Two worlds that share a name and almost nothing else — unless you count the dinosaurs
Halflings are native to eastern Khorvaire, and they were there long before humans arrived. The nomadic tribes of the Talenta Plains have ridden dinosaurs across the grasslands for thousands of years, maintaining oral traditions, spiritual practices, and a way of life that predates Galifar, predates the human colonisation of the continent, and shows no particular interest in being updated. The appearance of dragonmarks among the halflings — the Mark of Healing and the Mark of Hospitality — spurred the migration of some halfling families westward, spreading their services alongside the earliest human settlers. The halfling houses of Jorasco and Ghallanda did not merely accompany humanity across Khorvaire; they made the expansion possible, providing the healing and shelter that allowed colonial communities to survive the dangerous wilds. Sometimes halflings of House Ghallanda joke that their mark prepared them for the arrival of humans by allowing them to make their new guests comfortable. There is more truth in this humour than most people realise.
Today, halflings occupy two worlds that share a species and almost nothing else. The Talenta halflings ride clawfoot raptors across an ocean of grasslands, consulting spirits and wearing dinosaur masks. The urban halflings of the Five Nations run inns, argue cases in court, pick pockets, manage crime syndicates, and identify primarily by the nationality that raised them. Put a Talenta hunter and a Sharn barrister in the same room and they will share a silhouette — and that is approximately where the common ground ends.
SIR DANTON IR'LAIN, BRELISH KNIGHT, RECOUNTING THE BATTLE OF LYRENTON RIDGE "I've fought Karrnathi undead, Valenar cavalry, and a warforged juggernaut that walked through a stone wall. But a howling halfling berserker charging in on a clawfoot raptor? Most terrifying thing I've ever seen."
Halflings are small — averaging three feet tall and weighing around forty pounds — and their entire biology is calibrated to make the most of that compact frame. They are quick, nimble, and possessed of reflexes that consistently surprise larger opponents, with a natural agility that makes them superb riders, acrobats, and pickpockets in roughly equal measure. Their proportions are humanlike but scaled down, with slightly larger feet relative to their height (useful for balance and silent movement) and features that tend toward the round and expressive.
Halfling skin, hair, and eye colours range across the human spectrum, with Talenta halflings tending toward darker, sun-weathered complexions and Five Nations halflings displaying the full diversity of the urban populations they inhabit. Halflings reach adulthood around twenty and live to approximately one hundred and fifty years — longer than humans, shorter than dwarves — with a period of vigorous middle age that extends well past their first century.
The most distinctive biological trait of halflings is their luck — or rather, the uncanny ability to avoid danger that halflings themselves describe as luck and that scholars have never satisfactorily explained. Whether this represents an innate preternatural awareness, a form of unconscious divination, or simply the statistical result of being small enough to dodge things that would hit a larger target is debated at Morgrave University with more heat than light. Halflings are also remarkably brave for their size, displaying a resistance to fear that seems disproportionate to their physical vulnerability and that may be connected to whatever produces their legendary luck.
Talenta halflings maintain a physical fitness shaped by nomadic life — lean, sun-darkened, with callused hands and the particular musculature that comes from riding dinosaurs from childhood. Urban halflings tend toward softer builds, but the underlying quickness and coordination remain.
The Talenta halflings are the nomadic clans of the Talenta Plains, and they are everything the Five Nations does not expect halflings to be. They ride clawfoot raptors, fastieth runners, and glidewing pterosaurs with a skill that makes Five Nations cavalry look ponderous, and the sacred bond between a hunter and their mount is one of the deepest relationships in Talenta culture — a connection that does not end with the animal's death, since many warriors believe their mount's spirit remains with them. Talenta culture is oral, communal, and firmly disinterested in being modernised. Each tribe is led by a lath, a chieftain, and guided by shamans who consult the spirits and choose the paths of migration. Warriors and shamans alike wear masks that present a particular face to the spirit world, and a Talenta halfling who has lost their mount may wear a mask they believe holds its spirit, speaking to it as though it were still alive.
