Moroi
Contents
Fast Facts
Height: 5’4"-6' Males, 5’-5'8" Females
Weight: 120-180(lbs) Males, 100-150(lbs) Females
Lifespan: Adult (18 years), Elder (90 years), Deathly (120 years)
Notable Features: Horns, Glowing Golden Rings, Purple, Red or Black Eyes, Red, Purple, Onyx, Peach or Pale Skin, Constellation Tattoos, Tails
Player Restrictions: None
Racial Ability: Travelers: The Moroi have an innate ability to navigate using stars and their constellations. They have an instinctive awareness of the direction of constellations relative to their own location, allowing them to always be able to determine their relative distance and direction. Because of this, they rarely become truly lost on long journeys. Additionally, the Moroi instinctually designate one place as their 'home', and will always know the direction they need to go to return to it.
Population: 6,000 on Atharen
Distribution: Mornoth's Mountains
History
The Moroi carry with them the longest history of any known race. While the Hyr'Norai were the first people on Atharen, extensively tracing their ancestry back nearly 5000 years ago, the peoples of the Outlands can cling to stories that span much further back. It is said that the Moroi initially evolved on the planet Kornos three hundred thousand years ago, diverging from a more primitive species of horned, gremlin-like people, hunched over and crude. The more poised and intelligent products of their evolution slowly began to spread and in time, came to rule Kornos as its leading race.
Kornos was a planet primarily consumed by jungle, with occasional plains lying in-between, beautiful coasts and tall mountains. The Moroi quickly settled into the valleys of their planet at first, whichever they could find around rivers and lakes, before eventually expanding to settle the mountains themselves. Learning to build terraces on high structures, and to travel between their high peaks through complex tunnel and bridge systems, they slowly mastered their world over time. It is said by the living scholars of their race that this expansion of knowledge is what drew the Adac to them, an interstellar species of immense arcane depth. Masters over reality, formers and shapers of the environment surrounding them, some of these Adac found the Moroi home and made contact with their race.
The Adac immediately left behind a tremendous mark. They introduced materials foreign to the planet of Kornos, and helped the Moroi build the greatest wonder of their world, the Keminalis. A massive telescope colored black and gold, the structure was capable of peering out even beyond their galaxy, staring through and beyond the dark unknown. As the Moroi learned of space, they began to understand how their own world worked. Theories blossomed, scientific concept becoming the core of their society. From the beginning, they had always loved viewing the vast beyond. It became a singular goal of their race to go as far enough as to be able to explore it. And that meant growth, and change.
While the Adac continued to help guide their progress, at some point they began to disappear, one after the next. Their great allies in the stars went away, and so they were left to navigate their uncertain future alone. Despite this, the Moroi did well. They advanced quickly, through era and hurdle after another. Some few thousand years after Atharen had been created, they were a truly advanced race. Kornos had been converted into an Ecumenopolis (or a planetwide city) known as Aderkai. They had learned to overcome the apocalyptic hurdles that held them apart from progress, and unified as one nation. An era of prosperity overcame them, and even in the darkness of their quiet galaxy, the Moroi looked outward with promise. They had already found worlds teeming with life, and they were near enough to building a vessel capable of reaching them.
It was then that they began to notice something, through the eyes of the Keminalis. The Megascope as they called it had always possessed the ability to view magic through a lens that had at once helped them to understand the ethereal nature of their universe, the Moroi conceptualizing Magithermal Entropy and other arcane laws by viewing reactions and arcane waste through that lens. This lens was also how they kept track of other races: their advancement, their locations. At one point in time, they believed themselves to have found the home of the Adac, a great beacon of light within empty space, always shining brightly along the scope's peripheral no matter where they looked. As they peered more and more across the Outlands, they found that more and more of these sources of energy had gone dark. Equivalently, for every lost signature of energy, one began to grow more and more. At the core of their universe burgeoned what began to appear as a force for total destruction: an adversary they began to recognize far too late.
The Outsider discovered their planet after cleaning up the waste of other advanced civilizations. Many believe that pointing at its energy signature through the Megascope was what led it to discover their people, as only weeks after their first extensive study did it appear on Kornos. The result was immediate, and devastating. A peaceful, disarmed people, they were helpless to its destruction. Their magical technology was devoured, their people slaughtered by the billions, their souls harvested into the maw of the great predator. Like a force of the end-times, it cleaved through their planet, their only hope the stars beyond. Through the scope they looked back towards that one remaining signature they could find: a planet still rife with people, a landmass both large and scattered, perhaps enough that the Outsider might fail to notice it. The final measures of their voyage were put into place, and ten thousand were hurried into a vessel set to explore beyond the boundaries of their galaxy.
