Burrowers

"One of the primary non-human races." Skittering sounds of swift steps, nothing there to meet the eye. Burrowers are one of the primary non-human races in Grienzland that is actually a spirit and not a creature. They generally manifest as small humanoid women with murine-/lapine-tails and ears from one to two feet tall and possess a number of abilities that make them extremely advantageous to employ in military positions.

Legend
Many stories exist about the Rock Sprites and their interactions with humanity, tracing back into antiquity. It's unclear when these accounts of interactions first began due to their ubiquity, as they seem to have been a companion to humanity for as long as people have dwelt on the continent. There are as many myths about Burrowers being mischievous to the point of seeming malicious or spiteful as there are of them being friendly and helpful to humans.

On the more threatening side, they are believed to inhabit old mines and empty caves, and if displeased or frightened they could cause the earth to rid itself of air, making interlopers pass out or sometimes even die. In more urban settings they were said to be willing to make deals with rogues and thieves, accepting gifts in exchange for harassing some target or 'haunting' a location.

There are as many (if not more) tales of positive relationships between Burrowers and humans however. From old legends of a Rock Sprite coming to a group of trapped miners and clearing the cave in out of the way, to showing a young miner where to find a vein of gold ore so he can win his beloved's heart. As far as domestic Burrowers go, there are many, many detailed methods of both attracting and assuring one that a homeowner is welcoming to their presence, plus how to keep them satisfied. A friendly Rock Sprite occupying a home is said to bring it luck and provide protection so long as she remains fed and respected.

Description
Burrowers take the form of small female humanoids, ranging from 1' to 2' tall at most, with an average height of 1'6" and an average weight of 2 lbs, 4 oz. They look just like human females aside from a pair of ears and a tail that resembles that of a mouse, vole, or rabbit, depending upon the ethnicity. They take this physical form most of the time, but are capable of 'stepping' into stone or rock to hide within it, abandoned their solidity when the situation calls for it. In this immaterial form they are visible to those with magical senses (such as Night Ravens) as a ghost-like version of their regular bodies. Burrowers tend to have brown, gray, or black hair and fur, and most commonly have brown eyes, though a rare few have red or golden eyes instead.

Ethnicities
Even from ancient times there were always said to have been three different types of Burrowers, with no mention of when they split or how.

Cave Burrowers
Also called Mountain Mice, Mushroom Farmers, and (somewhat derogatorily) Mine Rats, Cave Burrowers live in tunnels or mines within the mountains. They take after mice and have rounded ears and slender tails and tend to have darker hair colors, dark grays and browns. They are - without a doubt - the most aligned with stone and rock of all the Burrowers and can use their elemental control over rock to form their own artificial cave networks or mines within the sides of mountains. Larger settlements of Cave Burrowers are even made to accommodate humans and the taller races, though this is a very rare occurrence; such underground cities are kept a closely-guarded secret.

Cave Burrowers make for excellent prospectors and can use their ability to walk through stone to locate hidden ores in the rock. Many Cave Burrowers of old were said to set up smithies at the mouths of their mine as well, from which they could craft tools or goods that they exchanged with humans in return for gifts of food or alcohol. There are many, many stories of them consuming a large amount of alcohol they earned from selling metal tools or weapons.

Due to their racial weakness to worked iron, Cave Burrower metal goods are made from an unknown alloy of metals that includes nickel, cobalt, tungsten, and silver. It is believed that they possess a magical means of refining the ores due to the difficulty of working tungsten with the limited facilities they employ. What's more, no metallurgy has been able to recreate the strength and durability of the metal products that Cave Burrowers create. This may be the source of the many legends which involve Cave Burrowers including elements of heroes visiting them for the purposes of acquiring a sword or shield or piece of armor to help them on their quest.

Of all the Burrowers, the Cave Burrowers are the strongest and hardiest, but also the most fickle. When mistreated or dishonored, they could use their stone sense to tap into dangerous metal deposits that reacted with the air to unleash poison in mine shafts. But once befriended, a Cave Burrower is said to be the most reliable companion one could ever ask for.

Meadow Burrowers
Also called Corn Wives, Rye Aunts, Field Fairies, and Flower Maidens, Meadow Burrowers are the most nature-inclined of the Burrower ethnicities. The Meadow Burrowers are often seen as a race of gardeners that tend to and prune the plants in the wild. They prefer to clothe themselves in simple yet ornate homemade robes and dresses woven from plant fibers and colored by natural dyes. They have the most visual variation of the three Burrower ethnicities, with hair ranging from white to gray to brown, though light brown is the most common. Meadow Burrowers take after mundane voles, though in appearance they can be difficult to tell apart from Cave Burrowers. One of the methods of differentiating them is that their ears tend to be slightly more pointed than the round ears of their mice-based kin.

