands: Jakkai villages are found deep in temperate forests. Jakkai plant special trees to build their homes in. These trees have leaves that don’t fall off in winter, their color fading to pure white. The jakkai homes are built in the cradle of the branches. Jakkai children that come of age move into empty houses. Jakkai don’t often like outsiders coming into their villages.
Religion: Jakkai worship nature spirits and guardian spirits, and only occasionally worhip ‘proper’ dieties.
Language: Jakkai speak Common, buy many learn sylvan, elvish, or gnomish.
Names: Jakkai are named by the elders upon their hatching with simple names that describe unique features of them. As such, a jakkai with a long tail may be called ‘snaketail’, which they are known by until they come of age. When they reach 10 years of age, they choose a new name, which becomes their first name, their birth name becoming their last name.
Adventurers: Jakkai adventurers can be wanderers,
- +2 strength, +2 dexterity. Despite their small size, jakkai are surprisingly strong and they’re quite nimble.
- Monstrous Humanoid: Jakkai are creatures of the monstrous humanoid type.
- Small: As a small creature, a jakkai gains a +1 size bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Hide checks, but she uses smaller weapons than humans use, and her lifting and carrying limits are 3/4 of those of a Medium character.
- A jakkai’s base land speed is 20 feet. A jakkai has a climb speed of 20 feet. They gain a +8 racial bonus on climb checks, and can choose to take 10 on climb checks, even if rushed or threatened.
- Prehensile Tail: A jakkai’s tail can be used to grab and manipulate small objects. The tail cannot be used to attack or perform somatic gestures, but it can pick up objects weighing less than the jakkai’s light load, and it can manipulate objects like a hand.
- Scent: Jakkai possess the scent ability.
- Skills: A Jakkai gains a +4 racial bonus to balance, jump, and listen checks.
- Winter Coat: During cold seasons, a jakkai’s coat is shed in favor of a thick, white and gray coat. If a jakkai moves into a cold area, after one month they transition to their winter coat. While they have this coat, they gain a +2 racial bonus against cold damage and cold effects, and they can exist comfortably in conditions between -20 F and 90 F without having to make fortitude saves.
- Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: Elvish, Gnomish, Goblin, Sylvan.
- Favored Class: Ranger
- LA +2
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Jakkai [3.5 Fuzzy race! PEACH!]
