the fallen races

[evtrax]

i decided to do what vampire hunter D suggested on the your headcanon thread and start a thread about the fallen primordial races. i would start us off by detailing a race of my own creation, but i dont have any at this time. so instead i will give an overview of them. My overview might not fit with 3ed canon.

The Fallen Races

Despite what the common folk think, humanity is far from the only race in creation. The primordials made many different beings before they made humanity. Of these the best known are the Dragon Kings who ruled over humanity in the primordial age, the Mountain Folk who toil under the surface and the degenerate Lintha. The fallen races one and all suffered in the wake of the Primordial war. Not even those who fought alongside the gods and the exalted were spared, as the Dragon King civilization was broken by the fighting and the treachery of Thrice-Damned Gorol and the Mountain Folk were reduced forever by the Great Geas, forced upon them by Autochthon by the paranoia of the exalted, exacerbated by the Great Curse. But despite the Dragon Kings near total destruction and the fundamental lessening of the Mountain Folk's entire potential, breaking the people of adamant and enslaving them to the exalted for all eternity, they still got off easy compared to those races that dared to stand against the exalted.

Of those who fought for the primordials the Lintha family is the best off. However, they have fallen so far from there former glory, the surrender of the Yozi Kimberly having resulted in there current state. The Lintha are inbred, cannibalistic and twisted by exposure to the wyld, stealing from the very poor region of the west, making there home upon a dying Behemoth, reviled by the ghosts of there ancient ancestors. But despite how far they have fallen, they still have a base that sees the sun, and despite there castration and inbreeding they are still fundamentally Lintha. All other races who stood with the primordials were either completely wiped out by exalted or forced into places the exalted couldn't or wouldn't follow them. Some were banished alongside there masters, either willingly following the Yozi or being dragged by the petulant defeated primordials in an act of defiance. The Mountain Folk fight an endless war against the Darkbrood, composed of those races the primordials rejected as well as those who fled underground to escape the exalted purges. And in the depths of the wyld, there are certain horrors that originate not from chaos but from the order of the Primordials.

Of the Fallen Races, only the Dragon Kings and Mountain Folk do not hate humanity (save for certain small factions). They alone do not worship the Primordials (certain fractions of the Mountain Folk non-withstanding) and would rather not see the primordials return. While the sun weakens the Darkbrood, they still seek to destroy humanity. In the wyld the banished dream of vengeance, even those who have been enslaved by the Raksha (who were the first foes of the Primordials). Even those races long dead can return, be they reanimated by the will of the Neverborn or resurrected by other means. The past just might come back to haunt humanity. Unless the exalted repeat the acts of there ancestors and throw these monster into oblivion or cause them to fall even further.

---

Ok, now it's your turn. Give me your Primordial races, and how they might come back if they are dead. You can also expand the canon races (i still have no clue where i can learn of the dark paths that the dragon kings have). I will leave you guys to it, and if inspiration strikes i will post.

[Accelerator]

edit: Accidentally pressed save. This will be a placeholder until I finish my writeup.

[Baaldam]

Considering i've toyed extensively with underbroods and forbidden gods in the two previous editions, would be definitely up to joining the thread to toy with the subject once more.

In fact 3e corebook's lore update of elementals, reintroducing them as of multiple independent origins and in some cases possibly older than the gods themselves has lead me into rethinking the subject a bit, using them in the role of "Primordial but not exactly pro-Yozi/Neverborn" races or "strange kind of inhuman people from foreign lands" one might find in ancient or medieval travel chronicles, with some "fantasy (D&D) monster races" mixed in, among other things.

It's due to such "elementals as primordial races/adapting D&D monsters" line of thought, that i would come up in a previous thread with two homebrewed races: some "basalt elves" kind of riffing on Jadeborn and Drow both - and has since gone from their pseudo-underdark roots to evolve into a kind of lintha-esque niche (more on that later) and the "long-handed", a race of beings with qualities of bats, moles & flying fishes, capable of using their extended forelimbs as both wings to fly, paw-shovels to move & shape the soft earth from riverbeds and/or flippers to swim and thrust themselves through water, plus cries/songs used to ecolocate both in and outside of water or for social and magical attacks.

(My initial idea was just porting a race of bat-people from a "homebrew underdark" i did for a Pathfinder game - in itself a reskin of their version of the harpy, that has siren-esque singing - but then the "bat wings as shovels & fins" image hit me and they become something more idiosyncratic. I really have to further flesh out and use those guys...)

