Faun

Synopsis
Faun are flighty and nimble like deer. They are natural peacemakers and have an attractively positive disposition but this is often accompanied with a vapid blissful ignorance.

Faun are the offspring of satyrs that, for various reasons, aren’t full-blood satyrs. Most faun are the children of druids who had dalliances with satyrs, which leads many to speculate that their hybrid appearance is a result of the druids’ shapeshifting abilities instinctively attempting to make the new life match the mother’s form.

Faun can have fiendish origins just as easily as fey ones. It’s not hard to see how small horns, hooves, and alluring voices could come from succubi or other demons of temptation. Indeed, such fiendish individuals might claim to have satyr ancestry just to deflect investigations into their true background. Faun might also be the natural result of druids shapeshifting while pregnant, with no interaction by satyr parents at all. Faun could also be a mad wizard’s experiment, a stepping stone in his quest to transmute people into dryads, sprites, and brownies.

A few other faun are known to have come from satyrs who were transformed into females and then gave birth, suggesting that a female satyr isn’t quite the same species as a male satyr. Perhaps this very difference in gender is why 75% of all faun are female, and often born as twins.

Faun & Religion
Faun can be very strongly shaped by the beliefs and ethics of those who raise them, so most worship gods that attract many druid followers—those that seek a balance between the elements of civilization and nature, as well as law and chaos. However, not all faun are raised in such rural environments, and some faun leave their homelands precisely because they never feel they fit in. While most faun are essentially good-hearted, those who give up on ever finding the acceptance they crave can become dangerously bitter. Some give up the cause of good in an effort to bond with companions who are, themselves, cloaked in darkness.

Music is another strong motivator for faun, and many end up worshiping gods of song, dance, and drum even if, in their youth, they favored more nature-oriented gods. Music can also draw faun along moral paths, depending on what crowd they fall in with. A faun spending time with good-aligned bards or lillends is very different than one drawn to the fell song of banshees and harpies.

Faun & Society
Like half-elves, faun rarely gather in large enough numbers to form their own societies. They most often settle in small, loosely-knit groups such as clans of druids or elven scout outposts. These groups have strong interpersonal relationships and an abiding respect for independence, traits that faun strive to maintain even when they travel into the broader world. Faun are, in some respect, always seeking to build tiny communities around themselves and populate it with friends and loved ones. Acceptance with and loyalty to a small community is the norm for faun, and they generally assume those qualities will be echoed in anyone they choose for their surrogate family as well.

Faun are well accepted by elves, half-elves, gnomes, and halflings. Indeed, pipers and gnomes get along so well that more than one scholar has sought in vain for some indication their origins are somehow connected. Faun often suffer unfortunate fates at the hands of orcs and half-orcs, who for some reason find them particularly objectionable. Faun forced to spend time with such groups, though, still struggle to find acceptance and forge some kind of family unit. Dwarves and humans are often wary of faun, and ofte outright hostile toward them.

Because faun have a natural knack for music and are often spellcasters, humans and dwarves tend to see them as potential troublemakers. Dwarves, on the other hand, see faun as naive (or worse, stupid). This stems from fauns’ tendency to assume that they are trusted and loved to the same degree they trust and love their own companions. The effort that faun immediately put into forging close relationships with their neighbors and business partners often exacerbates these stereotypes, and can result in dwarves and humans to find a faun to be clinging and petulant.

Whenever a faun gains the trust and friendship of another person, no matter what race, the faun considers that bond as strong as if the two were flesh and blood kin.

Notable Faun of Templehelm
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