Veridian

Backstory

The Veridian seeded twelve worlds with their kind before remembering they had a homeworld. They are slow, patient, and almost impossible to kill at scale because every fallen body becomes the soil that grows the next. Their warriors are walking forests; their archmages can negotiate with stone.

Physiology

Humanoid wood-and-moss composites with embedded chloroplasts. They photosynthesize during peacetime and metabolize iron during war.

Visual template

Broad, slow-moving humanoids whose bodies are quite literally grown — torso is a fused trunk of weathered greybrown bark with visible sap-veins running gold beneath the surface; arms are denser wood with knotted joints; legs are root-like with a wider stance. The chest cavity has a soft mossy lining that pulses faintly. Heads are bark-skulled with two glowing amber eyes set deep, no nose, a horizontal mouth-slit. Hair-equivalent is a crest of softly bioluminescent moss running from the forehead down the spine. Skin is greenish-tan and patchy with lichens. They wear no clothes — bark IS armor — but sometimes a single woven sash of dried vines indicating clan. Weapons are blade-spears made from their own grown wood, harvested in peacetime and bonded permanently to the hand. Posture is upright but languid, like trees in slow wind. Older Veridian show visible carved scars and growth rings.

Color palette

• #3d6b2f
• #7eaa5e
• #4a2f1d
• #c8d088
• #202810
• #a8c8a0
• #5a8030

Signature abilities

• Plate
• Recoil-Plate
• Final Defiance
• Bulwark