| Races - Halflings |
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Halfings are clever, capable opportunists. Halfling individuals and clans find room for themselves wherever they can. Often they are strangers and wanderers, and others react to them with suspicion or curiosity. Depending on the clan, halflings might be reliable, hard-working (if clannish) citizens, or they might be thieves just waiting for the opportunity to make a big score and disappear in the dead of night. Regardless, halflings are cunning, resourceful survivors.
Personality: Halflings prefer trouble to boredom. They are notoriously curious. Relying on their ability to survive or escape danger, they demonstrate a daring that many larger people can’t match. Halflings have ample appetites, for both food and for other pleasures. They like well-cooked meals, fine drink, good tobacco, and comfortable clothes. While they can be lured by the promise of wealth, they tend to spend gold they gain rather than hording it. Halflings are also famous collectors. While more orthodox halflings may collect teapots, books, or pressed flowers, some collect such objects as the hides of wild beasts--or even the beasts themselves. Wealthy halflings sometimes commission adventurers to retrieve exotic items to complete their collections.
Physical Descriptions: Halflings stand about 3 feet tall and usually weigh between 30 and 35 pounds. Their skin is ruddy, their hair black and straight. They have brown or black eyes. Halfling men often have long sideburns, but beards are rare among them and mustaches almost unseen. They like to wear simple, comfortable, and practical clothing. Unlike members of most races, they prefer actual comfort to shows of wealth. A halfling would rather wear a comfortable shirt than jewelry. A halfling reaches adulthood in her early twenties and generally lives into the middle of her second century.
Relations: Halflings try to get along with everyone else. They are adept at fitting into a community of humans, dwarves, elves, or gnomes and making themselves valuable and welcome. Since human society changes faster than the societies of the longer-lived races, it is humans society that most frequently offers halflings opportunities to exploit, and halflings are most often found in or around human lands.
Halfling Lands: Halflings have no lands of their own. Instead, they live in the lands of other races, where they can benefit from whatever resources those lands have to offer. Halflings often form tight-knit communities in human or dwarves cities. While they work readily with others, they often make friends only among each other. Halflings also settle into secluded places where they set up self-reliant villages. Halfling communities, however, are known to pick up and move en masse to some place that offers a new opportunity, such as where a new mine has opened up or to a land where a devastating ware has made skilled workers hard to find. If these opportunities are temporary, the community may pick up and move again once the opportunity is gone, or once a better one presents itself. If the opportunity is lasting, the halflings settle and form a new village. Some communities, on the other hand, take traveling as a way of life, driving wagons or guiding boats from place to place, with no permanent home.
Adventurers: Halflings often set out on their own to make their way in the world. Halfling adventurers are typically looking for a way to use their skills to gain wealth and status. The distinction between a halfling adventurer and a halfling out on her own looking for "a big score" can get blurry. For a halfling, adventuring is less of a career than an opportunity . While a halfling opportunism can sometimes look like larceny or fraud to others, a halfling adventurer who learns to trust her fellows is worthy of trust in return.
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