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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 4035645" data-attributes="member: 6533">I'm going to use the core 8, though I may add some adapted AE races in as time goes by - and there will be enough room for people to play whatever is allowable from the monster manual.The basic setting is an extremely loose fantasy analogue of medieval Texas and the Southwest.Giants and the Glyph-thaned Families - Founders of the current world system, arbiters of the dictates, and rulers of the pilgrim roads.   They have long since passed into the mists that claimed their homeland and the holy city of Ananomphis, but their laws and words are still present in the world.  Indeed, most religion is based on ancient understandings of their rituals.Humans - The humans were the first of the Giant favored races to escape the cataclysm.  They brought aid to all they could find, and worked to bring the peoples of the concord into harmony.  Eventually, their hegemony lead them into empire and hubris, for they could not master the magics and rituals of the Giants.  The crisis destroyed humanity as a people - only three populations survive:The Nomad Legions - Concentrated far to the West of the Imperial capital when the crisis came, the Legion Tamarchs quickly understood the finality of the Night of Bright Clouds.  They abandoned their hated war against the Dragonborn, moved their armies to the plains, and adapted their protocols for pastoralism and technological degradation.  Today the descendants of each Legion form a nomadic tribe of hunters, herders, and paladins - for the final legacy of the Tamarchs was the promise of aid to all peoples who should ask for it.  They were the only human population to survive without extensive magical modification.The Tieflings - Within the cities of the empire, certain priests, sages, and magi were granted premonitions of their coming doom.  Their fevered attempts to find an alternate punishment for their people resulted in the Tieflings.  None now know how the ritual was succesful or what price was paid, but the Tieflings remain the most intellectual and far sighted of humanities descendants - and the most willing to make bargains.  They still live inside the cities, braving the ruins of both humanity and the giant Satrapies.Half-Elves - Along the banks of the Per lived the most peaceful scions of humanity.  On the eve of the crisis there came among them the Faen - a dying race returned to the lands to seek shelter.  The humans of the Per granted them shelter, and this kindness saved them.  Over the course of the crisis the two peoples literally merged.  They are the most populous and peaceful of humanity's scions.  They keep no armies relying on magic, diplomacy, and subterfuge to protect them.Dwarves - Second among the Giant's servitors, the only escaped the mists well into the human hegemony.  At either end of the Canyon of Souls the mists rolled back to reveal two vast dwarven cities who's inhabitants could none of them remember what their sojourn within the mists was like.  Since that time their culture has divided in two:the Great Holds have a culture dominated by shallow materialism, trade, and war against the mists.  Their cities are the largest and best located in the lands making them the center of all commerce.  These dwarves are the most cosmopolitan of all peoples.The Diaspora Clans are calmer, dour, and more scholarly.  They build small secure fortress palaces where ever they can find water and the shelter of stone.  Among the peoples they are valued for their sense of duty - often housing the food caches for whole other peoples.  They are conservative and sometimes greedy, but also hospitable and good.Elves - Arrived late in the time of the Giants.  They came as soldiers to aid the Giant Satraps in their war against the Eastern Beast-peoples.  What they did not know was that their Eladrin lords were effectively exiling them.  The Cataclysm cut off their contact with the Feywild for generations and left them stranded in a realm of war.  They dispersed their formations - learned to live off of the land and became masters of guerilla warfare and vendeta.  Generations later they are winning their war and have tamed their forests.  Currently, they are among the great powers of the earth.Eladrin - Among the fae they were the lowest rank of favored cultures, and when the giants offered them nations in return for troops they happily accepted.  Unlike the Elves they did not entirely loose contact with the Feywild during the cataclysm.  Instead, they developed magical constructs called kivas and troads that allowed them tap into the conjunctions of the world and feywild in order to bless their cities with powerful enchantments and travel without regard to the mundance wilderness.  Now they live in compact elaborate cities supported by mana fonts, revels, and their hunts for fae infused beasts and items.  They are the most civilized of all peoples - possessing less depth perhaps than the Nomad Legion's Tamarch libraries, but far more of them.  Unlike most Fey they no longer slave.  With the return of the Faen the Feywild became open to them, and now they raid the slavers of other fey, bring their charges back to the world, and ransom them.  Those who cannot pay become clients till their debt is paid.The Eladrin are in decline - the kivas require more and more effort to maintain and the troads are becoming perilous.  Political crises and threats from the beast men of the west have left many cities damaged.  They have had no royal court for two generations.  It remains to be seen whether external alliances or an unexpected internal unification might reverse this.  Dragonborn - The second most powerful during the age of giants, they fell horribly far during the cataclysm.  They have forgotten nothing, but they have abandoned much.  Trusting only to simplicity and the most essential of forms.  Their homeland is entirely tamed and closed, a desert paradise only their elders may access.  Once of age their children are sent out from it in mercenary companies to bring some salvation to the rest of the world.  During the hegemony, humans resented the Dragonborn for holding back the secrets of the  Giants.  The war between them was long and fierce, but surprisingly honorable.  By the end of the hegemony - human soldiers so resented the injustice of their cause that the war had become pure ritual.  Human legions would encounter Dragonborn companies and 'engage' them only to join them in destroying some greater threat.Halflings - The ships of the Halflings have been seen off the coast of Anansil since the dawn of the Giant's Age, but it is only in the wake of the crisis that their culture has come to full flower.  Now they have great harbors and cities on the barrier Islands of the Southern coast, and have become guardians of the Sacred Lake Precincts in the North East.  Their small ships ply every river, and their exquisitely attired merchants bring culture and aid to all the peoples of the land.  There is talk among the tribune-scholars of the Nomads that the Halflings may become the next great hegemony, but this is widely considered unlikely.  No race, save perhaps the Dragonborn, respects the giants more.  They still wait for their return from the mists and the rebirth of the Pilgrim Realm.  This is not to say that they don't have ambition, simply that is less obvious.</blockquote>

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