"People of the Air" were not mortals but a confederation of air elementals aligned with but independent from the Deliberative, formed in a nebulous period of the dawn of humanity, sometime between the Divine Revolution and the Niobraran War. Tales about the inhabitants of their aerial citadels and palaces as the "creations of the exalted" are the result of solar hyperbole and misinterpretation of diplomatic/social treatises between both parts, related to the "adoption" of young sorcerously-created air elementals just released from service in as citizens of the People of the Air, to be accepted on a probationary period.
The conflicts of the Usurpation, the Xogunate that followed it, along with the tensions of the Rain Wars between Air and Water courts would lead to the eventual shattering of their civilization, of which the hedonistic palaces of the Cloud People, the belligerent fraternities of nomadic thunderbirds and mysterious empty citadels floating amidst the stormy skies or the highest fog-shrouded mountains are some of the most long-lasting remnants.
(Did that because the People of Air as just some people with Solar-given mutations felt, imho, wrong and too small fry for a group who got one or two vignettes dedicated to them in the Dreams of the First Age sections in the Castebooks. Remaking them as an empire of elementals was my way to (re)dial up the sense of wonder)
The Deliberative experimented with creating water-breathing people to serve to occupy the territory of the fallen Niobraran League and hunt its remnants, but the results proved far from practical, proving too costly to develop in relation to more temporary but versatile options. The fact a number of the few successful created beings would be coopted by a number of benthic powers of varied origin pretty much sealed the fate of project "People of the Sea", relegating exploration & use of the seabed to the strategic use of sorcery, thaumaturgy & minor artifacts among other tools.
(By the same principle, i'm doing away with "People of [Element]" that came later out of little beyond a misguided sense of simmetry. The People of Sea i kind of cited above as a sort of backhanded answer to the whole "pelagothrope or not pelagothrope" conundrum of 2e. They were made, but things fell apart and the few successes were suborned/went rogue and would in time become the seed from which pelagothropes, or at least some groups of them, would spawn and spread)
Just to be clear, while in general i dislike the background we were given for them in 2e am not against the idea of solar created races per se. I just prefer more specificity and detail, preferably evocative one, that may inspire me images to expand or improvise from on the spur of the moment, over banal detail and bland generality of artificial simmetry.
Less numerous, more localized groups, possibly the vanity project/experiment of a clique of sorcerers, a circle or just one individual exalt with peculiar ambitions/aesthetics/obsessions, helps to make things more colorful and rich overall.
I am kind of tempted to mess with the "thrown in with the Jadeborn and their endless war" angle of the People of the Earth, possibly respinning them from that on the get go, more like a penal colony/batallion of convicts thrown into the meat grinder of the Darkbrood in exchange for freeing more jadeborn troops and such, with obviously far from ideal results in troop quality, morale and other issues one might expect from that.
The conflicts of the Usurpation, the Xogunate that followed it, along with the tensions of the Rain Wars between Air and Water courts would lead to the eventual shattering of their civilization, of which the hedonistic palaces of the Cloud People, the belligerent fraternities of nomadic thunderbirds and mysterious empty citadels floating amidst the stormy skies or the highest fog-shrouded mountains are some of the most long-lasting remnants.
(Did that because the People of Air as just some people with Solar-given mutations felt, imho, wrong and too small fry for a group who got one or two vignettes dedicated to them in the Dreams of the First Age sections in the Castebooks. Remaking them as an empire of elementals was my way to (re)dial up the sense of wonder)
The Deliberative experimented with creating water-breathing people to serve to occupy the territory of the fallen Niobraran League and hunt its remnants, but the results proved far from practical, proving too costly to develop in relation to more temporary but versatile options. The fact a number of the few successful created beings would be coopted by a number of benthic powers of varied origin pretty much sealed the fate of project "People of the Sea", relegating exploration & use of the seabed to the strategic use of sorcery, thaumaturgy & minor artifacts among other tools.
(By the same principle, i'm doing away with "People of [Element]" that came later out of little beyond a misguided sense of simmetry. The People of Sea i kind of cited above as a sort of backhanded answer to the whole "pelagothrope or not pelagothrope" conundrum of 2e. They were made, but things fell apart and the few successes were suborned/went rogue and would in time become the seed from which pelagothropes, or at least some groups of them, would spawn and spread)
Just to be clear, while in general i dislike the background we were given for them in 2e am not against the idea of solar created races per se. I just prefer more specificity and detail, preferably evocative one, that may inspire me images to expand or improvise from on the spur of the moment, over banal detail and bland generality of artificial simmetry.
Less numerous, more localized groups, possibly the vanity project/experiment of a clique of sorcerers, a circle or just one individual exalt with peculiar ambitions/aesthetics/obsessions, helps to make things more colorful and rich overall.
I am kind of tempted to mess with the "thrown in with the Jadeborn and their endless war" angle of the People of the Earth, possibly respinning them from that on the get go, more like a penal colony/batallion of convicts thrown into the meat grinder of the Darkbrood in exchange for freeing more jadeborn troops and such, with obviously far from ideal results in troop quality, morale and other issues one might expect from that.
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