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After Man PC

Meaching

Ability Score Adjustments:	The initial ability scores are modified by a +1 bonus to Dexterity, a -1 penalty to Charisma and Comeliness, and a -2 penalty for strength.	Comeliness:	4-16
Ability Score Range:		Perception:	10-18
Strength:	4-15	Class Restrictions:	Fighter (15th level limit); Druid (10th level); Wizard (6 thth level).
Dexterity:	12-18	Hit Dice:	Hit Dice by class.
Constitution:	6-18	Alignment:	Meachings tend to be Neutral or Neutral Good in alignment. Meaching PCs can be of any alignment.
Intelligence:	6-16	Natural Armor Class:	6
Wisdom:	6-17	Languages:	Meaching. No other language exists in their environment for them to learn.
Charisma:	4-16	Role-Playing Suggestions and Background:	For background information, see the meaching monster entry at the end of this article.

The meaching player character will be unusual among his or her brethren. As except during rare times of migration due to lack of food and/or over large colonies, the typical meaching is not merely quite content to stay in their self-made fortresses. They are utterly terrified of journeying outside. Their world is full of predators who wish to eat them, and they are on the bottom of the food chain. Gandimots, bootie birds, and polar ravenes are all too eager to gobble any meachings they encounter. Though a pc meaching has overcome a natural fear of the outside and agoraphobia, they will still not be completely at ease in more vulnerable settings. Meachings will always wish to defend rather than attack, and do not like being in exposed positions, preferring concealment and stealth.

Meachings have a strong cooperative instinct ingrained into them, stemming from having to not only live together in close quarters, but also from the simple fact of an "us versus them attitude" against a world of predators. Meachings will tend to cooperate readily among themselves, and are excellent at dispute resolution. Once they get over initial mistrust of outsides (more on that in a moment), they will be very cooperative and team-oriented members in any party.

Meachings, depending on how they are used in a campaign setting , come from a world in which there are no other sentient races they know of (the khiffah occurs thousands of miles away, nowhere near meaching lands). To encounter any other sentient race - perhaps planestraveling bariaur or time travelling humans and elves - is astonishing to them. Once they ascertain that the new race is not a predator (which they will assume from the start), they will be utterly fascinated with all aspects of this new individual and his or her species. The tundra can get pretty boring, and anything interesting and new will delight a meaching.

Special Advantages: Meachings are very much used to the cold, and as a consequence it takes very, extremely severe arctic weather to truly endanger one. All cold-based attacks on a meaching are at +2 to save.

Meachings live their entire lives in maze-like fortresses they construct on the frozen tundra, so they are adept mapmakers and great at mazes. They are immune to the Maze spell.

Owing to their small size, creatures over 7 feet in height are -1 to hit.

Special Disadvantages: Meachings are at a very low level technologically, basically in the stone age. They have zero metal working skills, and little access to it. Very rare colonies have acquired metal from fallen meteorites and used it to tip their spears, but this is an exception.

Meachings are rather small creatures, and thus the damage they do is accordingly smaller. Their weapons - generally spears - do half the damage a human-sized one would do.

Always borderline agoraphobic, if thrust in a situation that is dangerous and provides no cover - say in a desert dune field or on a life raft - they have a chance to panic. If they have lost over half their hit points and are in such an open area, there is a base 50% chance they will either seek any cover available, dig to hide themselves, or run. This base chance decreases by 5% per level of experience gained.

Monstrous Traits: Appearance, size.

KHIFFAH

The khiffah pc will feel very much at home in the trees, and think it the most natural thing to eat, sleep, mate, fight, and travel among the branches, never touching the ground. Though they do journey to the ground on rare occasions to gather fallen fruit or drink water when fruits are rare or absent, the khiffah pc will be most happy living an arboreal life. Whenever possible, he or she will chose to sleep in a tree, fight from a tree, and stay in a tree. However, khiffah pcs will be much more curious about the world of the ground then an npc khiffah.