The Talenta Plains were recognised as a nation under the Treaty of Thronehold, largely through the efforts of Lathon Halpum, who united many tribes during the Last War to defend their territory. Now that the war is over, most tribes have returned to their ancient patterns — but the question of what nationhood means for a nomadic people who have never wanted cities, laws, or lightning rails remains unresolved. More foreigners cross the Plains than ever before: settlers and merchants heading to Q'barra, Valenar elves riding through in search of challenges, Mournland horrors crawling out of the dead-grey mist. The dragonmarked houses seek to expand their presence at Gatherhold, the traditional meeting place where all tribes come to trade, hold councils, and settle disputes. Holy Uldra, a powerful shaman and tribal leader, urges halfling warriors to drive all outsiders from the Plains and preserve the ancient traditions. Lathon Halpum believes the tribes must learn to work together as a nation of nations. The halflings will have to choose.
Urban halflings in the Five Nations have been settled for generations and bear little cultural resemblance to their Talenta cousins. Quick, charming, and socially adept, they put their natural talents to use as bards, barristers, merchants, politicians, and — inevitably — criminals. Halflings are found in every major city and every walk of life, from the highest salons to the lowest wards, and their adaptability has made them one of the best-integrated non-human peoples on the continent.
The most prominent halfling institution outside the dragonmarked houses is the Boromar Clan — the most powerful criminal syndicate in Sharn and arguably in all of Breland. The Boromars started as a family of halfling immigrants from the Talenta Plains and built a sprawling empire of gambling, smuggling, and theft that now extends from Lower Dura to Skyway. Most of the city's burglars, pickpockets, and fences either work for the Boromars or pay tribute to them. Their network of extortion, bribery, and blackmail reaches into the Sharn Watch, the city council, and the aristocracy. The clan head, Saidan Boromar, is married to an unmarked heir of House Jorasco, giving the Boromars access to discounted healing and cementing ties between organised crime and organised medicine that make ethicists uncomfortable. Ilyra Boromar sits on the Sharn city council. The Clawfoots — the family's personal guard — are fierce halfling warriors recently brought from the Talenta Plains, and they are as terrifying in Sharn's alleys as their namesakes are on the open grasslands.
Two dragonmarks appear among the halflings of Khorvaire, and both are ancient — first manifesting among the halfling nomads centuries before humans arrived on the continent. The result is that the most common professional interactions most Khorvairians have with halflings involve being healed or being fed, which shapes the public perception of the entire people in ways that are simultaneously flattering and reductive.
House Jorasco bears the Mark of Healing and operates the continent's medical network. Jorasco houses of healing can be found in every significant settlement, offering services from basic wound care to lesser restoration to, in the finest enclaves, raise dead. The house employs both magical and mundane healing techniques, and its reputation for competence is one of the pillars of daily life in the Five Nations. Jorasco's business model is straightforward: healing costs money, and the severity of the condition determines the price. This pragmatism has drawn criticism — there are those who believe that healing should be a public good rather than a commercial service — but Jorasco's defenders argue that the house provides more medical care to more people across a wider area than any alternative system could sustain.
House Ghallanda bears the Mark of Hospitality and dominates the hospitality industry — inns, taverns, restaurants, and the social infrastructure that connects communities. The Gold Dragon Inn franchise operates in every major city, providing consistent quality and a familiar menu to travelers across the continent. But Ghallanda's influence extends beyond beds and meals. Every Ghallanda enclave is a sanctuary beyond the legal reach of any government or dragonmarked house, and the innkeepers of House Ghallanda hear everything. The house does not sell information — it prefers to build friendships and deal in favours — but a Ghallanda baron who truly needs something done likely has a favour they can call in from someone who was grateful for a warm meal on a cold night.
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Talenta religion reveres spirits — both departed ancestors and the natural spirits of the Plains. Shamans consult these spirits to guide migration, settle disputes, and interpret omens. The Talenta Plains contain an unusual concentration of manifest zones tied to Dolurrh and Thelanis, which means that the dead are more likely to linger and minor fey are scattered across the grasslands. The spirit world is not abstract to a Talenta halfling; it is present, visible in the shimmer of heat across the Plains and audible in the whisper of wind through the tall grass. Stories tell of ancient ruins that date back to the first age of the world, and of a vast graveyard holding the bones of dragons — places the halflings shun, believing them haunted by fiends.
Urban halflings in the Five Nations follow whatever faith their community practises. The Sovereign Host is the most common, with Boldrei (community) and Olladra (luck) receiving particular attention. Halflings who work in the hospitality industry often honour Olladra as a matter of professional instinct, while those with ties to the Boromar Clan may have a more transactional relationship with the divine — praying to Kol Korran for profitable ventures and to the Traveler for protection from the consequences.
