Runescar Pack

The Knowledge-Gathering Arcane Antitheses of the Wulven people

Pack Description

The wild, magically attuned Wulven who dwell within The Shattered Corridor, the Runescar pack are covered in fur that glows and pulses with arcane light, switching between colors all across the spectrum at various points throughout their lives as arcane glyphs and markings blaze upon their bodies. A pack that once dwelled within the lands of Ea now sunk to the deep ocean, the Runescar live within an area where wild magic is so pervasive and all-encompassing that it is unavoidable fact of life none can avoid. So, true to Wulven nature, the Runescars have embraced and overcome the challenge of living within such a hostile area where magic runs rampant, and have become so in tune with magic that they can literally smell and sense arcane spellcasting and magic that exists near them and instantly determine where that source comes from. Highly intelligent even among Wulven standards, the Runescar pack are avid collectors of magical lore and knowledge of all kinds that could possibly relate to arcane studies or magic itself, which they utilize mostly to prepare themselves to combat and deal with the magical threats that so often plague the Shattered Corridor.
As a result of where they live, Runescar Wulven, even more so than other Wulven packs, think less of death and the loss of life since life itself is so cheap where they live. They are the most tightly knit of all the Wulven tribes, but place no importance on families or blood relations, as often one's parents die before they can even know their own children. Instead, Runescar Wulven forge their "families" based on the journies they have in life and care little for blood relations or similar genetic ties. They have little care or love for permanent structures or permanence itself, and can almost never be persuaded to hold back on doing something once they desire to do so...for, to them, their life could end at any moment and thus they cannot spare time to not do what they wish to. As a consequence of their bodies having adapted to the primal magic storms of their homeland, they are extremely deadly against all spellcasters, as they often radiate antimagic fields and can sunder magic and Spell Resistance with their mighty claws. They do not hate spellcasting culturally, but treat it with extreme wariness and caution with the knowledge that magic is infinitely more dangerous than any blade or warrior. They are naturally incredibly deadly warriors, but thanks to their cultural emphasis on recovering knowledge and information on one's enemies they are uniquely also highly skilled generals, tacticians, and even scholars, making them rare examples of Wulven who can be trusted to diligently pursue scholarly pursuits and intellectual studies with regularity...it is also the Runescar tribe who often documents and contains the written history of the Wulven people, for they believe that to have information on one's foes and one's history is to make them definable and to codify their existence, so they might be studied, learned, and understood which in turn helps them be defeated.

Pack Mechanics

Pack Trait: When you drop below 30% health, you gain SR (11 + (⅓ total lethal damage accumulated)), maximum 35) for the remainder of that combat. Any damage accumulated from yourself or allies you allow to injure you does not count towards this total.
Their bodies coated in magical runes and sigils, the Runescar often cannot tap into these potent symbols...but, when they fall close to death these symbols open their secrets to Runescar

Alternate Pack Traits:

Genetically Engineered Wulven: Gain the Unnatural Aura universal monster rule out to sixty feet. Gain Intimidate as a class skill and gain a racial +2 to all Intimidate checks. Replaces We Drink! We Fight! We Learn!.
While many outsiders and even other Wulven packs believe the Runescar Wulven to be the result of odd experimentation at some point in the past at the hands of others, they are incorrect. Rather than have received this augmentation, it was instead the Runescars who sought out and performed such experiments on themselves using ancient and forgotten technology so that they might better endure survive the Shattered Corridor...

Bane of the Arcane: You are automatically made aware of any Arcane spellcasting initiated within 120ft of you regardless of line of sight, and you know instantly the direction of the creature who just cast it. You keep the Scent ability against that creature for 1d4 hours after the spell is cast, which refreshes each time they initiate an arcane spell within your radius. Replaces Hunter’s Nose.
One of many odd magical anomalies that manifests in the odd Runescar pack, many Runescar are so innately tuned to resist spellcasting and the power of the arcane that they are innately capable of smelling and perceiving the mere act of spellcasting happening in a large radius around them...and become capable of tracking that foolish mage long after.

Know thy foe: Gain Spellcraft and Knowledge Arcana as class skills, and gain a racial +4 to both. Gain a racial +5 to all fortitude or will saves made to resist the effects of both magical and mundane alcohol. Replaces We Drink! We Fight! We Learn!
A symbol of the sometimes overlooked tendencies of Runescar Wulven to voraciously seek out, gather, and record knowledge, the Runescar often believe that to truly defeat or fight against anything, they must first understand it. As a result, many among them are highly learned and knowledgeable about the arcane and other topics.

Magically Minded: Gain a +1 to any save made against an effect caused by an arcane spell. Gain Mage’s Glyphscript as a bonus language, and any caster attempting to use Detect Magic on you or any creature within 15 feet of you must succeed at a caster level check (DC 10 + ½ HD + CHAMOD) or the effect returns no magical items were found. You may choose to allow a detect magic spell affect you. Replaces Nature Primordials.
Many Runescar Wulven make it a point to study the arcane and the language those who use it frequently use, to such a degree that they learn how to resist a bit of the effect of arcane spellcasting, and a few "tricks" that let them falsely return results when Detect Magic is cast upon them.

Pack Feats:

Antimagic Hide:
Prerequisites: "Magically Minded" Alternate Trait, Character level 14th
Effect: You are treated as being permanently the center of a 30ft Antimagic Field for the purposes of Detect Magic, Spellcraft, Arcane Eye, or any other spell which detects magic or magic items in an area. True Sight no longer works on you or any creature within 5 feet of you. You may allow these abilities to penetrate this field at will. 1/day, you may treat this 30ft radius as being an actual Antimagic field for one round, though you lose this ability for the rest of the day. You may keep this true Antimagic field active for longer than 1 round at the cost of 1d6 CON damage each additional round it is kept active.
A mighty mutation that appears among those Wulven who wish to learn the arcane to better foil and hide from it, these rare and lucky Wulven find their hides begin to glow with antimagical energy that foils even the most powerful of magical divination....and when they so wish, they can force this pseudo-antimagic aura to become a true Antimagic aura...though maintaining it for long can have serious consequences for their bodily health.

Runescarred Nose:
Prerequisites: "Bane of the Arcane" Alternate Trait, Character Level 6th
Effect: You gain the Scent ability out to 200ft, but only against Dead Magic Zones, Antimagic Fields, or Wild Magic Areas. You can detect these areas and determine precisely where they begin and end. So finely tuned are some Runescar noses that they can sniff out and detect the very presence and state that magic exists in nearby.

Shattered Corridor Survivor:
Prerequisites: Character level 8th
Effect: You may roll twice and take the better result on all Wild Magic and random magical effect tables.
Wild magic is a fact of life in The Shattered Corridor where the Runescar pack makes their home, and as such some among them adapt to such harsh environs and learn to better twist the effects that come from such places to their advantage.

Sundering Strikes:
Prerequisites: Character level 12th
Effect: Each time you inflict lethal or nonlethal damage to a foe, they must make a will save (DC 10 + ½ HD + CHAMOD), and on a failure they must subtract 1d3 from their SR if they possess any. They regain any lost SR after 24 hours.
A truly mighty and highly feared ability of the Runescar pack which is a technique born in the minds of the Runescar Wulven who learn to focus the odd antimagical energies that dwell within them into their claws, this technique is highly feared, for it allows these Wulven who learn it to shred through any and all resistances a creature may have to spells and magic.