Ratfolk love to travel, and they can often be found on the road in merchant caravans. They’re good with their hands and have a keen eye for spotting anything out of the ordinary, from threats to treasures. They’re also inveterate hoarders; ysoki warrens are crammed full of unusual odds and ends gathered by previous generations and stowed away in preparation for some future emergency.
Physical Description
Ysoki have whiskered snouts, large ears, and hairless tails, and typically have red eyes and short brown or black fur. A common ysoki is 4 feet tall and weighs around 80 pounds. Ratfolk vary considerably, however; even a single family group can exhibit substantial variation in hair color, eye color, or size.
Instinct drives ysoki to maintain cleanliness, though this is also reinforced through their strong social structures. Other condescending humanoids often presume ysoki are dirty or diseased, but in actuality, they are meticulous about personal hygiene. Because their appearance is often considered unnatural—and other people mistake them for wererats—ysoki often conceal their physical features with hoods, gloves, shoes, long-sleeved tunics, robes, and other layers of clothing when moving through spaces dominated by other ancestries.
Society
Ysoki culture values cooperation and community. Every ysoki learns—through communal games, social occasions, and sports—to forge fast friendships and connections with ysoki outside their family. You may never know whose help you’re going to need, but when you do, you’re going to need it now.
With a long tradition of working as traders and tinkers, ysoki travel frequently from one town to another. Their wagons are usually grouped into caravans of up to half a dozen vehicles. Ysoki wagons are pulled by exceptionally large giant rats; many ysoki can speak to such animals.
Discrimination against ysoki has shaped their culture, prompting them to rely on each other and strengthening their family and communal bonds. Ysoki are very good at differentiating between bad actors and those who are simply acting out of ignorance, modeling good behavior and slowly working to reverse generations of discrimination for those willing to learn. They are always on the lookout for members of other ancestries who don’t judge them for their appearance, embracing these individuals as true friends and welcoming them into their communities. But they also can quickly spot determined bigots prone to violence and steer clear of such individuals, minimizing any opportunity for tragedy.
Religion
Though ysoki revere their ancestors and tend to acknowledge whatever deity is prevalent in their local area, Lao Shu Po has a special role in ysoki culture. Grandmother Rat, as she is sometimes known, embodies many things that are otherwise antithetical to ratfolk—she urges followers to put their own interests above others, and she encourages deceit and trickery. To most ysoki, Grandmother Rat accomplishes all those things ratfolk need done, but which no reasonable ratfolk would wish to do.
Adventurers
Ysoki might take up the adventuring life to explore and travel, to defend their family or community, or for any number of other reasons.
Their natural wit and nimble fingers make ysoki excellent alchemists and rogues, while some specialize in ranged weapons as fighters or rangers.
Typical ysoki backgrounds include animal whisperer, artisan, merchant, medic, nomad, scout, and tinker from the Core Rulebook, plus bandit, barber, scavenger, and teacher from this book.
Names
Every ysoki family has perhaps two dozen names that have been passed down from generation to generation, sometimes with minor alterations or alternative nicknames. A grandfather might be Grivver, for example, while his daughter goes by Griva and her son is simply Griv. Ratfolk are often assigned nicknames and sobriquets by humanoids they interact with, but most ysoki find these names distasteful and endure them only when outside ysoki communities.
Sample Names
Ysoki Mechanics
Traits
Hit Points
6
Size
Small
Speed
25 feet
Ability Boosts
Dexterity, Intelligence, Free
Ability Flaw(s)
Strength
Languages
Taldane, Ysoki
Additional languages equal to your Intelligence modifier (if it's positive). Choose from Aklo, Draconic, Dwarven, Gnoll, Goblin, Orcish, and any other languages to which you have access (such as the languages prevalent in your region).
Low-Light Vision
You can see in dim light as though it were bright light, so you ignore the concealed condition due to dim light.
Versatile Heritages | Ysoki Feats
You select a heritage at 1st level to reflect abilities passed down to you from your ancestors or common among those of your ancestry in the environment where you were born or grew up. You have only one heritage and can’t change it later. A heritage is not the same as a culture or ethnicity, though some cultures or ethnicities might have more or fewer members from a particular heritage.
Deep Rat
Your ancestors lived deeper underground than other ratfolk, granting you the ability to see in the dark. You gain darkvision.
Desert Rat
You are native to arid plains and likely grew up traveling the roads. You have a leaner build than other ratfolk, with longer limbs and short fur. If you have both hands free, you can increase your Speed to 30 feet as you run on all fours. In addition, environmental heat effects are one step less extreme for you, and you can go 10 times as long as normal before you are affected by starvation or thirst. However, unless you wear protective gear or take shelter, environmental cold effects are one step more extreme for you.
Longsnout Rat
The long snouts that run in your family give you a keener sense of smell than most ratfolk. You gain imprecise scent with a range of 30 feet. This means you can use your sense of smell to determine a creature’s location. The GM will usually double the range if you’re downwind from the creature or halve the range if you’re upwind.
In addition, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Perception checks to Seek a creature or object within the range of your scent.
Sewer Rat
You come from a long line of ysoki from a community based in the sewers beneath a large settlement. You are immune to the disease filth fever. Each of your successful saving throws against a disease or poison reduces its stage by 2, or by 1 for a virulent disease or poison. Each critical success against an ongoing disease or poison reduces its stage by 3, or by 2 for a virulent disease or poison.
Shadow Rat
Your ancestors lived in dark spaces underground, granting you dark fur and a vaguely unnatural mien that unnerves sapient creatures and frightens animals. You gain the trained proficiency rank in Intimidation and can use Intimidation to Coerce animals. When you Demoralize an animal, you don’t take a penalty for not sharing a language with it. If you would automatically become trained in Intimidation (from your background or class, for example), you become trained in another skill of your choice.
Animals’ attitudes toward you begin one degree worse than normal, usually starting at unfriendly instead of indifferent for domesticated animals, and hostile instead of unfriendly for wild animals.
Snow Rat
You have a thicker coat and bulkier frame to defend against the cold, granting you cold resistance equal to half your level (minimum 1). You treat environmental cold effects as if they were one step less extreme (incredible cold becomes extreme, extreme cold becomes severe, and so on).
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