Pet Facts



Gurahdi Facts

Gurahdia center their entire lives on the pursuit of goodness, and they believe the way to do this is through gaining knowledge. Gurahdia spend their whole lives learning and their magic grows as they learn. The more they learn, the better good deeds they do, and the more good they do, the more their magic grows to aid them in doing even greater good. If a Gurahdi tries using their magic to do something that goes against the pursuit of goodness, the magic will actually work around its constraints to try to fulfill its duty to good. One illustrative Gurahdi children's fable tells of a wicked Gurahdi who captured a princess and tried to use magic to make her tell him where her father kept his treasure. As he was betraying the goodness of it's nature, the magic he used to try to force her to talk instead made it so that her voice would carry clearly to the ends of the earth. And so, as the story goes, she was able to alert her father's army and he came to her rescue and the evil Gurahdi was vanquished because he used his power for ill.

Not only do Gurahdia pursue learning and goodness, they also make it their personal duty to ensure that wisdom and goodness stays in the world. They are naturally attracted to people and creatures who hold exceptional knowledge and will make it their personal goal in life to protect these people at all costs. Gurahdia can be fierce in their guarding and what knowledge they learn from their charges only makes them stronger and more fierce. Thus, it is easy to tell how long a Gurahdi has been with its ward simply by testing how powerful it is - the more powerful and knowledgeable, the longer it has made that person its duty to protect.

A Gurahdi's markings on each forearm are called halla. In general, the halla defines where in their magic a Gurahdi's strength lies. Although there's no set guide to determine what skills a Gurahdi may possess, there are some consistencies which are easy to classify and apply with a fair amount of accuracy:

Turning Corners
A Gurahdi whose halla contains many turning corners is generally adept at defensive magic and maneuvers. They are neither ingenious nor quick to come up with new spells or think fast on their feet in a battle, but they are solid, steady warriors and mages and can call on untapped reserves of hidden strength.

Thin Lines
Fleet, quick and light, a Gurahdi with a halla that contains many thin lines can attack quickly and think even more quickly. They are able to seek out weak points where their weak magic can do the greatest amount of damage. Fickle and not particularly strong, these Gurahdia can be as sharp as blades and, keen-eyed but somewhat frivolous.

Crossovers
A Gurahdi with long lines which cross over themselves many times are sly thinkers. They are best at magic that comes at a price - generally spells which exact something from the user in order to work. Because of the nature of this kind of magic, their spells are extraordinarily powerful, but they are tempered by how much the wielder can withstand in penalty damage.

Squares or Boxes
Gurahdi who have many boxes (also called squares) in their halla are strong attackers, but cannot think much for themselves when it comes to their magic. They do best when following commands, because their magic and concentration suffer when they must stop to consider the best attack to execute.

Angles
Angles in a halla are fairly rare, and hallas which do contain them usually only have one. Angles add power to a Gurahdi's magic, but they also add an element of unpredictability. A Gurahdi with an angle in its halla may find that their magic doesn't always work, or, it may instead find a different way to express itself than its user had intended.

Of course, no Gurahdi has just one of these elements and most have all of them (with the typical exception being angles) in varying degrees of occurrence. In order to best figure out what a Gurahdi's skills are, it's necessary to divine them from the whole of the halla, not just from one or two instances of a recurring theme. So a Gurahdi who has mainly crossovers in its halla will still have its crossover tendencies tempered and perhaps entirely altered by the other designs which occur. This amount of combination and subtlety makes for the endless variety of magical ability for which the Gurahdi are renowned.

Twin Gurahdi share half of the same mark rather than two identical marks, which makes for an interesting magic casting because, in essence, they are considered by the magic to be one being which happens to come in two vessels. Thus, while most Gurahdi prefer casting their magic alone, twins work in tandem, an abnormality which has interesting effects. Although they are the same being in the sense that neither is stronger than the other and both need to work together to produce the same effect a non-twin Gurahdi could perform on its own, twins have the added benefit of two separate physical bodies which allow for potentially greater stamina than a single Gurahdi could possess. Thus, crossover twins are some of the most powerful Gurahdi warriors in legend because they are gifted with the ability to take more punishment damage than a normal single Gurahdi mage could.

Gurahdia are just as at home on the land as they are in the sky and can even choose whether they prefer to walk on two legs or four, as they are easily comfortable with either. Each Gurahdi chooses whether it prefers near the clouds or the soil and both are equally common since both appeal to them immensely. Regardless of where in Mistica they live or how they live, however, all Gurahdi gather once a year in aeries in the mountains for a Skydance celebration that lasts a double fortnight. In that time, the Gurahdia recount all the things they've learned and pass them on to each other and their children so that the world might never loose the knowledge and enlightenment Mistica worked so hard to gain. There, during the Skydance, high in the mountains, some say the Gurahdia reveal the key to the mythical library and by the end of the ceremony, a new bearer is chosen to protect it.


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