The Peoples of the Empire

Who your character is in the world, and what the world makes of them.

In 175 AD, the Roman Empire contains nearly a quarter of humanity within its borders. Every people that Rome has ever conquered, traded with, or allied with is present somewhere in its territory. In D&D terms, this means every major race has a cultural home within or adjacent to the Empire. This chapter tells you which real-world culture each D&D race maps to, how Rome classifies and treats them, and what that means for your character.

D&D Races in the Roman World

Human: Most Provincials and Roman Citizens

Humans are the Roman Empire’s most visible population, but “human” covers an enormous range of cultures, languages, and social positions. A legionary from the Italian heartland and a Syrian trader who has never seen Rome are both human; they share almost nothing else. The range below is not exhaustive, but it covers the groups most relevant to this campaign.

Italian-born Romans are the cultural center of gravity: Latin as a first language, Roman law as a birthright, the Senate and the Capitoline Hill as inherited reference points. They tend toward either soldier or administrator, and they carry a quiet assumption that their way of doing things is the correct one.

Gallic provincials (from modern France and Belgium) have been Roman for two centuries; their great-grandparents were conquered by Caesar. They are thoroughly Romanized in public life, speak Latin fluently, and maintain Celtic customs in private. They are excellent cavalry soldiers and skilled craftsmen.

Hispanic provincials are among Rome’s oldest and most integrated non-Italian population. The peninsula has been Roman territory since the Second Punic War. Several emperors, including Trajan and Hadrian, were born there. A Hispanic character occupies some of the most secure social ground available to a non-Italian human.

Syrian and Levantine provincials come from Rome’s wealthiest eastern provinces: literate, commercially sophisticated, often multilingual (Aramaic and Greek alongside Latin). They are heavily represented in trade, medicine, and military specialty roles. Rome tends to regard them as clever and slightly untrustworthy, which says more about Rome than about Syrians.

Egyptian provincials are a special case even among humans: Egypt is technically the personal property of the Emperor, governed separately from the normal provincial system. Roman-identified Egyptians in the legions are unusual enough to draw comment. Most Egyptians who interact with the Roman military are civilians: farmers, boatmen, temple staff, traders.

Pannonian provincials (from modern Hungary and the Balkans) are frontier people, the sons and daughters of peoples Rome conquered within living memory. They are heavily recruited for the auxilia: tough, experienced in rough terrain, loyal to the unit if not always to the Empire. They are present at Fort Vindolanda in numbers.

How Romans perceive this range: They apply a spectrum from “practically one of us” (Italian, Gallic, Hispanic) to “useful and known” (Syrian, Pannonian) to “fundamentally foreign despite Roman dress” (Egyptian). The gradations are inconsistent and frequently unfair.

Military role: Any rank is available to full Roman citizens. Non-citizen provincials serve as auxiliary soldiers or specialists; citizen rank is achievable after 25 years of service. Italian-born soldiers have access to officer tracks that others reach more slowly.

Starting languages: Latin (all), plus one regional language based on origin (Gaulish, Aramaic, Greek, Demotic Egyptian, or a Danubian language).

Starting skill bonuses: These are flat bonuses added to your skill modifier, not proficiency. Record them on your character sheet alongside your other totals. They do not replace proficiency; they stack with it.

Italian Roman: History +2, Persuasion +2, Intimidation +1. Roman law and rhetoric are in your bones before you learn to read them formally. The cultural center of the Empire carries its assumptions as instincts.

Gallic Provincial: Athletics +2, Animal Handling +2, Survival +1. Two centuries Roman, but the older knowledge persists: horsemanship, the land, the body’s capacity. Your great-grandparents were cavalry and the skill did not disappear.

Hispanic Provincial: Athletics +2, History +1, Persuasion +1, Survival +1. Oldest Roman provincial stock outside Italy. You are fluent in the Imperial system and in the hard country that produced Trajan: balanced, practical, and usually underestimated.

Syrian/Levantine: Medicine +2, Persuasion +2, Insight +1. Physicians, merchants, advocates: the eastern provinces trained their people for human systems. You read people as naturally as you read documents.

Pannonian: Athletics +2, Survival +2, Animal Handling +1. Frontier people, recently recruited. The Balkans’ terrain is demanding and its people are shaped by it. You are tough and adaptable in ways that matter more here than rank does.

For full context on how these bonuses work within the skill system, see the Skills chapter.

Elf: Greeks and Hellenized Easterners

The Greeks were civilized when Rome was a cluster of huts on seven hills, and both sides know it. Elves in the Roman world are Greeks and the Hellenized populations of Asia Minor, Syria, and the Levant: people shaped by centuries of Greek philosophy, rhetoric, mathematics, and art. They carry the weight of a culture that predates Rome’s by enough centuries to be slightly irritating to Roman officials who studied Greek rhetoric at school while being taxed by Greek-origin senators.

