Mark of Handling Human
Ability Score Increase Your Wisdom score increases by 2, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1.
Size Medium
Speed Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Don’t get sentimental. A beast is a tool. Our role is to find the right tool for the task and to make sure they’re of the finest quality. Nature is our kingdom; never forget that we were born to rule it.
—Dalin d’Vadalis
The Mark of Handling gives its bearer a primal connection to beasts and the natural world, granting the power to calm and coax. This extends beyond purely natural animals; the mark allows its bearer to guide a hippogriff as easily as a horse.
House Vadalis
Leader: Dalin d’Vadalis
Headquarters: Foalswood (near Varna, Eldeen Reaches)
Represented by the hippogriff, House Vadalis plays an important role in daily life, offering meat, mounts, and more. Vadalis isn’t one of the most powerful houses, but its barons are generally content; they’re more interested in discovering new monstrosities than engaging in politics. The current head of the house, Dalin d’Vadalis, disdains the use of a title and has no aspirations to nobility or greatness for himself or his house.
House Vadalis breeds and trains beasts for a wide range of purposes. While the house maintains vast cattle ranches and trains horses and hounds, the Mark of Handling allows Vadalis to work with more exotic creatures as well. Griffons, hippogriffs, and even bulettes can be bred and trained. Even with the Mark of Handling, this is dangerous work; there’s a lot of turnover at the bulette ranch. But these exotic creatures aren’t enough to satisfy the most innovative members of the house, leading to the practice of magebreeding. Using dragonshard focus items, Vadalis has found ways to create magical creatures. Typically, this results in a superior version of a creature—an animal that is stronger, faster, and smarter. But rumors claim that Vadalis has crafted monsters of its own. Some rumors even insist that Vadalis is trying to magebreed better humans.
Wild Intuition
When you make a Wisdom (Animal Handling) or Intelligence (Nature) check, you can roll a d4 and add the number rolled to the ability check.
Primal Connection
You can cast the animal friendship and speak with animals spells with this trait, requiring no material component. Once you cast either spell with this trait, you can’t cast that spell with it again until you finish a short or long rest. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
The Bigger They Are
Starting at 3rd level, you can target a beast or monstrosity when you cast animal friendship or speak with animals, provided the creature’s Intelligence score is 3 or lower.
Spells of the Mark
If you have the Spellcasting or the Pact Magic class feature, the spells on the Mark of Handling Spells table are added to the spell list of your spellcasting class.
Spell Level |
Spells |
1st |
animal friendship, speak with animals |
2nd |
beast sense, calm emotions |
3rd |
beacon of hope, conjure animals |
4th |
aura of life, dominate beast |
5th |
awaken |