Finally, the Moroi had left Kornos to explore the stars beyond - only their ancestral dream had only come at the end of their race. As the people aboard that vessel sailed through the empty skies, the population of Kornos was harvested to extinction, every last liter of arcana extracted from their grand machines, drunk like liquor by the insatiable monster they left behind.
The vessel, its name translating to 'The Promise', landed on Tarkus not long after. Propelled by advanced magic that allowed it to fold through space, it only took a few months before they arrived at their intended destination. Not long after landing, they were met with a delegation of odd, green-colored men and women who identified themselves as the Krishkir, the rulers of that world. Though curt and seemingly impolite, they declared their intentions for peaceful coexistence, and first contact appeared to go reasonably well. For a few months, the Moroi lived within their ship and in small camps they had set up outside of its boundaries. They were frequently met by a Krish scholar by the name of Kixan, who appeared deeply fascinated by their species, inquiring as to how they had managed to cross what his people called the 'Great Divide', the world they had come from, and whether or not they had emerged from some unknown corner of 'Atharen'. It was the first they had ever heard of the world, and so the two shared knowledge: of Kornos and Aderkai, of Atharen, of the Outsider that had destroyed their land.
Kixan informed them before long that his people were terrible brutes, and he needed aide in building a megaportal so that he could guide the Moroi to safety. Using what resources they had left within their vessel, they helped to build and construct an Interplanar Portal through Kixan's Resonance, one they came to power in the coming days. As the man predicted, however, his people attacked before long. They intended to eradicate the Moroi, and destroy their vessel so it did not lure the Outsider to their home. Nearly half of all of the Moroi present were killed, and the Promise was left a smoldering ruin, though with Kixan keeping true to his word. The Interplanar Portal opened, and thousands of the Moroi flooded through; the very last in their galaxy, flooding into Atharen as they were hunted and lashed by barbed flails from behind.
The portal closed as the last few emerged on the other side. What lay before them was a great valley, as they peered down from the mountains above. Overlooking Daravin and Radenor from the mountain range along Vendigad's eastern edge, they viewed the world they had found with relief and surprise. Finally, in the year 4598, they had made it beyond the breadth of the stars to a new home: their first and perhaps final voyage. Atharen was theirs to explore, as they built whatever structures they could along the hills that peered towards Mornoth from above.
Physiology/Biology
A humanoid species, the Moroi are roughly equivalent to humans in height (if not slightly shorter), with comparable muscular composition, including the shape and structure of their hands, feet, their skulls and brains. This is despite the fact that they physically evolved within the Outlands, where humans were created intentionally on Atharen. Scientists on Kornos who once studied Moroi evolution noted that, long ago, there was a sudden deviation in the structure of their species... roughly coinciding with the introduction of the Adac to their kind. This likely means that the Adac intentionally altered their evolution, making them evolve to more closely resemble them.
Moroi have two horns along either side of their heads, which normally grow alongside the diameter of their skull, but frequently may grow in front of them, lower along their ears and towards their neck, or in a variety of different shapes. Their horns tend to resemble the color of their skin, which is most commonly red, purplish-gold or peach, but can also present as onyx, pearlescent or a combination of any of these colors, sometimes shaded in surprising, chromatic hues when shone upon by light. They virtually always have ivory-gold, bright eyes, though there are rare exceptions, with some Moroi having red, black or deep blue eyes. Their hair is typically black, white, red, purple or blue, though rarely a Moroi may have fuchsia or golden-colored hair.
Moroi tend to have golden rings along their horns and sometimes other parts of their body that glow faintly under sun and moonlight, appearing to draw in the energy of that light to illuminate. Aside from this, they do carry one evolutionary remnant of their origin species: medium-length tails, which are skin-like in texture but with a small tuft of hair at the end. These largely remain within their species to help them balance while navigating mountains and hills.
Technology
Moroi were, among all the species on Atharen, the most advanced to have ever been known. They converted their entire planet to an Ecumenopolis, learned to harness enough of their sun's energy to power their world, had technology that allowed them to peer out towards and eventually travel through the vast reaches of space. Despite this, with the near-extinction of their species, they have lost all or the vast majority of this technology. What remains of their old world are but a few things, largely trinkets: their clothes which appear to be made of advanced technology, their books on the universal cosmology, documenting solar systems, constellations, galaxies and spatial structures, and a few lockets that are said to interface with the old ruins of their homeworld, which most Moroi contemporarily call 'Vaults'.
These Vaults were the storage facilities for many of their old technologies and secrets, with the Promise itself constructed and launched from a Vault. With Kornos left barren by the Outsider, however, these lockets remain a trinket of history. Tragically, the Moroi have found that virtually all of their old technical knowledge only applied to the resources of their old planet, with their understanding of biology and other sciences completely incompatible with Atharen, which operates with entirely different laws.
