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| The Writer |
Humans
Argueably the masters of Threa in the past, humans are little more than a resource in the grimm present of the world. Ever abundant, humans dwell in several parts of The Veil, but only on The Solar Desert Of Narmok they can dwell in freedom. Thought one would argue that surviving underground while being constantly hunted down by gigantic menaces can hardly be called "freedom". Most "civilized" humans dwell in the cities of the damned, either as workforce, servants or, worst even, blood cattle for the vampire lords to feast upon. At the scar of the world, humans are even used as currency among devils, as their souls fuel many of their devices and unholy powers, while demons are more interested in using them to bolster their numbers. Some free human communities hold dealings with the alghul, but most find the hunger folk unsettling. By the same token, most humans avoid building settlements too much to the south, lest they fall pray of the machine raids marching from Arbahn, which seek humans to turn them into gavra workforce. As such, humans do anything they can to keep the gavra away, both fearfull they may be overtly working for the machines to get more raw material, or simply disgusted by being remainded of what the machines make of man. While most humans are both scared and fascinated by the deerath, the singing haunts usually avoid them as their meat has turned a highly prized asset on human markets.
There is little record in the regards of the human culture of the past in Threa, but most free humans now revere a femenine divinity they call Anodel, The Ascending Child. Curiously enough, the human mythology states that Anodel is not the creator of humanity or Threa but the daughter of an elder divine entity and pseudo-historical figure remembered as Asoey Worgbane. According to the legend, Asoey took on the unlikely mortal form of a human girl to battle head on the demonic infestation on the world scar, allowing herself to be captured in order to seize the power of The Abyss for herself to battle fire with fire. However, as Asoey saw her battle was unlikely to end soon, she bestowed the spark of divinity upon her daughter, Anodel, and entrusted her with the task of humanity's survival until her return from The Abyss, day in which she will cleanse the world from all darkness. It remains a mistery of faith who the father of Anodel was, if it ever existed, as there is little surviving proof of the historical reality of Asoey Worgbane, whose myth originated around 1000 years ago. In the other hand, some scholars are inclined to think Asoey was but the lessermost divinity of a whole pantheon of which nothing is remembered but in decrepit writings and long lost lore, thought most clerics disscard such claims as blasphemous heresy. Anodel is commonly depicted as a human girl of shoulder lenght black hair and dark blue eyes, dressed in dark purple robes glittering with tiny silver sparkles as if she was wearing the night as her mantle, for the humans of Threa believe the night grew long in the world to protect them from their most inmediate enemies. In the other hand, Asoey Worgbane is depicted as a human female warrior with a fiery reddish blonde mane and golden eyes, clad from head to toes in a black fullplate of demonic appearance (sometimes even depicted as ablaze in hellfire), with a masterwork greatsword of angelic motiffs in one hand and the other enveloved in crackling eldtrich fire, representing her taming of the demonic arkane powers. Because of this, most human arkane delvers pray to Asoey in hope the battling goddess will help them mastering the demonic powers of magecraft without being consumed by them but, as arkane power is associated with demons and their ways, it's study is largely disscouraged. Some scholars of the faith associate Asoey with the sun, saying it now brings misery upon men because she is no longer wielding control over it as it was the case in the long lost past.
Svetocher
As the vampire lords do as they please with their human vassals in their cities, dhampirs are far more common than what one would guess, specially on the cities of Zomer and Sperches, which are the closest to the human settlements on Narmok. In the beginning, dhampirs were merely the result of the whims of bored vampire lords seeking to fill the voyd of their solitude with the experience of parenting. Nevertheless, as time passed and the human stock grew, the vampire nobles saw the wisdom in having a faction of mixed heritage under their service, for their insights granted them a better understanding and control of the cattle they intended to keep indefinetely. As such, most dhampirs enjoy lesser nobiliary titles that entrust them with direct power over the human population, acting both as overseers and enforcers of the law under the command of their lords. However, as time has passed, many dhampirs have grown fonder of humans than they are of their undead sires and it hasn't been unheard for dhampirs to do their best to lessen the cruelty of the damned over the humans under their power. Technically all dhampirs on Threa are of the svetocher kind as they are all descended from the moroi kin. If there were other vampire lineages in the past, it is largely unknown, and the vampire lords themselves remain silent on the matter.