Anyway, getting a lot of milleage out riffing any variety of monsters/elder races/etc as elementals. So much so that i have unintentionally left the Underbroods and "old school fallen races" by the wayside, i guess.

And that when not outright subsuming previously existing races into my homebrewed elemental races &/or courts, like remaking the People of Air as a nation of air elementals, both naturally spawned & "emancipated" summons, instead of altered mortals or the popularity of a race of zebra jasper midgets as summons among Dynastic sorcerers in a certain period inspiring a fashion in the Realm and jumpstarting the Djala slave-trade, for just two examples.

[Baaldam]

Here goes a slightly expanded & tweaked rewrite of my previous ideas on one of these samples, in this case the jadeborn/drow expies (that turned into more of a kind of lintha thing).


Basanites (aka basalt elves)

The basanites are an elder race of precise origins lost in time. These basalt-skinned humanoids of elfin features and limestone hair have inhabited Hamoji and other volcanoes spread across the archipelago now known as Wavecrest since times untold.

In their dark, fiery and smoke-enshrouded abodes they dwelt in relative seclusion, until roiling, boiling passions shared with their homes would overtake them and they would spew, either by lonesome foot, in bands, or sailing their flaming outrigger, double-hulled ships and trimarans, which cut equally across the surface of earth and sea.

The Flickering Striders, their many-legged champions, beings that look like eerie crystalline blends of man, spider & vaaktri, devotees of a sorcerous initiation unique to their society, move over the seas like water striders and climb beneath the waves as raft spiders, encircled by a mantle of air bubbles, generated by steaming the water as they dive into it. Savants and mystics whispers rumours of how the most experienced among these warrior-sorcerers eventually learning to shape their essence in a way that allows them to metamorphose further, melding with demesnes of earth or fire to attain a monumental manse-like condition akin to the gemlords that gives birth to their domains - and according to some occultists, birthing grounds.

With dreams of empire harkening to the time when Flame marched against the Sea they spread, to trade, to raid and conquer, pursuing loot, pets, slaves or other volcanoes all across the Archipelago and beyond, through the whole West and even farther to conquer and remake into their dark citadels, the Dimmuborgir, challenging, allying with or betraying Lintha, Mosok, Niobrarans, mortal kingdoms and all kinds of beings, with the ebb and flow of the tides of war. Eventually they joined the Exalted Host against the Niobrarian, exchanging their ambitions for victory, favors and stability and wars of conquest for ritual games & competitions of skill along with the occasional bit of trade, tribute or worship.

Charm ideas (WIP):
- a shower of fiery rocks ranged attack.
- flying/shooting oneself as a smoldering boulder?
- generate heat &/or fire by touch.
- transforming into flowing lava for faster movement, flowing & oozing around people, objects and places (while burning up everything). Can lead to accidental petrification (in irregular shapes for extra inconvenience) if hit with a large quantity of water or any other source of cold.
- using "lava transformation" to reshape their own limbs & forms (or genders. Basanites start genderless and them develop it or not by personal preference through association with other beings).
- a group of basanites "melt & merge" into a single gigantic warrior. The more individuals, more physically powerful, but also harder to access individual memories & skills.


Flickering Strider Charm ideas:
- heightened speed &/or multiple attacks
- wall-crawling & vertical climbing.
- walking over the waters.
- dive into the depths surrounded in an envelope of heated air bubbles.
- shaping a bubble of hot air to levitate and even float into the heights of the skies.


(The name comes from the ancient latin/greek word for basalt. To give them a little more than "rock drow/jadeborn" for character, leant on the basalt/igneous rock angle as a stepping stone of sorts, leading to the volcanic connection and from there to the idea of them as "igneous marauders", spewing explosively from their abodes as a literal burning legion or sailing in rafts of flaming pumice like a cross of Lintha with Maori made from fire and stone. The Dimmuborgir was a very lucky discovery that gave me a nice norse/metal support in giving the Basanites an identity more their own, while the "many-leged champions" are just a riff on Driders to which i added the water-walking and diving tricks as little thematic twists inspired by actual water-walking or hunting insects. The idea of them potentially evolving into the Dimmuborgir was a way to highlight the weirdness of elementals and make the term & locale into something more than a cool regional name for manses. The "shooting like smoldering cannonballs" thing is a newer bit of imagery that i still have to do something from).

[Baaldam]

Going to do some rewrites of the "long-handed" and the "people of the Anacreon" later on when i get some ideas to expand and further flesh them out.