Meadow Burrowers dwell in complex tunnel networks under the roots of plants in fields, reaching down to the rock underneath the dirt. They prefer forests or fields far enough from human towns that they won't be disturbed, but as the human population increased and civilization spread out further and further, this became more difficult. There are all manners of stories of haunted thickets or clearings where nature itself seems to repel and punish any intruders. This is now understood to be a manifestation of their unique ability to cultivate plant growth in an extremely accelerated and directed manner.

In addition to their affinity with stone, Meadow Burrowers have powers over the plants that grow in the earth. The IMRA speculates that this might be due to the ability to control the release of minerals from dirt, but research has shown that is not sufficient to explain their cultivating abilities. When encountered in the woods, Meadow Burrowers are mostly evasive and skittish, but do act as protectors of the trees and vegetation if given no other choice. One of their prime means of defending their areas is through outbursts of thorny vines as well as the stinging nettle plant. The latter has been so deeply associated with offending a Meadow Burrower that it also goes by the name of Mouse Barbs.

On the other hand, the sudden appearance of a ripe bush of bilberries is often referred to as a Burrower's Gift. After the success of the Edict of Unification showed that non-humans and humans could live side by side, many Meadow Burrowers are in high demand due to their ability to guide plants in their growth, and arrangements made between farmers and Field Voles has granted them guaranteed living space in exchange for their services.

City Burrowers
Also known as House Rabbits, Spirit Hares, and Hearth Bunnies, it is easy to tell apart a City Burrower from the other two subtypes due to their lapine features. City Burrowers take after rabbits, with tall ears and a small, puffball tail. They generally have brown ears and hair and dark brown eyes, with some variation in shade. As with all Burrowers, there are a very small number of albino City Burrowers as well, with white hair and ears and bright red eyes.

City Burrowers have the longest and best documented history of interactions with humans. For as long as humans have made towns and villages in Uropa, they have had stories of spirits that haunt their abodes, for ill or for good. City Burrowers make their homes in the foundations beneath human houses, living within the solid stones there as well as crafting little warrens than only they can access for storing their treasures and belongings. When not wanted, City Burrowers were seen as a pest that would eat the foods out of gardens or steal the threads from clothing. But there are far more instances of gifts being given to them and earning their friendship instead, leading to the protection of houses and the granting of good luck to those who live within.

It was this familiarity which made it so natural to recognize and integrate Burrowers as members of society, and many of them went from mysterious and misunderstood haunting presences to proper and welcome guests in households all over Grienzland. Many of the informal folklore traditions and rituals were made more explicit and uniform as humans vowed to not try and exorcise these little spirits, and City Burrowers laid out their desires. Through this process, many House Rabbits took on formal positions as professional servants and maids, receiving minor pay for their services in place of scraps of food, glasses of milk, toys and trinkets, and funds to make their own ornate outfits and purchase jewelry.

City Burrowers are the most furtive of Burrowers, having mastered the art of staying out of sight. When angered, their tricks tend to take on the form of more harmless pranks, such as dishes being knocked off of counters and small objects disappearing- for a day or forever. White hair (and sometimes red eyes) are most common among City Burrowers compared to the other ethnicities.

Capabilities
The abilities of Burrowers are seemingly many, but all stem from their inherent connection to the Earth. The most well-known ability of Burrowers is actually a misconception, however. They are believed to be able to become invisible at will. This is not the case. Burrowers can become unseen to the human eye, but they do so by embedding their Essence into a large quantity of rock, stone, dirt, clay, or other such inert natural material. As a rule, the more solid the material, the easier this Stone Walk is, as shifting gravel or mud can be extremely disjointing and even painful to a Burrower attempting to hide within it. As well, the state of naturalness of the material has an impact, as hewn stone is inherently more offensive to a Burrower than raw stone.

A Burrower's connection to the earth is more than just her ability to step into it. They are capable of spurring the ground itself into moving to aide them in their endeavors. As opposed to their Stone Walk, this manipulation of the earth is easier done with smaller particles than large stones. This is what allows Cave Burrowers to dig into caves and form their own mines, Meadow Burrowers to create underground tunneling homes, and City Burrowers to clean up dirt and dust, all without tools or substantial noise. It is also what provided the inspiration for the name 'Burrowers.'

Additionally, the different ethnicities of Burrowers have different capabilities developed based on their environments and sociomythological niches. Cave Burrowers have a rudimentary Metal Sense that allows them to detect where raw ore or processed metal is like a form of magnetic echolocation. Meadow Burrowers have power over plants and can cause them to grow at an extremely accelerated rate, not even requiring seeds or saplings to do so. And City Burrowers have the ability to grant those they respect with good fortune, allowing them to avoid harm or to find needed objects or desired items.