Psychology and Culture
There is little so defining of the Moroi than their innate connection to space, and their natural interest in astronomy. So strong was their desire to peer out into the stars that the first Adac to make contact with them built the Keminalis as their parting gift, before disappearing and returning years later. While initially the Moroi believed this interest in the cosmos appeared to be due to religious influences, or even their particularly unique and bountiful placement within the galaxy, others have come to understand over time that it is merely an innate function of their race. Beyond wishing to explore outside of the biosphere, Moroi enjoy traveling and exploring within it, as well. They are natural wanderers.
The Moroi spirit of wanderlust can be dull in some, but in many, it is intricate to their psychology, and extremely intense. Discovery is one of the most gratifying things a Moroi can experience. Exploring new pastures, eyeing horizons never before seen. This joy can be derived from urban or natural landscapes, and it appears that the Moroi equally have a strong anthropological interest.
Culturally, they are a close-knit people. They're family-oriented, but with strong community ties that have only dramatically strengthened since the death of their home planet. Being that the Moroi around now are the only ones alive left in the galaxy, numbered at only a few thousand, they carry a strong need to protect and nurture one another. A 'village' raises each child, and children are taught to interconnect from an early age. Children often grow through 'adventures'; joyous wanderings with their friends, discovering new things, and flexing that innate wanderlust on a smaller scale.
The Moroi are naturally curious of other species, and tend to value learning of them. It is in this regard that Atharen is a treasured find in many ways, beyond just helping save their race: it is rife with differing species of animals and intelligent beings, a fact that ignites much curiosity among the interstellar people.
Moroi also tend to enjoy astrology, and draft very complex star-charts for their children based on the month, day and hour they're born, the lunar phase, the earth's rotation around the sun, and the present constellations. While these star-charts are largely superstitious, they often form a connection between Moroi and certain constellations, which many will often call their 'guiding bodies' or otherwise regard as stars that are closely familiar to them; ones that provide a deep sense of comfort.
Clothing, Grooming and Art
Moroi clothing tends to bear emblems or sigils of their written script of Kornaan (seen below), a complex and circular language of image-like writings that form larger sentences or convey deeper meanings. Typically around the collar, center or belt-area of their clothing lies at least two or three of these symbols, which radiate a faint, golden glow many describe as 'celestial'.
Tragically, the ability to produce these garments has been lost to Kornos, meaning there are a limited quantity of these sigils left on Atharen, and each piece of clothing is therefore considered a cultural relic, key to remembering their heritage. They are well taken care of, and the old, satin-like fabrics connected to them are sometimes replaced by Atharen-native cloth if necessary. Due to the rarity of these items, some in the past have attempted to kill Moroi in order to sell their garments, though a recent pact with the Principality of Tilema has seen these incursions significantly reduced.
Moroi are clean and well-groomed, as a rule. One thing many unfamiliar to their culture remark upon is just how comfortable they are when it comes to commentary on the aspects of one's appearance. If someone smells badly, received an awful haircut or is wearing an outfit with poor coordination, relatives and even acquaintances in their community may immediately comment upon this perceived issue shortly after meeting them. These comments tend to be meant in good faith, as the Moroi believe themselves to be a sophisticated and orderly people, who like cohesion and cleanliness within their communities.
Moroi art is, unsurprisingly, astrological in nature. Even their writing itself is a form of astrological art, and this only expands as they paint and draw. They are known also to be skilled designers, weaving cosmological designs into the structures of their home, and their clothing. Aside from this, they are also known to be poets, with their poetry tending towards optimistic lines of thinking, though in recent decades many Moroi have written great poetry and novels around their grief; the loss of their entire world, their family and the things familiar to them. As much as braving their 'New World' brings many a form of satisfaction, nearly all Moroi still grieve deeply what was lost, and this is often seen in their art.
A common form of art is that of constellation tattoos, typically inscribed into the face or collar area of a Moroi, and usually drawn somehow in relation to their astrological-chart, though they can take from a variety of different influences. These vary greatly in size, scope and even color, and not all Moroi have them.
Religion and Worship
The Moroi are not typically known to be 'religious', though there are concepts akin to some sort of theism that are commonplace among them. To begin with, the Moroi have known of the Adac, or the Living Gods of Atharen for some time, and as architects and guides of their early-middle advancements, they have long admired and even revered them. It was a stunning surprise for them to learn that the land they found was the one forged by the remnants of that race, though the Adac remaining appear not to match with the ones they initially encountered.
