Race:Rito

Rito is a playable race on Hyrule Castle. As one of the fourteen common races, any player can choose to make a Rito character.

Since Rito is considered a human-race, a Rito is detested by most monster-races. The Rito will not be welcome in any society of monster-races, and will likely be attacked on sight if attempting to even approach one.

Canonically, members of this race have only appeared in The Wind Waker.

Character Creation Brief

These bird-like people don't actually hail from the Hyrulean continent proper. Their home, Dragon Roost Island, lies east of Hyrule itself, nestled within the Great Sea and can only be reached by boat or some other form of over-sea transportation. Protected by the guardian of skies, the dragon Valoo, most Rito have been gifted the power of flight from their protector. Born with only a beak, feathers, and talons, a Rito must pass a ritual known only to their race, involving a scale of Valoo, in order to gain their wings. However, once a Rito earns wings, he or she is able to travel to great heights and distances, tiring only from the longest of journeys.

Although most Rito throughout the world call Dragon Roost their home, in recent years more and more of them are born abroad, whether in Hyrule itself or other lands. Because of the distance and difficulty in travel, not all Rito can make it back to Valoo to earn their wings. Even if a Rito does eventually return to earn his or her wings, since they did not grow up with them, it takes significantly greater practice to learn to fly. Rito who cannot fly, either because they lack the means of travel or actively choose not to gain wings, are referred to as “Fokka,” a term simply meaning flightless. There is some bad blood between “proper” Rito and Fokka, which only grew worse when many Fokka sided with Ganon instead of the Hylians during Ganon’s War.

A Rito begins with a PWC of 1/1/2, having a 2 in Courage. If a Rito does not gained Winged Flight as one of its racial perks, it has the option of beginning with a PWC of 2/1/1, having a 2 in Power instead. In either case, this| starting PWC can be defied by using the Exception racial perk during character creation.

A Rito character can have up to three racial perks of choice. In addition to the general perks available to every race, a Rito can also choose from:

• Gale Aura: a defensive spell which momentarily surrounds the Rito in an vortex of wind
• Hookshot: a useful and powerful mechanic device useful for crossing large distances; it is often used by Rito who haven't mastered flight
• On the Breeze: a trait which makes it easier for the Rito to gain Wind-based treasures
• Roc's Feather: a magical item which enables the holder to jump thrice their normal height; this feather is useful mostly for Rito who can't fly
• Shuttle Loop: a technique used by winged Rito to enter flight quickly, it can also be useful in combat
• Valiance: a trait which enables the Rito to start with more Courage-based treasures
• Winged Flight: a typical adult Rito has performed the ritual to grow these fully-functional feathered wings; the few who haven’t are referred to as “Fokka” instead of Rito

Recommended Origin

If you've never made a character before and intend to make a Rito, it is highly encouraged that you base your character on the following three origins. If you've made a character before, this example origin may provide inspiration for your character.

Dragon Roost Inhabitant

Every day of your life, you've lived grown up with your people on Dragon Roost Island, a peaceful mountain community rising up out of the Eastern Sea. Earlier in your youth, you succeeded in the ritual of your youth, ascending to the peak to confront Valoo and earn the wings you now treasure. The land of Hyrule is distant to you, almost a legend. Like some of your kin, you might yearn to leave your small, safe island to see a world filled with wondrous discovery and adventure...

A Dragon Roost inhabitant begins with a PWC of 1/1/2, with 4 additional points distributed as you see fit. Its racial perks include Winged Flight , Shuttle Loop, and Valiance.

Traveling Postman

Rito are favored by the Postal Service due in large part to their ability to fly, combined with their courageous and dutiful nature. Thus it’s hardly a surprise you’re delivering letters all across the world, whether it be to Hyrule, Labrynna, or somewhere else entirely. You spend much of your time in the air, and have made an ally of the wind itself. Whether by wing or by sail, across mountains or seas, through monsters or wilderness, you always ensure your letter arrives at its destination.

A traveling postman begins with a PWC of 1/1/2, with 4 additional points distributed as you see fit. Its racial perks include Winged Flight , On the Breeze, and Profession.

Fokka Mercenary

Your parents left the land of Dragon Roost for reasons you might have never learned. Whether claimed by monsters or prisons, they were taken from you at a relatively young age, forcing you to fend for yourself before you even reached full adulthood. Whether sword or spear, you had to defend yourself with something—and in time, grew to the ways of war more than most of your kin ever could. You adapted to fighting along the ground, and have since gained magical trinkets to bolster your fighting prowess. As an adult, you are nothing like Rito—you are strong, tough, and hardened for survival. You are a Fokka, and you are proud of it. As if to scorn the people who look down their beaks at you, you may have even joined forces against their side in Ganon’s War. They certainly paid better, anyway.

A Fokka mercenary begins with a PWC of 2/1/1, with 4 additional points distributed as you see fit. Its racial perks include Hookshot , Roc’s Feather, and Valiance.

Physiology

While not vital information, the following includes further detail on the race's appearance and biology.