Limitations
One of the main difficulties Burrowers face is their own skittish nature when it comes to other non-human races. Naturally, their greatest anxieties come as a result of proximity to Fey Cats, though Night Ravens and Wolfen also trigger an instinctive fear response. This is theorized to be due to the magical senses of the former two races that might allow them to have posed a threat to Burrowers in ancient times, although the distant roots of Fey Cats brings this theory into question. The Wolfen and Burrowers have inhabited the same areas for a very long time so there are likely instances of them encountering each other, though this is unknown, and the cause of the anxiety in this instance may simply be a reaction to a source of danger.

Another debilitating risk to a Burrower in the modern world is that of man-wrought iron. While resistant to most forms of harm due to their ability to revert to an Essence form and retreat into nearby earthen material, iron that has been heated and purified and worked into form by man is exceedingly dangerous to them. Wounds rendered by worked iron cause symptoms similar to infection or poisoning, causing significant pain and taking twice as long to heal as a similar wound would on a human.

And finally, on a lighter note, Burrowers experience a persistent urge to play pranks on others. This is often the result of seeking to right wrongs or provide a measure of justice for abuse or mistreatment. In such cases, these 'pranks' can actually be rather dangerous or harmful, but are rarely deadly in nature. On the more pleasant end, Burrowers will frequently treat their friends to mischievous happenings, such as leaving them gifts that just so happened to have been taken from someone else (who is usually looking for said 'gift'), or more innocuous things like tying bells to belt loops. Great care must be taken to ensure that Burrowers understand the gravity of the situation so as not to do such things in a war zone.

Unification Status
Burrowers have had a fairly welcome addition to society since their reluctant revelation once the other races had set the precedent. Due to their spirit nature not being limited to a physical form, the process of accommodating them has been paradoxically easy and complicated at the same time. Many Burrowers were able to continue their previous living circumstances as suspected (but previously unproven) welcome guests in homes or forests. Others came into conflicts with human mining operations seeking to dig into the mountains where they lived. It took quite some time before beneficial solutions could be found to make Burrowers a more fully welcomed member race of civilization rather than an occasionally-recognized neighbor to it.

Much of the success in unification came from the education to human methods of conducting business and the nature of currency. While there were a great many who protested the introduction of monetary exchange into what had previously been a matter of mutually beneficial exchange, proponents of economic inclusion eventually won out. This did have the side effect of helping to explain why humans did not appreciate having objects stolen from them and reduced the occurrences of such outside of intentionally disruptive pranks. Now many City Burrowers are able to collect payment for their services in households, although they usually do not charge much. Meadow Burrowers are frequently employed in forestry jobs tending to the national parks or assisting in agriculture. Some have made the switch to city life as well, as gardeners and landscapers employed by a town or a member of the aristocracy. Cave Burrowers are highly sought out by mining companies, though this has been the least successful of relationships due to the disruptive nature of human mining operations.

The spirit nature of Burrowers makes them the subject of much mistrust and uncertainty. Humans have difficulty coming to terms with Burrowers' ability to inhabit stone, bypassing barriers and abandoning physicality altogether. For this reason, Burrowers are frequently faced with suspicion when small objects go missing, and a lone Burrower unaffiliated with an established family or company will be faced with considerable hesitation in many smaller towns. Additionally, they still don't trust Fey Cats and will go out of their way to avoid them.

Humans
"'Humans can be creatures pleasant or monsters cruel. They cannot follow into old places and beds of stone, but they are crafty and build fierce traps when provoked. But they can still be reminded of the old arrangement, moreso by words than by tricks anymore. They are so fun to trick, though.'"

Night Ravens
"'Frightening. Their eyes glow; they see the paths. They don't usually inflict harm, but the smaller ones have eyes of greed. There is much risk in helping one to steal from the Humans. Hide in rocks until they grow bored and fly away.'"

Wolfen
"'Dangerous. They have sharp noses and sharper fangs. They want to impress the Humans so they hold back. Don't get caught alone with one. Hiding will not help.'"

Dragon Daughters
"'Dangerous. Too big, too clumsy. Their hands can dent stone, they can throw rocks. They've been nicer lately but don't get flattened underfoot.'"

Fey Cats
"'Terrifying. Avoid attracting their attention. They use words as a lure and kindness as concealment. They are impermanence made manifest, and they loathe being so. Their jealousy would be our undoing should they get their way. Avoid at all costs.'"

Sea Hounds
"'Terrifying. Water erodes stone, fangs tear flesh. Sharp, everything sharp. Avoid.'"

Flame Maidens
"'Dangerous. Can be beseeched and a deal made, but they are so hungry when they first awake. The Humans have finally taken an interest in guiding them, thank the Heavenly Lord.'"

Living Dolls
"'Lovely friends! Treat with kindness and patience, always.'"