As law enforcers and defenders of the cities of the damned, dhampirs are constantly facing the threat of the alghul and their raids, so both races have a long history of enmity since their inception. Dhampir feel a distant kinship with the gavra, as they see on their stitched faces and missmatched parts a sort of disstorted mirror visage of their own mixed heritage, specially when they ponder on "the real visage" of their undead sires. Naturaly attracted to beauty, the dhampir find the deerath's enigmatic charm almost irresistible, a peek into the posibility of a brighter world of beauty and many of the less ethic kind have been known to capture the singing haunts to keep them as personal pets on their manors or as gifts to their undead sires, who value the rarity of such presents. Accostumed to enforce the law of their sires, dhampirs get along well with the hellspawn, who seem all too eager to partake in the political intrigue of the vampire kind. In the other hand, pitborn make poor company for an svetocher, as both find the other aggresively competing for the spotlight and leathership in whatever social sittuation they might find the other.
Dhampirs aren't particularly inclined to religion, but some follow the creed of their undying sires, who venerate Adiastebh, The Breaching Tide. Also known as "She-Who-Cannot-Be-Denied", Adiastebh is also praised by thieves and those aiming to attain forbbiden things, for she personifies the will, might, and cunning to get anything that is desired without mattering the consecuences or the means. Apocrypha found on the secret libraries from the southern city of Otomne suggest that Asoey Worgbane enlisted the help of Adiastebh to steal the secrets of arkane lore from the pits of The Abyss but, upon fulfilling her part of the agreement, The Breaching Tide betrayed Asoey, taking away her godhood while delivering her to the demon lords. Her ascension as a vampire goddess, thus, was key to the rise of the vampire kin as the sovereigns of The Veil and their "neutrality" in the Blood War. While evident that this account of events contradicts what most human devouts hold as true regarding the mythos of Asoey Worgbane, one could argue that the records held by vampires have a higher chance of being more accurate considering the immortality of the damned. Nevertheless, it is also completely feasible that such an account was a mere hoax designed by the vampires to demoralize the human cattle under their control and over-justify their superiority and right to subjugate as part of "divine decree", considering how intrinsecal faith seems to be on mortals. Adiastebh is usually depicted as a humanoid woman, barely an adult, with silky black hair and crimson eyes colored pitch black with eyeshadow all around them. Scanthly dressed in gothic attires of black leather, two bat wings sprout from her back as white fangs peek through her black colored lips while she licks the blood on them.
Hellspawn
Even taking into consideration the fact that Baator has stablished a firm foothold on Threa as a means to battle the demonic incurssion on the planet, the abundance of hellspawn (tieflings descended from devils) is unusually high, specially when one takes in account the fact that humans are not as common or populous as in other words, throwing the "mere chance" variable out of the window. However, this doesn't means in any ways that the devils of inhabiting The Veil are any less brutal, sadistic or evil than they are on The Nine Hells Of Baator. It doesn't means, either, that humans in Threa are more open minded and accepting for like entertaining and enduring such acursed lovers as devils could be. In fact, the truth is far more practical, cruel and harsh in nature, befitting of the devilkin. Having made a permanent hellish outpost on a radius around the breach as a sort of containment wall, the devils find themselves ill suited to bring all the necesary divine power to fuel their unholy abilities and machinery. As such, they are in dire need to gain souls far faster than what their numbers can handle while also battling wave after wave of demonic invaders. It was with this purpose that hundreds of humans have been captured, lured, or "bought" from the vampire lords to act as breeding stock, in order to create a boom population of hellspawn tieflings. The hellspawn chilren are, thus, brutally and strictly raised with only 3 possible fates: soul corruption, grunt workforce, or cannon fodder. It is, in fact, a very profitable business when you take in account the soul economy of hell as, being raised on depravity but still posessing a soul, hellspawn are almost damned since birth, so if they outlive their usefullness, devils can already count with the energy of their souls once they loose them.
