Ryan Bailey (order #2639004) 173.14.196.1 - fap.if.usp.br

Ryan Bailey (order #2639004) 1CHAPTER ONE: LIFE IN THE HIGH FIRST AGESNAKEMENDuring the Time of Cascading Years, a Lunar nowknown as the Mother of Serpents restored Creationto its natural state by journeying to the world’s edgesand copulating with what she perceived as one of thetwenty hidden souls of Gaia—a tremendous serpentat the root of the Elemental Pole of Wood. Since thattime, she’s acquired a taste for re-enacting her Creationdefiningact, though so furtively did she engage in thispractice in the beginning that she fled into the Wyldso her peers could not see her. The result is the race ofsnakemen, half-mortal and half-beast. The world doesnot yet know the origin of the snakemen, and believesthem to be the result of genetic manipulation. TheMother of Serpents has not yet let it be known thather new name is literal. The Deliberative occasionallycelebrates her as a genetic genius, but her reclusivelifestyle prevents her from accepting these honors inperson. Dancer in the Wind, her Solar husband, helpskeep her secret partially because of the prestige he winsfrom such an honored spouse.Similarly, other Lunar Exalted who’ve bredbeastmen during the First Age have done so in secretand disguised their progeny as artificial beingsof other sorts.and festivals. Their impressive wings and ethereal fashionslend an otherworldly air to holy days and serve as a reminderof Exalted might in a way the gods’ presence cannot.Each blessed race is design to be particularly well suitedto its environment and function. For instance, the peopleof the sea are green-skinned and gilled mortals created toinhabit the West. The people of the earth are blue-skinnedand clawed, expert miners who spend all their time belowground. The herd guardians are feline carnivores who mindthe vast cattle herds of the South. The minikin are tiny folkcreated to service delicate machinery. All these races areless well known than the people of the air but still prominent,except in the West, where the people of the sea arebetter known than and serve the same festival roles as thepeople of the air. Lately, however, the people of the sea’sfame has been overshadowed by that of the mysterious andexotic pelagials.Cousin to the blessed races, slave races are those racescreated for the gratification of their Exalted creators. Theyhave few or no rights, and most of Creation’s inhabitantsview them as barely alive, more akin to living constructspowered by human souls than human beings in their ownright. Their souls come from the lowest tiers to whom theMandala Accord applies. As their numbers grow, though,the Deliberative must broaden the Mandala Accord’s criteriafor judging which souls are undeserving of incarnation in a“true” mortal body.NONHUMAN RACESNot all the mortal races of the Age of Splendor are human.From the plethora of intelligent races in prehistory,few still exist. Most were eliminated or enslaved as threatsto human hegemony over Creation in the First Age’s earlydays. Enemy races that survive have been exiled to theUnderways and sealed from the world. Only the MountainFolk and the people of the earth interact with them withany regularity. Still, a few nonhuman races survive alliedwith the Deliberative.THE DRAGON KINGSThree thousand, five hundred and sixteen years havepassed since the end of the Primordial War, and Creation’smost famous nonhuman race has yet to recover.Before the war, almost 150 million Dragon King soulsreincarnated endlessly. For the prehistoric Dragon Kings,all relationships were permanent, and although a friend inone life might become a rival or a distant correspondent inthe next, each of the saurians took for granted the enduringnature of such bonds. Not only their social lives, but theirentire culture, their rituals, their beliefs and their moralitywas built on the certainty of no demise being permanent.This state of affairs was the norm for uncounted years.During the war, the Primordials deployed terrible meansof attack against the Dragon Kings and irrevocably shatteredover 80 percent of the saurians’ souls. Less than 30 millionDragon Kings survive in the Era of Dreams, and such has itbeen since the Ochre Fountain Era. Never will more than 30million Dragon Kings walk Creation at once again.In the war’s aftermath, the surviving Dragon Kings hadlost the majority of their peers and friends, the relationshipsby which they’d defined themselves. Almost all of their traditionsbecame unfeasible, and the axioms of their culture,their metaphors and proverbs, their taboos and their greatestworks of fiction and art were proved or rendered nonsensical.Newly sapient Dragon Kings, who recall their past livesbut faintly, suffer only a gnawing feeling of unease and loss.Older Dragon Kings recall an eternity of cultural stability,gone. Their regret grows only more clear and painful as theycultivate their enlightenment, even as they recall a time whenenlightenment and the sharpened memories it brought servedto bring them closer to old friends and valued comrades.Dragon Kings survive in small city-enclaves acrossCreation’s face. They participate in rituals with the Solars,they act as bodyguards for Celestials they wish to honor, andthey advise the Deliberative politically. They are, however,in cultural decline. For a time, they sought to redefinethemselves as the servants of the Unconquered Sun’s newfavored children, and they still adhere to that role, but itbrings them meager satisfaction.32