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Duskwalkers are planar scions12 connected to the Boneyard, reincarnated from the souls given a second life by psychopomps3, in created bodies4 into the Universe and infused with their and the Boneyard's energies.2
Duskwalkers' physical features bear resemblance to the ancestry they used to be in their previous life, except for their ashen-grey skin. Most look like humans or human-sized humanoids: bigger and smaller duskwalkers are uncommon.3
Most duskwalkers have an innate respect for the cycle of birth and death, and tend to gravitate to jobs related to its protection like undead hunters, midwives, morticians, and priests.356 Duskwalkers appreciate that their death allows new lives to begin and struggle to understand other races' fear of death, and even cheerful duskwalkers tend toward morbid humour.3
Despite anti-duskwalker prejudice, they are typically companionable, open-minded, and accepting. They seek friendships and romances with others of various ancestries. Many build families consisting of adopted children, preferably those that other prospective parents might look over.3
Duskwalkers become adventurers usually from some sense of misplaced destiny. While duskwalkers have free will, they also feel the pressure to make good use of their reincarnation. Many duskwalkers choose to study magic and become wizards or bards. Duskwalkers are also more concerned than most with matters of the soul, commonly becoming clerics, champions, and monks.7
The first duskwalkers appeared as the result of a bargain between two powerful psychopomps58 an olethros mother and a yamaraj. Prior to Aroden's death, only souls destined to perform roles that would serve the Boneyard's interests would be reincarnated as duskwalkers. As the Age of Lost Omens began and prophecy failed, duskwalkers began to shape their own fates.3[citation needed]
Duskwalkers are reincarnated from the souls who helped preserve the cycle of souls but died too soon56 before fate had decreed for them to.3 A strict limit of duskwalkers can exist at one time356: if the limit is reached, dead duskwalkers cannot be resurrected. Some duskwalkers request that their funerals also celebrate the birth of a new duskwalker, which usually takes place the year after the previous duskwalker's death.3
When a duskwalker dies and faces final judgment,58 a newborn duskwalker appears spontaneously within a year in a sanctified place with a connection to death near a settlement at adolescence358 as a roughly eight-year-old human child, cloaked in simple white robes, with a small satchel of food and water by their sides3[citation needed] typically far from its predecessor's birthplace.58 Duskwalker children do not experience infancy and mature at a variable rate: those that are taken care of mature like humans and develop a healthy balance between appreciation for life and interest in death, while those that are forced to fend for themselves rapidly mature but tend to lack social skills.3[citation needed] All duskwalkers are sterile,358 and most are asexual as well.3[citation needed]
Some duskwalkers receive occasional visitations or messages from psychopomps, but they are under no obligation to do the tasks the psychopomps guided them to.3
Duskwalkers are more singular then other versatile heritages, thus do not possess lineages.6
Duskwalkers can draw upon the powers of the Boneyard. In some duskwalkers' hands, any weapon has the ghost touch power to strike true against spectral incorporeal beings. Their ward against corruption protects them from void energy and the abilities of undead and sahkils, and their bodies and spirit can never become an undead creature.9103
Evil duskwalkers that reject their inborn nature and associate with sahkils lose these abilities and gain powers suited to inflicting fear. Their altered ward against corruption allows them to become undead and guarantees them some unusual form of undead, like ghosts unbound to their place of death.3[citation needed]
Duskwalkers are very rare and many go their entire lives without meeting another duskwalker. The few duskwalker communities are small and unite individuals by a common goal, like bands of undead hunters; most duskwalkers live among the communities near where they manifested. Some humans look askance at their ashen appearance and the manner of their creation, or are unsettled by how duskwalkers relate to death. Other communities value duskwalkers for their wisdom, skill at medicine, and proficiency at fighting undead. They get along well with empyreans,11 cambions,12 aphorites, and ganzi, but instinctually distrust dhampirs.3[citation needed]
Most duskwalkers are neither good nor evil; good duskwalkers are less uncommon than evil ones.3[citation needed]
Pharasma is the most popular deity among duskwalkers, followed by Sarenrae and Ashava.3[citation needed]
Some duskwalkers speak Chthonian, Diabolic, Empyrean,3 or Necril.12 Duskwalkers name themselves soon after they manifest. Those who have good relationships with the surrounding community take a name according to community traditions, while ostracized ones make up their own names.3[citation needed]
For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.
Cambion
(tiefling)
Other heritages
1E uncommon
2E legacy planar scions