In contrast with the well known unpredictability of tiefling heritage on other worlds, hellspawn from Threa are far more easily distinguishable from their demonic counterparts as, tracing back their bloodline to the phistophilus, most of them posses crimson red skin, horns, pointed ears, and black eyes with glowing irises. Some even possess tails, and the horn shapes vary by individual, but the other traits are almost universal among them, which makes them recognizable to others and to each other. This "common look" has given a usually inarticulated race a sense of kinship that is way too rare among the fiendish blooded of other worlds, as well as a sort of status, as hellspawn found on other lands are expected to be educated and well learned beyond the norm, since it is the most logical assumption that a hellspawn that isn't toiling for it's daily chunk of bread or going in the frontline is definetely up to gather souls through corruption, a task that requires a good deal of witts, skill, and knowledge.
Hellspawn find the gavra dissmaying as their cravings and obessions could make them the perfect clients for soul transaction, if they were to have any sort of soul to trade, but they still value them as allies and professional companions, since having someone that keeps his word by free will is a rare luxury in Threa. They get along superbly with dhampirs as their lots in life are dramatically similar with both being trained since earliest youth in courtly intrigue and the study of humanoid psyche. Also, both share a general despise for the alghul, as the hellspawn find their feral and chaotic nature way too similar to the foul brood of The Abyss they are taught to hate since birth. In the other hand, they find themselves perplexed before the deerath, as most hellspawn can't wrap up their minds around the idea of a race so inclined to chaos and yet so peacefull, which makes many to falter in their intrinsecal devotion of law. They have an strained relation with the pitborn as, half-descended from the eternal enemies of their sires, they know what is to be in between two worlds but can't bring themselves to trust a being spawned from chaos. In most cases, hellspawn look at humans with a blend of pitty and envy, for they know they are nothing but the prey and cattle of the higher powers vying for control over Threa but, at least, their souls aren't damned to begin with, which grants them a tiny twinkle of freedom and hope that a hellspawn would treasure far more than it's own life if she could get such a rare chance.
Encouraged to think that they are damned from their very inception, most hellspawn turn their devotion to Asmodeus, Lord Of The Nine Hells Of Baator, in the hope that, by pleasing the unquestioned ruler of hell or their closest lieutenants, they might scape the torment of eternity by being quickly promoted from lemures into the hellish hierarchy of greater devils. This drives most hellspawn to push themselves to excel in whatever task they find themselves, trying to outdo their peers and show that they deserve to scape their fate as mere fuel on the Blood War. Nevertheless, a few truely daring hellspawn rebel against the unholy law of Erediss, the second of five devil settlements that exist on Threa around the planar breach, seeking to regain the control they never had over the ultimate fate of their souls. As would be expected, the words of a hellspawn are weighed with care, and while people of their word, nobody trusts their intentions, since their fame as soul bargainers follows them around wherever they go.
