The Ashborn are the children of a world consumed by hell, born to exile, survival, and invasion. They came into the new world not as refugees alone but as a people determined to build a homeland strong enough that no catastrophe will ever take it from them again. On the table, they read as monstrous but deeply sympathetic, a culture of hard vows, communal survival, and iron discipline shaped by the memory of losing everything.

Ashborn are broad-shouldered, heavy-boned people marked by heat-scars that seem to come in every family line. Their skin ranges from soot-dark to ruddy brown and copper, often mottled by ash-gray patches, ember-red eyes, or horn-like ridges at the brow and jaw. Their hair is usually coarse and dark, though it can silver early or grow flame-bright in streaks after illness, stress, or battle. Many have pronounced teeth, thick nails, and bodies that look built for marching through smoke, cold wind, and hunger. They are not graceful by default, but they are imposing in a way that suggests endurance has become a kind of beauty.

Ashborn society is organized around warbands, hearth-clans, and labor circles that can function in peace or war. Children are raised collectively, and lineage matters less than who fed you, trained you, and kept you alive. Storytelling is a civic duty, because memory is treated as armor against repetition of disaster. Their festivals are stern but joyful, full of contests, repair work, shared meals, and the reading of old scars as proof of survival. They prize blunt honesty, endurance, and practical generosity. Waste is shameful. Cowardice is forgivable if confessed, but betrayal is remembered for generations. Many Ashborn have a strong tradition of adopting outsiders who prove reliable under pressure.

Ashborn faith is built around remembrance, endurance, and the moral duty to outlive catastrophe without becoming monstrous in the process. Many honor ancestral hearth spirits, battlefield dead, or unnamed guardians of surviving bloodlines. Their traditions are not gentle, but they are not inherently cruel. Ashborn can be found across the moral spectrum, though their culture strongly rewards disciplined loyalty, practical courage, and refusal to surrender. They distrust performative virtue and prefer actions that keep people alive.

The Ashborn speak of a homeland that was once broad and brutal, a world where their ancestors built fortress-villages around vents of heat, black stone ridges, and iron roads. That world was swallowed by hellfire over generations, until whole generations were born already inside infernal dominion and knew no sky that did not flicker with red light. Their buildings in the new world reflect that history. They favor low, wide halls of packed earth, stone, salvaged metal, and hide, arranged around communal hearths and watch platforms. They dislike delicate towers and ornate glass, preferring structures that can be abandoned, rebuilt, or defended without grief.

Other peoples often misread the Ashborn as conquerors first and survivors second. That suspicion is not entirely unjustified, since many Ashborn leaders believe land must be defended before it can be shared, and they remember betrayal longer than kindness. Still, individual Ashborn are often dependable allies once trust is earned. They respect competence, keep bargains with painful seriousness, and tend to admire communities that know how to work, fortify, and endure. They have special hatred for slavers, infernal cults, and anyone who treats the weak as expendable.