QuietBrowser
First Post
So, I just had an idea for a new race in the Darkest Continent/Gardens of Zyn region, and whilst I love it, I really want to know what you folks think of it.
Hell, I want some feedback in general, but let's not get crazy.
From ancient stone temples hidden in the tropical swamps of the Dark Continent and the Garden of Zyn, aided by kobold allies and commanding the twisted life of their swampy home as servitors, come the gorgons: snake-skinned, reptilian yet weirdly elven maidens whose heads bear writhing manes of prehensile serpent's tails and whose eyes gleam with fell magical energies. A mutable breed, marked by many strange anomalies of form - snapping serpents for hair, multiple arms, undulating coils in lieu of legs - the gorgons claim to be the heirs to ancient dragon-kings who once ruled the world as living gods. Proud and haughty creatures, they claim as their own all of the ancient ruins of the lost dragon empire, and whilst they may deign to trade with other races at a time, all too often they have gone to war to recover what they see as their rightful inheritance.
In truth, the gorgons are not who they believe they are. In fact, they are a fallen strain of the elven family tree; a sister-colony to the first Sun Elves, historians studying the cursed ruins of the ancient dragon empire, who had fallen from glory before the elves first arrived on the mortal world. When the Netherstorm tore their souls apart, they tried to find a cure through combining early prototypes of the same elixirs that created the Sun Elves with residual magic tapped from the draconic artifacts they had been studying. The results were a... dubious success. It cured their afflictions, but left them overwhelmed by vestigial draconic memories, and physically mutated in the bargain. Even now, the draconic essence still sits uneasily within their frames, resulting in the diverse array of powers and mutations displayed by the race. Gorgons of great power can even mutate further, and the more serpentine they look, the more they are prized within their culture for their "blood purity".
The gorgon culture, then, is a hodgepodge; fragments of elven pieced together with snippets of remembered or studied draconic, mortared together with fiction and plastered over with madness. As a race, the gorgons have no idea that they were once elves; only the kobolds they share their temple-cities with, the true heirs of the fallen dragons, know the reality.
Eye color is hugely important in gorgon society, because the color of a gorgon's eyes indicate what kind of gaze abilities these have. Flame-eyes, for example, can project searing rays that incinerate whatever they look at, for example. Gaze abilities can also increase in power as a gorgon grows stronger (aka, feats/level-restricted).
Incidentally, whilst gorgons are believed to be all female, that actually isn't the case. Females are more common than males, but not greatly so (around 2-1 or 3-2); instead, the misconception is fostered by the fact that those ancient traces of Sun Elf have made the gorgons an androgynous race; males are all but impossible to visually distinguish from females at a casual glance unless one is very familiar with the race.
So, what do anons think? Does this race sound like it could have a place in this setting?
Hell, I want some feedback in general, but let's not get crazy.
From ancient stone temples hidden in the tropical swamps of the Dark Continent and the Garden of Zyn, aided by kobold allies and commanding the twisted life of their swampy home as servitors, come the gorgons: snake-skinned, reptilian yet weirdly elven maidens whose heads bear writhing manes of prehensile serpent's tails and whose eyes gleam with fell magical energies. A mutable breed, marked by many strange anomalies of form - snapping serpents for hair, multiple arms, undulating coils in lieu of legs - the gorgons claim to be the heirs to ancient dragon-kings who once ruled the world as living gods. Proud and haughty creatures, they claim as their own all of the ancient ruins of the lost dragon empire, and whilst they may deign to trade with other races at a time, all too often they have gone to war to recover what they see as their rightful inheritance.
In truth, the gorgons are not who they believe they are. In fact, they are a fallen strain of the elven family tree; a sister-colony to the first Sun Elves, historians studying the cursed ruins of the ancient dragon empire, who had fallen from glory before the elves first arrived on the mortal world. When the Netherstorm tore their souls apart, they tried to find a cure through combining early prototypes of the same elixirs that created the Sun Elves with residual magic tapped from the draconic artifacts they had been studying. The results were a... dubious success. It cured their afflictions, but left them overwhelmed by vestigial draconic memories, and physically mutated in the bargain. Even now, the draconic essence still sits uneasily within their frames, resulting in the diverse array of powers and mutations displayed by the race. Gorgons of great power can even mutate further, and the more serpentine they look, the more they are prized within their culture for their "blood purity".
The gorgon culture, then, is a hodgepodge; fragments of elven pieced together with snippets of remembered or studied draconic, mortared together with fiction and plastered over with madness. As a race, the gorgons have no idea that they were once elves; only the kobolds they share their temple-cities with, the true heirs of the fallen dragons, know the reality.
Eye color is hugely important in gorgon society, because the color of a gorgon's eyes indicate what kind of gaze abilities these have. Flame-eyes, for example, can project searing rays that incinerate whatever they look at, for example. Gaze abilities can also increase in power as a gorgon grows stronger (aka, feats/level-restricted).
Incidentally, whilst gorgons are believed to be all female, that actually isn't the case. Females are more common than males, but not greatly so (around 2-1 or 3-2); instead, the misconception is fostered by the fact that those ancient traces of Sun Elf have made the gorgons an androgynous race; males are all but impossible to visually distinguish from females at a casual glance unless one is very familiar with the race.
So, what do anons think? Does this race sound like it could have a place in this setting?
