Vori are massive creatures unafraid of throwing their weight around in a fight. Highly competitive, these strong nomads can prove to be powerful allies and welcome additions to any adventuring party.
Personality
Vori are known for their almost foolhardy daring. In their mountain homes, they leap from precipice to precipice, heedless of the fatal consequences of a misstep. They place great stock in clan and family; life in the mountains teaches even the youngest vori to rely completely on his fellows for a hand across a crevasse. Because most vori are hunter-gatherers, they tend to be inquisitive, always curious about whether better hunting lies over the next ridge or a good water source can be found in the next canyon.
Physical Description
A typical vori is larger even than most oroc. Most stand between 7 and 8 feet tall and weigh between 280 and 340 pounds. Unlike with many other races, there is no appreciable difference in height or weight between male and female vori.
Vori skin colours vary from gray, to brown, to nearly black, and mottled with dark and light patches that shamans say hint at a particular fate. Lithoderms - coin-sized bone-and-skin growths as hard as pebbles - speckle their arms, shoulders, and torso. While voris of both sexes have dark hair on their heads, male vori typically shave their heads. Female vori often keep their hair grown to great length and always kept braided. Vori's eyes are a brilliant blue or green, and they often seem to glow a little from underneath their furrowed brows.
Because their skin mottling has cultural significance, vori generally dress as lightly as possible, displaying their skin patterns for all to see. For the same reason, few vori would willingly get a tattoo - to draw on one's skin is tantamount to trying to rewrite one's fate. Instead, they decorate themselves with jewelry, often sporting ear, nose, or brow rings. A vori's lithoderms are also common places to embed a gem or two, since they have few nerve endings and stand out on the vori's body already.
Relations
When encountered in the mountains, vori are outwardly friendly to anyone who doesn't threaten the tribe and can keep up with them as they climb from peak to peak. Humans who brave the mountains - rangers or wandering monks, most often - can often earn a tasty meal by helping a team of vori hunters.
Vori hold dwarves in particularly high regard, wishing their tribes had the dwarven aptitude for weapon crafting. Some of the bravest vori climb down into the tunnels and natural caverns under a mountain to learn more about crafting, while others take the easier of path of seeking a dwarf community to trade with. The smaller-than-human races are regarded as curiosities, but many a nimble-climbing gnome or halfling has earned respect by beating a vori in a race up a cliff.
Alignment
Vori have a slight tendency toward chaotic alignments, which is reflected in their wanderlust and the small, mobile communities in which they live. Still, each tribe has one or more adjudicators that settle disputes within the clan, and such vori are generally lawful. Vori also have a slight preference for good over evil, since among the high mountain peaks, survival becomes much easier when one aids a fellow vori without insisting on recompense.
Vori Lands
Because they don't support large-scale agriculture or extensive settlements, the mountain ranges where vori live are home to few other intelligent races. Most tribes of vori wander from peak to peak, tending their goat flocks and foraging for alpine roots and tubers. Typically, a tribe sets up a temporary village in an alpine meadow and remains there for a month or two, then moves on when the season changes or better hunting can be found elsewhere. Larger tribes tend to follow a similar trail from year to year, retreating to lower elevations in midwinter and when they need to trade, then ascending to the highest peaks once the snow melts.
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