Hadozee

Hadozee, also known as "deck apes" or "winged deck apes", were simian humanoids with distinctive patagia who were known for being master mariners and famed for their sailing skills and love of their ships and the sea. "So far we've charted a new island in the Spice Archipelago, fished for dragon turtles, visited the Pearl Citadel of the sea-elves, and escaped from pirates no less than seven times. And this voyage isn't over yet. What fun!"

- Bansh Midnightchild, a hadozee deckhand of another world

Description
While their nicknames described them as apes, hadozee were taller and skinnier than apes,  and some said that they looked more like baboons. Hadozee were covered in fur of all varieties of brown &mdash;from light tawny to dark chocolate  &mdash;and it was so thick that they really had no great need to wear clothing. Their faces were surrounded by a shaggy mane. A hadozee's snout protruded outwards from its face,   and had a mouth full of small but sharp teeth  and a some long fangs. Their eyes were black and tended to sparkle.

Hadozee had no tails. Their feet were fully prehensile, complete with opposable thumbs, allowing them to hold onto things with both hands and feet.

The most distinctive physical feature of the hadozee were their patagial wing flaps, much like a bat or flying squirrel. This membrane of skin hung loosely between the arms and legs,    from wrists to ankles. When hadozee raised their arms, the membrane stretched taut.

Hadozee had a moderately stooped posture, so it was not obvious that they stood about tall when fully upright. Some could even reach in full, outstretched height. Muscularly built, they usually weighed roughly.

While not needing clothing, hadozee often wore harnesses or belts to hold their tools and weapons. Regular clothing would interfere with their wing flaps and they required armor specially tailored to them, of course. They would wear clothes when cold, when visiting an unfamiliar port, or on ceremonial occasions, and preferred a special form of caftan with slit sides.

Abilities
Hadozee were nimble and dexterous, with excellent balance and natural climbing skills that meant they were able to scale poles, ropes, trees, and most walls with ease and walk across any platform no matter how narrow and without fear. These skills made them especially suited for life on sailing vessels of all kinds. With four effective hands, they could climb and carry items at the same time and were not vulnerable to attack while scaling a surface. They had a natural inclination toward all manner of melee weapons and were ambidextrous. They could even fight with a weapon held by a foot!

When the arm-flaps were stretched tight, a hadozee could leap into the air and glide for limited but impressive distances, such as between the rigging of two different parts of a ship, though they were not capable of true flight. Should a hadozee happen to fall, they could glide and land safely, over any distance. The wings had secondary benefit—they could wrap them around their bodies for warmth.

The hadozee also had magically heightened fight-or-flight reflexes; with their quick reactions, they could evade attacks and mitigate injuries.

Personality
Having an inherent love of travel and exploration, hadozee were eager to see the world by sailing over the horizon. For them, a life well lived was one in which they'd seen and experienced all that they could. A few hadozee focused this drive on specific goals, such as journeying to uncover magical secrets, the lore of fallen empires, or just hidden pirate treasure. A hadozee adventurer was not too different from a regular hadozee. While many hadozee felt called to the sea at some time in their lives, those who journeyed inland were considered a little odd by other hadozee but no more than that—"to each their own" was a hadozee saying.

Most hadozee were actively curious and were unquenchable optimists. This latter quality lent itself to a tendency to make good-humored jokes in even desperate circumstances, though some could have a dark or bitter sense of humor, at least when it suited the situation. They were very expressive&mdash;intensely so&mdash;whether laughing or loudly whooping when having a good time, and fang-baring and snarling when angered. However, they also had a reputation for rudeness, being known to produce torrents of insults and derisive or disrespectful remarks and for having sharp tongues that could make even an experienced sailor blush. They moderated this tendency only around their employers and elves. They truly loved elves, and this resulted in flattery towards them.

Nevertheless, they were a highly peaceful people who fought only when they had to, but when they did, they did not shy away from battle for they were natural warriors and were quite comfortable in the midst of a mêlée. A friendly brawl was good a bit of fun and they rarely held grudges.

Hadozee were naturally as intelligent as humans; only people who didn't know better treated them as mere apes. They were practically minded and wanted only to be happy and to live and work in peace and let others do the same. They were not philosophers and gave little consideration to ethics and morals, being more neutral in nature. They loved operating ships and looked forward to their shipboard tasks and chores, not considering them inconveniences. This gave them a reputation as hard workers who were diligent and got the job done, as well as as courageous and capable fighters. Although a few unprincipled sorts might exploit this, most captains considered them quite highly and welcomed them on their crews. They were respected across all the known crystal spheres.

