Tiveran

Fast Facts

Height: 5'8"-6'6" Males, 5'4"-6'2" Females

Weight: 140-250(lbs) Males, 110-180(lbs) Females

Lifespan: Adult (18 years), Elder (80 years), Deathly: Dromekh (120 years), Deathly: Adavon (500 years)

Notable Features: Bat-like Ears, Bioluminescent Red Lines, Bright Red Eyes, Chiropteran Evolution (Adavon)

Player Restrictions: None

Racial Ability: Ravanian: As diluted descendants of the Ravanians, the Tiveran carry lesser versions of their hereditary abilities and can evolve to achieve their greatest extent through time. In essence, the Tiveran can transfigure themselves into that of a chiropteran, gaining the traits of that blended species as they learn to tap into their Ravanian blood. The details of this racial ability are detailed in the race's physiology section.

Population: 67,000,000

Distribution: The Shattered Isles, The Helix Isles, Vividim, Lukhan

History

What is known of the Tiveran people, first and foremost, is their origin: their descent from the Ravanians, the wretched abortions of the Gods. It is not known from where the Ravanians came, but when they arrived on Atharen's continental main, they came forth as a blight never seen before or after in its sheer momentum. Vicious chiropterans, within whom magic was as natural as breathing, overwhelmed the land and slaughtered millions of Elves... Elves who thought themselves the greatest spellcasters alive. They were broken woefully wrong, their glory usurped by them by a species that seemed transfixed by unimaginable horror.

The Ravanians were discovered very early in the history of mortal life on Atharen, found in a cavern by an explorer named Sinorion in Glade of 773. An Ashen Elf and a young man, Sinorion spoke since his early childhood days of being called to in the night by haunting whispers, which reverberated into his dreams. After two decades of coercion, he came to believe that these voices were calling him to his destiny, which lied in a cavern beneath the mountains of what is now western Daravin. Though he did not know how his God-given destiny had come to be there or why it called on him to plunge such unimaginable depths, what Sinorion found was indeed what he sought: a grey-skinned, shriveled thing of a man, who claimed that he was one of the Living Gods who had been trapped in that cave and starved to the point of cachexia and malnourishment. Though the creature spoke in a deep, harrowing pitch, Sinorion was enthralled. He brought that creature whatever it desired; animals, blood, meat, and eventually people. Sinorion brought his little sister to serve as the entity's feed, as it promised him that once she was consumed it would return to its natural, Godly state.

It did not. The courier of that entity's dinner was his next meal, and as he and his sister laid there on the cavern floor as little more than winnowed bone marrow, the awoken Ravanian traversed through the remainder of the tunnels that had locked his kind away. Freeing each of them one by one and bringing them feed from whichever surface village he could plunder, the Ravanian—his name one day known as Kahr—brought his kin to the fold.

It is unknown to any but the Gods how they ended up there in those deep underground vaults, so tight as to not allow even oxygen through. Erudites only muse on what they are, or when they came to be on Atharen, if they came there through some arrival or if they were forged by the Gods by mistake. Despite their enigma, they are unmistakably known for their power: they are a species superior to any other living organism known on Atharen, second only to the Adac above. It was not a great moment of Elven heroism that pushed them back into obscurity, either, but the direct intervention of the Gods themselves, with the Eldashan their chariots. Even then, the attempt to cleanse Atharen of the Ravanians was not clear-cut. It did not resolve in some great battle, but rather as a subversive war in the shadows that was waged for decades, even with the direct intervention of Atharen's Creators.

And some would say it was a battle never fully won, for even as the pureblood Ravanians vanished from the surface, the progeny they sired afflicted the land for hundreds of years. The first generations of Ravanian offspring, the first Tiveran, were as brutal and subversive as their ancestors. Though they did not wield the sheer and innate magical might of their fathers and mothers, they were tormented by their foul urges and their need to dominate the minds of others. They lusted for the physical flesh of others, consuming the meat of their prey, and they sought after carnal gratification like a vice. The descendants of the Ravanians were hunted like scourge, chased to the end of the world by man and Elf alike until they vanished from continental Atharen.

The Tiverans retreated at first to Strix, a cursed land consumed by shadow. Though it drove men mad, it was suitable for them. Its ghastly, haunting black shores were comely to a people who had only ever known prejudice and despair. It was on Strix's shores that the Tiverans first forged their own identity. All of them were human, as Elves had gloriously failed to fall prey to the chiropteran allure, but they did not see themselves as humans any longer. They had been demonized by their mothers and fathers, and they did not bear their appearance. They were different: they had intrinsic physical characteristics that made them discernible, and therefore hateworthy. The Tiveran men and women who settled their first homes on the island of Strix, first frontier of the Shattered Isles, forged their new identity and let it come to be. They named themselves after the ship that guided them to Strix, the Tivereme.

Suitably, for the next three thousand years, their race would be known as the scourge of Atharen and Icheron's seas.

