Kender

Kenders were small humanoids who inhabited the world of Krynn and were most known for their curiosity, fearlessness, and ability to always find trouble.

Description
Most kenders were similar in appearance to muscled human children. Adult kender males typically reached tall and weighted. Female kenders were slightly smaller and size. It was almost unheard of kenders being taller than and weighting over. They had fair skin which quickly tanned under the summer sun, turning dark brown. At the age of around forty, kenders started to developed "wizened" deep wrinkles.

Unlike halflings of the Realms, kenders had more elven appearance with distinctly pointed years. Kenders' usually had sandy blonde, light brown, dark brown, copper-red, red-orange hair and they kept it long, often braided in variety of styles or simply worn in ponytails. These small humanoids often decorated their long hair by weaving colorful ribbons, feathers, beads, flowers, and other fanciful things. Among the most common eye colors were pale blue, olive, light brown, and hazel.

Abilities
The most notable ability of kenders was their complete immunity to magical fear and inability to feel it naturally. Additionally, they were quite hardy when it came to poisons and more likely to avoid negative effects of spells than other races. Their natural short attention span made them much harder to sneak on or be surprise by their opponents.

Natural foresters, kenders had a much easier time determining directions to the closest town or civilized habitat than other races, even if hopelessly lost in the wilderness.

Personality
Kenders had extremely intense facial expressions. When they laughed or cried it appeared as if they experienced most powerful emotions.

Kenders did not have armies and rarely faced with invading forces as their villages rarely had anything of value and kenders were relentless defenders. No warlord wanted to take kenders as slaves as they were uncontrollable via intimidation and fear. Ironically enough, many kenders welcomed occupation thinking it to be great for the economy and the invaders' pockets were always filled with curious items for kenders to "handle."

Guests of kender villages often found themselves relieved of all possessions within mere hours after arrival and barraged by unending questions, ramblings, and pointless stories. Other races considered kenders to be charming, or annoyingly vulgar, extroverted to a fault, friendly, and obnoxious. Despite all that, kenders could be easily offended as they were sensitive to indifference or negative remarks.

Fiends were precious to most kenders, including members of other races. They took it close to heart pain, death, or suffering, experienced by fiends and strife that befell innocents. Kenders' extreme and deep emotions often threw them into deepest depressions and emotional turmoil when they witnessed suffering, sometimes lasting up to several months.

Combat
When pressed into combat, kenders were literally fearless and fought relentlessly, often relying on natural intuition and improvisation to come up with surprisingly effective strategies. The most common defensive strategy among kenders were taunts. They were surprisingly good at showering their opponents with verbal abuse and enraging even the most stoic and experienced warriors.

Even though they used many different weapons in combat, kenders were natural with slings and bows. Many preferred the traditional kender weapons - a hoopak, a combination of a quarterstaff and a staff-sling. The weapon was crafted out of had wood with a forked slingshot-like end. Between them was affixed a letter thong pocket to launch bullets at their opponents from afar. The other end of a hoopak was a sharp metallic spike hardened in fire and used in close combat.

Most kender disliked wearing heavy armor in battle and most wore leather and padded armor sets, with studded leather and ring mail being a rare exceptions and often taken off after a short period of time.

Society
Family unit was the heart of kender society. A typical kender family consisted of a pair of parents and their kids. Children stayed with their parents until they started experiencing wanderlust after reaching their 20s. This compulsion fueled by their natural curios mind often kept them on the road adventuring and absorbing experiences until they reacted their 50s or 60s. This is when kenders reached the period of their lived called "rooting", another compulsion but now it drove kenders to settle, pair up, and procreate. One or two children were a typical number for kenders of Krynn. A new offspring was never conceived until the older child was gone from the family nest. This cycle of wanderlust and rooting spread kender societies through the entirety of their native world.

Kenders were a democratic society that bordered on anarchy. Each kender had value and was allowed to do almost anything they wanted and no kender enforced their views on others. Their communities had almost no laws nor official governments as kenders were never malicious or evil. They were ready to work together for the good for their society and needed little encouragement to do so.

They openminded nature led kender communities to have tried multiple types of governments but they never stuck. Kenders were open to the idea of new governments and were willing to give something new a try. The same point of view spread on the leadership position in the kender communities. A single leader was followed only as long as kenders were entertained. Often enough, such leadership roles lasted for several days only.

Culture
Kender tended to have single-family homes that often only had one room, furnished with comfort in mind, flush with cushions and wooden furniture. Many decorative and practical items within their homes were handcrafted by the inhabitants themselves as kenders were prone to creative tinkering. Interestingly enough, their homes never had locks inside.

Kender clothing varied greatly but in general once could more likely see colorfully-garmented kender than not. Particular favorite was dyed and softened leather, decorated with patterns and designs. Kender outfits always had numerous pockets and pouches, filled to the brim with a wide selection miscellany, that could include bird feathers, creature teeth, materials, tinker toys, strings, rings, chains, handkerchiefs, various small tools, curios pebbles and twigs, exotic coins, jerky, or even a small pet animal. most of these items were often liberated from their rightful owners by these hyperactive and curious small humanoids.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Tymora's Luck
 * Video Games
 * Neverwinter Nights series
 * Card Games
 * AD&D Trading Cards &bull; Spellfire: Master the Magic
 * AD&D Trading Cards &bull; Spellfire: Master the Magic