Avendar

Overview
STR	25
INT	16
WIS	17
DEX	18
CON	25
CHR	21
Resists	Blunt
Vulnerable	Holy
Special	Giant, +1 Scan distance
Classes	Fighter, Gladiator, Bandit, Barbarian, Bard, Ranger, Watcher

The oldest sapient species, the alatharya have dramatically declined after their millennia of empire and domination. In the wake of challenging the supremacy of the Overgods, the alatharya were cast down in their hubris by the heavens in a cataclysm known as the Sundering.

Biology

The alatharya are enormous humanoid mammals. They have white hair, silver or bluish-silver skin in various shades, and average eight feet tall with a broad, muscular frame. They are lean, with very little fat or body hair, though some alatharya may grow beards. They mature quickly both physically and mentally, often reaching six feet by age ten and being considered adults by age fifteen.

Both the marrow and blood of the alatharya contains traces of telianthin, the source of their metallic complexions, their superior stamina, and their unusually dense bones. Their eyeballs are elongated like a hawk's rather than spherical, granting them extraordinarily keen eyesight and allowing them to see farther than most. Alatharya may have any eye colour, though they tend to paler shades.

The alatharya are incapable of aligning with a resonance or using magic.

Culture

There are no alatharyan cities or states, though small and isolated alatharya-dominated communities exist. Their size and strength make them desirable labour in human cities, though stereotypes of the alatharya being slow or unintelligent bar them from many positions of power or prominence. In more extremely aligned cultures such as Kor Thrandir or the ch'taren Havens, alatharya tend to be mistrusted due to their lack of resonance and the perception of them as stupid or easily manipulated. They are common slaves for the shuddeni, whose priests have uses for their flesh and blood.

Those alatharya who do not live as a minority among other people will form their own small communities, generally consisting of no more than fifty to one hundred people at most. Some of these communities are stationary, as with Yora Vale, while the alatharya of the Rirro Jagka in particular are nomadic and move every season. Settled or not, alatharyan communities tend to egalitarian arrangements, with horizontal hierarchies and communal ownership and stewardship of shared property.

Religion

Enirra is the sole deity associated with the alatharya. After the Sundering, the alatharya were largely abandoned by the gods, but Enirra emerged to shelter the broken alatharya and preserve them from extinction. Many common alatharyan values and mores have their roots in Enirran philosophy as a result, even among atheist communities.

In modern times, Enirran enclaves tend to be more secretive, particularly in the wake of targeted persecution from devotees of Rveyelhi. They are especially concentrated in mixed population centers where the alatharya are an underclass, and have a reputation for finding ways to become involved in anti-authoritarian and insurrectionist activities. While individual followers will gravitate toward whatever aligns with their personal values or politics, this inclination is actually polity-agonistic from the Enirran perspective; Enirrans are just as likely to align with progressive movements as they are conservative ones.

Though the hubris of the alatharya remains legend, modern deities do not shun them and even sigil prominent followers, the same as any other lineage.

History

The Sundering radically changed the face of the land and destroyed the legendary power and world-spanning empire of the alatharya. Afterward, the shattered race was stripped by the gods of their peerless mental capabilities, capacity to use magic, and ability to align themselves with resonance. Their peerless mental abilities became diminished and their capacity for magic stifled, but their large and sturdy physique remained intact; this along with Enirra's intervention allowed them to survive in those chaotic and violent years.

They had early contact with the ethron, who traded their knowledge of hunting and the wilds to the alatharya in return for artifacts preserved from their fallen empire. Taking advantage of their height, superior eyesight, and strength, the alatharya elaborated on the knowledge of the ethron to establish a lineage of archery that continues into the modern day in the form of the Ranger. Other species were not so kind, however; with knowledge of the alatharya's treachery and debasement, not to mention the state of the world as the last ripples of the Sundering calmed, the communities of most other species shaded from wary to outright hostile. This lead early alatharya to establish hunting lodges deep in the wilds across Avendar, which served as early waystations and trading posts for a people forced to either isolation or wandering.