Hidden Face - The Gavra, Stitched Emulation Of Humanity

The Writer

It is in the nature of men to create things, silently and unconciously mimicking, like a child, whatever force gave it origin. However, through history, many have become obsessed with the divine spark of creation and the ability to bring forth life where it wasn't, as it is the domain of gods and higher beings, delivering instead secret remorses, at best, and great tragedies at worst. Despite this foretold result, many have refused to acknowledge that mortals cannot outdo gods on their own domains, for only gods can will existance to be and such shall be as they conceived and willed it to be. But mortals are arrogant and stubborn creatures driven by their selfish feelings and desires, and way too many grieving husbands, lustfull scholars, and dark accolytes alike have been led to incur in the sin of blasphemy, under the false promise of god-like powers that would bend or skip altogether the laws of nature imposed by the creators. No matter how deep mortals delve into the perilous paths of the dark arts, or the forgotten ways of now bygone sciences, for mortals cannot conjure the raw stuff of life from the elements as the gods can, and yet, despair and lust would suffice to drive mortals to turn to far more heinous means and despicable acts of self desacration. With thread and nail, metal and bone, carrion and engine, mortals dared to bring forth life to something not meant to have it by conjuring the wrathfull powers of the sky. And they succeeded. A mockery of nature that not even death would accept anymore on it's arms, bearing the eternal scars which mark them as the craft of mortals, a patchwork of desacrated lives akin to the babblings of an inept ape trying to mimic song of an artist, broken memories brought forth by force to be selfishly relived, the gavra are a soiled miracle that now lingers as a reminder of both mortal's blasphemous arrogance and folly innocence.

Physical Description

While possing as a human is not a difficult task for a properly garbed gavra, only very few can keep up such charade for long upon closer inspection. A gavra looks like the victim of a terrible accident, whose limbs and parts have been stitched together with threads of iron or other metals, scarring it's body in ghastly ways, giving it the look of a flesh raggdoll created from tidbits came from heterogeneous and missmatched sources, usually granted and slightly yellowed pallor with ever so slight hints of green. Unnatural beings came to be from an unhappy marriage between eldritch arts and weird science, a gavra is more closely related to other mimicries of life such as the feared golems, specially the disturbing flesh golems. Yet, despite being assembled in a very similar fashion, a gavra can only come to existance when assembled from the remains of one (or several) recently deceased no older than 3 days since expiration, with all parts belonging to members of the same humanoid race. However, it takes a lot more than simply gathering fresh parts and some tough thread in order to put together a gavra, as the parts must be cleansed of all blood and treated with special alchemical fluids, while a good deal of the skeletal frame and internal organs, specially the heart, is replaced with valves, tubes, and clockwork machinery designed to assist the new nature of the parts put together. As a result, despite lacking a need to breath, sleep, or eat, gavras are alive, despite being bereft of the divine spark that once gave natural animation to their now missmatched husks.

The gavra physiology has been both an unsettling and fascinating topic for those few of scholarly inclinations on Threa, for while retaining their digestive systems in integrity, the gavra are incapable of truely "digesting" other substances than water, alcohol, or salts in disolution. With largely infunctional viscerae, their stomachs only serve as temportal receptacles that lazily dispatch any matter that can't be absorbed, a task that can be quite dire, strenuous, and potentially harmfull for the apparently "embalmed" anatomy of the gavra. And yet, this begs to answer the question of how it is possible that these beings, uncapable of true digestion, can regenerate damaged tissues in the same fashion as normal biological entities can. Few know that the answer lies in the fact that, while gavras do not posses a biology like ours, they aren't undead, and their tissues are pretty much alive, thought their inner workings have been transformed during the process of assembling the gavra, thus making such a being only superficially tied to the original possesors of it's compounding parts. These transformed organisms are far more resilient than their original forms and can remain on dormant state almost indefinetely, being kept together by an state of alchemical preservation, while feeding on the slimey and translucent lime fluid the gavra have for blood whenever damage is being repaired. Lacking functional organs that produce hormonal messengers, the gravra have an alternative kind of methabolism derived from the artifact that passes as their heart, transforming the composite materials on the gavra's bodily fluids into the minerals and compounds required to repair what is needed. While granting the gavra with virtual emortality, this system has a critical flaw, as the process of regenerating consumes part of the gravra's life force which, bereft of an animating soul or spirit, can't be replenished, thus rendering them as mortal as any men, even if age never touches them.

Society

Being creatures of artificial nature originally conceived for varied purposes, the gavra cannot trace back any sort of cultural legacy except for a vague sensation of kinship upon finding others of their own. A rare commodity upon the lands of the undying lords, gavras are far more commonly found on the underground town of Palashink, at The Battlefield Of Arbahn, where many fledlings have found shelter from their tyrant masters of steel after being mass produced. Bereft of bodily needs, most of these gavra flock together trying to help each other "remember" who they were before being turned into what they are now thought, most of the time, they have very little success in this, as the alien "memories" on their fragmented recalls are nothing but the echos of all the former masters of the parts that now compose their bodies, granting many gavras an unsettling (and sometimes delirious) sense of "patchwork-self", making them prone to be obsessed with very disparate topics or cravings. It is common for older gavras to warn younger ones about "not being drawn in the lure of memory" for many gavras have been hurted psychologically to the point of maddness upon finding the truth behind such cravings and the fact that they belong to lives that cannot be gotten back.

Relations

Most other civilized folk find the unnatural presence of a gavra disturbing and unsettling, making them generally shunned wherever they go, so they keep to themselves, concealing their identities whenever such is possible, thought many have learned to capitalize on the fear their tortuous visages bring to the dull witted. Not needing food, and only requiring basic shelter, gavras on their own hit the road or settle in the fringes of towns or cities, some even claiming propiety of dilapidated states, becoming the seed for ghost stories. 