High Elves map to the educated Athenian class and its equivalents across the eastern Mediterranean: people who have read Plato and can argue about him, who speak multiple languages, who understand the infrastructure of thought. They serve as tutors, doctors, engineers, legal advocates, and advisors to Roman officials who need their expertise while declining to fully respect it.

Wood Elves map to rural Greek and Anatolian populations: farmers, shepherds, and small-town craftspeople who speak a Greek dialect and hold to older religious traditions that predate the classical period. They are less visible in Roman political life, more connected to the land and to local divine cults that Rome neither understands nor bothers to suppress.

How Romans perceive them: With genuine intellectual admiration and persistent political condescension. Rome built its philosophy on Greek foundations and then spent five centuries declining to fully acknowledge it. “Graeculus” (little Greek, a diminutive term) was used affectionately and dismissively in roughly equal measure.

Military role: Greek-heritage individuals rarely serve as ordinary legionaries; their value is in specialist roles: engineers, physicians, translators, staff officers for senior commanders who need someone to write their letters. Officers of Greek origin exist but face extra scrutiny for advancement.

Starting languages: Greek (native), Latin (learned; all educated Elves speak it), plus one regional dialect or additional eastern language.

Starting skill bonuses: Arcana +3, History +2, Persuasion +2. Greece built the philosophical infrastructure that Rome runs on and then spent five centuries watching Rome credit its own professors for it. You carry that tradition as genuine facility: arcane theory, historical argument, and the rhetoric that actually works in rooms where it matters. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Dwarf: Germanic and Dacian Peoples

The peoples north and east of the Roman frontier are not simply “the enemy.” Rome has been in contact with Germanic and Dacian peoples for centuries: trading with them, fighting them, recruiting from them, conquering portions of their territory, and repeatedly discovering that conquered territory does not stay fully conquered. Dwarves in the Roman world are these peoples: compact, tough, organized around clan loyalty and craft tradition, and profoundly resistant to the Roman assumption that their way of doing things needs to be replaced.

Mountain Dwarves are the Dacians: the people of the Carpathian mountains, recently and bloodily conquered under Trajan. The Dacians had cities, wrote things down, built in stone, and mined gold and silver in quantities that made them worth conquering. Their craftwork is distinctive and recognizable. They remember the conquest; they have not decided what to do with the memory.

Hill Dwarves are the Germanic peoples along the Limes: Chatti, Cherusci, Marcomanni, and others, organized in clan groups, operating on honor economies, skilled in ironwork, farming, and warfare. They trade with Rome during peaceful decades and raid during less peaceful ones. Many serve in Rome’s auxiliary forces under their own chiefs; clan loyalty runs deeper than imperial loyalty, and Rome’s smarter officers know it.

How Romans perceive them: As stubborn, useful, and in need of management. Roman military writers describe Germanic and Dacian fighters with grudging respect and consistent underestimation of their capacity for complex organization. This is a mistake that Rome has made several times and will make again.

Military role: Primarily auxiliary soldiers, recruited in tribal units under their own leaders. A Dacian or Germanic auxiliary might rise to the rank of a unit commander (decurion or centurion) within their own unit. The path to a full Roman officer commission is long and requires deliberate Romanization.

Starting languages: A Germanic or Dacian language (native), Latin (functional; heavily accented), possibly a second tribal language from nearby peoples.

Starting skill bonuses: Athletics +2, Survival +2, Nature +2. The mountain peoples of the frontier know their terrain the way Romans know their roads: not as an abstract map but as a living system of pressures and paths. Craft, endurance, and landscape intelligence come before formal training. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Halfling: Phoenician, Syrian, and Nabataean Traders

Trade flows through the Roman Empire along sea lanes and road networks, and at every node where trade flows you find Phoenician, Syrian, and Nabataean merchants who have been working that node since before Rome existed. Halflings in the Roman world are these peoples: adaptable, present everywhere that commerce happens, underestimated by nearly everyone, and very deliberate about the advantages that underestimation provides.

Lightfoot Halflings are the Phoenician coastal trading families: Beirut, Sidon, Carthage’s successor cities along the North African coast. They have been seafarers and traders for a thousand years. They know every port, every harbor official, every local restriction on what can be moved, and where the exceptions can be found. Their family networks span the Mediterranean.

Stout Halflings are the inland Syrian and Nabataean merchants: the caravan traders who move goods along the roads between the Persian Gulf and the Roman frontier, who know the desert routes as well as a legionary knows the via militaris (the military road). Palmyra is their city. They are physically tougher than the coastal traders and slightly less diplomatically polished, which is not to say they are unpolished.

How Romans perceive them: As tradespeople of middling social status, present everywhere and somewhat interchangeable. Rome has been trading with Phoenician and Syrian merchants for centuries and still categorizes them primarily by what they sell rather than who they are. This is exactly the level of attention they prefer.