One quality incidental of these three races in contrast to other of my homebrewed elementals like the People of Air & Jasperkin and i'm taking a liking to is a shared liminality of sorts, each of them existing in a threshold of sorts, where traits of two or more elements converge to form beings of more peculiar qualities. Seriously tempted to make it into a pattern to more "Primordial" races of elementals in relation to more "refined" ones generated in millenia of interaction with the divine hierachies and mortal principalities, as their order replaced the whimsy, petty squabbling and savage rivalries of powers older than Creation itself.


(Have also thought of maybe giving the "dark rock elves" thing a non-volcanic, more "vanilla earth" retry later on. My best provisory candidates are hematite and tourmaline for now)

Aaaaand sometimes an idea just hits you like a brick out of nowhere, priorities be damned.....



Lodeston, the Land of Shards

A land and people supposedly originated from the fragments of Lode, the Black Spiral, a dragon born of the shadow of Pasiap,
that challenged the Earth Dragon for possession of the Omphalos and lost, according to the legends of the lodestoni people.

Though broken in the time before history, the nation and beings sprung from its remains can still feel the tugging of its vital force
inside their stony cores, compelling them with to supernatural attractions and repulsions of mysterious purpose, the source of
much esoteric, philosophical and esoteric among those versed in their culture's most celebrated text, the Magnetic Principles.

These urges and the tugging that makes them forever aware of the Pole of the Earth at the center of Creation have inspired
much of their long history of religious disputes, campaigns of unification or separatism, sacred peregrinations and conquering
warbands to the heart of the Blessed Isle, across the eras of Creation and the vagaries of the people above and below the earth.



[hematite led me to magnetite, from there a dumb wordplay between lodestone and -stan inspired me the idea of "ferromagnetic people in an eternal cycle of debate and dispute over the attraction, repulsion and the magnetic pole at the core of their being as both individuals and nation". From the magnetic pole angle came the image of a dragon that challenged Pasiap for the role of Omphalos and a little nod to the Black Spiral as cited in RotSE. Some things still churning in my mind are the subject of a relation or not to the Ebon Dragon - what could go to all kinds of places depending on truth or lie of the legends and how it feels about them - and interactions with the Raksha, that may work in quite different ways depending if lodestone still counts as iron for fae-stuff purposes or a arcane material that changes iron from a fae-bane into something else]

[Baaldam]

Re-reading my post on the basanites, the "Maori made from fire and stone" bit got my some fun things in my mind. Artisan-mystics taking one or more minerals and through fire, pressure and peculiar alchemical processes rendering it down into a strangely colored tattoos that spirals around the chakras of those marked through the chiseling of their stone skins. The branded warriors, mystics or nobles capable of unlocking Evocations from these tattoos that allow him or her to manipulate or gain power from a variety of esoteric sources through them.

(Like the Demonic Tattoos merit option from the "Bargain with Mara" sorcerous initiation)

Power that lives on even after death, occasion in which a hero's petrean remains may be painstakingly carved into richly etched arms or armor memorializing it.

[Baaldam]

edit: Accidentally pressed save. This will be a placeholder until I finish my writeup.

Is that writeup still around? Kind of curious about what you had in mind back then.

[Accelerator]

Crap. I think I forgot about what it was.

[Baaldam]

Crap. I think I forgot about what it was.

Crap luck, but it happens. We had more than a month where no posts worked in the Exalted forums and even then my original message was 7+ months after your post. It's kind of my own fault for taking so long to backtrack and call you on the subject.

Anyway, if you ever find/remember what your writeup was about - or comes up with something else on elder/fallen/etc races, you're more than welcome to post it here, the more the merrier.


And in interest of keeping the thread's theme rolling, here goes a little excerpt straight from the books:

"The oldest artifacts predate the human race.
When the makers of the world strode from pole to pole like colossi, all manner of lesser beings — elementals, gods, prehuman races — dwelt in their shadow.
In the time before humanity, these peoples forged arms and armor to hunt and make war much as mortals do, and made other devices for myriad purposes."

"These species bore little resemblance to humanity, and the unthinkably rare surviving relics of their cultures —

twelve-fingered gauntlets woven from immortal vines;
fractal armatures of flexible crystal;
luminous purple vapor that can be sung into a seagoing vessel’s shape (alien equivalent of the Folding Ship?);
eternal unflames shedding a cold deathlight;
lances of tangible mathematics

— are unrecognizable as artifacts to all but the most erudite savants."

