The valley doesn’t care what you are. It has eaten better.
Fourteen ancestries walk into Cairnfoot looking for work. Species is first identity — voice, silhouette, and story — backed by a deliberately light mechanical package: one trait, one knack, rated +1 Power Value (same weight as a creation trait) so picking a species never slows the sub-minute character assembly or breaks mission sizing.
The Grounded
| Species | In a phrase | Package |
|---|---|---|
| Wanderers | Humans — good at nothing, everywhere anyway | A second creation trait; one Boon anywhere, once per run |
| Scragg | Swamp-born orcs, mossy and deep-feeling | Poison-proof Wind; Frenzy when an ally is hurt |
| Zephyrin | Elemental-blooded elves, breeze and hurricane | Crits arc 1 Break to a bystander; a free step on the clock |
| Rivenkin | Bloodlines cracked by an ancestor’s bargain | Boon searching rooms that hold secrets; shrug a Wound at a price |
| Desecrants | The dead who declined to stay down | Immune to Poison and Bleed; stand back up, once, for a scar |
| Wrought | Automatons who outlived their purpose | +1 Guard and better Patches; an out-of-turn Rally |
The Small and the Silly
| Species | In a phrase | Package |
|---|---|---|
| Brightlings | Comfort-lovers who did not ask for this | An extra consumable; soup that restores a Vital |
| Pucklings | Fae-touched goblins living for the bit | Fumbles feed allies Boons; cancel a Bane, once per fight |
| Draxolots | Pastel dragon-kin, completely unbothered | Boon vs Shaken, resting regeneration; a tiny breath weapon |
| Puddlings | Friendly ooze, wildly expressive | Can’t Bleed, flows through grates; gums up an enemy’s weapon |
| Cubhorns | Horned kids in oversized armor | Announced attacks hit harder (at a risk); refuse one Stagger |
| Winglets | More wing than control | Ignores floor hazards and falls; the tactical crash |
| Bristleben | Fox-folk with too many pouches | An extra tool; produces exactly the right consumable |
| Whiskrin | Cat-folk who meant to do that | +1 Wind, climbs anything; fumbles never stick to them |
Deferred: gentle giant-kin and non-biped body plans (centaur-likes) — impractical in tight dungeon environments for now.
Balance note: packages are first-pass and tunable. The shapes aim at different currencies — dice (Pucklings, Whiskrin), layers (Wrought, Scragg), the clock (Zephyrin, Winglets), logistics (Brightlings, Bristleben), and the run’s meta-economy (Desecrants, Wanderers) — so no two species compete for the same slot.
In the game: all fourteen ship in Content/species.json and appear as an optional ancestry step in character assembly. A package is one always-on tag (namespaced species:, so it can never collide with a creation trait or a scar) plus one knack — an ability card the phone surfaces on a once-per-encounter or once-per-run budget, or a second tag the engine reads. Both halves are priced once, at +1 PV, through the same trait term a creation trait uses. Some trait halves still ride as data the crawl layer has yet to honor; Loose Threads §3 keeps that list honest.