Military role: Rare in the legions. Halfling characters who serve in the military typically do so as supply contractors, logistics specialists, or intelligence assets using their trade networks. Some serve in light cavalry auxiliary units from the Nabataean frontier regions.

Starting languages: Aramaic or Phoenician (native), Latin (excellent; essential for commerce), Greek (also excellent; the language of the eastern markets), and often one or two additional trade languages.

Starting skill bonuses: Deception +2, Insight +2, Persuasion +1, Sleight of Hand +1. A thousand years of trade routes taught the Phoenician families to read people and rooms faster than anyone else at the table. The underestimation that follows you is a professional advantage you learned to cultivate before you learned to walk. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Gnome: Egyptians and Alexandrians

Egypt is the oldest literate civilization that Rome has absorbed, and it has not been absorbed so much as added to the collection. Egyptian religion, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine predate Rome by millennia. Gnomes in the Roman world are Egyptians: keepers of old knowledge, practitioners of mystery cults, inhabitants of the Nile delta, and, in the case of Alexandria, residents of the Empire’s great intellectual city.

Forest Gnomes are the rural Nile population: farmers in the delta, priests of local temples, practitioners of folk magic traditions that reach back to the pharaonic period and do not particularly acknowledge that that period has ended. They live in a landscape of flooding, irrigation, grain, and extremely old gods. They are resourceful, independent, and somewhat opaque to Roman administrators who come expecting gratitude.

Rock Gnomes are the Alexandrians: scholars, engineers, and archivists of the greatest library in the world. The Library of Alexandria is functionally a gnomish institution in this world: a place where the accumulation of knowledge is treated as a sacred act and where the political implications of information are understood with the same precision as the information itself. An Alexandrian Gnome knows things. They are careful about sharing what they know and with whom.

How Romans perceive them: With a combination of genuine respect for their knowledge and persistent suspicion about what they are actually doing with it. Roman officials find Egyptian religious practice strange, do not fully understand the mystery cults, and are quietly aware that Egyptian priests have access to information and social influence that Rome has not fully mapped. This makes them useful allies and uneasy subjects simultaneously.

Military role: Gnomes rarely serve in the legions. Alexandrian scholars appear in military contexts as engineers (siege mechanics, hydraulics, architecture) and as medical staff. Some are recruited directly into the Emperor’s intelligence apparatus, where their archive access is considered a strategic resource.

Starting languages: Demotic (native), Greek (native in Alexandria; fluent everywhere educated Gnomes are found), Latin (excellent for those in Roman institutional contexts; functional for rural Gnomes), and for scholars: classical Egyptian for reading old texts.

Starting skill bonuses: Arcana +2, History +2, Medicine +2. The Library, the temples, the Nile’s agricultural mathematics: Egypt’s knowledge tradition is older than Rome and considerably wider than most Romans understand. You carry specific, deep knowledge that surprises people who assumed you were simply foreign. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Half-Elf: People of Mixed Roman and Greek Heritage

The Roman Empire has been intermarrying with Greek-heritage populations for generations, and the result is a substantial class of people who are functionally Roman in public life and Greek in private life, or vice versa, or neither quite completely. Half-Elves in the Roman world are these people: the Romanized upper class of Greek provinces who hold Roman citizenship but read Greek philosophy for pleasure; the Dacian noble who received a Roman education and now navigates both worlds with unease; the frontier child of a Roman legionary father and a Greek-province mother who inherited two cultural frameworks and full membership in neither.

The educated Greco-Roman Half-Elf typically occupies a comfortable social position precisely because they are fluent in both cultural registers: they know when to speak Greek and when to speak Latin, when to reference Aristotle and when to reference Cicero, which room wants which version of themselves. This fluency is an advantage and a performance, and the performance is exhausting.

The frontier Half-Elf (Dacian family, Roman education, or the reverse) is a different case: caught between worlds that do not regard themselves as continuous, holding loyalties that those worlds would not allow to coexist if they were made visible. These characters have a particular relationship with the question of identity that the campaign will press on repeatedly.

How Romans perceive them: With qualified acceptance: “practically Roman” if they perform the right cultural signals, “foreign, though educated” if they do not. The acceptance is real but conditional, and the conditions are not always stated clearly.

Military role: Full access to the Roman military system, including officer tracks, for those with citizenship. The social navigation required to advance is more demanding than for Italian-born Romans of equivalent ability, but the path exists.

Starting languages: Latin and Greek (both native or near-native), plus one additional language from their non-Roman heritage.