A halfling in the Five Nations is likely to be unremarkable — small, quick, friendly, and assumed to be either running an inn or picking your pocket, depending on the neighbourhood. The stereotype is not entirely wrong: halflings are disproportionately represented in the hospitality industry (thanks to House Ghallanda) and in certain categories of crime (thanks to the Boromar Clan), and their natural social facility — the easy charm, the quick read of a room, the ability to make a stranger feel welcome or to spot a lie before it finishes forming — serves both professions equally well. Beyond these archetypes, halflings work as barristers, merchants, diplomats, entertainers, and politicians. Their size is occasionally an inconvenience in cities designed for humans, but it is rarely a social barrier; the Five Nations have accommodated halflings for centuries, and the infrastructure reflects it.
The Talenta halflings who visit or settle in the Five Nations are a different matter entirely. A Talenta nomad walking through Sharn for the first time is experiencing something genuinely alien — the density of population, the vertical architecture, the absence of open sky — and the reaction from Sharn's residents is symmetrically bewildered. A halfling wearing a dinosaur mask and speaking to the spirit of a dead clawfoot is exotic in a way that a halfling barrister in a well-cut suit is not, and the cultural distance between the two is a source of both comedy and genuine misunderstanding.
The halfling stereotype has two faces, and both are products of the dragonmarked houses. The first is the healer: competent, businesslike, slightly mercenary — you're glad House Jorasco exists when you need stitches, and you resent them when you see the bill. The second is the innkeeper: warm, chatty, knows your name, remembers your drink, and is filing away everything you say for reasons that are probably benign but that you can never quite be sure about. These two images — the healer who charges for saving your life and the innkeeper who knows more about you than your spouse does — define the halfling's place in the Five Nations imagination.
The Talenta halflings occupy a completely different perceptual category: they are exotic, dangerous, and vaguely romantic — nomadic warriors riding dinosaurs across a pristine grassland, untouched by the corruption and complexity of civilisation. This image is as reductive as the innkeeper stereotype, and it is equally wrong. Talenta culture is not primitive; it is a sophisticated oral tradition that has sustained a people across millennia. It is, however, genuinely alien to the urban Five Nations, and the cultural gap between a Talenta shaman and a Sharn politician is wider than the gap between any two human nations.
The Boromar Clan complicates the picture further. The clan is an open secret in Sharn — everyone knows who they are and what they do — and their existence feeds a third halfling stereotype: the charming criminal, the small person who has gotten their hands on big power through cunning and ruthlessness. This is both admired and resented, sometimes by the same people.
OVERHEARD AT A STALL IN THE BAZAAR, MIDDLE DURA, SHARN "You see the halfling behind the counter at the Gold Dragon? She knows the name of every regular, where they work, who they owe money to, and what they drink when they've had a bad day. She never charges for that last drink. And she remembers everything. Everything."
The halfling peoples present two entirely different sets of stakes.
The Talenta tension is one of sovereignty and survival. The Plains were recognised as a nation, but the halflings have no interest in the institutions that nationhood typically requires — no standing army, no tax system, no diplomatic corps, no capital in the traditional sense. Gatherhold is a meeting place, not a seat of government. Foreign traffic across the Plains is increasing, dragonmarked houses are expanding, Valenar riders are pushing boundaries, and the Mournland is leaking horrors from the east. Holy Uldra's militant isolationism and Lathon Halpum's cautious diplomacy represent two incompatible visions of the future, and the tribes will eventually have to commit to one or the other — or watch the Plains be changed around them by forces they did not invite.
The urban halfling tension is the Boromar war. The Clan has been the dominant criminal force in Sharn for centuries, but Daask's assault on their holdings is the most serious threat they have ever faced. If the Boromars fall, the power vacuum will produce chaos; if they win, their grip tightens. Either outcome reshapes the criminal and political landscape of the most important city in Khorvaire. An adventurer with halfling ties — whether as a Boromar relative, a Jorasco healer, a Ghallanda innkeeper, or simply someone who grew up in Little Plains — will find it difficult to avoid being drawn into this conflict.
And beneath both tensions runs the deeper question that connects the Talenta nomad to the Sharn barrister: what does it mean to be small in a world built for larger people? The halflings have answered this question in two radically different ways — one by refusing to participate in that world at all, the other by burrowing so deeply into its structures that they have become indispensable. Both answers work. Neither is complete.