In the other hand, those few gavras who are actually accepted by a community or even if just an small group of friendly acquaitances of the living kind face problems of a diferent nature as, upon living in proximity to breathing beings, the gavra may quickly fall into an spiralling depression. Memories of the taste of food, the bliss of dreaming, the sight of an unscarred self upon the mirror, or the mere sensation of wholesomeness can quickly drive a gavra to grow bitter and envious of her living friends, prompting her to seek solace in solitude or in the company of others of her own kin.

Finally, while gavras bear no ill will as a race towards any other kin, they are specially wary about the alghul and avoid being in their proximity or their territories, for the hungry-kin liken way too much the taste of carrion to the smell of gavra flesh and lust for their taste as they crave to feast on any of the unliving.

Alignment & Religion

Lacking a real culture and being bereft of soul, the gavra pray to no god, for they know their origin lacks any mysticism and so their ends as well. Nevertheless, the gavra show a great deal of deference and respect for the kyton, for they know that the arts that made their existance possible were taught to the mortals by them. Most gavras start their existance as lawfull neutral beings, but they quickly branch into other alignements as soon as the spark of individuality arises on them.

Adventurers

At least once on their lifetimes, gavras take to adventuring since the memories that come back to haunt them make them eager to revisit the places from where, at least a part of them, belongs. Sometimes it is not a place but a person, and many tragic stories of people reporting sightings of "Dark Stalkers" following them around are, in fact, gavras stalking a person embbed in their memories, trying to find out who these persons were and what they meant to the original owner of such memories and feelings. Some, in the opposite direction, take to adventuring as a means to get ridd of what they dimm "false memories" to forge a sense of self that they can truely call of their own. However, a few gavras take to adventuring with far more sinister purposes on mind, as they intend to have a deeper understanding of the arts that brought them back in their new forms.

Standard Racial Traits

* Ability Score Racial Traits: Althought indirectly descended from humans, gavras still retain some of the flexibility of their former selves. They gain +2 to one ability score of their choice at character creation.
* Size: Gavras are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
* Type: Gavras are humanoids with the human and half-construct subtypes.
* Base Speed: Gavras have a base speed of 30 feet.
* Languages: Gavras begin play speaking Common. Gavras with high Intelligence scores can choose any languages they want (except secret languages, such as Druidic).

Defensive Racial Traits

* Composite Mind: Possesing an ego that comes to be as an amalgam of the basical set of instructions granted by their maker and the fragmentary memories stored on the neural tissue of each of their component parts, a gavra's mind is as much a patchwork as the gavra itself, allowing it to "dissconnect" or "isolate" parts of itself with the same ease it integrated it's compounding parts to begin with. As such, gavras receive a +4 racial bonus on saving throws against mind-affecting effects.
* Unnatural Physiology: With an internal chemistry that reacts to the enviroment more like a machine and less like a living being, it is far harder for deceases and poisons to take root on the strangely assembled body of a gavra. As such, gavras gain a +2 racial bonus on saving throws against disease, poison and effects that cause exhaustion or fatigue. By the same token, gavras do not need to breathe, eat, or sleep, unless they want to gain some beneficial effect from one of these activities.

Feat & Skill Racial Traits

* Bonus Feat: Pretty much like the humans they once were, gavras learn quickly, perhaps because they are merely rediscovering things they did knew before. As such, Gavras select one extra feat at 1st level.
* Shards Of The Past: With a mind that integrates little tidbits of information left behind in the tissues of their body parts, gavras come to be with knowledge and memory of things belonging to lives that weren't theirs. As such, a gavra chooses two knowledge skills gaining a +2 racial bonus on both of these skills, and they are treated as class skills regardless of what class is taken.

Weakness Racial Traits

* Unnerving Presence: Aside of being visually unappealing to most humanoid races due the evident marks of their construction and the slight odor of alchemical substances their bodies produce, the constant shift between positive and negative energy potentials in their galvanic core make the gavra's presence to be very feint and, thus dimly registered by normal senses, which can't focus entirely on a thing that is and isn't at the same time. This constant flickering, while imperceptible to normal perception, is translated by the brain as a certain unsettlingness when near a gavra which, in addition to their ill favored looks, makes them universally shunned by men and beast alike. As such, gavras suffer a -4 penalty on Bluff, Diplomacy, and Handle Animal skill checks, but gain a +2 bonus on Intimidate skill checks. Additionally, all NPCs and animals start with an attitude one step worse than normal when dealing with the gavra.
* Soul Void: While visibly animated and alive, gavras lack the fundamental spark of life which bring forth life from the celestial realms. Being artificial beings, they are bereft of any kind of animating force of metaphysical nature. Because of this, spells that raise or resurrect the dead do not harm a gavra, but are largely unneffective, making impossible to raise or resurrect a gavra. This small but important fact makes gavras to value life all the more.

Other Racial Traits

* Polarity Shift: The secret of the gavra existance lies at the arkane device that serves as their heart. Designed by the forbbiden arts of the kyton, this galvanic core constantly shifts the polarity of a gavra's body in between positive and negative energy, using it's metallic parts and wires as direct conductors, granting their flesh it's unique features and properties, holding them aloft in the blurried line between life and death. In time, the gavra learns to, more or less, gain a measure of control over the shift rhythm of their galvanic cores. This allows the gavra to, once per day, reverse the effects of positive and negative energy for 1 minute, allowing them to briefly make use of some of the strange properties of the cursed undead while keeping alive.

- The Writer.