General Rules: Monsters - Graben

Graben (Mercenaries)
Medium Humanoid (Orc)

Hit Dice: 1d8+1 (5 hit points)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 30 feet
Armor Class: 16 (+2 Dex, +1 dodge, +3 studded leather armor), touch AC 13, flat-footed AC 13
BAB/Grapple: +1/+2

Attack: Longsword +2 melee (1d8+1, slashing, 19-20 x2) or composite longbow +3 ranged (1d8, piercing, 20 x3, 110 feet x10)

Full Attack: Longsword +2 melee (1d8+1, slashing, 19-20 x2) or composite longbow +3 ranged (1d8, piercing, 20 x3, 110 feet x10)

Space/Reach: 5 feet by 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks: Semi-blur
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 feet, elusiveness
Saves: Fortitude +3, Reflex +2, Will +0
Abilities: Str 12, Int 11, Wis 11, Dex 14, Con 12, Cha 10

Skills: Hide +4, Listen +2, Spot +2

Feats: Dodge
Environment: Desert

Organization: Raiding party (2 - 7 plus 1 3^rd level leader) or clan (8 - 16 plus 2 2^nd level lieutenants and 1 leader of 3^rd level plus 150% noncombatants)

Challenge Rating: ½
Treasure: Standard
Alignment: Usually neutral evil
Advancement: By character class
Level Adjustment: +0

Graben are lean, wiry humanoids, distinctive for their speed, stealth, and cunning. They carve out nomadic existences in the wastes and deserts of the world, raiding and scavenging whenever they come upon settled peoples trying to establish more substantial livings. In other word, they are a marginal race who inhabit equally marginal lands as best they know.

As such, graben make themselves nuisances to those townsfolk and villagers whose livelihoods they try to share. Local authorities hunt graben thieves, both real and suspected, mercilessly. Graben raiders inspire both fear and hatred out of proportion to the actual damage they inflict. Down through the generations, they have adapted so they know how to hide and elude better than most, and they are notoriously hard to track.

Graben speak Euroz and one common local language.

Combat
Graben always prefer to strike from ambush, firing their composite longbows from cover until their foe no longer represents a threat. They don’t like melee combat. Unless forced to engage, they will not resort to melee unless they can surprise or flank an opponent. When attacking a fixed position - for example, raiding a village - they prefer to use stealth and discourage their enemies by loosing arrows from cover, often moving from covered position to covered position to create confusion. If their opponent makes a determined attempt to engage them in melee, graben raiders will withdraw rather than slug it out, even if they have not taken what they want yet. This elusiveness is one reason why the targets of graben raids despise them so intensely.

Elusiveness (Ex): Graben leave an unusually light footprint, partly by training and partly because of the way in which weight is distributed in their bodies. Anyone using the Track feat to try to locate graben suffers a -5 circumstance penalty to their Survival check roll.

Semi-Blur (Sp): Once per day, a graben may summon its energies and perform an evasive maneuver so effective that it looks like blur was cast on it. This effect behaves exactly like the spell blur, except it lasts no longer than one minute. The graben can only activate it during a round in which it moves, and it ends in the first round thereafter in which the graben does not move, or in one minute, whichever comes first.

Graben Society
Graben travel in clans no larger than a modest extended family, headed by a dominant male. The clan is the focal point of every graben’s allegiance. Clans may form alliances (almost always temporary and subject to change at a moment’s notice) with each other to accomplish a goal that is too large for any one of them.

Graben worship a desert god they call Kalaka. Kalaka is an exceedingly harsh deity, whose blessing consists of allowing you to live another day without suffering his wrath, and whose displeasure manifests itself in searing siroccos that materialize without warning.

Graben Characters
Graben are an insular race, deeply suspicious of outsiders - for good reason. Very rarely will an individual join with other races for any purpose whatsoever. Except in extraordinary cases, a graben who allows itself to be found alone by outsiders is either a pariah cast out by his clan or insane. A graben who does accept the company of non-graben will appear guarded or sullen to the others and keep to himself if possible.

A graben’s favored class is barbarian.

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