Ancestries

After rolling for attributes, one of the most impactful decisions you can make is your ancestry. Your ancestry tells you what species and culture your character comes from, and it shapes how your character interacts with the world.

Ancestry List

Ancestral Gameplay

Your ancestry includes several items that determine how you play the game. This includes your ancestral keywords, your movement speed, your native languages, and your vision.

Ancestral Keywords

Your ancestry grants you your essence keyword, as well as your creature keywords.

Move Speed

Your base movement speed is based on your ancestry, but modified by your Agility.

Native Languages

Your ancestry tells you which languages you speak natively. Unless otherwise noted, you cannot read or write your languages. A high Logic score can alter your languages, as well as your ability to read and write.

Vision

Vision comes in 4 types in ITD&TD, and it is based on your ancestry.

Normal vision is the baseline human mode of sight: perception based on visible light, color, contrast, and motion. It performs best in direct illumination and becomes progressively less effective as light levels drop, losing detail first and then shape definition. In low light, only silhouettes and broad movement can be reliably distinguished, while darkness removes visual information entirely.

Normal vision is highly reliable and precise in good lighting conditions, allowing fine detail work, reading, combat awareness, and spatial judgment. However, it provides no additional information beyond what is physically visible, and it does not reveal hidden, recent, or environmental traces that fall outside direct sight. Chances are good, if you are reading this, you are familiar with normal vision.

Low-light vision extends the eye’s ability to function in dim environments by amplifying limited available light and improving contrast sensitivity. It does not create new light or penetrate darkness, but it allows shapes, movement, and basic environmental detail to remain readable in conditions that would otherwise be near-black for humans.

In practice, uncertain light remains usable out to greater distances, and the transition from “visible” to “dark” is less abrupt. Torches, moonlight, and reflected illumination carry further and retain more detail, though true darkness still eliminates vision entirely. This type of sight is best understood as improved efficiency in low illumination rather than a separate sensory mode.

In terms of gameplay, creatures with low-light vision function the same as creatures with normal vision, however any uncertain light listed for a light source is doubled. Thus, if a spell creates “30 feet of clear light, and 30 feet of uncertain light after”, creatures with low-light vision treat it as 30 feet of clear light, and 60 feet of uncertain light after.

Infravision perceives differences in heat across surfaces and the surrounding environment, translating thermal variation into visual contrast. Warm objects stand out against cooler backgrounds, while airflow, recent movement, and living bodies create readable thermal shapes. It does not rely on visible light and functions independently of illumination, but it requires temperature differences to produce meaningful detail.

In stable, cool environments such as stone corridors or underground spaces, infravision becomes highly effective, allowing the detection of living presence, hidden spaces, and recent passage. However, in environments where heat is uniform or chaotic, such as deserts, furnaces, or heavily fire-lit rooms, thermal contrast degrades, reducing clarity and creating visual noise rather than useful detail.

Ultravision perceives variations in how surfaces reflect and interact with ultraviolet light, emphasizing biological residue, surface chemistry, and environmental trace patterns. It does not create illumination or reveal objects directly in darkness, but instead highlights differences in materials and recent interaction with the environment.

Organic matter, such as plants, skin, and natural oils, tends to produce strong contrast under ultravision, while residues like sap, sweat, and other biological traces remain visible beyond what normal sight would detect. Sterile or heavily processed environments appear comparatively flat and information-poor. In darkness, ultravision provides little benefit unless some form of UV-reflective or ambient light is present, making it a tool for detail interpretation rather than navigation.

Infravision and Ultravision are not forms of darkvision. Instead, they allow certain ancestries to perceive aspects of their surroundings that others cannot.

These senses are not a replacement for normal sight. For example, although dwarves and gnomes can use Infravision to navigate underground, they perceive only differences in heat. Fine details are easily lost, cool objects may blend into their surroundings, and creatures that produce little or no heat, such as certain undead, may appear only as empty voids against the background. Likewise, sudden heat sources, such as torches or campfires, can overwhelm their vision, making it temporarily unreliable.

Because of these limitations, even ancestries with Infravision or Ultravision typically carry lanterns or torches when exploring. These senses are best used to gather additional information rather than to replace ordinary sight.

Very few creatures in Cerrix can see perfectly in complete darkness. Attempting to travel or fight without a light source is always at a disadvantage, regardless of the vision type you possess.

Ancestry Features

All ancestries have features they are able to take advantage of. For example, all elves are immune to the paralyzing touch of undead creatures.

Note: Not all features are beneficial. For example, gnomes and halflings suffer experience penalties when playing classes with the Soldier keyword. Regardless, all ancestry features must be recorded and followed.

Class Keyword Feature

There are 4 class keywords: Adept, Arcanist, Priest, and Soldier. Once you select a class, you gain the benefits of the class keyword feature based on one of your class’s keywords. Think of your class keyword feature as an extra ancestry feature tailored to specific classes.

If you gain more than one class keyword, either because the class has multiple class keywords or because you are a multi-class character, you must select only one of those keywords to gain the feature from.

Age

Age should be randomly rolled to determine how old your character is at the start of play. Age has an impact on your attributes. Once you determine your starting age, apply all age-related attribute adjustments from youngest to oldest. More information about age-related attribute adjustments can be found in Chapter 12.

Ancestral Information

Your ancestry also includes roleplay information such as normal height and weight ranges, age breakpoints, and methods of generating these items randomly.