Starting skill bonuses: History +1, Persuasion +2, Insight +2, Arcana +1. Two cultural frameworks, both partially internalized. You know when to shift registers and what each audience expects from you; you know when to speak Greek and when to speak Latin, when to reference Aristotle and when to reference Cicero. The performance is exhausting; the results are real. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Half-Orc: Germanic Foederati Warriors

Foederati are allied peoples who serve Rome under treaty rather than as conquered subjects or enrolled citizens. Germanic Half-Orcs are Rome’s allied German fighters: large, direct, operating on honor codes that predate Roman law by centuries, serving under treaty agreements that both sides understand and neither side fully trusts. They are present at Fort Vindolanda in meaningful numbers, and the Roman soldiers who have served alongside them have complex opinions.

The relationship between a Half-Orc foederatus and the Roman military is built on mutual interest rather than shared identity: they fight well and they want what Rome can offer (pay, security, trade access, and for some: the recognition that comes with service under the most powerful military institution in the world). Rome wants their fighting capability and has learned, at cost, to respect their tactical skills. Roman soldiers who have not served alongside them view them as impressive and somewhat alarming. Roman soldiers who have served alongside them view them as impressive, somewhat alarming, and exactly who you want on your left flank.

How Romans perceive them: With a combination of physical respect and cultural wariness. Roman military writers catalog Germanic and Dacian tactics with precision and acknowledge their effectiveness. Roman civilians regard foederati as foreign, powerful, and present at the sufferance of the Emperor. The wariness is mutual.

Military role: Primarily as heavy infantry in allied units operating under their own commanders within the Roman order of battle. A Half-Orc who has fully integrated into a Roman unit over years of service may hold centurion rank; a Half-Orc operating as a foederatus unit leader holds that position through their own authority, not Roman commission.

Starting languages: A Germanic language (native), Latin (functional to good; depends on years of service), possibly a second Germanic or Danubian language.

Starting skill bonuses: Athletics +3, Intimidation +2, Survival +1. Your fighting tradition predates Rome by centuries and was not improved upon by contact with it. The physical capability is real; so is the social weight that follows you into every room. Roman soldiers who have not served alongside your people regard this as alarming. Roman soldiers who have served alongside your people regard it as exactly who they want on their left flank. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Tiefling: Carthaginian-Heritage Peoples

Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BC, salted the earth, and spent the next three hundred years absorbing the populations that had lived under Carthaginian cultural influence: the peoples of North Africa, of Spain, and of the Phoenician diaspora who had organized their religious life around Baal Hammon and Tanit. You cannot destroy a city and eliminate a tradition; you can only push it underground and watch it persist in the things people do when Roman officials are not watching.

Tieflings in the Roman world carry this inheritance. Their “infernal” heritage is theological rather than diabolic: it is the mark of the divine bargains their ancestors made with gods Rome conquered and did not replace. Baal’s demands were different from Jupiter’s. The traditions that survived three centuries of Roman rule are older, stranger, and more demanding. Tiefling characters who know their own history know that they carry something the Empire destroyed and could not quite kill.

North African Tieflings are the most numerous: Carthage’s successor cities along the coast of modern Tunisia and Algeria, now thoroughly Romanized in law and language while maintaining older religious practices in private. Spanish Tieflings descend from Phoenician colonial settlements along the southern coast. Some families have held this heritage for so many generations that its specific origin is as remote as their great-great-grandparents; they know they carry something; they are not always certain what.

How Romans perceive them: Uneasily. Rome officially classified Carthaginian religion as foreign and its practices (particularly certain sacrificial traditions) as barbaric. Tieflings are not legally prohibited from anything a peregrinus of their status is not prohibited from, but Roman officials with old-fashioned views about North African religious traditions apply extra scrutiny. Some officials classify Tieflings as dediticii regardless of their actual legal status, which is technically incorrect and practically consequential.

Military role: Available at all levels depending on legal status. North African cavalry units are among the finest in the Roman military, and Tiefling soldiers in those units serve with distinction. The path to officer rank requires navigating prejudice as well as demonstrating capability.

Starting languages: Latin or a Berber language (native, depending on background), Punic or Phoenician (family language, often surviving as a religious register), possibly Greek if from a commercially connected family.

Starting skill bonuses: Religion +2, Deception +2, History +1. Three centuries of suppressed tradition produce people who know how to carry something privately, how to read official religious systems from outside them, and how to maintain a history that no conqueror has archived. You know things that Rome destroyed and could not quite kill. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Dragonborn: Parthians and Persians

East of the Roman frontier, beyond the Euphrates, the Parthian Empire rules territory that once belonged to Alexander’s conquests and before that to Persia. Parthia is Rome’s great eastern rival: an ancient civilization with its own imperial tradition, its own military doctrine (famous for armored cavalry and the “Parthian shot”), and its own diplomatic culture in which Rome is one powerful neighbor among several rather than the center of the world.

