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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 4728048" data-attributes="member: 23240">My homebrew world does not have any strange player races. There are, however, a few really strange kinds of creatures, too alien to be playable - but definitely having their part in shaping the world. And the strangest of them are Hydras.To understand their nature one has to know a little about how the world itself works, especially the relation between gods and mortals. Gods cannot exist without mortal creatures that follow them. No matter how powerful a deity is, without prayers and sacrifices it withers and dies in no longer than human's lifetime. On the other hand, no mortal race can rise above animal level ("awaken" as it is called in the game world) nor stay in the civilized state without a god to guide them. The interconnection is very strong - in myths there is no difference between a race awaking and a god being born. One of the races - as advanced as humans or elves at the time of its fall - reverted to animal level after slaying their own god in a civil war.The Hydras are autotheist. Each one is its own deity, its own religion, its own culture.A hydra is a colony of snakes, thousands of them. A hive mind, awakened through and by itself, worshiping itself as a god (albeit a small one). It is alien not only to humans - it is as alien to other hydras as cultures and religions can be one to another. But it is definitely conscious and intelligent, it may learn languages, use magic, create art. It may be curious, may be helpful, may be unreasonably hostile. Each encounter with such a creature (if "creature" is even a appropriate word) that happened during our games was definitely interesting. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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