Pitborn
Very much like their devilish counterparts, the tiefling tainted by the chaos of The Abyss are far more common in Threa than what one would expect, thought their reasons owe nothing to evil machination or masterfull planning. In fact, the genesis of the pitborn tieflings in Threa owes itself more to chaos than to any other circunstance, which is ironicaly befitting to them. As The Midnight Gate began to tear apart Threa, the demonic taint began to spread through air, water, and soil alike, and those who drew nourishment from such taint fell ill to unnatural maladies. Yet, not all those who drank fouled waters or ate the meat of tainted beasts died. Some survived in a weakened state, ignorant that the corruption they had intaken would manifest in the generations to come. Before priests could device any sort of reasonable answer to blame such an event on the sinfull nature of their followers, a miriad of human parents found themselves bearing the burden of a family that now had the taint of The Abyss on their genealogy, even if none of their members had ever crossed their ways with the acursed tempters. Despised, shunned, and, more than anything, feared, most pitborn fled from their former homes to find a place where they could dwell, a place which would not judge them without a crime, but none above ground or below it on Threa would suffer the chaos tiefling and the taint on their blood, so they pay heed to the call of The Abyss and returned to the bowels of the world. There, in brown earth putrid with corruption, alight with ragefull flames of palid yellow, and washed with bitter rivers of tears, the pitborn found a place they could turn into an abode. Thus The Halls Of Grime came to be, carved in the living rock of the breach, as those who beared the spirit of The Abyss seeked to scape the war in between their hunters and the realm of chaotic intend that had brought them forth. There they dwell, leading lives of filth, misery and violence, much in the likeness to the monsters that come forth each times the clock strikes twelve in the night, drawing sustenance from the ever present gore that rains down on the slopes amid the chasm like starving flies at the disscard pile of a butchery, indulging in acts of depravity and corruption for which words grow too small and soft, for all the delights of goodness have been unfairly denied to them.
Once again, as the origin of these particular strand of pitborn is of a far more human stock, they are far more distinguishable from their hellspawn counterparts, appearing almost human with noticeable, yet slight, demonic traits, such as horns, slit pupil eyes, tails, or even hoofs for feet in some cases. However, still bearing the taint of chaos on them, most pitborn possess some minor or mayor deformity that marres their simetry, either as slight as an odd colored birthmark or additional sets of useless and half-formed appendages. This makes them easy prey for the devil patrols, always on the look for infiltrators among the human ranks or even those attempting to pass as hellspawn.
Pitborn see the gavra as charming, as their missmatched visages pleases the chaotic aesthetics of The Abyss, but find their unwillingness to "let go" constraining and stagnant to their chaotic free selves, so they tend to get along well for a time. In the other hand, pitborn have much in common with the alghul, and both can easily understand the sittuation of the other, as both have been forced by circumstance to dwell among dirt and filth while feeding upon that which anybody else would dare touching. Nevertheless, this similarities makes them natural rivals for survival and territory as well, so the skirmishes between pitborn and alghul are common in the depths of the earth whenever any of both attempt to expand beyond their borders. The deerath are gazed upon with a deep sense of envy and puzzling, for their perfect simmetry and free chance to dwell in utter peace and freedom, despite the chaos inherent to them, is what a pitborn craves the most but knows that can't be attained. They, however, despise how the singing haunts seem so unwilling to defend what they have in a more aggresive way and tend to equate their contemplativeness to cowardice. The relation in between the dhampir and the pitborn would be quite good, as the dhampir understand too well what is to be between two worlds, but most pitborn despise the svetocher nobleborn haughtyness as a sign that they do not know what is to struggle for survival and, thus, do not acknowledge their authority by any mean, often competing against them for the spotlight in whatever sittuation they are, trying to one-up them and prove that it is personal might (be it of character, physical power, magical skill, lore, or even all them together) which grants the true right to have the fate of others in your hands instead of lousy invested titles. The relation with their devilish counterparts, the hellspawn, is complicated as the pitborn are aware they are, essentially, the same, yet regard them as little if any different from devils at large, thus seeing them with well earned suspicion, knowing that every deal struck with one of the hellspawn can become an eternity of damnation. Perhaps the best company a pitborn can find is with the ever lonely haglings, for their primeval bond with the bygone natural world and the realms of confusion before time strikes to them as very similar to their own blood link to the ever shifting chaos of The Abyss.