Dragonborn in the Roman world are Parthians and Persians: rare in the west, distinctive when present, carrying the weight of a civilization that regards Rome with the same careful respect that Rome regards them. A Dragonborn in a Roman frontier fort may be there as a former diplomatic hostage (the standard ancient practice of exchanging high-status children to guarantee treaties), as a noble who chose Rome voluntarily, or as a trader who crossed the border for reasons they prefer not to specify in detail.

How Romans perceive them: With fascinated wariness. Parthian culture is genuinely impressive to Romans who have encountered it: the art, the architecture, the military technology, the philosophical tradition. Rome respects Parthia in a way it does not respect most peoples it deals with. It also does not share strategic military information with Parthian-heritage individuals, regardless of their legal status or stated loyalty, and this policy is enforced without apology.

Military role: Dragonborn in Roman military service are exceptional. A Dragonborn who serves as a soldier typically does so in a specialized cavalry or archery unit, often under circumstances that involve significant diplomatic background. They do not hold strategic command positions regardless of capability.

Starting languages: Parthian (native), Aramaic (the regional lingua franca), Greek (used in Parthian diplomatic contexts), Latin (learned; present if they have spent significant time in Roman territory).

Starting skill bonuses: Arcana +2, History +2, Intimidation +2. The other empire’s cultural weight. You carry Parthian military doctrine, Persian philosophical tradition, and a bearing that makes Roman officers slightly uneasy in ways they cannot fully explain. The wariness is mutual and you have learned to read it accurately in both directions. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Aasimar: Roman Noble Families Claiming Divine Descent

The gens Julia claimed descent from Venus. The gens Cornelia traced itself to gods. Roman noble families have asserted divine ancestry since the Republic, and in this world, some of those assertions are true. Numen, the divine presence that radiates from a genuine divine bloodline, is detectable to augurs, priests, and others trained to recognize it. It is not dramatic, usually: a quality of presence, a sense of weight, a light that shows up at certain angles and is not quite the light in the room.

Aasimar in the Roman world are the members of these families in whom the divine inheritance is active and visible. Not every member of the gens Julia is an Aasimar; divine blood dilutes across generations. But some carry it undiluted, and the gods who seeded these lines are still paying attention to them.

Radiant Soul Aasimar are those in whom the divine connection is live: a deity whose blood they carry still has an interest in them, still communicates through the blood, still exercises something that looks like care. These individuals occupy significant positions in Roman religious and political life, or they hide what they are, because visibility brings obligations.

Fallen Aasimar are those whose divine patron has withdrawn favor: still carrying the bloodline, still marked by it, but operating without the divine attention that makes the inheritance feel like a gift. The patron’s withdrawal may be a punishment, a test, or simply the consequence of something the bloodline did two generations back. In either case, a Fallen Aasimar knows they carry something that is no longer warm.

How Romans perceive them: With reverence, ambition, and close attention. Divine bloodlines are political assets in Rome; families that produce Aasimar members protect them and promote them, because a visible divine connection is the most credible form of authority in this world. An Aasimar from a non-noble family is a rarer and stranger case: someone whose divine inheritance arrived without institutional context, which raises theological questions that priests find interesting and powerful people find inconvenient.

Military role: Full access at all levels. An Aasimar from a recognized noble family has the fastest path to command rank of any character in the campaign. An Aasimar from an obscure background still carries visible divine favor, which functions as social capital even without a family name to back it.

Starting languages: Latin (native), Greek (educated standard), and the sacred language of the patron deity’s cult.

Starting skill bonuses: Religion +3, Persuasion +2, History +1. Divine bloodlines in Rome produce people who understand the gods at a level that formal training cannot replicate. The religion is not academic for you; the divine is a family relationship, and you grew up knowing which family members to call on, and what calling on them costs. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Shadar-kai: Spartan-Heritage Shadow-Cursed

By 175 AD, Sparta is a Roman curiosity in the province of Achaea: a living museum preserved deliberately for Roman tourists who pay to watch young Spartan men flogged at the altar of Artemis Orthia, performing the old customs on schedule. The Romans find it picturesque. The Spartans who perform it know something the Roman visitors do not: the public rites are theater. The old things are not theater.

The Krypteia is older than the performance. In the classical period, Sparta sent young warriors alone into the dark with iron knives and orders to move without light, kill helots on the roads at night, and return before dawn without speaking of what they had done. This was not barbarism; it was doctrine, and something enabled it that was older than the doctrine itself. The compact at the root of Spartan shadow training was made with Hades, in the old way, at a price that was paid then and is still being paid now by bloodlines that carry it.

Shadar-kai in this world are members of Lacedaemonian families in whom that compact runs in the blood. It does not manifest in every generation. When it does, it is visible: the pallor, the slight extension of the shadow, the way light behaves around them at certain angles. The family knows what this means. It does not treat the manifesting member as cursed so much as marked, which is a distinction that matters in Spartan tradition and is largely lost on Romans.

