Glimmerkin
"Crystalline, Resonant, and Unyielding"
Starting Attributes
Physical Traits
The Glimmerkin are a marvel of subterranean evolution. Their bodies are not made of flesh, but of living gemstone and faceted rock. Depending on their lineage, they may resemble jagged amethyst, smooth obsidian, or radiant quartz. Light refracts through their limbs, giving them an inner glow that pulses with their heartbeat.
Despite their rocky appearance, they are not stiff lumbering golems. Their joints are comprised of flexible, diamond-dust cartilage that allows for fluid and silent movement. They do not breathe air but instead absorb ambient mineral resonance and thermal energy from the earth.
Social Interactions
Glimmerkin communicate primarily through "The Deep Song"—a form of tonal vibration that travels through stone floors and walls. When speaking with surface dwellers, their voices sound like chiming bells, infused with a magical resonance. They value clarity, simplicity, and durability in all things.
They live in vast, sunless cathedrals carved from the roots of mountains. To a Glimmerkin, a promise is as permanent as stone; breaking one causes physical cracks in their psyche. They find the surface races' obsession with soft things (cloth, wood, clouds) to be baffling and dangerously fragile.
World View
"The wind forgets, but the stone remembers."
Glimmerkin view themselves as the historians of the world. While others write on paper that rots, Glimmerkin carve their memories into the crust of the planet itself. They are slow to anger, preferring to wait out problems like a mountain waits out a storm.
However, when they do act, it is with the crushing inevitability of a landslide. They venture to the surface usually to retrieve stolen minerals or to silence threats that vibrate too loudly, disturbing the peace of the deep earth.