Khiffah, like their monkey ancestors, are mischievous, and love to play pranks and practical jokes, even if sometimes crude. Taunting monsters, pelting them with fruit, and hiding camp supplies will all be seen as good fun by an khiffah.

Owing to the gender based division of their society, khiffah can be sexist at times. It is not that they don't respect females, far from it, but as the males do all the fighting among these treefolk, they sometimes believe a female cannot adequately hold her own in combat. More enlightened khiffah, once they interact with others species, will reailze that the different races have different relationships among the sexes. (All khiffah adventurers will be male).

As the female does all the building and the food gathering among these folk, the khiffah male has only to defend. While sometimes this can be quite harrying and very dangerous, many a time it is very boring. As a result, the khiffah are not only used to long periods of inactivity, they expect it. While this makes them very patient, at the same time the khiffah can occasionally lack motivation. Worse, they rarely will help out with domestic type chores in a mixed gender and race party; that is the female's job. Unless the groups is all male (and generally all khiffah), they will rarely if ever help with the cooking, cleaning, or anything similar.

Special Advantages: Adept tree climbers, the khiffah rarely fall; 99% unlikely to ever fall. As such, they automatically gain the full 99% success rate to climb walls as a thief.

Owing to millennia of striger predation, the khiffah is fairly adept at hiding in natural surroundings (tropical forest canopy), able to hide with a 80% chance success rate.

The khiffah male has some built in combat advantages; horny armor over the face and chest reduce the overall AC to 6, four on the protected areas. Further, they have a built in weapon; vicious claws on the thumb and forefinger (supplemented by a biting attack), allowing for a natural attack of 1-4/1-4/1-2.

Special Disadvantages: Owing to their claws, the khiffah can on occasion have trouble manipulating very small objects, though they generally learn to overcome it. However, both male pride and general physiology will prevent the use of armor, though a shield or a helm could be used. A shield would likely be disdained as it hampers climbing ability.

Khiffah are extremely poor swimmers.

Monstrous Traits: Appearance largely.

Monster entries follow for the meaching and the khiffah:

MEACHING (Nixocricetus lemmorphus)

Climate/Terrain:	Arctic tundra	Hit Dice:	1-2
Frequency:	Common-Uncommon	THAC0:	19
Organization:	Clan	No. of Attacks:	1
Activity Cycle:	Any	Damage/Attack:	1-4 or by weapon type
Diet:	Herbivore	Special Attacks:	Nil
Intelligence:	Average (8-10)	Special Defenses:	Nil
Treasure:	None	Magic Resistance:	Nil
Alignment:	Neutral or Neutral Good	Size:	3 (about 2 to 4 feet in height)
No. Appearing:	4-80 (4d20)	Morale:	Average (8-10)
Armor Class:	6	XP Value:	200
Movement:	10

The meaching is one of the main life forms of the arctic tundra of the world 50 million years hence, and in a fantasy campaign might be on the road to intelligence and civilization (it is fantasy after all).

Descended from the lemming, they exist in colonies on the frozen tundra. To protect them from their many predators as well as the frosts and snows, they construct fortresses of sorts. As the constantly frozen ground of the tundra makes digging through the soil impossible, these fortresses are constructed above ground. These fortresses exist as gigantic mounds of matted vegetable matter, through which numerous tunnels and passageways have been constructed. The interior of the fortress is very complex and consists of a network of passages and tiny chambers, one for each individual. During the winter each rodent is fully insulated and kept warm by the rest of the colony.

As the meaching became better at constructing fortresses and getting along with its fellow colony members, an intelligence has developed. To aid them in defense of the fortress, some meachings have replaced a reliance on a bite attack with the use of clubs and spears, generally made from tree branches, old bones, and the like. Doing half-damage of a human-sized weapon, the meachings have begun to experiment with the ideas of tactics and coordinated attacks.

