Humans

Humans built the railway towns, fly the airships and fill the ranks of every army on the continent. They are also the only people the gods are said to favor, and they have never once let the other races forget it. What they can't stop doing is hating each other.

Description. Humans in Eldriloch look like humans anywhere, though the nations have distinct styles. Adryaens favor goggles, gloves and gadgets. Ethonians wear their scars openly. Staerhielians dress in stovepipe hats and lace when they can afford them and grease-stained leather when they can't. The people of Usmon prefer monastery smocks, Justicar steel and as little machinery as possible. Within every nation, though, the first thing anyone notices about a stranger isn't where they're from. It's whether they're Sovereigni or Sullied.

Relations. Humans distrust the runekar, whom they blame for the Dark Sunder, and fear the malumtene, whose name is used to frighten children. They conscripted the ashen in war and then built the souldriven to put them down. Most humans treat mechanoids as tools and souldriven as something between a soldier and a slave.

Lands. Humans rule all five nations: technocratic Adryae, battle-born Ethon, sprawling Staerhiel, council-run Usmon and the jungle tribes of Thaela.

Religion. Most humans honor the gods of the Celestial Covenant. The Sullied crowd Selphail's kitchen shrines and Esriya's waterline altars, and the Sovereigni favor Aostre's great temples and Kendaunt's courts. Only humans can be chosen to wield flux, and only if they are born with the gift. The gift appears among the Sullied as often as among the Sovereigni, which the Sovereigni find hard to explain.

Names. Human names vary by nation. Examples from across the continent: Ardwen, Cassa, Doran, Halvery, Veldlarin, Irvorn, Zinrie, Olbarl, Edrin, Daphyra, Gilirak. Sovereigni add a family name and expect it used. The Sullied often go by a single name and a trade.

Adventurers. Sullied adventurers are mercenaries who fight for coin, Veil runners, tinkers chasing a breakthrough nobody will fund, and soldiers the last war left with nowhere to go. Sovereigni adventurers are rarer: younger children with no inheritance, officers, engineers hunting artifacts, and the occasional idealist who has seen how the Sullied live and can't unsee it.

Every human nation divides itself into two cultural classes, and they distrust and loathe each other.

The Sovereigni

The Sovereigni are the ruling class: the Regnant Sovereigni who rule nations, the families around them, and the most prestigious engineers, whose work earned them a place among the powerful. They live in luxury, in the center rings of cities, on estates, and on airships that never touch the ground. Sovereigni value intelligence over natural ability and try to avoid any emotional response. To them, money is nothing more than a resource, and so are people.

In Sovereigni eyes, their place is a birthright. They believe their blood is finer, and that letting the Sullied in would pollute it. They marry among themselves and guard their names jealously. Behind closed doors, the Sullied call them snoots, an insult that will often lead to death. Everyone uses it, and nobody is brave enough to say it to a Sovereigni's face. The Regnant title is a coveted title reserved for rulers. Dropping or forgetting the title when naming a Regnant Sovereigni is a dangerous insult.

Among the Sovereigni

The Sovereigni's world is survival of the fittest, and they believe only the best deserve to be called Sovereigni. Families fight each other constantly with political intrigue: whispered rumors, ruinous contracts, arranged scandals, debts called in at the worst moment, and allies bought out from under a rival. The stakes are total. A Sovereigni who loses the game can be left with nothing: no fortune, no allies, no name anyone will speak. A Sovereigni without resources is no Sovereigni at all, and the fallen are knocked down among the Sullied they spent their lives despising. Neither class welcomes them. The Sovereigni pretend they never existed, and the Sullied remember exactly what they were.

Only one power rivals the Sovereigni: the Celestial Covenant. Belief moves the Sullied in a way money never will, and the Covenant controls it tightly. Sovereigni have learned the hard way to work with the Covenant, and sometimes for it. A family the Covenant turns against doesn't usually survive the game.

No Sovereigni would ever allow fleshgrafting on their body, at least not in public. To them, needing a graft is weakness: proof that the body, and the bloodline, failed. Yet some do it anyway, after an accident, a duel or a war wound, and they go to great lengths to hide it: high collars and gloves, private grafters paid for their silence, servants who never see them undress. A rival who discovers a hidden graft holds a weapon in the game of intrigue, and many Sovereigni have fallen to exactly that.