The curse: The compact offered what every Spartan soldier wanted: survival through darkness, difficulty of killing, persistence beyond what the body should permit. The price is that the self grows thinner unless sensation keeps it anchored. Pain, grief, exhilaration, rage, joy: any of these will do. The Spartan tradition had a philosophy built precisely for this cost, which is why the compact made sense to their ancestors. What the ancestors did not account for was that the philosophy fades across generations. The cost does not.

A character who does not feel intensely begins to slip: presence diminishes, the shadow grows more substantial than the body, perception thins. This is not metaphor. It is physically visible to a trained augur at close range.

Ares and Mars: Sparta’s divine patron was not Mars, Rome’s god of military order and institutional discipline. It was Ares: older, less controlled, the god of slaughter rather than the god of war-as-institution. The distinction is theologically real in this world and it has consequences near divine military objects. A shadar-kai character encountering the campaign’s central artifact encounters Rome’s divine military presence as something recognized, and recognizing them back, but not aligned. Cassia can feel this. She will not always explain it immediately.

How Romans perceive them: With discomfort they cannot name cleanly. Romans admire Sparta intellectually; Spartan severity is a standard Roman reference point for discipline and endurance. A living Spartan with shadow in their blood does not match the preserved museum version. Officers who encounter a shadar-kai auxiliary watch them more closely than other soldiers, for reasons they cannot articulate. They are not hostile. They are attentive in a way that is its own kind of pressure.

Military role: Standard auxiliary status as Spartan-heritage peregrini. The krypteia tradition translates immediately to scouting and infiltration roles; experienced frontier officers understand this value quickly and tend not to examine the mechanism closely. A shadar-kai who has served two posting cycles will typically hold a specialist role regardless of formal rank, because the alternative is explaining why they were not deployed that way.

Starting languages: Greek (Laconian dialect, native), Latin (learned; present in any character who has served in Roman territory or traveled widely), plus one of the following: another Greek dialect; a Balkan language from Macedonian or Thracian auxiliary service; or functional Germanic from a frontier posting.

Starting skill bonuses: Stealth +3, Athletics +2, Insight +1. The old training: moving without being seen, enduring without showing it, reading what others will not say. The Spartan tradition runs through the body before it reaches the mind, and the shadow compact means your body has capabilities your conscious self is still mapping. For full context, see the Skills chapter.

Racial traits:

Darkvision. The compact trades some warmth of daylight for clarity of darkness. You see in dim light as though it were bright light, and in darkness as though it were dim light, to a range of 60 feet. You cannot discern color in darkness, only shades of grey.

Necrotic resistance. Hades’ prior claim on your bloodline creates a partial immunity to the energies of death. You have resistance to necrotic damage.

Fey ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed. Magic cannot put you to sleep.

Krypteia’s Step. Once per short rest, as a bonus action, you step into the shadow world and emerge from it elsewhere: you teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. Until the start of your next turn, you are incorporeal: you have resistance to all damage except force and radiant, you cannot be grappled or restrained by physical means, and you cannot pick up or carry objects. You return to full corporeality at the start of your next turn, whether you choose to or not.

The fading mechanic:

The compact requires sensation to maintain your presence in the material world. Each session, track whether your character has experienced a moment of intense sensation: taking 10 or more hit points of damage in a single hit, witnessing a death that matters, or a scene of genuine emotional intensity that you describe actively at the table.

If no such moment occurs before the session ends, you begin the next session with disadvantage on Perception checks. This disadvantage resets the first time something intense happens. Tell the GM when it resets: they will acknowledge it.

Three moments across the campaign reset this automatically and carry additional effects that the GM handles. You will know when they happen.

The shadow stages:

The compact is not static. It deepens when you fade and recedes when you feel. The stages below are sealed until you reach them: open one only when your GM tells you your shadow has moved. Each stage changes what others see, what you can do, and what you are becoming.

Stage 0: Marked (starting stage)

You are here. Your shadow extends slightly further than the light warrants, and in certain angles of light you are paler than you should be, but nothing in your presence is alarming to anyone who does not know what to look for. Cassia would notice, given time. No one else will, yet.

What you find normal: The dark is comfortable. You move through it more naturally than others, and this has been true long enough that you have stopped remarking on it.

What others notice: Nothing specific. A quality of stillness, perhaps. An officer who has been watching you for a while might describe you as “self-contained” without being able to say more precisely what they mean.

Krypteia’s Step: 30 feet. Once per short rest. Standard incorporeal window until start of your next turn.

How it changes: Two consecutive sessions without a fading reset, or two shadow-curse manifestations, moves you to Stage 1.

Stage 1: Fading

Something has shifted. The connection between you and the material world has become something you must actively maintain rather than something you simply have. The fading disadvantage is now persistent between sessions unless you reset it. The shadow moves when you do not, sometimes: a slight lag, a direction it leans that is not yours.