With The Abyss merely "downstairs", most pitborn have a rather undoubting faith on the power of the demon lords, and many have become popular choices of devotion for their kin. Graz'zt, The Dark Prince, is a very popular choice among those pitborn who seek to excert domination over their brethren as well as those who desire to strike back at their hellish rivals from above. Malcanthet, Queen Of The Succubi, sees worship among those pitborn who seek to leave behind The Halls Of Grime and earn a place amid the decadent lords from the cities of the damned, more than eager to flaunt their superiority before the haughty svetochers. Finally, Orcus is favored by those who seek to truely rebel on their demonic heritage and exert domination through sheer power and brutality and, while some scholars would argue that Demogorgon, The Prince Of Demons, is a far more powerfull choice, few find any appeal in the borderline insane demon lord which seems more a beast than a thinking sentience.
Hagling
Ever lonesome and ever wandering, the scions of the hags and humanoid races, haglings (oftenly named changelings, causing much confussion with those who trace their ancestry to the shape-shifting dopplegangers) were relatively common on other times, when humans weren't so afraid of the forests of the world, but such times are long gone now. With the eldalie extinguished, and the green realms twisted in vicious gardens of spiked brambles and fetid bogs of toxic fumes, the hags have grown many, perhaps even way too many for their own liking, thus rendering the need for newcommers scarce and, thus, haglings aren't sired with the same fecundity of the past, nor it is as easy to lure the happless traveler into the forest as it used to be. Because of these reasons, haglings have become rather rare. Uncalled by their hag mothers upon reaching maturity and hunted down by their human foster parents, most haglings flee the outskirts of humanoid settlements to lead lonesome existances, usually at the doorstep of their mothers' domains, while others, more resolved to carve a place of their own, take residence at the brass city of Erediss, persuing careers of corruption and guile that, sometimes, rival the best hellspawn. Others, of a more intellectual inclination, seek to explore the secrets in the intrinsecal order of the universe, working to tame the latent arkane powers on their blood, applying to the schools in the lazurite city of Kathodrel. Ultimately, those desperate enough seek shelter in The Halls Of Grime along the pitborn, for the demon blooded tieflings brimm with stolen secrets of arkane lore that date back to the days of The First World and, perhaps, even more ancient things.
Haglings feel they can sympathize with the gavra feelings of lost origin and their search for truth, but can't help finding their lack of a tie to the natural world somewhat distasteful. Haglings and alghul would get along well if it wasn't for the fact that many haglings desperatelly avoid anything that would remind them in what they may become one day and, while the hunger folk do not resemble the hate crones in looks, the alghul share a good measure of the savagery which has made the hags infamous. Both deeply tied to the most primordial aspects of the nature, haglings and deerath enjoy the company of the other dearly, even if they cannot fully understand each other due the inmense mental gap in between both. Svetochers find that the abilities of the hagling put her slightly above the common human cattle, but they remain way too uncouth and parasitic to be considered more than unrefined country folk that try to torpidly imitate their graces through forgotten fey arts. Conversely, the haglings consider the svetocher as haughty beyond the limits of their beauty, prefering to deal as little as they can with them. In dire contrast, and despite their tendency to chaos, haglings and hellspawn can work wonders when teaming together for both races are fond of exploring and exploiting the depths of humanoid psychology for their own ends and associations in between both are common. However, it is alongside the pitborn that the haglings seem to find true twin souls, as both have endured a similar persecution through life and both cannot help but to delight upon the primal surges of power found in ritualistic magic and chaotic power of eras past.
Haglings do not have any sort of true religion as most seek not to turn into hags and, thus, do not worship hag deities. Nevertheless, most of them revere nature in the likeness of the deerath and as witchcraft is ever so common on their numbers, many instead revere the strange entities from beyond that are collectively known as Fal'Cie which seem to bestow their powers upon them, said to dwell in the rift between worlds, thought none in Threa had ever wittnessed or given accounts of such primordial beings if ever out yellowed scrolls and crumpled tidbits of lost books which are better left in such an state.
- The Writer.
