Tales of Creation: History of Mortals
Mortals are the beings who have true Free Will, Consciousness, and Souls, thus they serve as one of the major forces of the universe itself. However nothing was forever, and once mortals didn’t exist, when they did, they came in fits and starts. One of the strangest factors of mortals is their relationship to Free Will and Fate, while they all possess Free Will by definition, they are all shaped by fate in their own way. So here is a brief history of the First Mortals.
Nothing is known of these creatures, the first beings to possess a soul, other than that they are referred to as “The Progenitors”. What little is known seems to imply that they were utterly alien, but had great magical power before they died out entirely. The only one left is the Thorian, and whether it is the last of a species of an entirely original creature remains unknown.
Dragons are the first true mortals, and they continue to stand as the absolute hallmark of what mortality is capable of. Dragons embody raw supremacy in their very being, and their entrance unto the scene ushered in a new age, defying the previous complacent divine powers with their incredible power. What shocked and fascinated scholars and the Powers about them was the ways in which Fate could affect them, a bizarre Twofold effect known as “the Rite of Causality”. Firstly, Dragons could alter fate in small ways, though Fate itself always seemed to adjust very naturally (unlike the breaking of Fate which mortally wounded Fate itself). Secondly, they seemed to be oddly effected by time, specifically they are almost temporality cold blooded. While dragons can be frighteningly (and often lethally) quick when roused, and are among the most brilliant creatures in the world, they seem required to spend an inordinate amount of time doing nothing.
These are the lesser form of the Great Titans who serve as the embodiment of Subjective Reality, the lesser Titans are the second mortal race, but are oft forgotten in the chronicles. The reason is in part because of their isolated nature, their small numbers or their difficulty with communication, but the greatest mistake likely is that they are often mistaken for elementals. Titans are massive creatures (duh) who are seemingly made out of elemental material but with a far more humanoid form than elementals, with facial features, fingers and a concrete anatomy. Titans vary from those made of multiple elements, those made of single elements, and the so called “High Titans” that seem entirely humanoid (some suspect they might be an entirely different creatures who are related). One of the major supports for this theory is that low Titans are defined by being pathologically solitary, they simply avoid contact with other beings almost pathologically, in particular their own kind. Beyond mating years, seeing two titans of the same type is unheard of (for the rest of the article, assume that High Titans are their own category, as these rules do not apply). They occasionally can be convinced to wander along with other species, and the truly terrifying hoards sometimes bring a few titans alongside them. However there have been a rarely observed phaminium where different species of Titans hang out in large groups, normally one of each type. These are sometimes called ‘Titan Circles” but nobody truly knows what the hell that they are doing, they often spend time simply standing around in circles speaking in their strange language for years on end. Then they will depart or go and perform a single task (often changing a physical location in a particular way) before leaving. However there have been (mostly) unsubstantiated reports of these circles wandering the world trying to right wrongs, specifically targeting Outsiders or Dragons as a group, taking their stuff and using it to continue the process against bigger evils until all of them are dead or they retire. While these tales might be romantics, the occasional walking mountain wielding a wand of lightning bolt suggest some truth to these tales.
4) The Eternals. Basically the Titans of 3.5 D&D and earlier, combined with the Titans from Warcraft, these creatures are tied closer to Free Will than Fate, specifically that they are completely without limits in regards to their decisions. These creatures appear as perfected versions of humanity itself but mixed with the raw power of the gods in the process. However they have absolutely no limits, no restraints, and no doubts, they live everything to the extremes and with little regard to others. Thus any interaction with a Eternals can be a frightful one, because if you made them angry, you make them angry to the extreme. If they like you, they will like you to the extreme. These creatures have absolutely no conception of limitations, and to them, if they want to do something, they shall.
They are divided into roughly three groups, the Travelers who wander the realm engaging in their own artistic ideals. The Watchers, who guard the world and makes sure it follows their vision (and no, they are not benevolent), and the Makers who forge magical items that tend to cause more harm than good. All of these creatures are defined by their role with the universe. Finally there are the Great Eternals, creatures of near Godlike power who dwell in remote parts of the Outer Planes, contemplating their thoughts. These creatures strive to avoid having their thoughts interrupted by other creatures, or worse influenced by beings other than themselves.
5) The Gigas- Basically the guys from Pathfinder.
The Giants are often seen as the proto Humanoids, while these massive creatures clearly aren’t much like the modern day humanoids, one can see the resemblance. Critically they have actual civilizations unlike the pathologically solitary Titans and Dragons, these are social creatures who build communities, and whose primary form of imagination comes from storytelling.
During the height of their empire, Giants became famous for their power of Prophecy, many Giants were able to perfect see Fate even as they could do almost nothing to resist it or change its effects. The Giant Religion at the time was based on an almost worship of fate, you could know your eventual fate but obviously you would have no ability to alter it. However the one thing that was in your power to control was your reaction to your fate, and whether you could be at peace with it or not. The giants themselves knew the world would eventually end in a Great preordained Battle, and so their ideals were all about embracing this fate emotionally rather than fighting it.
