Kalla

(Header image by Lesseras)

What is a Kalla?

Kalla are beak-faced bipeds with scaly hands, a feathered back, and horse-like legs. They have big feathered ears and hooved feet. Rarely, they may grow horns, antlers, or a unicorn horn. People from Earth might call them hippogryphs, though they lack wings. As a footnote, kalla haooves are nearly indestructible.

What is the magical gift of the kalla?

Kalla are born fulminokinetics... meaning that they can throw lightning bolts! Full-fledged lightning bolts are a rare thing for them to do, but there's no such thing as a Kalla who has trouble lighting a fire in the wilderness. Sometimes kalla will hold a storm in their hands just to prove to themselves that the universe loves them. Maintaining that is a good training exercise; young kalla struggle to do more than throw sparks until they've practiced quite a bit.

Kalla lightning is strangely inconsistent among the magical gifts of the people of Theoma. It doesn't work equally well in all theomes and it requires an unpredictable 'charge time' to activate. Peaceful uses of lightning tend to be quick and easy. Hostile uses of it are slow, and in most urban theomes are accompanied with an intense headache that must be pushed through to continue with the strike. Strong-willed kalla are among the most ferocious warriors of Theoma, but this is also a bad reputation; the magical gifts of the other species are peaceful.

Some kalla have learned to monetize their magical gift by working with metal. They can fuse plates (welding) and stoke furnaces to extreme levels. The scaled hands of the Kalla are nearly unburnable, though extended uses of this ability will still leave a metalworker feeling burnt out.

Where do the kalla prefer to establish their settlements?

The most appealing territories to the kalla are the wide-open plains. They are runners like the Izerah, although not quite to the extreme that the Izerah have. They also tend to love storms and stormy territories, and exuberant kalla have been known to 'answer back' to lightning strikes by throwing lightning bolts at the sky. The result is a tremendous increase in the rate of lightning strikes during storms in kalla territories.

Kalla are one of the least populous peoples of Theoma, possibly because they tend to be unpopular. There is a substantial fear about them, and they're accurately associated with both loud noises and elevated risks of accidental fires. Some people consider kalla to be an elevated risk of intentional fires as well, and kalla arsonists are an unfortunate mainstay of some storytellers' repertoires. The result is that kalla are an unpopular minority who are often stuck living in kalla enclaves where they only interact with their own kind.

The majority of sapients on Theoma are dragons. Ageless, beautiful, and in this place at least, quite peaceful. Kalla are the exception. They are not dragons as people of Earth would define them, although in-setting the word "dragon" means "person" to such an extent that they are indeed dragons to the people of Theoma.