Sandspeaker

Background — Homebrew for Heretics of the Old Gods

The Long Night is Deshretu’s rite. You go out alone — no food, no water, no shelter — and you stay out until the desert decides what you are. Most people who attempt it come back in a few days, humbled and hungry. Some don’t come back at all. A few come back different: quieter, steadier, carrying something in their eyes that wasn’t there before.

You took the vow. What happened out there is yours. What you brought back is what this background represents.

Sandspeakers aren’t a formal order. The name is what people call anyone who’s taken the Long Night and lived — whether they came back with prayers on their lips or just calluses on their feet. The Weathered clerics of Deshretu often carry this background. So do people who have never cast a spell in their lives.

Ability Scores: Wisdom, Constitution, Strength

Feat: Tough, or Magic Initiate (Cleric — Deshretu) if you completed the full vow and came back with something more than survival

Skill Proficiencies: Survival, Religion

Tool Proficiency: Herbalism Kit

Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) Herbalism Kit, desert-worn traveling clothes, a waterskin, a small pouch of dried herbs and fungi foraged during the Long Night, a carved token marked with Deshretu’s sigil, 5 gp; or (B) 50 gp

Feature: The Land Provides

You can survive indefinitely in hostile natural environments without supplies, provided the environment supports any life at all. You know how to find water in arid terrain, identify what is edible and what is medicinal among local flora and fauna, construct shelter from available materials, and read weather and terrain well enough to avoid the conditions that kill unprepared travelers. You have Advantage on Nature and Survival checks made in wilderness environments.