Rito are a two-gender race, though females are a relative minority. Females tend to have smaller stature and slightly more slender body and facial features, among other discernible differences.

Rito produce in the normal way of a two-gender race, and like Hylians, usually only have a single child at a time. True to their avian nature, the child usually spends several weeks as an egg before hatching into an infant. A Rito ages at a rate comparable to a Hylian, usually reaching a state of adulthood after 15-20, with the maximum expected age being around 100 years. An average adult Rito tends to be a few inches taller than the average Hylian, but due to a slender frame and bird-like hollow bones, usually weighs only a third of their weight (30 to 100 lbs, or 12 to 45 kg).

A Rito's body is mostly colored in feathers, with human-like hair on the scalp. Males almost always have brown feathers and white hair, while females almost always have white feathers and brown hair. A Rito's Hylian-like eyes usually have red-irises, on either side ofa sharp beak replacing other races' mouth and nose. Rito have pointed ears like Hylians, but they are usually more subdued and less noticeable.

Rito who have gained wings have these wings function similarly to natural sleeves when not in use, wrapping around the Rito's arms. A Rito flies by slipping his hands into these "sleeves," thereby granting him full control of the wings and enabling him or her to fly.

Although Rito are capable of being omnivorous, their diet will preferably consist almost entirely of fish, or occasionally other game.

Culture

While not vital information, the following includes further detail on the race's habitats and society.

For millennia, the center of Rito culture has revolved around their race’s Patron Deity, Valoo. Their homeland of Dragon Roost Island is even named after him. Since time immemorial, the immortal dragon has kept the race’s best interests at heart, and gone to great lengths to protect and guide them. One of the most unique aspects of the Rito race, their wings, only grow when a Rito personally visits Valoo and acquires one of his magical scales. In return for all this, the Rito absolutely revere and worship Valoo, protecting him and providing all that he needs. He is as a god living among them, and any Rito who doesn’t revere Valoo is considered sacrilegious and evil. It is largely for this reason that any Fokka—flightless Rito who have never visited Valoo—are seen as so low in the society of Dragon Roost. Their apparent unwillingness to visit Valoo is often seen as a terrible sin which cannot be forgiven. Rito often consider Fokka entirely separate from themselves, but the feeling is not always mutual, as most Fokka wish to fly and share Rito values, but either can’t or won’t make the pilgrimage.

Rito initially spoke the language of Valoo, which is now called Ancient Hylian. As their population grew, it became increasingly difficult for common Rito to make much contact with Valoo. Meanwhile contact with Gorons and Hylians made it increasingly useful to speak Hylian, the language common in Hyrule. Over the decades which followed, Rito have almost completely switch to the Hylian language, with only a few still speaking Ancient Hylian.

Although Rito revere Valoo as their deity, common day-to-day tasks on Dragon Roost Island are governed by a monarch referred to as the Rito Chieftain. Each Chieftain rules for most of his or her life, and is succeeded by one of his or her children who will in turn serve for most of their life. While the Chieftain is the ultimate authority on most subjects, past Chieftains have created parliaments and other organizations to run most matters. It is very difficult for a Chieftain to have absolute control over organizations established by his ancestors, and thus with each successive generation, the Chieftain becomes slightly less influential in governmental matters. The current monarch, Chief Komali, is the son of the man who established the Postal Service.

Rito as a whole are known for their sense of duty, and their courage. This perceived trait is bolstered even more by the fact most of the world only sees Rito in the form of Postmen, one of the most dutiful and intense jobs in the Light World.

History

While not vital information, the following includes further detail on the race's origins and development.

Ancient fossils suggest that thousands and thousands of years ago, an ice age tore through the ecosystem of the planet. It is believed this sudden change in climate caused an unnamed aquatic race to divert into a branched evolution, which at the very least created what eventually would become five separate races: Parella, Tokay, Lizalfos, Zora, and the Rito themselves. While the aquatic races kept to the seas, and the reptilian races adapted to jungles, the race that would become known as Rito wandered onto the shores of a mountainous island and evolved to meet this ecosystem’s demands. It is on this island that the dragon deity Valoo was first believed to reside. For reasons lost to history and seemingly the deity’s own memory, he became the Patron Deity of this race, though many presume it is because he gave them the gift of flight. Even today, thousands and thousands of years later, every single Rito must venture on a pilgrimage to meet Valoo, and gain one of his scales in person to gain his or her wings. Rito evolution and adaption seems to have even adapted to the use of these wings, as their bodies have become drastically lighter than any of the other races who share their ancestry, making it easier to fly.

At some point well after meeting Valoo, Rito began to write and record their own history. Centuries of extensive records are archived and available to the current chieftain. For numerous generations, the people have lived peacefully here, but were long isolated from the rest of the world. Even with the gift of flight, it was foolish for them to attempt to fly into open oceans.

Within the past few centuries, Rito were beginning to construct larger and more capable sea-faring vessels from which they could make perch. They knew from Valoo that other islands did indeed exist, and were becoming increasingly interested in finding them – but even as their ship technology was rapidly advancing, numerous expeditions found little evidence of Valoo’s proclamations.

