Riftborn¶
"A sub-species of demon/human. Outlawed and hunted by agents of the Divine." — Post-Sancturi Lore
The Riftborn are humans remade. Warlocks of Proturas created the first of them during the Great Guhvil War, working a ritual on human infants that bound something demonic into them so that they could fight the aberrations spilling from the Rift; the Fifth Age race lists set them under Humans as a "Human+Demon hybrid". They "can naturally move across the Rift easily", which no other mortal people can, and for that gift they are outlawed and hunted wherever the Divine is worshipped. Those who are not slaves of the warlocks who made them are outcasts, garrison soldiers, pirates and refugees.
Also spelled riftborne; the Divine Alliance calls them Rift-folk.
Origins¶
The Proturas Timeline places the first Riftborn in "the early stages" of the Great Guhvil War, which its table sets around 670 AL, when "the first Riftborn were created by Proturan warlocks" to hold the trade routes through the Rift against the Guhvils. The Post-Sancturi lore agrees on the makers and the purpose, "created hundreds of years ago by warlocks to help deal with Aberrations", the monsters that since the Redemption "simply spawn around Rift anomalies".
The making begins with a child. Kristen, a Riftborn warlock of the Raven Concord, "was created from a small human baby in a ritual", an orphan whose parents are unknown, and was "born into slavery under the Warlock Oxar" of the Blue Flame, who did not treat her well. The campaign notes record the mechanism that keeps a Riftborn human: "The Riftborn have the same magical plague as the High Elves. This is what allows them to suppress their demonic influences." That plague is the blood-plague an elven blood-mage loosed on his own people during the Hollowing to shield them from the Hollows; how it passed to the Riftborn is not said.
Gap
No source describes the ritual itself, which demon or demonic essence is bound, whether Riftborn can have children, or how long they live.
In the Rift¶
Where ordinary travellers in the Rift sicken, starve and move between its drifting islands only by dirigible or by gate, "Warlocks, Demons and Riftborne use magic (rift-gates or rift-stones) or flight to move between islands". The Proturan navy keeps a Riftborn Proturan Garrison at Torghuk, a shipyard and forward outpost in the Torghuk Cluster. At Urdhar, a decayed trade node on a minor route, the thirty or so townspeople "are outcast Riftborn and Humans", refugees who "get by on scraps" and on passing ships; the castle above them is held by Marcayllis, a Riftborn privateer who has recruited most of the able refugees as pirates, and a necromancer in its cellars takes the rest as test subjects. Elsewhere in the Rift a small group of Riftborn live "in a symbiotic relationship with a vampire".
Among the peoples¶
In Proturas the Riftborn hold no seat on the council. They are listed among the "Other Outcasts: dwarves, gnomes, riftborne" who have no faction of their own, and Riftborn are found in the warlock orders, the Proturan military and the mercenary companies. Proturus, the hidden cave-city the outside world called the Grotto, was "a refuge for outcasts of all races and castes" and home to the fallen, the Riftborn, fae creatures, magic-users and witches; its scouts and rangers included Riftborn, and a sorcerer of the Rift kept a Riftborn among his caged prisoners beside a Guhvil, a goblin, a human and a dwarf.
The Divine Nations and the Kingdom of Lorsythe count Rift-folk among the evils they exist to eradicate, with the old gods, magic-users, dragons, demons and the Fae, and in the Age of the Divine the Riftborn are "outlawed and hunted by agents of the Divine". The Blue Flame warlocks who made them keep some as slaves; the Raven Concord takes others as apprentices, and many Concord warlocks go on into the Proturan military.
Ebonheart Riftborn¶
The Ebonheart are the Riftborn whose demonic side shows plainest. Aqiran, a scout of Proturus in the Into the Rift campaign, is "smaller than most other Ebonheart Riftborn at only 5'10"", with a "pitch-colored form" rippled with muscle, a nearly bald head, sharply pointed ears, a black beard and broad nose, and "two thick, curled, dark grey horns" crowning both sides of his head. "Most unnerving to outsiders, his eyes glow a deep red and are a distinguishing feature even from 60 paces under a hood"; Ebonheart scouts wear tinted goggles to dull the light of their eyes. Aqiran speaks Common and Demonic.
Gap
No source names any other variety of Riftborn or says what proportion of them are Ebonheart.