"Many are of such bizarre configuration that only Lunars, by dint of shapeshifting prowess, might wield them unmodified.
Even relics of races built roughly like humanity, such as Mountain Folk and Dragon Kings, are often of exotic materials and peculiar construction."

Partly inspired by this i got the idea of a set of artifacts forged by Alveua - wonders of gleaming black metal forged from mortals lives willingly reshaped upon her anvil, that lightless place, beyond even the Demon City’s emerald sun and alien stars, the forge of night where many of Hell’s arthropods were hammered out into form. Wonders of hellish power that exist as lightless reflections of her personal philosophy of hierarchy, harmony and happiness, in contrast to Solar principles of authority and leadership, emanating from the Divine Rebellion.


Or in fewer and more concise words, my idea was to get a bunch of Orichalcum artifacts with a "leadership/charisma" theme - like the Daiklave of Conquest & Crown of Thunders from previous editions - as basis for a "panoply of the rightful ruler" set, recycling evocations & all as much as possible.

Later on it struck me that sapient social insects like ants, bees or termites (be them demonic, elemental or mortal) as her worshippers and probable wielders of these artifacts might be specially appropriate. Unfortunately i never went farther than that with the idea because, afaik, neither of the two artifacts i cited was updated to 3e. But who knows, maybe one day i'll be a little less lazy and give them a try myself.

And from the same source....

Among the Exalted’s most notable innovations was the art of making colossal weapons — goremauls, direlances, daiklaves — whose mass made their blows devastating, yet which their masters could lift as easily as a feather.

The Exalted likewise taught themselves the art of Evocations, bonding with artifacts to draw forth secret inner power from shield and cuirass, bludgeon and blade.

Even today, some recall the legend of Eternal Nova, the Sword Priest, so gifted with blades that he could awaken another’s weapon with a touch, unlocking its Evocations for them to master.

A few scholars write instead of how Feranth Dambresile, called the Invisible, stole the art of Evocations from Thau Irim, The City in the Ruby, that long-lost prehuman race which was also a single stone.

(That race sounds like something one might simulate with Asphodel and its evocation set - an idea and imagery i already tinkered with on the "people of the Anacreon" i conceived previously, might be said)

[Baaldam]

In another topic, Erinys brought up a race that had been loyal to one of the Primordials who stayed loyal to Theion, but they had lost their patron's favor or had experienced something [that they considered] abuse, leading some to support both sides in the Primordial War.

My first thought was to correlate that kind of dynamic to the Lintha & Kimbery (more on that later perhaps)...


But in hindsight it crossed my mind that from his position as Holy Tyrant of Creation and its makers, a deconstruction of sorts of the Genesis and fallen angel imagery within the mythic narrative of the Divine Revolution offers interesting possibilities i'd say.

From a visual perspective Diablo's angels with their cowled faces perpetually hidden in shadows and light/tentacle-styled wings, make a very appealing blend of iconic and yet alien take of popular imagery to spin things from.

Or maybe not a single race of creations/servants, but a category of them, much like angels are popularly divided in a variety of types in many literary, mystic or religious works, the messengers/heralds of the Makers, each one sprang of a peculiar mix of Theion To's fancy with renderings of its siblings, for extra nuance and complexity.

[hachiman]

To detail Primordial Races, i just straight up stole from scifi. Alien races from books and movies and tv made the best inspirations for me. Not Star Trek tho, much as i love it, many of the races are humans with a few bits changed, which didnt really suit the alien vibe i wanted.

[Baaldam]

To detail Primordial Races, i just straight up stole from scifi. Alien races from books and movies and tv made the best inspirations for me. Not Star Trek tho, much as i love it, many of the races are humans with a few bits changed, which didnt really suit the alien vibe i wanted.

Overall, in this edition i've tried to avoid the lovecraftian critter/sci-fi videogame steals - we had enough of that in 2e through 'Magitech" & "Genesis", imho - to focus more them as venues for the occasional bit of world-building or retcon. In terms of descriptions i try to evoke a Travels of Marco Polo meets Herodotus' Histories on steroids" kind of scenario, sometimes tinker with bits from previous editions through a more fanciful, sword & sorcery/sandal lens.


In the last few days i've been working into something of a rewrite of Dukantha as, instead of Water Aspect and Akuma, a sort of unique exalt reflecting a number of kimberyan themes, first and last of his stillborn race of Chosen spawned by self-sacrifice within Lintha Ng Oroo's ever more barren womb.