The Sullied

The Sullied are everyone else, and that is nearly everyone: miners, rail crews, dockworkers, soldiers, farmers, mechanics, servants and the poor rings of every city. The name was the Sovereigni's insult first, and the Sullied wear it now with a kind of grim pride. They value ability over knowledge, wear their feelings openly and look after their own, because nobody else will.

A Sullied is often every bit as intelligent as a Sovereigni. What they lack is resources: schooling, tools, workshops, fibrolite, time. So the Sullied focus on surviving, and they get very good at it. A Sullied mechanic can fix with scrap what a Sovereigni engineer needs a workshop to build, and a Sullied soldier can live for a month on what a Sovereigni officer eats in a week.

Keeping the Sullied Down

Wealth doesn't make a Sullied into a Sovereigni. A Sullied who strikes it rich is still Sullied in Sovereigni eyes, and worse, a threat. When a Sullied acquires real riches, the Sovereigni do what they can to strip them away: new taxes and licenses, lawsuits, contracts that dry up, a guild charter revoked, a warehouse that burns. A Sullied who rises too high is knocked back down, and everyone watching learns the lesson. The Sullied learned long ago to hide what they have, and to trust a Sovereigni's generosity least of all.

Beyond the Divide

Out on the open sea and in the high air lanes, the divide disappears. The Open Reaches have no Sovereigni and no Sullied, only crews. It's a chaotic, lawless life full of privateers and thieves, and to the freeborn who live it, it's the only free one there is.

Across the Divide

The two classes need each other and resent it. The Sovereigni can't run a city without Sullied hands, and the Sullied can't eat without Sovereigni wages. Sullied revolts flare in Staerhiel's annexed towns, and the Veil feeds on the anger. In Adryae, citizen petitions give the Sullied a voice, but the Sovereigni have more votes than anyone can count. A character who crosses the divide, a Sullied raised to Sovereigni or a Sovereigni who joins the Sullied, is trusted by neither.

• Divine Potential: Only humans can take levels in a class that casts divine spells. A character must have the gift from birth, and the Game Master may require a background reason for it.

• Background: Every human is Sovereigni, Sullied or Freeborn and gains that background's traits (below). Most characters are Sullied. A Sovereigni character needs a reason to be adventuring. Freeborn were raised in the Open Reaches, outside the divide altogether.

• Regional Trait: Every human gains one regional trait from the nation they were raised in (below).

Sovereigni

Birthright: A Sovereigni character starts with twice the normal starting wealth for their class, and with a family name that opens doors.

Cold Schooling: Knowledge (nobility and royalty) is always a class skill, and the character gains a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks with other Sovereigni.

Silver Spoon: The character takes a –4 penalty on Diplomacy and Gather Information checks with Sullied who know or guess what they are. Among the poor, a Sovereigni's coin buys silence, not trust.

Fallen Sovereigni: A character whose family lost the game of intrigue takes the Sullied background instead, but keeps Knowledge (nobility and royalty) as a class skill. They suffer both backgrounds' penalties when either class learns who they used to be.

Sullied

Make Do: The character takes no penalty for using improvised tools, and only a –2 penalty (instead of –4) with improvised weapons.

Survivor: Survival and one Craft or Profession skill of the player's choice are always class skills, and the character gains a +2 bonus on Gather Information checks with other Sullied.

Gutter Blood: The character takes a –4 penalty on Diplomacy checks with Sovereigni who know or guess what they are, and can't buy property, licenses or guild charters in Sovereigni-run cities without a Sovereigni sponsor.

Freeborn

No Masters: The character was raised on the decks of the Open Reaches, where nobody is Sovereigni or Sullied. They never take either class's penalties, and they gain a +2 bonus on Will saves against compulsion effects. Nobody tells them what to do.

Deckhand: Balance and Use Rope are always class skills.

Outlaw Blood: In any nation's port or city, the freeborn are assumed to be smugglers or worse. The character takes a –4 penalty on Diplomacy checks with officials, guards and Peacekeepers, and can't own property in any nation without a sponsor.