Starkads have the above-mentioned supernatural size, strength, agility, healing properties, pain resistance, and innate ability to sense the needs of their crops and livestock. They also have the ability to choose their kin or allies and take wounds for them; they must first take these into their home for a night of hospitality before they can do this.

Starkads are said to have three lives, though in truth, they can simply take two wounds that would be fatal to another being and still survive. This includes decapitation, combustion, and crushing. In game terms, it means they can experience a triple-exceptional wound/stun/hit or double-exceptional stun/wound twice before it actually kills them. Their hegnhic power makes their weapons stronger when used defensively (+3 parry, weapons never break), and when defending their homes, their prowess increases (+3). They can turn the reed stalks in their homes into spears as a last resort. Starkads with more than two arms (four is common) use as manys words as they can carry to fight. Starkads are supernaturally impressive to the rich and powerful when in their homes, as a defense against exploiters, invaders, and conmen.

They are skilled poets.

Starkads are a warrior nation who fiercely protect their homesteads. They live in massive farms that span along the coastline and include fisheries, scallop beds, grazing lands, and crop fields. Every homestead is a community of at least ten families, usually more, all led by a council of elders with representatives from each family, from any workers not affiliated with the families, and from the outlying communities of non-starkads.

In the past, starkads were raiders, feudalist warriors, knights, and brutally patriarchal. Their lords gave way to merchants, and eventually, they overthrew them. Banded together, the starkad farmer families and workers threw out the lords, the merchants, and the bandits. They built a new society. Their farms produce the food and goods for what they need; they share whatever is left over with non-starkads that live in the area. The main aspect of their former culture that is leftover is the holmgang , a traditional duel fought between starkads who have slighted each other's honor.

Starkad children are raised by their families, going to public community schools at age of seven until they are 20. They reach adulthood with their last growth spurt, between the ages of 18 and 22, and those who mature late are encouraged through communal ceremonies if they choose not to wait. Every starkad is taught history and how to fight, farm, fish, and build, but they are taught other things as well, mostly of their own selection. Starkads who choose not to be farmers or fishers are welcomed among the workers.

Courtship among starkads is varied, ranging from casual relationships, open relationships, or monogamous commitments. Marriage is common and a source of major celebration among the families involved. Other feasts in the life of a starkad are birth, graduation, adulthood, parenthood, and elderhood. Each year sees three festivals, all of them different harvests that differ by community, and one nation-wide celebration of the Liberation from the lords and merchants.