It was around this time of expansion that, ironically, a foreign ship came upon Dragon Roost. The Gorons of the vessel were abandoning a land they had called Hyrule in search of an island they believed to be to the east of their homeland. It was through this meeting that the Rito finally were able to learn of the vast world which existed in the seas beyond their coasts—from Hyrule, to Labrynna, Holodrom, and other even more exotic locations. A handful of these Gorons would up staying on Dragon Roost to teach and learn from the isolated Rito tribe.

Now that they knew the nearest continent, Hyrule, was west of them a Rito expedition set out for the continent. By making shore near the Hyrulean settlement of Windfall Island of the coast of Hyrule proper, Rito were able to make firsthand contact with Hylians, Zora, and the numerous other friendly races of Hyrule, and eventually the lands beyond it as well. Trade routes were soon set up between Hyrule and Dragon Roost, allowing not only mercantile exchanging, but even tourist travel. As positive interactions connected their two races, Hylians became friends with Rito, and vice versa.

Each people were fascinated with the other, but, interactions where not wholly positive. Rito as a whole had become dependent on the ability to fly, and thus dependent upon their deity Valoo. As Rito explored and inhabited lands further and further away from him, some began to lead lives where they could never make the pilgrimage back to their patron. As if to separate themselves from these ‘lower’ and ‘sacrilegious’ people, Rito called them Fokka—“flightless”—and as a whole treated them as second-class citizens. Fokka in time became alienated from ‘proper’ Rito, and the influence of the more populous flyers spread their negative view of Fokka throughout the world, causing them to be seen as low and dirty for no reason other than their inability to fly and inability to make a pilgrimage.

By pure happenstance, in their avian exploration of the world beyond their borders, a Rito re-discovered a race of people long believed to be mere myth. The Wind Tribe, an elusive and highly-magical race that had once been Hylian, was rediscovered—of all places—in the sky. They inhabited a single slab of floating earth christened Skyloft, which no purely terrestrial people could reach. The Wind Tribe preferred to remain as isolated as they had been for countless generations, believing themselves to be physically and spiritually above the rest of the world. Perhaps because Rito themselves were people of the wind, they did willingly interact with a few select diplomats of the race—a condition which remains to this day.

Shortly after the Wind Tribe was discovered, a century ago to this day, a civil war broke out between Northern Hyrule, Southern Hyrule, and the Gerudo Kingdom. In this conflict, Dragon Roost and indeed most Rito sided squarely with the northern forces. Infamously, Fokka sided almost exclusively with either Southern Hyrule or the Gerudo Kingdom, deepening the rift between Fokka and Rito which continued even in the aftermath of the war. When this war, Imprisoning War, finally came to a close, the majority of Rito and all of Dragon Roost Island had yet to experience battle directly. Compared to their allies in Hyrule who were still recovering, Rito were able to spend the next few decades in complete prosperity.

By order of the chieftain, the Rito of Dragon Island eventually founded and began to maintain an artificial series of structures—platforms—which together became known as the Rito Bridge. These platforms extended in strings both east and west from Dragon Roost Island, another tiny platform was erected in the open sea for a Rito to rest its wings, and possibly rest the night. This “bridge” extended both east and west, effectively connecting Dragon Roost Island both to Windfall Island in the west, and the recently-settled Goron Island in the east.

While the Rito Bridge was still in progress, a joint effort between the governing Chieftan of Dragon Roost and the current King of Hyrule in Castle Town was proposed—an organized system of carriers to deliver letters or small parcels quickly over long distances, useable by anyone. This system was eventually founded as the Postal Service, headquartered in Dragon Roost, but with offices eventually serving throughout Hyrule and gradually expanding into much of the Great Sea. It begun service almost as soon as the Rito Bridge was functional, consisting of many flying postmen who made use of the new route. As the Hyrulean Kingdom was both downsizing and struggling to recover in the war’s aftermath, most postmen ended up being Rito. Over time, other races would join in the service, with most of them either utilizing Mounts, Loftwings, or Wing Tunics to travel great distances quickly.

In the years which followed, the Postal Service expanded to eventually include lands as distant as Isle of Frost, Labrynna, Holodrum, and even Crescent Island. Rito and their culture expanded as well, and the economy of Dragon Roost was entering a golden age of growth.

Nearly two decades ago today, Ganon’s War broke out in Southern Hyrule. Unlike the previous conflict, Rito were much more heavily involved, even if they were not frequently on the frontlines. Rito postmen were instrumental in carrying intelligence and orders between allied forces, and their abilities of flight were put to use as scouts and sentries. Most famously, a Rito scout squad directly enabled the mission which recaptured Ruto from Ganon’s forces. Most infamously, many Fokka have once again joined Ganon’s forces against the allies of Dragon Roost.

Not all Fokka have joined Ganon, however, though there remains a powerful stigma against them. Many peaceful Fokka rightfully fear the possibility of internment camps for their kind, but, thankfully, this has yet to happen.

As the war simmers in the modern day, Rito continue to be instrumental in the allied effort, and are renowned as dutiful postal workers.