Characters:Creatures:Badgers

Among Characters:Venag Danir's many experiments mingling Prime and animal stock were his extensive attempts to mingle the Primes and badgers. Why he sought to do so exactly is a matter of some debate, even among the scholarly Badgers.

The Badgers, as they call themselves, fall into three general categories:

• Werebadgers
• Runebadgers
• Songbadgers

The werebadgers are half-human. They are usually hunters, fighters, or simply wildmen. The Songbadgers are a mixing of Half-Elvish and badger. They have the Half-Elvish love of the woods and their talent for magickal songs. Their repertory is limited by their forms, however. As Half-Elves, they can sing anything. As Badgers, they are forced to simply call-from-within on the nature around them. They are more territorial than most Half-Elves and tend even in their Prime forms to use badger imagery. Badger skulls, if found around trees, or arranged in circles, mark Songbadger territory.

Of the three Badger kindreds, the Runebadgers are probably the least happy. Werebadgers eventually go mad, if not taken in by the Disciples of Malad, and cease to care about their fates. Songbadgers learn to adapt to their feral natures and partake of the Beastlord's less common gifts. Runebadgers, because they are Dwarvish folk forced to live halved lives, knowing what they have lost. Their minds do not break, as do the Humans, nor do they learn to sing the beastsongs, as do most Half-Elvish folk. They are simply disinherited, unable to work metal or stone for weeks at a time while in their beast forms. However, as Crafters, they did not give up when the crafting of stone and ore was taken beyond their grasp. The Beastlord and the Axebearer taught them to rune-mark themselves. They wear these marks either as brands on their Dwarf-bodies or as individual colorations on their faces, backs, paws, or bellies as badgers. Over time, their tradition of taking personal runes as a way of differentiating themselves from the brute beasts lead to their practice of naming themselves by those runes. As a result, a Runebadger's name, spoken by any Dwarf, sounds like the person in question is spelling words.