But then somewhere midway i was hit by Final Fantasy VII associations, the idea of Ng Oroo as a shard of Ululaya the Blood Moon, the splinter fragment of an alien celestial body attempting to infect/assimilate the world in the vein of Jenova and Dukantha as her acid-etched pirate-king/demigod Sephiroth.

From there it led into some retooling of the Lintha themselves as a race in a endless repeating cycle of dilution, corrosion and infusion with their rivals & enemies. Are they a band of mutants with dreams of grandeur and the pedigree of polluted water or diminished remnants of more glorious pre-human origins? Contradictory as it may sound, both. The Lintha of the present are unlike the Lintha from before Dukantha, who are unlike the Lintha from before Contagion, who are unlike the Lintha of the First Age and who might looked askance upon by their alien forebears - look deep enough into their mausoleums of salt & brine preserved carcasses enfolded in seaweed wrappings and one may find finery and forms ever more alien, some like pelagothropes or beastfolk, others with markings of the blood of dragons or elementals, beings with an almost idealized cast closer to the greatest of Jadeborn than common man, but also older and stranger beings, between reptilian or piscine, more akin to homage or mockeries of Mosok & their brethren and older more eldritch besides.

Because the Lintha are the beloved of the Sea that Went Against the Flame, they ebb and flow, they corrode and mix up with whatever crosses their path, in an endless cycle of acretion and infusion, condemned to tides of repetitive transformation that yet produces utterly different beings.

[Erinys]

1. The Basanites are very interesting, more as fire elementals than as elves. In fact I don't see why they shouldn't all be drider-shaped. I like Primordial-made races to be very different from humans and each other, and the humanoid shape to be a quite rare one before the First Age. Anyway, I want to know their history. What Flame did the Sea march against, anyway? We know that it must be a true story, because it's part of Kimbery's Legend and the Primordial Legends are axiomatically True. But ... well it should stay mostly mysterious but I'd like to see enigmatic hints about how the Basanites are connected to that legend.


2. The Lodeston are another interesting idea. Like the Basanites, you've set the foundation for a rather alien, but still describable, mindset and culture. I would rather see you drop all reference to ROTSE and the Black Spiral, though. That was a bad book and a badly written attempted shout-out to the World of Darkness that didn't get even close to understanding what the Black Spiral is. It was just the name appropriated for something of no resemblance... like the Demon: the Fallen and Kindred of the East names taken out of context into MOEP: Infernals.

What would challenge the Dragon of Earth? Well, no Primordial would do that because they don't want to blow up Creation. Anything from the Wyld would implode instantly on contact with the Central Pole. So I'm going with a Behemoth of completely unknown origin. Does it have to be a dragon? I don't know. This insane thing wanted to seize the Pole so maybe it was indeed trying to transform Iron into something else, like Hematite. This represented a catastrophic threat to Creation, so not only did the Earth Dragon curbstomp it, but then Gaia, Cytherea, She Who Lives in Her Name, Mardukth, and Saturn made sure it was really destroyed and thoroughly dead. Szoreny probably watched in fascination. Autochthon probably stole pieces of its body for making stuff. Just the fact of being smashed simultaneously by Gaia, Cytherea, and Mardukth caused the thoroughly, absolutely not-coming-back-to-life carcass to spawn life like maggots from the corpse of Ymir, because Metagaos and Lykkenan were too busy playing the Games to bother eating it in time. It might also be because Szoreny allegedly peed/bled/dribbled Essence on the corpse just to see what would happen. I'm not saying he necessarily did, but they have quicksilver blood in their lodestone bodies...

I wonder what their attitude towards the Yozis, Gaia, and Saturn would be. Maybe a tension between attraction (reverence for causing their birth and protecting their Polar home) and repulsion (horror at the merciless killing of their progenitor).


3. The City in the Ruby? Perhaps some sort of intangible intelligences that take up no physical space would be just the sort to wield spears made of pure Mathematics. Perhaps a creation of He Who Bleeds the Unknown Word? If red blood was commonplace maybe the Ruby is a drop of his Blood. Maybe the Ruby was indestructible and continually spawned new inhabitants automatically, but small enough to hurl into Malfeas along with the Yozis. Perhaps it now resides somewhere within the Sphere of Speech... where its people are surprisingly content with their lot.

Some other books mentioned other prehuman artifacts: the glass engines of the Remonnet and the singing mists of the Nishaat, with no description of course. Apparently these artifacts were of a type forged from the willing devas of their Primordial patrons.



More comments to come as I continue reading...