Florans

🍄 Overview

Florans are a race of unicorn folk distinguished by their dual forms: the unicorn, and the humanoid. As rulers of the Day Duchy, they embody elegance, intelligence and wisdom.

Florans are revered as scholars, diplomatics and leaders. They, like the High Fae, live incredibly long lives (around 1500 years) and use this lifespan to accumulate vast knowledge and experience, which they use to guide their realm and people.

Their society is built upon principles of wisdom, elegance, and harmony. They are skilled in arts, sciences, and magic, with a deep appreciation for beauty and order. They have built a profitable partnership with the Harpies of the Day Duchy, using their strength and martial aptitude to enforce order in the Dawn Court.

🍄 Appearance

A Florans appearance is based on horse breeds with a huge variety in coat colour and pattern.

• In their Unicorn form, they look just like a horse, with a horn on their forehead. Their coats are shiny, luscious and their manes and tails are often decorated with jewellery and flowers.

• In their Humanoid form, they are tall, slender beings, often with long hair, a unicorn horn, and a tail. Their feet are normal human feet. They retain some of the pattern of their coat on their legs and arms and have a little hair on their elbows and ankles. They also have equine ears that can point up or down.

Design Guidelines

• Florans have star shaped bellybuttons.

• Florans horns often shimmer with rainbows and little magical sparks may drift off of them.

  • They like to adorn their horns in jewellery.

• As mentioned, they retain some of the patterning of their horse coat on their legs and back of arms. they will have some amount of hair on their elbows and ankles.

Clothing

• Florans like to wear long, flowing clothing in rich and stylish fabrics such as silk, lace, embroidered satin etc.

• They like light, pastel colours such as white, tan, pastel blue/pink/green etc, yellow, cream, peach, lavender.

• They prefer style over substance.

• They will adorn their outfits with white or tan fur in colder climates.

• They love jewellery and wildflowers and will adorn their clothing with these as decorations. 

• Suns are common decorative motifs. Other motifs include clouds, stars, sunrays, birds, wilflowers, mountains, wind.

• Martial types may wear armour. Light armour is made from white or tan leather. Heavy armour is made from shiny silver or gold metal and often has Day Duchy motifs metalworked into it.

🍄 Birth, Life and Death

Birth

• Florans give birth to live young and tend to have 1-5 children in their lifetime.

• As with wildlings, Floran foals will take after the breed of one parent. Their coats may be unique to their siblings though.

• Pregnancy lasts about 11 months.

Life

• Florans live to be about 1500 years old.

• They have a coming of age ceremony at around 100 years old, after which they are considered to be an adult (although they will mature to full size and strength over the next 50 years).

Death

• When Florans die, they are cremated by the Sunfire disk, and their ashes are ceremonially scattered to the wind. Families will gather on a high mountaintop of their choice and perform this funeral rite.

• There is a graveyard in the Day Duchy called The Solar Meadows, where headstones are erected for Florans that have passed. Families will visit this graveyard on the death anniversary every year and leave jewellery and wildflowers. Fire from the Sunfire disk is carried to the headstone and a small flame is left alight at the headstone. Despite the Meadows being quite windy, the flames do not go out. Although the bodies do not rest here, families like to believe that the souls of deceased Florans can find their way back to their headstone once a year by seeking out the light on the headstone.

🍄 Floran Customs & Culture

Personality Traits

• Florans can be serious, intellectual, and curious.

• They are elegant and well-spoken, and do not let themselves get overly exciteable - how uncooth!

• They enjoy a rigorous debate and discussing politics, culture and history.

• Florans can be conceited, haughty and condescending.

• They are sensitive, protective and loyal.

• They are mostly practical but are still prone to being prideful. They may think they know best as they have lived so long.

Your Floran character should have a few of these traits but certainly doesn’t have to have all of them. Please feel free to put a unique spin on it.

Romance, Marriage and Offspring

Romance

• Florans are as interested in romance as any other fae being. However they tend to stick to their own race as falling in love with a race with a shorter lifespan is a recipe for heartbreak (not that this doesn't happen).

• It would be very taboo to enter a relationship with a High Fae or Fairy.

• It would be frowned upon to enter a relationship with a Nymph or Polypore - the Florans think themselves superiour to the Night Duchy races and see that realm as an unserious party city. They also scoff at their political system (even tho the Night Duchy is actually incredibly well-run and citizen morale is very high).

Marriage

• Florans see marriage as the proper end goal of any serious romantic relationship and have their own marriage rituals.

• Like the Night Duchy, it is very auspicious to marry on an equinox or solstice.

• Florans marry outside, usually in a wildflower field or meadow, with the sun on them as a witness.

• They wear flower crowns constructed out of thin gold cords and often tie their hair with colourful ribbons and adorn themselves in flowers.

• They wear extravagent gowns and capes made of white and gold.

Offspring

• As mentioned, Florans give birth to live young and have 1-5 foals across a lifetime. Pregnancy lasts about 11 months.

• Despite moderate sized families, Florans can be unsentimental and may see having a family as their duty to carry on a noble lineage and ensure that Floran remain the ruling race of the Day Duchy (and natural competitors to High Fae) rather than having a family because they love their children. This is not always the case though. 

Miscellaneous

• Florans are less prone to being cold as they have a light coat on their arms and legs and are used to cool weather and windy conditions.

• They are surprisingly agile and good at climbing.

• When using magic, faint celestial runes may appear and drift off of their horns.

• There is a long lost legend that the Day and Night Duchy used to be one realm, and Florans and Nymphs lived amongst each other as friends. Florans would never admit this though.

• Florans don't really like High Fae, seeing them as a threat to their rulership over their realm.

• White unicorns are incredibly rare and are sacred to the Florans - almost like a God or spiritual figure. White unicorns are nomadic and are actually rarely seen in the Day Duchy. They are considered to be immortal Florans who have technically lost the ability to turn back into their humanoid form - but to the Florans, it is seen as an 'ascension' to a higher existence to become a white unicorn.

• Florans think incredibly highly of themselves as they believe that they are the descendants of Rhiannon.

If you have questions about Florans, please ask them in the helpdesk channel on Discord!