Rare extraordinary meachings have begun to dabble in the very long lost magical arts, and any meaching fortress encountered has a 25% chance to have a druid, of levels 1-4, and a 5% chance to have a actual wizard, of levels 1-2.

Such innovation is greatly needed, as the meachings are subject to a great deal of predation. Chief among them are the polar ravine, the bootie bird, and the gandimot. The polar ravene is the fox-like predatory rat similar to the temperate ravene described in the falanx entry. They have been known to attack meachings by digging into the fortress with their front paws.

The bootie bird is a descendent of the crow. Still black in color, the bootie bird is more heron like in form now, with a long neck and bill and long legs. In the summer months the bootie bird behaves as a heron, dipping into streams and shallow pools for fish, but in the winter months it uses its long neck and beak to probe into the fortress for hapless rodent folk.

The gandimot is another avian predator, descended from the magpie which it still resembles (though with a hooked beak and pointed wings). Unable to reach the meachings inside their fortresses, this hawk-like predator attacks the meachings when they migrate to new territories. The meaching have a very high birthrate, to compensate for the harsh climate and the large number of predators, but on occasion population explosions result, forcing meaching colonies to move to new areas, sometimes splitting up, others times moving as a whole. At this time, the swooping, diving gandimot is a major threat (along with the bootie bird and the polar ravene).

The mechings have no comprehension of any other form of sentient or semi-sentient life, and to encounter such would be a source of amazement to them, if they did not avoid them thinking they were yet another predator.

KHIFFAH (Armasenex aedificator)

Climate/Terrain:	Tropical rain forest and jungle	Hit Dice:	2-3
Frequency:	Rare	THAC0:	19
Organization:	Tribal	No. of Attacks:	3
Activity Cycle:	Day	Damage/Attack:	1-4/1-4/1-2 (female and young male 1-2 bite attack)
Diet:	Omnivore	Special Attacks:	Nil
Intelligence:	Average (8-10)	Special Defenses:	Nil
Treasure:	Nil	Magic Resistance:	Nil
Alignment:	Neutral	Size:	Medium (4-5 feet)
No. Appearing:	2-20	Morale:	Steady
Armor Class:	6 (4 on face and chest) [female and young male 7]	XP Value:	250
Movement:	9 on ground, 11 in trees

The khiffah is a newly emerging, sentient race in the world After Man. While many arboreal inhabitants have sought to deal with the predatory striger via armor, spines, poison, or some sort of physical defense, the khiffah has sought defense in social organization. This intelligent race of monkeys lives in tribes of up to twenty individuals and builds defensive citadels in the boughs of trees. These large, hollow nests, woven from branches and creepers and roofed with a rainproof thatch of leaves, have several entrances, usually situated where the main branches of the tree thrust through the structure. The khiffah's nest is divided into two levels containing separate storage and living rooms.

The khiffahs have adopted a gender based division of society. The females and young males, which possess neither armor nor claws, are the principal food gatherers of the tribe, and carry out the majority of building as well. The adult males remain behind to defend the citadel and have developed a unique set of features to carry out their highly specialized role; horny armor over the face and chest and vicious claws on the thumb and forefinger (supplemented by a biting attack).

It is not unknown for a female to taunt a passing striger and allow herself to be pursued back to the citadel, dashing to safety while the striger finds its way barred by a powerful male capable of disemboweling it with a swipe of its terrible claws. This apparently senseless behavior, however, provides the colony with fresh meat, a welcome supplement to their basic vegetarian diet of roots and berries. Only young and inexperienced strigers are caught this way.

Though not as yet civilized as the meaching of the frozen north, the khiffah are starting to develop into a civilized race. In any one colony, it is 25% possible that the more intelligent (and idle) males have dabbled into the beginnings of magic, are either a druid of levels 1-3 (75% chance) or mage of levels 1-2 (25% chance). In a few thousand years, it is quite possible that the khiffah might develop into a major civilized race.

Enterprising players and DMs might want to consider khiffah (or meaching) PCs in a world After Man.