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| Komadas Creatures | Komadas Creature Index | ||
| Origin of Species by Teija, Scholar and Historian of Piiya The Aoru believe themselves to be the most ancient race in the isles. This belief is in part supported by the fact that the aoru race is slowly dying out, in its twilight years, while the other races of the isles are enjoying unprecedented culture and prosperity. According to the oldest scrolls in surviving Aorushan libraries, the Aoru were the first of the land races, but according to their religious beliefs, the aoru were not the first race to appear. Before even the aoru came to the isles, there were the first and second worlds, realms of air and water. During the time of the first world, the Lai created the races and creatures of the air. Finding the first world imperfect, with its flighty and stormy denizens, the Lai created the second world. The second world was bursting with vast oceans and waters and all the races and creatures that live within them. Finding the second world imperfect and incomplete, the Lai created the third world, the world of land. The aoru were made, and put in dominion of all the creatures of all the worlds, to protect and to serve, and to maintain the balances of all three realms, air, water, and earth. Legend has it that the aoru, since time before remembering, were the guardians of the worlds, and lived lives of a thousand years to carry out their beloved duty. During the Golden Age of Lai, there was harmony, with the spirits of the air respecting the citizens of the watery deep, who were peaceful with the creatures of the land, who maintained respect for the air. The world was Paradise, and Komadas was the heart and soul of Lai. It is said that, as all races and epochs must, as balance and harmony dictates, all that begins must also end. The time of the aoru peaked, and then passed by, and their decline was marked by terrible changes. As the dominion of the aoru grew less tenable, so did the harmonizing effect of the Lai on the races and creatures of air, water, and land. Volcanoes erupted, the earth shook in massive earthquakes, tidal waves reshaped the coastlines, and storms raged in the heavens. Many of the races of the different realms went to war with each other, choosing an existence of chaos, violence and separation over one of harmony and peace. During this time of chaos, the land also changed. The volcanoes spewed poisonous gasses into the air, causing great harm and mutations to the once-ethereal air creatures. Toxic gas vents opened up under ocean beds and in lake bottoms, poisoning the once-beautiful denizens of the waters. Lava and ash rained down on the land, killing entire forests, causing starvation and desperation among the creatures of the land. The creatures of all three worlds grew fiercer, meaner, and hungrier. Territory was viciously fought over and defended. As Komadas plunged into a battleground for a new generation of predator creatures, so did the aoru sink into decline. Almost in direct proportion, the more strange and virulent the monsters became, the more the aoru lifespan begin to shorten year after year, and the more aoru females found themselves barren with each passing generation. The aoru were as defenseless against their own slow death as they were to halt the growing imbalances of the worlds around them. Strange new predators targeted the aoru as easy meat, and flourished in the forests of the north, driving the aoru into the trees. Despite this, the aoru still believed in the balance of Lai, and in their role as protectors of the worlds. However, a subgroup of the aoru, the poru, believed that the aoru had grown weak because of such pacifistic thinking, and urged the race to adopt more aggressive measures to help combat the violence that raged around them. The poru, finding themselves an unpopular minority, were exiled and went to the greatest source of power they recognized, the great volcano Omatsu. Believing that they must align and integrate themselves with this power to survive, the poru went underground, into the very fires of Omatsu. They succeeded in their adaptation, and more than succeeding, they thrived, but in the process, became something less than, or more than, the aoru. The poru created a new civilization, rumored to be great and strong, where they still live long lives, and where they are once again in dominion over all the creatures that exist below the surface of the world. The rumors say that instead of balance, as is taught by Lai, these poru believe only in power and domination, and despise anything less as weakness. Meanwhile, on the land, in the lakes and seas, and in the air, all the creatures made by the Lai changed. Roaming bands of semi-intelligent carnivores traveled from coast to coast, spreading destruction in their wake. The beings in the lakes, once so friendly to the aoru, now lured the innocent, and not-so-innocent, into their waters to drown and be eaten. The spirits of the air, once so carefree, became isolationists, only leaving their mountain aeries to hunt the inferior creatures of the second and third worlds. A massive swamp emerged in the southern portion of Komadas, a bubbling mass of mud and organic compounds riddled with volcanic gasses. Even to this day, it is said that there are more twisted creatures being born into that murky soup than can be cataloged, and no one enters the boundaries of Fever Swamp without a death wish on his shoulders. |
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