The Moroi would recant ancient stories of a 'Jyrak', a 'Lyxan' and a 'Masena', the three Adac who frequented Kornos and helped them to build the mega-structure of Aderkai. Extensive research into the Adac of Atharen has led them to conclude that all three of those great beings who once shepherded their race must now be dead, though with the absence of the Living Gods, none would speak to them to confirm. It is said that these Gods were responsible for the construction of the Vaults of Kornos, helping them to store knowledge and ancient technologies that would persist regardless of whatever crisis that faced them.
Aside from their reverence for Gods that no longer appear to live, the Moroi generally carry faith in the cosmos, believing the universe itself to be the manifestation of some greater conscious or will. It is their view that the Outsider acts as a disease within the greater cosmos, a virus that the universe has not yet learned to counteract, but one day will. This conceptualization of the universe itself as a sort of dormant, breathing entity has typically led them to consider the Adac almost as cells within that larger structure, forging creation and helping shepherd growth and vitality to the inner structures and lifeforms within.
Reproduction, Aging, and Death
The Moroi are largely similar to the majority of the other races on Atharen in that they reproduce between one male and one female of their species. Though not the typical norm, many Moroi appear fairly androgynous, largely due to the fact that their race naturally has a half-chromosome attached to their second (either X or Y), resulting in males with very masculine or typically feminine appearances, and females with very feminine or typically masculine appearances. Because of this, Moroi can often identify differently than with their 'biological sex', given that their chromosomes could result in a 'female' Moroi looking entirely like a man, and vice-versa.
The reproductive cycle of a Moroi does not differ much from a human's. Conception usually occurs within three weeks after insemination, and after roughly eight months total, a Moroi will usually give birth to one or two children. Moroi very commonly conceive twins, who are rarely identical, but can be. These twin-births tend to make up around forty percent of all Moroi pregnancies, though a Moroi who gives birth generally takes some time to recover from the pregnancy.
Moroi age fairly standardly, though they live up to around a century or longer, with fortunate ones dying at around a hundred twenty to a hundred thirty years. At around the age fifty to fifty-five, most will very clearly exit their prime and begin to age. At around ninety, they will appear very aged, and the byproducts of that age may begin to set in not far after, such as dementia or more frequent illness or disease.
When a Moroi dies, they are always burned so that their ashes will rise to the atmosphere, before one day filtering through to the cosmos. Their star chart will be read before a crowd, and it will be matched on accuracy to the events of their life. Then, a star-chart for their life beyond - their life-in-death as it is called - will be produced before that crowd, their stories within the world beyond being relayed as if a grand, secondary adventure. Even though Moroi are not strongly religious, they do believe in some concept of fate, and eternity. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, a fact they use to reason that the mortal spirit - or the soul - cannot truly be destroyed either. All life is therefore, in some way, eternal... and they continue to honor their ancestors long after they are gone.
Language
The Moroi speak a language known as Kornaan, named after their home planet of Kornos. An ancient language, true scholars of the tongue would divide it into several subsects: Old Kornaan, Lexergic Kornaan, Pre-Stellar Kornaan, and Atharenian Kornaan. Regardless of these variants or dialects, it can be well understood inter-generationally or through old texts, given the preserved and largely unchanging nature of Kornaan's written script. The Moroi language is circular, using complex symbols (see Gallifreyan writing above). Within the larger or outer sphere will exist one to two inner spheres, with certain sections of those spheres having symbology written within that speaks to the meaning of the symbol. One single series of written spheres can depict anywhere from one sentence to an entire paragraph, depending on the size and complexity of the inner workings. Kornaan writers inscribe from left to right, and can write entire essays within one to two lines, though their letters tend to be rather large. In their writings, circles tend to intersect, which can in some cases alter the meaning of the circles, though typically this acts the introduction to a new paragraph, a comma or otherwise a continuation of the thought.
All Moroi names have a Kornaan and Atharen Common written version.
Common Male names include: Lexen, Nalkor, Tyrin, Marxevin, Verne
Common Female names include: Lirix, Tyrinhe, Glerel, Kaliax, Noirak
Moroi surnames are derived from their mother. Every five generations, a young woman - upon reaching adulthood - will determine which of her ancestors, male or female, she wishes to emulate and look to for inspiration. For the next five generations, her descendants will be named after this chosen ancestor, often with some slight variation in their name, such as a prefix or suffix.
Notes
- Moroi who wish to play Flashback Threads on Kornos, the Promise or Tarkus must ask for permission and must discuss these thread(s) with a moderator, preferably on Discord or PM.
- Virtually all Moroi alive know each other, as they all arrived on Atharen on the same ship. Please keep this in mind if two Moroi PCs are interacting. They may not be deeply familiar, but they will likely at least recognize one another.
