Wayang

Shadowy and nihilistic, wayangs are alien creatures hailing from the Shadow Plane. Poorly adapted to what they view as a harsh and unforgiving world perpetually plunged into painful sunlight, wayangs quickly took to the stars as soon as they were able and fled from the celestial bodies that did them harm in favor of the entropy of black holes.

Physical Description

Spindly and gaunt, wayangs possess a clearly otherworldly anatomy. Their limbs long and thin and their fingers needle-like, wayangs seldom stand taller than 3 feet in height, and their natural skin color is usually cool, dark tones such as green, blue, violet, or gray, with deeper shades of these pigments present in their hair. However, only young wayangs typically possess their people’s natural pigmentations—wayang culture has an ancient tradition of bodily scarification and mutilation that stretches back millennia to when the race first emerged upon the Material Plane. These traditions always include skin bleaching, giving most wayangs skin that is blotchy and chalky. Additionally, most wayang clans perform scarification rituals, as well as body mutilation (such as forking the tongue) or alteration (such as stretching the ear lobes). Dozens of wayang clans exist that are defined by these rites alone, and wayangs are very picky about making sure others properly identify them based upon their clan allegiance.

Home World

Wayangs emerged from the Shadow Plane on nearly every habitable world in the galaxy for reasons unknown; some stories claim that their people were cast out from the Shadow Plane by terrible beings, while others believe that they fled from something gruesome and unnatural.

Most wayangs consider their people’s exodus to the Material Plane to have been an awful idea, as they loathe sunlight and the prospect of emerging into a star system with light-shedding stars was and continues to be more than many wayangs can bear. When the people of the galaxy first developed spaceflight, wayangs quickly began researching its use to support spatial communities. As soon as they were able, wayang clans across the galaxy left inhabitable worlds, never to return.

That is, until the disaster and the emergence of a black hole that appeared in the galaxy following the crisis. Wayangs flocked to this almighty body of pure entropy and began praising it and its ability to draw light away from the wretched stars. Now dozens of wayang shadow cathedrals orbit the black hole at a safe distance, claiming its stellar space as their own, personal territory.

Society And Alignment

Wayang society is insular and xenophobic, mistrustful of those races who would frolic about under the gaze of the sun. They keep to their millennia-old traditions wherever possible, adapting them only when proven of the pragmatism of new ways beyond a reasonable doubt.

Wayangs are shy even around each other, and prefer to spend most of their time isolated from other family units until necessity forces them together. Nearly all wayangs follow a nihilistic (but not evil) religious philosophy known as the Dissolution, which states that wayang souls look forward to reemerging with the endless darkness of the Shadow Plane when they die.

As much as wayangs look forward to perpetual freedom from the sunlit world, the Dissolution also states that the soul must be allowed to smolder out like a long-lit candle before it can take its rightful place among shadows, and so wayangs are often anxious about anything that could bring about harm for them, paranoid that a single false move might doom them to reincarnation for another life of sunlit misery.

Relations

As xenophobic as they are, wayangs typically don’t enjoy the company of nearly anyone, including members of their own races. They are shy reclusive, especially around humans, samsarans, and any race with intrusive telepathic powers, including shirrens and lashuntas. They loathe gnomes, having some sort of strange feud with the feylings since before they took to the stars in their shadow citadels, and have little patience for the chittering of ysoki. Wayangs are more at ease around other creatures originally hailing from the Shadow Plane, and have at least a begrudging respect for solarions of any race who fully embrace the power of gravitons and black holes.

Adventurers

As reclusive as they are, wayangs have little aspiration for adventure. They prefer to live their lives in quiet solitude, going about their business until the day they finally die and dissolute into shadow. Or at least most wayangs do.

A very small but vocal cadre of wayangs disparagingly known as Dayseekers eschew many of the ways of their people, instead preferring to explode the sunlit world they now found themselves in. Dayseekers are mistrusted more than any other in wayang society, and so they often find themselves forced to leave their people’s shadow citadels for brighter pastures. As shadowy and sneaky as they are, wayangs make for skilled operatives and soldiers, provided they stick to ranged weaponry and schew melee combat.

Wayangs also take to mechanical pursuits as well as the hidden secrets of technomancy. Finally, many wayang Dayseekers find themselves called to the ways of the solarion—beings of shadow and entropy called into the light of the stars themselves.

Names

Wayang names are ancient, heralding from their shadowy language which is believed to have heralded from the Shadow Plane itself. Wayang names usually translate into extremely gloomy and pessimistic words and phrases in their native tongue, which might account for the overall demeanor the race possesses. Some examples of wayang names are Ballipho, Clouei, Daratas, Duskade, Ebnalli, Eclis, Glomintar, Jecu, Midex, Oboskursuma, Shawarto, Shadni, Twilaka, Umbrutari, Veilwar, Wahmisti, Xili, Yasa, Yiji, and Zamoh.

Racial Traits

+2 Dex, +2 Int, –2 Wis

Hit Points: 2

Size and Type

Wayangs are humanoids with the wayang subtype. They have a base speed of 20 feet.

Special Abilities

• Darkvision: Wayangs have darkvision, allowing them to see with no light source at all to a range of 60 feet in black and white only.
• Dissolution (Sp): Wayangs can cloak themselves in shadow as a standard action, appearing as little more than an area of shadow of their approximate size. They gain the following spell-like ability: 1/day—invisibility (1 round/level; maximum 5 rounds). The caster level for this effect is equal to the wayang’s level.
• Light and Dark: Wayangs can reverse how spells and other effects that cause different effects to living creatures or undead affect them as a reaction. When activated, the wayang is affected by abilities that affect undead, or that affect undead differently than they affect living creatures, as if it was undead. The wayang is still subject to affects that just affect living creatures normally. This ability lasts for 1 minute once activated, and a wayang can use this ability once per day.
• Lurker: Wayangs gain a +2 racial bonus on Perception and Stealth checks.
• Shadow Resistance: Wayangs gain a +2 racial bonus against illusions.