What you find normal: Sensation has become something you notice consciously, because the absence of it is now something you can feel. You have started cataloguing what keeps you here.

What others notice: DC 14 Perception to catch it: a moment where the shadow did something your body did not. Cassia notices without a check, given line of sight. Vercingetorix, if he has had his first private conversation with you, will have already marked this.

Krypteia’s Step: 30 feet. Once per short rest. After you re-solidify, you may spend a bonus action to anchor yourself early if needed (you do not have to wait for the start of your turn).

Recovery: Three consecutive sessions with the fading mechanic successfully reset each time drops you back to Stage 0. Tell your GM when you hit the third consecutive reset.

How it deepens: Two more sessions without a reset, or a third shadow-curse manifestation, moves you to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Thinning

The thinning is visible now to anyone paying attention. In direct bright light you are slightly difficult to look at directly: not frightening, not monstrous, but wrong in a way that defies description. The shadow is doing things on its own, and you are aware of this even when you cannot see it. Sensation that used to anchor you now only slows the drift.

What you find normal: You have stopped thinking about what you look like in mirrors. You have also started noticing the seams between shadow and light as though they were doors.

What others notice: DC 12 Perception to notice the translucency in bright light. In dim light, automatic for anyone who looks at you carefully. Romans who notice make a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw; on a failure, they are unsettled without knowing why and apply disadvantage to their own Persuasion checks toward you. Cassia does not need a check. Vercingetorix at this stage, if present, will tell you quietly that you are closer to the grove than to the fort.

Mechanical: Disadvantage on Charisma checks with Roman officials in formal settings (your physical presence is subtly wrong to institutional Roman eyes). In direct sunlight: disadvantage on attack rolls (the light finds less of you to stand behind).

Krypteia’s Step: 40 feet. Twice per short rest. The second use in the same short rest period is made at disadvantage on any attack roll during the subsequent incorporeal window.

Recovery: The grove ritual, or two of the three campaign-specific reset moments, drops you to Stage 1. Sensation alone is no longer sufficient.

How it deepens: A failed corruption divergence save while at Stage 2 or higher, or persistent isolation across Sessions 3-4, moves you to Stage 3.

Stage 3: Translucent

You are here in the way that a reflection in water is here: present, specific, and not solid in the way things need to be solid to be trusted. The physical world still holds you, but it holds you the way a net holds water. You have capabilities now that you did not have before, and they are not comfortable to enumerate. Something is preparing you for a transition it assumes is coming.

What you find normal: The distinction between the space a body occupies and the space a shadow occupies has become academic. You experience both. You are not yet certain which one is the primary one.

What others notice: Automatic in bright light: anyone who looks at you directly sees the translucency. NPCs make a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw when they first see it; on a failure, they will not stand within 5 feet of you without orders requiring them to. On a success, they file it under “frontier strange” and carry on, which is its own kind of unsettling.

Mechanical: Vulnerability to radiant damage (the divine light reads you as partially already belonging somewhere else). Disadvantage on Persuasion checks with anyone who can see the translucency. Advantage on Stealth checks in dim light or darkness (there is less of you to detect).

New capability: Once per long rest, you can spend 10 minutes in stillness to become fully incorporeal for up to 1 hour: you move through solid objects, physical attacks cannot target you, you cannot interact with the physical world in ways that require mass. You can end this early as a bonus action. While incorporeal, you cannot use Krypteia’s Step.

Krypteia’s Step: 40 feet. Twice per short rest. Can now be triggered as a reaction when you are targeted by an attack (before the roll resolves), once per short rest.

Recovery: Only through the grove ritual or Hades’ direct intercession. Sensation and reset moments cannot reduce Stage 3 alone; they can prevent it from deepening.

How it deepens: Reaching Stage 3 and failing the death saving throw described in the Death Ruling section moves you to Stage 4.

Stage 4: Shadow-Claimed

The compact has called in what was owed. You are present in the material world as an act of will, not as a fact of physics. Others do not pass through you; the world still registers your mass; but the registration is provisional. You exist here on terms that Hades is in the process of renegotiating, and the negotiation is not going in your favor without intervention.

What you find normal: The grove phrase you heard in Session 4 makes sense now. It was not a threat. It was an arrival notice.

What others notice: Your physical presence is visibly incomplete. You leave no footprints on soft ground. Torchlight passes through your hands at the edges. Anyone who looks at you knows something is wrong, though they may not have the vocabulary for what they are seeing. Cassia, if she is alive, will not look directly at you. She will tell the party what needs to happen.

Mechanical: Vulnerability to radiant damage (double damage). Advantage on all Stealth checks. Cannot be healed by mundane medicine. Magical healing works at disadvantage. Hades begins sending you direct communications through the shadow: your GM will determine what these say and when. You cannot always choose not to receive them.

