SMALL, FURRY AND COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF LEAVING WELL ENOUGH ALONE

The average sensible little person lives somewhere comfortable, grows vegetables and develops strong opinions about people who arrive wearing armour.

The Lepuna have apparently missed the sensible part.

Rabbit-like, energetic and possessed of an almost pathological enthusiasm for life, they live in warm underground burrows where silence is regarded with suspicion and somebody is generally singing, arguing, eating, playing music or opening another bottle.

They live quickly because they do not live terribly long.

That knowledge does not make them sombre.

Quite the reverse.

Lepuna throw themselves into things. Journeys. Friendships. Parties. Feuds. Romances. New hobbies. Bad ideas. Extremely bad ideas which somebody has nevertheless described as an adventure.

Fifth Fantasy: The Lepuna provides a complete playable package for adding these small, rabbit-like people to your Fifth Edition-compatible fantasy game.

This is not just a set of basic species statistics followed by three paragraphs about carrots.

You get the Lepuna themselves, their internal variations, backgrounds, feats, equipment and magical items: enough material to make them feel like an actual people with a culture and peculiarities of their own.

LIFE IS SHORT. ORDER ANOTHER BOTTLE.

Lepuna society is busy.

Very busy.

Their cosy earthen settlements are active at all hours. Music is everywhere. Food and drink are social necessities rather than luxuries. Conversation happens loudly and often simultaneously.

A Lepuna settlement should feel less like a sleepy pastoral village and more like somebody has put an entire pub underground and forgotten to establish closing hours.

That energy comes partly from temperament and partly from perspective.

Lepuna lives are short enough that putting something off until next decade has limited appeal.

They want to see things.

Try things.

Meet people.

Fall in love.

Learn the song.

Drink the wine.

Go over the hill everybody says is dangerous.

Find out why it is dangerous.

Then return home with a scar, a better story and something living in the backpack.

That makes them natural adventurers.

Not because every Lepuna dreams of treasure or heroism, but because curiosity and urgency are dreadful qualities to combine with a road leading somewhere unknown.

NOT HALFLINGS WITH LONG EARS

The Lepuna fill some of the same physical space as the traditional fantasy “little peoples”, but their character is quite different.

They are not defined primarily by comfort.

They are defined by appetite for experience.

A Lepuna may love their burrow deeply and still disappear for six months because somebody mentioned a city where the bridges are built upside-down.

They can be cheerful without being naïve, sociable without being harmless and impulsive without being stupid.

Small does not mean passive.

Cute does not mean defenceless.

And rabbit-like definitely does not mean somebody else's familiar.

A Lepuna adventurer might be a scout, thief, travelling musician, priest, warrior, hedge-magician, merchant, explorer or whatever else the wider rules allow.

Their culture gives the character a starting point rather than choosing the rest of their life for them.

A COMPLETE CHARACTER SUITE

The supplement expands beyond the basic Lepuna template with material intended to help you actually build one as a character.

Inside are:

• A complete Lepuna racial/species template

• Lepuna subraces

• New backgrounds

• Lepuna-specific feats

• Special equipment

• New magical items

That broader treatment matters.

A playable people feel thin when their entire identity consists of ability adjustments, movement rate and darkvision or the conspicuous absence thereof.

Culture shows up in what people carry.

What they make.

What they value.

What they become unusually good at.

What sorts of people emerge from different parts of their society.

What objects their adventurers bring into the world with them.

The Lepuna material gives you those extra pieces.

DIFFERENT RABBITS, DIFFERENT TROUBLE

The presence of subraces allows Lepuna characters to differ from one another at a level deeper than hat colour.

Different Lepuna communities and inheritances can produce distinct character possibilities while retaining the common identity of the people as a whole.

That makes them useful both mechanically and for world-building.

Two Lepuna characters need not be interchangeable.

One might come from a deeply settled burrow-community.

Another might belong to a population accustomed to travel or danger.

One may embody the sociable, musical reputation of the species.

Another may have spent their entire life being irritated by everybody assuming they can play a lute.

Subraces give players something to push against as well as something to embrace.

That is often where the better characters come from.

BACKGROUNDS: WHAT DID YOU DO BEFORE THIS BECAME A DUNGEON?

Race tells you what somebody is.

Background tells you what happened to them.

The included Lepuna backgrounds give characters a place inside their own society before they became professional door-openers, ruin-investigators and monster aggravators.

That distinction is important.

A character can come from a recognisably Lepuna life without being reduced to a walking species stereotype.

Perhaps they worked within the burrow.

Perhaps their experience involved travelling, trade, entertainment, craft or community obligations.

Perhaps they left home because they wanted something.

Perhaps they were encouraged to leave because everybody else wanted five minutes' peace.

A good background creates hooks.

Family.

Old companions.

Responsibilities.

Skills somebody learned before discovering that adventuring mostly consists of carrying rope and wondering where the cleric has gone.

It gives the Games Master things to bring back later.

Preferably at the least convenient moment.

FEATS FOR PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO SIT DOWN

The supplement also supplies Lepuna-themed feats.

These allow a player who wants the character's heritage to remain mechanically important to invest further into it rather than having the species choice largely disappear beneath class abilities after first level.

That can be particularly appealing with a strongly characterised people.

If your Lepuna's speed, temperament, instincts or cultural habits are central to who they are, racial feats provide another way to emphasise those qualities as the campaign develops.

Or, naturally, you can ignore them and spend every available character option becoming terrifyingly good with a polearm.

Choice remains one of the healthier traditions of role-playing games.

