Halfling

Overview
Halflings are much like humans, but far longer lived. As such, many are content to stay in their far-country lives, subsisting off the land and the values of their own work. A very sedentary people, the virtues of halflings come in their relative docility and their homey natures. Making their living from working the fields and cattle, and trading with their neighbors, Halfling communities are often wide, rolling tracts of land with few buildings.

Halflings come of age of adulthood at around 50 years or so, when they are expected to settle down, marry, and work the land, or their chosen profession, and provide a service to the community in the form of goods or services for trade and barter. While the majority of halflings choose this life, there are a scant few who become adventurers, or traders, willing to see the world at large (subjectively speaking).

Halfling traders and adventurers are often of varying backgrounds, but always seem to have one thing in common, a thirst for new experiences, and a love for a good tale to tell. News from the world beyond the community is a big commodity, which brings adventurers and traders much respect, despite the strange call of their profession. Goods from beyond the community carry a high price as trade items, or curiousities. Although one wouldn't know it to evaluate the culture, Halflings are an insatiably curious bunch.

Statistics
Halflings are usually about 3 and a half to 4 and a half feet tall, and weigh between 100-150 pounds. They are known to practice magic, but halflings are not exactly known for their stellar magery.

Halflings have an eye for trading, and the ones who leave their communities often lead lives full of excitement, because they tend to seek it out. They are plucky warriors, and have an air of luckiness about them, making them wonderful traveling companions. It's rare to find a halfling who can't cook.

Advantages
Halflings may be small, but are by no means slight. They make excellent warriors and rogues, and can use normal sized weapons and armor.

They are stout of heart, making them difficult to affect with magic intended to cause them fear.

Halflings are somehow preternaturally lucky in combat and on the road. Having a halfling around always seems to make things go one step further your way than they would have otherwise. Being the difference between being extolled by a highwayman, or a drink and a laugh with some lads in the woods goes a long way.

Disadvantages
While the community at large enjoys the things that adventuring halflings bring back, they are often not so fond of the adventurers themselves. Hard at work homesteading halflings tend to view adventuring and trading halflings with a bit of suspicion, if not outright derision for their differences.

Halflings are hungry little fellows, and their metabolism burns faster than almost any other races. They often require more food, despite being half the size, and can be a serious bane on trail rations for any party of adventurers. They also tend to succumb faster to alcohol, and poisons due to this trait.

Presence in the Shatterstorms
In worlds far and beyond, Halflings always seem to have those small, unsettled few who adventure to the far corners of their realms. When the first Shatterstorms came, they left fragments of crystallized reality, the first Shards. Where they occured, having torn parts of the realms completely apart. Shards occur from the edges of reality breaking and crystallizing, or are brought in like hail from particularly powerful Shatterstorms. A number of halfling adventurers picked these shards up and brought them back, with tales of the terrifying flood of energy and light and magic that composes a Shatterstorm. Shards however, are an unstable material, and when the literal edges of a reality are brought together, the Shatterstorms become more frequent.

Scholars of the Realm often come together to study the Shards, which for some reason have no effect on the Shatterstorm activity in the realm, but have other mysterious properties that have yet to be tapped. They are a rare trading material, and are often prized more valuable than gold.