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Physiology/Biology

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Technology and Civilization

Tiveran architecture is undeniably brutalist. It is smooth, often pyramidal or in the shape of ziggurats, and imposing. An entire Tiveran city may perhaps only be constructed of a few buildings, which host thousands or even tens of thousands of residents, stratified by floors, columns, corridors and rows that dedicate specific areas of one of these massive buildings to specific functions. One interior-facing row might be a police barracks, while an exterior-facing row might be occupied by residents. In the middle of many of the largest Tiveran buildings (many of which occupy millions or even tens of millions of square feet) there tend to be open atriums, which tend to host greenery, fresh water and serve as internal park areas for residents. These atrium are almost exclusively accessible by aristocrats in most Tiveran cities, with the peasantry needing to walk long stretches to find water reservoirs or fruiting greens.

Many Tiverans also live in subterranean infrastructure, as like their ancestors they have been known to dwell without issue in underground or low-light environments. This is typically a fate reserved for the poorest Tiverans, but in contrast, it is also in these low-light environments that nearly all of the living Adavon are found.

In general, despite impressive architectural feats, Tiveran society is not particularly stand-out in their overall level of technological acquisition. Most Tiveran cities have not industrialized, and they are often considered to be a hundred years behind Lorien and Grisic in this way. What protects the fragmented Tiveran societies safe from colonial intrusions is their impeccable naval technology. While few Tiveran societies have anything as organized enough to be called a fleet, most of their hundreds of city-states have at least one Vrechten, a black geometrical (typically pyramid shaped) vessel with exceptional impact on a nautical playing field.

Vrechten are nearly impervious to damage, built of an exterior shell of a mineral called Ornadium, which is only found in the Shattered Isles. Ornadium has an interesting composition: despite being far denser than other shipmaking materials, it still floats on water due to its electrical displacement of the surrounding hydrogen molecules. Ornadium has, in the past, facilitated the construction of entire floating cities, and used on the battlefield it allows for the deployment of mobile fortresses. There are some Ornadium structures that are shaped as rectangular arms, that can be positioned to fit together into wall-like shapes. Similarly, large Ornadium vessels can act as a harbor for entire fleets, and can host dense and ornate weaponry that can cleave ships from afar. The imperviousness of the material to damage is its other greatest asset, as it takes a great deal of trauma to dismantle these onyx-colored structures.

Despite this, there is no simplistic picture to paint of how Tiveran society or technology functions. Many outlying Tiverans, those not organized into wealthy privateering or trading states, live in conditions similar to Atharen's more medieval societies. Many are far more likely to expire to scurvy or dysentery than in a naval conflict. Considering the many divisions of Tiveran life, there are few consistencies to be drawn on.

Culture and Psychology

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Clothing, Grooming and Art

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Religion and Worship

Religion is one of the factors that separates the Tiverans most from the outside world. Their main trading partners, the Griscians, find their religious dogma appalling and have consistently wielded it as a tool to avoid any commitments or alliances to the small states they do dealings with. Simultaneously, the other nations they occasionally communicate with find their refusal of Ulen troubling, or their heresy against the Living Gods damning. Tiverans worship a truly novel faith: they do not worship the Living Gods, the Omen, the Eldashan, or any of the conventional powers that be; they don't worship Dragons or the more foundational powers that inhabit Atharen's world. Instead, they worship their ancestors: the Ravanians. And not just any.

There are a few specific Ancestor Gods worshiped by Tiverans in a more uniform respect, eight in number. These Gods are:

• Maeven, Lady of Murder.
• Aleran, Lord of Secrets.
• Kharem, Lady of Night.
• Talcor, Lord of Fear.
• Zana, Lady of Justice.
• Thianar, Lord of Loss.
• Camora, Lady of Sorrow.
• Vehk, Lord of Dawn.

It is said that all of these eight Ravanians each achieved apotheosis, and left behind their imperfect forms. No longer shriveled and ghoul-like chiropterans, they closer embody the ideals personified by mortals, likely in their attempt to assimilate as many of the characteristics they can of the Adac they envy. It is known, even among the Tiverans, that their Gods are perhaps false Gods. They do not maintain the domains that keep Atharen's reality stable; they do not maintain the boundaries of the plane, or control armies of spirits that control balance and order. In many ways, they are rungs below the power and influence of the Adac Creators, but their direct involvement with their followers and the power they bestow upon them make them worthwhile Lords to follow after.

The source of their power is seemingly similar to that of the Living Gods. Somehow, they have found ways to divert the souls of their followers from the Well of Souls, preventing their adherents' souls from being siphoned away and instead reaping these believers themselves. This has granted them power well above that of any other entities on Atharen. Ravanians are innately powerful, but the Eight are well above their natural caliber. They sit somewhere in-between the Living Gods and Eldashan in might, and have real impact on the world, particularly in the Shattered Isles.

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Language

The Tiverans speak two different languages, primarily, depending upon whether they were born on the island of Cairn or one of the surrounding orbital islands (like Korm, Tarnir, or Strix). Cairn's primary language is Kahrshite, while the orbital islands tend to speak Dromekh, the nautical language of the Tiverans. Because of Dromekh's worldly influences, its native speakers tend to pick up on continental languages more easily, and are very often proficient in Common, a necessary skill if docking in one of Atharen's harbors.