"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

• An old Night folk kenning.

The Night Folk are an elusive and cryptic people who make their homes in warrens deep in the mountains. They are wise in magic and in mushroom lore, and they are friends of bats and frogs.

Origin

The Woodkenners tell that long ago, when the dragons returned to Dakhoma, those ferocious reptiles became humanity's most fearsome predator. Humans adapted over time in several ways. The ancestors of the Cunning Folk built homes in tall trees to avoid the beasts, and they built better tools and made great strides in technology that allowed them to survive. The Night Folk played another evolutionary trick: they became nocturnal, losing their visual acuity but gaining enhanced smell and hearing and camouflaged skin, allowing them to avoid the dragons altogether.

Culture

The Night folk are nocturnal, and familiar with the things of the darkness. They revere the moon, who they call Mehnes, and the stars, which they say are the souls of their ancestors. Their artisans are masters of alchemy, metallurgy, mask-making, perfumery, and cuisine, rarely dabbling in the visual arts. Their clothing is an excellent example of this. Because vision is not their primary sense, Night Folk prefer to decorate themselves with highly textured fabrics, reflective objects, and fragrant perfumes. When they do use color in their art, they use vibrant, high-saturated dyes and paints because of the darkness of their homeland and the limitations of their visual range.

Night Folk prefer staple food sources that can be found underground, such as mushrooms, bats, rodents, rabbit, insects, and rock salt. They also sometimes forage above ground for herbs and game.

Magic

Unlike the Cunning Folk, who prefer more "tangible" magics such as divination and thaumaturgy, the Night Folk are experts in illusion, enchantment, and shadow magic. The majority of Night Folk know at least some magic, and they rarely enter into physical combat, preferring to defend themselves by magical means.