Chipaklee [Tree Pangolins]

Chipaklee, Armored Inventors

“O comfortable allurement, O ravishing persuasion to deal with a science whose subject is so ancient, so pure, so excellent, so surrounding all creatures…”
-John Dee, Preface to Euclid’s Elements

Playtest Version

This material is still in the process of being playtested. It is fully usable as written, but may be refined or changed in later versions. As always, this content should only be used with GM permission.

CHIPAKLEE +2 CON +2 INT -2 DEX 6 HP

Resembling enormous bipedal pangolins, the chipaklee have long flexible tails for balance, claws suited for climbing trees, and large durable scales layered over most of their body to protect them from harm. Those unfamiliar with them might assume they are some sort of unusual reptilian humanoid, but they, like their small anteater cousins, are mammals. Their society is mostly nocturnal and prefers heavily wooded areas and, as a result, have grown to be friendly with their elven neighbors over time.

Size and Type

Chipaklee are Medium Humanoids with the chipaklee subtype.

Armored Hide

Chipaklee gain a +1 racial bonus to AC.

Climber

Chipaklee have a climb speed of 20 feet.

Stability

Chipaklee can move through nonmagical difficult terrain in forests, hills, and marshes at their normal speed.

Tree Dweller

Chipaklee receive a +2 racial bonus to Acrobatics and Athletics checks. This bonus increases to +4 when balancing or climbing.

Playing a Chipaklee

You likely…

Take your time and favor thoughtful action over impulsivity.
Value inventive solutions to difficult problems.
Consider magic and technology to be of equal value and importance.
Love to eat bugs.

Other species probably…

Find it strange that you will seek out sophisticated solutions rather than pursuing easier objectives.
Value your rare connection with usually-xenophobic elves.
Wish your architecture wasn’t quite so vertical.
Mistake you for a reptile of some sort due to your scaled hide.

Physical Description

Chipaklees resemble enormous tree pangolins—nearly as tall as an average human despite their hunched posture. Like their small, animal kin they possess scaled keratinous hides, large but blunt claws for climbing, and a long tail for balance. Their face, underbelly, and limbs are naturally shades of gray, tan, or brown, with a similar or darker shade for their scales, but they frequently decoratively color themselves in various patterns and styles as a mode of personal expression.

Home World

Chipaklee share a homeworld with elves and lashunta, living primarily in the heavily forested areas of the planet. Thanks to their exceptional skill at climbing, any chipaklee settlement larger than a tiny hamlet is typically built high up in the trees of a forest with very few (if any) permanent constructions for access, as all the residents can readily traverse the trees themselves. Their larger cities, just beneath the canopies of redwood forests or old growth jungles, can span hundreds of trees with several levels of vertical construction, but can easily go unseen from beneath. In some places they live directly above elven settlements and form strong trade relationships with their neighbors.

Society and Alignment

The primary concern of chipaklee architecture is to have minimal impact on the forests where they dwell. As a result, they often must find innovative solutions to the infrastructural difficulties of running a physically isolated city. They have become clever and resourceful inventors—creating devices either technological or magical to solve problems. A chipaklee city may have an arcane lift for transporting visitors and trade goods, or an aerie of hippogriffs to pull nanotech-treated nearly-weightless cargo skips, or even building a teleportation circle to their preferred trade hub to avoid building roads through their precious forest homes. In some regions they are equally inventive in the measures they use to stop poachers who would despoil their land.
Chipaklee settlements generally maintain peculiar farms consisting of large colonies of domesticated (but otherwise ordinary) insects—which chipaklee consider a delicious dietary staple—as well as the plants the insects feed upon. These typically take the form of boulder-sized above-ground structures built by bees, wasps, ants, or termites surrounded by small but dense fields of plants, or orchards for raising ambrosia beetles, aphids, or scale bugs in large quantities. These farms produce many other fine quality products (such as wax, honey, honeydew, propolis, silk, paper pulp, shellac and other resins, and textile dyes) but in quantities much larger than the community needs, so they are traded to obtain materials that cannot be so easily obtained without disturbing the nature surrounding their homes, like metals and hardwoods. Due to their focus on coexistence, chipaklee tend to slightly favor good alignments, and otherwise prefer the natural balance of neutral alignments.

Relations

Chipaklee particularly value ingenuity, conservationism, and trade, and are generally friendly with societies that try to work in harmony with their environments rather than stripping planets of resources or covering their surfaces with dense urban sprawl. Due to their ancient coexistence, they are often sought out as negotiators by those who wish to form agreements with the xenophobic and paranoid elves and always have a place as diplomats with the corporate city-states on other continents of their homeworld.

Adventurers

Most chipaklee are not particularly adventurous but they often venture out into the wider universe in pursuit of scientific discoveries and supply lines for exotic or needed resources. They are cautious and slow to pursue efforts to put settlements on unoccupied planets, putting decades or more into studying the environment in extreme detail to ensure they can make as little impact on the biosphere as possible. The cultural value placed on magical and technological development means chipaklee usually have a solid foundation in the skills that make for expert mechanics and technomancers. Their robust physicality and natural physical defenses also predispose them to being excellent vanguards and nanocytes.

Names

Aside from formal titles, chipaklee usually only have a single name, and give either a parent’s name or the location where they are from to further specify. However, they are raised bilingual in elven and usually also have an elven name that serves as a nickname and is often employed during trade with their neighbors.

Example Feminine Names: Anong, Batari, Bulan, Cinta, Dewi, Kasih, Mawar, Melati, Siti, Ubon, Wati
Example Masculine Names: Arthit, Agung, Bagus, Gusti, Harta, Klahan, Lufti, Putra, Sakchai, Tirto, Wira
Example Unisex Names: Cahaya, Dian, Eko, Kamon, Kulap, Nyoman, Ratna, Sunan, Tirta, Wattana, Wayan

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Starfinder Core Rulebook © 2017, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Amanda Hamon Kunz, Jason Keeley, Robert G. McCreary, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mark Seifter, Owen K.C. Stephens, and James L. Sutter, with Alexander Augunas, Judy Bauer, John Compton, Adam Daigle, Crystal Frasier, Lissa Guillet, Thurston Hillman, Erik Mona, Mark Moreland, Jessica Price, F. Wesley Schneider, Amber E. Scott, and Josh Vogt.

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