So Giants were particularly affected by the Breaking of Fate, as their ability to make prophecies started to backfire on them, instead making them almost out of synch with the universe. They first started to gain a reputation for stupid or easily tricked, as they simply weren’t operating on the same level of reality as other mortals. When fate finally died, Giants started to make a comeback, with many empires suddenly falling in a matter of days to giant attacks, but the effect still lingers. Giants are just temporally…off. They are slow creatures and move in a slow manner. Some of it is physical, logically an 18 foot Frost Giant shouldn’t be any slower than a human than a 6 foot man is to a 5 foot one, but Frost Giants just move slowly, with a lumbering gait that almost balances their extreme strength. Other Giants are affected mentally, contrary to popular opinion, Mountain Giants aren’t actually stupid, they just think more slowly, their minds just move at a slower pace and they take a longer period of time to make decisions. Sometimes its linguistically, some giants are mocked for their manner of speaking, but it’s just that language doesn’t come naturally to them so they by pass it by speaking in a “Primative” manner. Giants are defined by their strength and slowness, but they are not to underestimated, these creatures once ruled the world and could be primed to make a comeback now that they are not longer trapped by their greatest strength. The Age of the Giants might yet return.
Note: Some people believe
Where these creatures come from nobody knows, but they serve as the first “Humanoid” creatures in the modern sense of the term, physically small but highly organized wide spread races who while individually weak, collectively are able to dominate the continent. The first Creator Races famously came in 5, who collectively seem to have emerged entirely independently of any other force. Nobody knows where these creatures come from, but once they emerged, they started to create more races, who started to populate the world as their servants. These races were the Sarrukh (reptiles), Aearee (Birds), Batrachi (Amphibians), Kopru (Fish) and the Kraken (Invertebrates). These were the creatures who first elevated Gods to prominence via their forms of worship, and started the process of greater wide spread civilization. The Sylvans (Plants) are sometimes seen as a Creator Race as well, though their status is unclear. However some great cataclysm (possibly global warming) destroyed their societies and reduced them to only a small number of local communities, though their progeny continues to live on. There are rumors of “Lesser” creator races who lived in the background, but three came to prominence after the disaster. These were known as “The successor races” and “The Forgotten Races”. The Former were Insects, Fish and Mammals, while the latter included Arthropods and Worms. Some scholars have posited their might be a Creator Races equivalent of Brachiopods, Bryozoa, but other scholars have responded that is lame and pedantic and anybody who believes that is dumb.
8) The Created Races. These are the races were created by the Creator Races, hence the Term Creator. Since they have been almost universally abandoned by their masters, and have largely taken up with Gods, to the point where it is difficult to tell the difference between these guys and Divine Races (See below). Some of the confirmable members of this races include Yuan-ti, Sauroids, Lizardfolk and other Scalykind from the Sarrukh (Naga’s role is still undetermined). From the Aearee the Avaians, Aacocokra, Kenku are confirmed, Bullywugs, Dopplegangers, Sivs, and Tako come from the Batrachi, and from the Koprus come Kuo-toa, Locothan, and other such creatures. Generally speaking, Beastmen are regarded as Created Races unless proven otherwise.
Once the Gods got powerful enough to start creating, it was basically like Divine Equivalent of a self-perpetuating motion machine, and eventually became able to create their own races, perfectly suited to their own specifications. Creating a new race is an extremely laborious and dangerous process, and so it was only truly possible with an alliance of different gods all working together. Ogres were the first Divine Race, but Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Halflings, Gnomes, Goblinoids, and Highborn are all Divine Races (the Status of Drow is still uncertain). There are also other divine Races created by Old or Elder Gods, but those tend to be…weird.
10) The Magical Races. Magic is weird, chaotic, and generally not to be trusted, and so it can occasionally create life spontaneously. Sometimes this magic is deliberately altered by powerful races to create new races, other times its spontaneous. The most famous of these Races are the Eldar, Tel, and the Mer but other such creatures can be found across the realms, but most magical races are alterations of existing races.
11) Artificial races. Sometimes new races can be created via magical experiments or alterations. Normally an existing race is used as a template and then changed but sometimes we have entirely new creatures created spontaneously.
12) Cross Breeds. Seriously do I need to explain this one?
13) The Changed Races. These are races who have been altered by external forces, and generally (but not always) are templates rather than races, like The Lost, Hollow, or Shadow creatures. But regardless, there are many forces in the world that can alter one’s fundamental basis, and those are known as “Changed Races” but scholars and as “those guys’ by everybody else.
14) Humans. One of the most recent races, Humans are unique in that they started out as basic animals, not mortals, and eventually evolved into being sentient on their own over time. Thus many races see them as actually being animals rather than full mortals, or as some sort of false mortal. Since human dominance has become far greater this sentiment is far less powerful, but it is still often believed. come ndoisehould
PS. Nobody knows where Aboleth and Mindflayers come from
