A Scourge-Born is of about Human height but broader and heavier, with thick, dense muscle and a hide-like skin that has turned aside more blades than any armour. Almost every adult is covered in scars, old white seams over newer pink ones, and they wear them openly. The features are sharp and hard, the brow heavy. The eyes are often of two colours, one brown and one grey, say, and in many they glow faintly, amber or red, in the gloom; they are made for catching movement in chaos.

They wear armour of beast hide and scavenged metal, patched and repatched, because gear on the Scourge rots and rusts in days. They move in a constant, restless watchfulness, never with their backs to an open space. Their voices are harsh and loud, made to carry over a plane that is never quiet, and they smell of sweat, iron, and smoke.

They live across the knife-edged mountains, wreck-filled valleys, and thorn thickets of the Scourge, in war-bands that hold whatever ground their strength can hold. Dwellings are temporary or carried, because walls on the Scourge fall.

Their societies are militaristic and hierarchical, built on strength alone: a leader is whoever can defeat every challenger, and holds the place until defeated. Alliances last as long as they profit both sides, and betrayal is expected rather than resented. They are aggressive, paranoid, and hyper-vigilant, and they see strangers as threats to be removed or resources to be used. They have no concept of mercy; to kill a wounded enemy is wisdom, not cruelty.

A Scourge-Born heals with a speed that astonishes travellers: a cut that would lay a Human up for a week closes in a day. They feel little pain, because pain is a distraction they cannot afford, and they fight on with wounds that would drop anyone else.

They grow up fast and fighting; a child is trained to arms as soon as it can hold one, and a long life is rare, because few Scourge-Born die of age. The dead are stripped of whatever gear still works, and the rest is left to the beasts.

On the Scourge a single undamaged sword can buy a kingdom, and the Scourge-Born will trade, fight, or betray for good gear from the Material Plane. A traveller can sometimes buy a warlord’s protection for a while, and should expect it to end without notice. Their danger is plain: most meetings with them end in a fight.

Material Plane tales call the Scourge a hell and its people demons, and both names are wrong: the Scourge-Born are a people adapted to a world of constant danger, not wicked by nature. Mortals who follow the fire of Ignis or the motion of Zephyr, the two currents that drive the plane, are said to admire them as proof that pressure makes the strong. The tale that a Scourge-Born cannot feel pain at all is an exaggeration; they feel it, and ignore it.

Sellsword captains of Caeldon who have crossed say the best fighters they ever saw were Scourge-Born, and the worst allies; camp-fire tales tell of a company that hired a Scourge-Born band for one battle and was sold to the enemy by sunset.