EQUIPMENT FOR SMALL PEOPLE WITH THEIR OWN IDEAS

One of the nicest inclusions is Lepuna equipment.

Fantasy games frequently tell us that a people has existed for centuries and then quietly assume they buy absolutely everything from the human equipment chapter.

The Lepuna have their own practical culture.

They make things.

They use things.

Their bodies, settlements, habits and preferences are different enough that some of those things should logically differ too.

Specialised equipment is where culture starts becoming tangible.

An item tells you something about the people who made it.

Why this shape?

Why this material?

Why do they carry it?

What problem was common enough that somebody invented a tool specifically to solve it?

The moment a fantasy species begins having answers to those questions, it starts feeling less like a costume option and more like part of the world.

It also gives adventurers more things to buy.

Which is important, because otherwise they simply continue saving money until somebody offers them a magic sword and the local economy collapses.

AND, OBVIOUSLY, MAGIC ITEMS

There are Lepuna-themed magical items as well.

Magic tells you a great deal about fantasy cultures.

Humans make legendary swords.

Dwarfs forge impossible armour.

Wizards fill towers with objects that explode when handled by people whose names are not written in the correct ledger.

What do Lepuna enchant?

What objects matter enough in their culture to become magical?

A species-specific collection of magical objects can become treasure, heirlooms, rewards or adventure hooks.

One might belong to the character's family.

Another may have been stolen from a burrow.

A third may be sitting in a dragon's hoard because dragons are acquisitive bastards with no respect for cultural patrimony.

Suddenly the treasure has context.

THE BURROW IS A PLACE, NOT A BURROW-SHAPED HOUSE

The image of the Lepuna home is important.

They live underground, in cosy earthen burrows.

That should change things.

Architecture follows bodies. Settlements follow habits.

A community built by small rabbit-like people need not resemble a human village after somebody lowered the ceilings.

Burrows can connect households, public spaces, storerooms, taverns and workshops in ways surface-dwellers find confusing.

Music travels through tunnels.

So does gossip.

There are probably several routes between any two places because nobody with rabbit ancestry is going to accept a single exit as good planning.

A Lepuna district inside a human city might spread under streets rather than along them.

A supposedly empty hillside could contain hundreds of inhabitants.

An army that thinks it has surrounded a Lepuna settlement may discover that it has actually surrounded six ornamental entrances while the population is leaving through a vineyard half a mile away.

You do not need a whole setting book to start doing something with those implications.

The basic idea provides plenty to play with.

THE PERFECT PEOPLE TO SEND INTO A DUNGEON

Small.

Fast.

Curious.

Used to tunnels.

This seems entirely safe.

Lepuna make a natural fit for traditional fantasy adventure because the things that define their homes and temperament also push them towards the sort of situations adventurers encounter.

A dungeon is another set of tunnels.

A ruin is somewhere nobody has properly explored.

A magical object is something nobody has tried yet.

A mysterious noise is an invitation.

A locked door is bordering upon personal insult.

That does not mean every Lepuna has to be reckless.

The interesting character may be the cautious one who has spent their entire life surrounded by people saying things such as, “How dangerous can it be?”

Presumably they became an adventurer because staying home was worse.

BARD? ROGUE? WIZARD? ABSOLUTELY.

The official artwork shows Lepuna as both a spellcaster and a musician, which captures the intended breadth nicely.

Their energetic, social culture naturally suggests certain character ideas, but the species is not locked to one role.

A travelling entertainer fits easily.

So does a nimble rogue.

A small wizard whose ears keep escaping the hood is visually hard to argue with.

A warrior becomes particularly entertaining the first time somebody mistakes height for combat ability.

Clerics, druids and rangers can draw easily on the burrow-community and natural associations.

A barbarian Lepuna is an idea everyone should be forced to consider at least once.

Tiny.

Furious.

Coming directly at your kneecaps.

EASY TO DROP INTO AN EXISTING WORLD

The Lepuna do not require you to rebuild a campaign setting around them.

Put a burrow beneath a hill.

Add a neighbourhood below an existing town.

Place a network of Lepuna communities through agricultural country.

Make them traders, musicians, vintners, guides or whatever suits the local economy.

They can be common, rare or almost unknown outside their own territory.

Perhaps everybody knows the Lepuna.

Perhaps the player character is the first one most humans in this kingdom have met.

Either works.

A new playable people earns its keep when it creates possibilities without demanding that the rest of the campaign move aside.

WHAT THIS PDF IS

Fifth Fantasy: The Lepuna is a compact digital supplement for Fifth Edition-compatible fantasy role-playing games.

It is designed for players who want a new rabbit-like little people with enough supporting material to make the choice meaningful beyond first-level statistics, and for Games Masters who want another culture to drop into their fantasy worlds.

You get the core racial/species rules together with subraces, backgrounds, feats, equipment and magical items.

What you do not get is another generic fantasy race whose entire cultural description is “they like nature”.

The Lepuna like life.

Messy, noisy, short, ridiculous life.

They are going to get as much of it as they possibly can.

FIFTH FANTASY

The Lepuna form part of the wider Fifth Fantasy range of character material for Fifth Edition-compatible games, alongside supplements such as The Brock, The Chancer, The Alchymyst and The Chronomancer.

Use the Lepuna on their own or mix them into a game using other Fifth Fantasy material.

The PDF is inexpensive, self-contained and intended to be dropped straight into an existing campaign rather than requiring another core book.

Available as a PDF download.

The burrow is warm.

The wine is open.

Somebody has started another song.

And one of the children has just asked what is beyond the mountain.

Well.

That is how these things start.