Combat
Capable of wielding any weapon a human could, hadozee seemed to favor longswords, spears, or halberds or cutlasses and falchions if at sea. They could wield a weapon in each hand, or foot, with ease. However, their wings made it impossible to carry shields, so they only used bucklers.

They favored a mobile style and a common tactic was to climb to higher ground then leap or glide down on their foes. They rarely killed an opponent and were quick to forgive offense.

Hadozee who had spent time on spelljammers&mdash;which was nearly all of them in wildspace&mdash;had learned how to use the gravity planes of vessels to their advantage. While they would glide towards an enemy vessel and seek a place to land, they knew how to dive into a plane, change their orientation, glide under and back over the vessel, and land on the other side oriented just how they wanted to be to attack.

Society
Hadozee were known as wanderers and sailors on the oceans of various worlds and in wildspace as mercenary spelljammer crews who would hire themselves out to various vessels. However, they had no spelljamming capability of their own as a race and relied on being hired by other spacefaring races. As young adults, hadozee formed groups of 20 to 30 persons, who trained together as a mercenary company until ready to join the crew of a spelljamming vessel. Both sexes served equally as sailors and mercenaries. Most were shipmates; they were common among spelljammer crews. Hadozee warriors were often mercenaries, and some would even work with pirates. Companies of hadozee warriors took flamboyant names like the Jammin' Wingbats, the Night Howlers, and the Soaring Hadozees. Finally, the elite hadozee explorers wandered wildspace in search of adventure and wealth, and regularly worked as navigators on spelljammers; to them, wildspace and the Astral Plane were worth exploring.

Only after they were too old to sail did hadozee retire and settle on a world. There, they mated and focused on raising their young. Children were raised communally, often being left by their parents with adults of a shared ship-name for up to months at a time.

Hadozee enjoyed living in large groups together and slept in hammocks in large communal houses. Groups would pool their money to purchase and keep up a large communal dwelling house, sometimes called a 'Hadozee House', and thereby have a place to easily host visiting hadozee. A hadozee who arrived in a port with no Hadozee House would likely stay onboard ship. The hadozee in these houses were hospitable to these visiting hadozee, always willing to listen to the latest stories from sea or space. In return, hadozee visitors chipped in on rent or helped with repairs and chores as needed. Hadozee maintained their living quarters well; if hadozee tenants left a house, they left it in much better condition than when they first rented it. Mothers, visitors, and hadozee recovering from injuries would help care for any children left there. Grown hadozee remembered these Hadozee Houses as happy homes with many new faces and stories.

Away from their homes, hadozee could be encountered singly or in a bands of up to four. They could also be found piloting their own seagoing ships with all-hadozee crews, including crewmembers, cabin boys, mates, first mate (often a ranger), and captain.

Language
The native tongue of the hadozee consisted of low vocalizations, barks, and hoots, but it also used a small amount of body language that was easy for non-hadozee to learn. They were adept linguists and enjoyed learning many other languages, and they were happy to find a non-hadozee who could speak their own. Spelljamming hadozee were familiar with the languages of most of the spacefaring races.

Hadozee did not use surnames. Instead, they created a "ship-name" for themselves, derived from the name of a vessel on which they took great pride to serve. If that vessel's name was feminine, then they treated it as if a mother, and included a word like 'child', 'son', or 'daughter' to reflect this. For example, a female hadozee named Dashi might call herself Dashi Pearldaughter after serving aboard a vessel named The Lady of the Pearl. Hadozee who had served aboard the same respected vessels might consider themselves stronger family than even true kin. However, they did not change their names with their ships; the ship, crew, captain, or voyage had to be truly great to be worthy of a new name.
 * Example masculine names: Bansh, Darsh, Falth, Garsh, Grath, Groh, Harth, Krath, Marn, Polth
 * Example feminine names: Bahasha, Bannithi, Dashi, Kalla, Kasha, Mara, Risha, Yasha, Yetha
 * Example ship-names: Dawnwarrior of The Dawn Warrior, Midnightchild of The Midnight Lady, Nightdream of The Dream of the Night, Pearldaughter of The Lady of the Pearl, Swiftson of The Swift Lady, Swordstorm of The Sword in the Storm, Wavedancer of The Wave Dancer

Religion
Most hadozee were not very religious, though they did offer respect to the gods and goddesses of the sea venerated by the sailors alongside whom they served. However, a hadozee might choose to revere a single sea god after serving alongside a shipboard cleric.

