Playable Race – Valkor

Valkor are the rare offspring of a Valkyrie and a Norn. It is uncommon for a Valkyrie to mingle with Humans and even rarer for them to lay together but if they do, there is a small chance of the Valkyrie falling pregnant. Due to its inability to traverse their floating city homeland, the mothers almost always leave the child in the care of the father.

Strength and Wisdom

Valkor are blessed with many of the advantages of both their parents. They have the strong, tall stature of their human fathers and the fair features and blessed wings of their mothers. They can vary in height and weight as their human half allows, often growing to a height of between barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet.

Due to the diluting of their holy blood, they cannot maintain their wings for very long, instead needing to use them in short bursts. They maintain the residual blessing of Thor, allowing them to harness his power for a short time.

Adoration and Mistrust

Even after all these years, the Valkyrie remain a mystery to the Norns of the Hammerlands. It is because of this that Valkor are often treated with either intense adoration or a burning mistrust. For every Norn that goes to a Valkor looking for guidance, there is another that refuses to speak in ones company.

Their position in society can vary wildly depending on the father. A Valkor child to a great Jarl will be treated with respect and find a comfortable place in society. The Valkir child of a farmer would like be ridiculed and used for their strength in dangerous missions, preferring to risk the life of a ‘half-man’ over a respected human.

Valkor Names

Due to being left with their fathers at birth, it is often Norn that decide on the names. This results in typically strong, classic Norn names. You can find some examples below:

Masculine	Feminine
Arne	Astrid
Bjørn	Frida
Halfdan	Gunhild
Harald	Helga
Rune	Hilda
Svend	Sigrid
Torsten	Sif
Ulf	Tora

Valkor Traits

Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 2 one other stat of your choice increases by 1.

Age. Valkor reach maturity at the same age as humans and live to the age of 180.

Alignment. Valkor inherit the ideals of their ancestral Valkyrie which makes them leans towards a good alignment. The human in their blood can sometimes turn them from this path though.

Size. Valkor vary as widely in height and build as humans, from barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet tall. Regardless of your position in that range, your size is Medium.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one additional language of your choice.

Burst of Flight. As a bonus action, you can summon your wings and gain a fly speed of 40 feet for an amount of rounds equal to your wisdom modifier. You can use this feature two times, and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a short or long rest.

Blessed Ancestors. You can use your bonus action to cast the bless spell on yourself without expending a spell slot. Once you use this feature, you must finish a short or long rest before you can use it again.

Holy Wisdom. You may add a 1d4 to any persuasion check you make.

Snow & Sky. You are immune to the effects of extreme cold and have resistance to cold damage.

Designing the Valkor Race

The Valkor are the children of a Norn and a Valkyrie and needed to feel as such in both lore and mechanics, however, I didn’t want it to be so simple as to directly take the features of both and throw them together. This left me with the interesting challenge of taking the aspects of each race and finding ways to modify them into related, but unique features.

The clearest example of this is the Burst of Flight feature. I knew I wanted the Valkor to have limited use of their wings. I originally toyed with giving them normal flight but making them slower but that felt like it was taking away some of the uniqueness of the Valkyrie. The answer came from reviewing what made the Valkyrie a Valkyrie. Most importantly, the high wisdom. It made sense to me that the wiser the Valkor was (also meaning how in touch the Valkor is with their Valkyrie side) the more proficient they’d be with their wings. So the final result was gaining flight for an amount of time equal to their wisdom modifier. And due to the strength of their Norn heritage, they don’t have the Valkyrie’s heavy armour limitations.

The second ‘active’ feature they have is Blessed Ancestors. This is a personal buff that they can use once before needing to rest. This feature was once again inspired by a Valkyrie mechanic mixed with Norn lore. It takes the Valkyrie’s Thor’s Blessed feature and changes up the boon to manifest as a buff as appose to weaponising it. The Norn have a few ways to temporarily buff themselves and this is the Valkor’s version of that.

The first ‘passive’ feature for the Valkor is Holy Wisdom. This gives them a small buff to persuasion checks in order to mechanically support the idea that they have the blood of Thor’s favoured race flowing through them. They are innately wise and therefore should trust their ideas.

Lastly, we have the Snow & Sky passive feature. This is the combination of a Norn’s acclamation to the snowy forests and the Valkyrie’s adaptation to handle the raging winds of the skies. It’s a perfect blending of each lifestyle and allows them to survive anywhere their ancestors could have.

And that wraps up the Valkor race! I hope you enjoyed reading about this new race and will consider it for your own games! We have two remaining Hammerlands races, the Dwarf and the Half-dwarf, and then we can move on to the races of the Floodplains! Please look forward to it! As always, you can find me on Twitch to join in the creative process of these homebrews or stop by my Discord community server for notifications when new posts go live!

Have a wonderful day and may your next session be filled with glory!!