Feral is a Shifter – a race of humanoids descended from a blend of humans and dangerous lycanthropes. Fierce, independent, and wild-spirited, some shifters succumb to their animal side and live lawlessly in the wild. Those that choose to participate in civilization often struggle to control the savagery that dwells in their blood.
Feral looks fairly human, but with distinctively bestial features such as sharp teeth, a flat animal like noses, large attentive eyes, pointed ears, and much more hair than is typical for any human.
Feral was a member of an elusive tribe of shifters that lived in the unforgiving jungles of Chult, but fell prey to slavers who sold him and his tribe to an illicit hunting club whose twisted and entitled members considered everything but the classic civilized races as mere animals to be relentlessly hunted and killed for sport. Forced to be prey in a nightmarish safari, Feral fled into the dense jungle doing his best to escape. Inevitably becoming exhausted and cornered, Feral sensed his impending death as he listened to the hunters loudly closing in on all sides.
What happened next was like a memory from a fevered dream. Feral recalls the sudden impossible silence of the forest, an unmistakable sense of dread and power, and an inescapable darkness that enveloped him like a thick, rolling fog. Time seemed to stop. Then the darkness (or something in it) spoke.
“Your life as you knew it is about to end, little prey. But I hear in the song of your soul the unfulfilled screams of the predator, not quarry. That is a furor I would see returned a hundredfold upon the world. I offer you salvation in exchange for debt. Swear to serve not the divine but the boon of the wild, and I shall anoint you with the primal power to challenge nature’s foes.”
He doesn’t remember how he accepted, but he must have done just that, for the next thing Feral remembers is being hurtled down through waves of energy, falling through vivid images of the world stretching back to the beginning of time before plunging into dark, cold, brackish water.
Struggling to swim to the surface, Feral found himself floating in the water where a Chult jungle river flows into the busy merchant routes of the Shining Sea. Rescued by a passing merchant ship headed for Waterdeep, Feral has joined this Waterdeep adventuring group to advance his new oath.
Feral is now a guardian of the natural world. But even with this mandate, Feral must decide: Does he continue the struggle to suppress his predatory instincts, or completely surrender to its wild power? Does he disregard the past in favor of the future, or seek revenge on the hunters and slavers that evilly hunt his kind for sport? Does he just accept the mysterious primal bargain he has entered into, or does he peel back the veil to discover who (or what) he has entered into a deal with?
Imbued with savage primal power, Feral is a mobile roadblock capable of withstanding terrible punishment and shaking off disabling blows. Foes dare not ignore his threats, as his attacks drag opponents around the battlefield, slow, and distract his enemies. When bloodied, he abandons all restraint and lets the savage predator within guide his fury. Feral is Ripper… Tearer… Slasher… Defender. He is the Teeth of the Darkness, the Vendetta of the Wild. He is Fury… and Storm… and Power! He IS Feral.
