Vitrotherma humana
Born when a living body endured magical heat and cold in relentless alternation, Ashglass are people remade rather than creatures assembled.
At a glance
Darkvision 60 ft.
Languages Common, Primordial
Resistances Choose either cold or fire when you select this species. You have resistance to the chosen damage type.
Height 5 to 6 ft.
Weight 140 to 230 lb.
Lifespan Ashglass mature socially at much the same pace as humans, though their transformed bodies can persist for roughly 150 years
At the table
You have resistance to either cold or fire damage, chosen when you select this species. The choice reflects which extreme your body more readily absorbs; the other remains dangerous.
As a Bonus Action, you vent a brief pulse of opposing temperatures. Each creature of your choice within 10 feet of you must make a Constitution saving throw, with a DC equal to 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + your Constitution modifier. On a failed save, a creature takes damage, half cold and half fire; on a successful save, it takes half as much damage. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest. The damage increases to at character level 5, at level 11, and at level 17.
Your senses read motion through changes in pressure and vibration. You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.
Common, Primordial
Their altered bodies often cultivate endurance and perceptive patience; characters may reflect this tendency in their abilities, but assign ability score increases as the rules allow, without fixed species bonuses.
Their cracks shine with a pronounced ember-red or gold light, and their shells tend to be especially dense.
Cinderveined Ashglass are most at home near furnaces, lava tubes, and sun-baked stone. They often favor direct action and take pride in work that turns dangerous heat toward a useful purpose.
Born when a living body endured magical heat and cold in relentless alternation, Ashglass are people remade rather than creatures assembled. Light glows through their fractured obsidian shells, frost vapor trails their movements, and every crack tells a story of damage survived. They seek ways to make contradiction livable, carrying their strange balance into a world that often mistakes them for omens.
Ashglass are transformed humanoids whose outer flesh has become a dark, glassy shell, marked by branching fractures.
Warm light glimmers beneath those seams, while pale vapor curls from their shoulders and hands. Their forms vary: some retain a recognizably human face and build, while others have broad plates, asymmetrical ridges, or a silhouette shaped by the injuries and healing of transformation. Their blood is a pressurized, briny fluid that carries both heat and chill. They feel pressure, vibration, and motion keenly, but ordinary sharp pain registers faintly or not at all. This does not make them immune to injury, nor does it prevent shock, fear, or grief.
Volcanic foothills, glacial margins, geothermal caverns, abandoned magical workshops, and communities built near both heat and cold.
Newly formed Ashglass are physically capable but often overwhelmed by unfamiliar sensations and the need to learn their body's rhythms.
They reach adult social standing after establishing control over their thermal surges, usually through years of practice and communal guidance.
With age, their shells grow more layered and their inner glow steadier. Elders may deliberately shed old plates, preserving the fragments as records of their lives.
Ashglass identity is shaped less by a shared origin story than by the practical work of living in a body that holds opposing extremes.
Many learn controlled breathing, careful movement, and habits for monitoring new fractures. Their communities preserve shed fragments as personal records, memorials, or art, never as interchangeable remains. Some Ashglass are born from inherited transformations or later magical events, while others are the sole survivors of a single catastrophe. They reject the idea that their unusual biology gives outsiders a right to study or command them.
Ashglass have no single faith.
Some honor deities of healing, endurance, fire, winter, or transformation; others regard their survival as a matter of biology rather than destiny. Their cultures value restraint and mutual care, but Ashglass individuals can be found at every point on the moral spectrum.
Many people find the Ashglass unsettling at first, mistaking their glassy skin and muted pain response for signs of an artificial or emotionless nature.
Ashglass communities answer this with hospitality and plainspoken teaching, though individuals differ in how much they wish to explain themselves. They often sympathize with those who have been changed against their will, while remaining wary of anyone who treats their transformation as a recipe to reproduce.
Ashglass communities often begin where extremes meet: a hot spring below a snowfield, a forge beside a glacier, or a ruin threaded with elemental vents.
Their buildings use layered stone, ceramic, and heat-resistant glass, with sheltered courtyards that let residents regulate their surroundings. Shared cooling pools and warm chambers are practical necessities, but also places for conversation and ritual.
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