Relations
On the seas, the hadozee favored working on elf ships, for elf employers, or with elf crewmates. In wildspace, spelljamming elves often had hadozee crewmen and mercenaries; they gladly employed them and paid them well, but elven arrogance meant they did not view them as equals of Tel-quessir. Otherwise, hadozee had good relations with most people, except those who would not do a hard day's work. They'd met many different peoples in the journeys.

Ecology
Hadozee reached adulthood earlier than humans but had similar lifespans. They had similar dietary and survival needs as humans, but they were less picky about their food, being content to eat insects and grubs, and even human food if they had to. Similarly, while they preferred tropical climates, they could survive in chilly environments by bundling up in warm clothes when needed.

Lands
Owing to their seafaring society, hadozee were invariably found on the coasts, in port cities, and on the sea itself. They did prefer warmer weather and tropical climates, and hence rarely took work on ships sailing to temperate climates, let alone to arctic regions. One home of spelljamming hadozee was the Rock of Bral.

History
They were native to the world of Yazir, a world with a temperate to warm climate. Early in their evolutionary history, the ancestors of the hadozee were mammalian tree-dwelling creatures about the size of housecats who'd evolved wing-like flaps to glide between branches. They tended to be timid and were hunted by their bigger natural predators on the ground.

In one apocryphal story, a wizard commanding a small fleet of spelljammers arrived at Yazir and ordered their apprentices to capture dozens of the hadozees' animal ancestors in magical traps. Aboard the ships, the wizard dosed them with an experimental elixir that caused them to grow larger, stand upright, and even become self-aware, but it also heightening their fight-or-flight reflex. The wizard's twisted aim was to develop an army of engineered warriors, and sell them as slaves. But the hadozees rebelled and slew the evil wizard, stole all the remaining elixir, and escaped back to Yazir. In these efforts, they were aided by the apprentices, who'd come to like and respect them. The hadozees used the elixir to change more of their kin, until, in a few generations, all were sentient humanoid beings. Finally, they left their world and went to space, where they remained for centuries. This was however untrue.

In any case, they later left that world and its predators, as wildspace was where they felt most at home. They travelled through space for many generations.

For seafaring hadozee, whatever homeland they once had was forgotten, nor did they particularly care. In their cultural memory, they had always been asail.

There was a long tradition of hadozee serving as spelljammer crewmen or mercenaries for the elves of wildspace. This tradition extended back to the time of the Unhuman Wars, when the elves soon realized that the hadozee were far more principled and cultured than the orcs and other "unhumans" with which they had first grouped them. The hadozee and the elves formed an alliance, with the hadozee aiding the elves in the war effort. They gladly served on elven vessels ever since, considering it a high honor.

Notable Hadozee

 * Boatswain Tarto, a training officer at Spelljammer Academy
 * Shrii Hallek, manager of the Man-o'-War inn and restaurant in Bral

Background
The hadozee are based on the Yazirian race, also called Hadozee, appearing in the Star Frontiers RPG also from TSR, first published in 1982. They were later adapted as the Underdark-dwelling shadowperson/shadowpeople for the Dragonlance setting in Monstrous Compendium: Dragonlance Appendix and as the spelljamming hadozee for the Spelljammer setting in Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix 1, both in 1990 for 2-edition Dungeons & Dragons. In 2005, for 3.5 edition, Stormwrack adapted the hadozee again, now for a seafaring setting. The Stormwrack Art Gallery twice refers to them as "hazaru"; if not an error, this may have been an intended new name for the revised race or another race that was merged with or replaced by the hadozee at the planning stage. Finally, in 2022, for 5 edition, the spelljamming hadozee were revised again for the new Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. They were also given an unnecessary creation story that was met with outcry for a perceived racist metaphor, which was removed in subsequent errata, with an official statement. It is included above for reference.

The above article covers both spelljamming and seafaring hadozee. The relationship between the space-dwelling and planet-dwelling hadozee is unknown, but they are undoubtedly the same; likely, hadozee who settled on various planets took to sailing the seas. Moreover, while spelljamming hadozee are known in Realmspace, the seafaring hadozee are not, but the lore is included here for completeness.

The nickname "deck ape" is likely derived from United States Navy slang for a boatswain's mate or other seaman roles, owing to the skills and work required.

Appearances

 * Modules
 * Spelljammer Academy • Light of Xaryxis
 * Novels
 * The Maelstrom's Eye
 * Card Games
 * AD&D Trading Cards