Krypteia’s Step: 50 feet. Twice per short rest. As a reaction when targeted. Additionally: as a movement option, you can spend half your movement to step partially into the shadow world and re-emerge anywhere within 15 feet of your current position that you could normally reach by walking (no action required, once per turn).

Sustainability: This stage is not sustainable without resolution. Without the grove ritual or direct divine intervention, you fully cross over within 1d4 sessions: you become an NPC in Hades’ domain. The party has that many sessions to act. Your GM knows the count.

Recovery: The grove ritual, performed with genuine sacrifice, drops you to Stage 3. From Stage 3 the ordinary recovery paths apply. There is no faster route. The compact honored its terms; matching it requires something real.

How Status Affects Your Character

Legal Status Rank Ceiling Can Own Land? Can Testify in Court? Path to Higher Status
Cives Romani No ceiling Yes, anywhere in the Empire Yes, full standing Already at top; can only lose status
Latini Centurion (rarely Tribune) Yes, in home province Yes, in provincial courts 25 years military service; imperial decree
Peregrini Non-commissioned; auxiliary commander in own unit Yes, in home province Yes, locally 25 years auxiliary service; imperial decree
Liberti Non-commissioned only Yes (personally); restricted on inheritance Yes, with restrictions Children born after manumission are full citizens
Dediticii None No No Imperial decree only; rare

The party’s collective action in Sessions 3 and 4, specifically the direct intervention that protects the Emperor from the conspiracy, places every party member within range of an extraordinary legal event. The Emperor can grant citizenship by decree; this is historically documented, used by Roman emperors for exactly the circumstances your characters are navigating: soldiers of non-Roman origin who performed service that the normal reward structure does not adequately cover. This grant is not automatic. It requires the Emperor to survive, to know what the party did, and to choose to act. All three conditions are things the campaign will press on. If they are met, the legal consequences are real and dramatic: a peregrinus who enters the last session without the ability to own land in Rome might leave it as a civis Romanus. That is a different life, and the campaign was designed to make it feel earned.

Province of Origin

Where you come from is not only a cultural identity: it determines which languages you grew up speaking and which assumptions you carry into every room. Your province of origin is separate from your D&D race, though the two interact. A human from Pannonia and a human from Italia share legal citizenship but almost nothing else. Use the table below to determine your free starting languages before applying any class or background proficiency.

The “native language” column gives the language you speak without spending a language slot. The “common second language” column gives the language most characters from that province would have acquired before military service. The “D&D equivalent” column shows how each real language maps to the PHB language list; for the full translation table, see the Languages of the Roman World section in the Player’s Guide.

Province Native language Common second language Notes
Italia Latin (Common) Greek (Elvish) Every educated Italian learns Greek; it marks good breeding and opens doors in the Senate and the army’s senior staff
Hispania Latin (Common) Celtic Iberian (treat as Dwarvish) The old Iberian languages are fading but survive in rural areas and among families that still think of themselves as pre-Roman
Gallia Latin (Common) Gaulish (Dwarvish) Many Gauls are bilingual; the older generation still think in Gaulish, and some frontier Gauls pick up Germanic from trade contacts
Britannia Latin (Common) Brittonic (Dwarvish) The wall postings are a language mix: Brittonic, Germanic, and Latin all in daily use; Germanic is genuinely useful here
Syria/Judaea Greek (Elvish) Aramaic (Halfling) Latin is the third language here, not the first; officers from the eastern provinces sometimes speak better Greek than they do Latin
Egypt Greek (Elvish) Egyptian Demotic (Gnomish) Alexandrian education means Greek; villages speak Demotic; Latin is the administrative language and not always welcome
Pannonia/Moesia Latin (Common) Germanic (Goblin) Danube frontier soldiers pick up Germanic from decades of contact with foederati and traders; it is practically a second military language here
Dacia Latin (Common) Dacian (treat as Dwarvish) Recently conquered; Latin is new here and sometimes resented; older Dacians treat it as a political language rather than a personal one
North Africa Latin (Common) Punic or Berber (treat as Infernal or Primordial) Carthaginian linguistic heritage persists beneath Roman Latin in family and religious contexts; Berber languages remain active in rural areas
Thracia/Balkans Latin (Common) Thracian or Illyrian (treat as Sylvan) Frontier peoples of the lower Danube; a second generation of Roman service is making Latin dominant, but the older languages survive in the villages

Choosing Your Province

Your province of origin is a character creation choice with two mechanical effects: your free starting language (or languages, in the cases of Syria and Egypt where Greek is the first language) and the cultural assumptions your character brings to every social encounter.

Pick the province that fits the backstory you want. Then note the free language on your sheet, check the race entry above for your starting skill bonuses, and look at the Languages of the Roman World section in the Player’s Guide for the full picture of how languages work in play: which NPCs refuse to speak Latin until trust is established, which texts require a specific language to read without assistance, and how to learn a new language during the campaign.