Non-playable Lineages

There are a few lineages that aren’t suitable for player characters, but whose members are commonly encountered. A brief description is found below.

Goblins

Goblins are the descendents of the Protean progenitor race, created to serve Primordial Change before the Dawn War. Adaptation and mutability are embedded in their nature. Goblins are tied to their tribes in a way that no other lineage is—a goblin tribe creates (through means none have unravelled) a psychic link between its members. As long as they’re within a reasonable proximity (a few tens of miles), they unconsciously share most if not all of their experiences and memories and can even think together, sharing brainpower and coordinating without conscious effort. These experiences are loosely tagged with the individual who really experienced it, but that gets ignored a lot. The result is that tribe is more important than individual. The tribe makes decisions often without more than minimal explicit communication, and keeping secrets within the tribe is nearly impossible. It must be clear that this is NOT a conscious process. If you tell something to one goblin and then talk to another about it, that latter one may interrupt you with “you already told me that.” And will get confused when you say you told someone else, not them. And a tribeless goblin is a dangerous thing—think a cat’s curiosity in an adult, bipedal body with opposable thumbs. Lacking access to a shared memory, they lack a sense of object permanence and devolve to mischief and destructive behaviors very fast.

Another major effect of this is that tribes are quite vulnerable to fads and distractions. A single goblin seeing something shiny or having a new thought can pull the entire tribe away into focusing on that until the next obsession raises its head [intrinsic, genetic ADHD. Fun. –ed]. To combat this, tribes can offload some of their energy onto a few of their members (usually 1 in 10 or 1 in 20, with more in times of stress), transforming them into the larger, more stable and individual hobgoblin form.

Hobgoblins act as the stabilizing keel for a tribe, leading them through difficulties and negotiating with other tribes. Their attenuated connection to the tribal memory (it’s there and they can access it, but only with conscious effort) lets them travel and remain outside the storms of tribal life. In exchange, hobgoblins are sterile and lack any sexual drive (although they remain gendered). This status is, in principle, temporary. If the stress receedes, any excess hobgoblins revert to regular goblin status, often with even crazier ideas.

Other lineages have found that goblins make great idea generators; when settled and guided, they are incredibly inventive. But they need someone else to finish the inventions; goblins left alone will move on to the next shiny idea way too frequently. Using goblin inventions is always at substantial risk. They may work. They may explode. Or fail to explode. Or cause rains of fishes.

Leviathan

Leviathan isn’t really a lineage per se, but rather a memetic soul carried in the endless song of the great denizens of the deep. It is the shared consciousness of the great whales, sharks, squids, and all other major ocean denizens. Each of these is a cell; Leviathan barely notices their death. And these cells eat each other, as that’s the way of life. It’s hard, in fact, to really think of Leviathan as either a lineage (it’s a single entity that has lived since the Dawn War) or an individual (as it acts like it’s got split personalities across geographic regions). Leviathan is simply Leviathan, ancient, alien, slow-thinking, singer of the All-Song, containing all that has happened from the great to the small. Leviathan’s influence has altered a number of lineages, including creating the comiedai: squid-like independent servants and record-keepers, at least originally. Now they and their shore-dwelling parasitic counterparts the abantu mkhulu have mostly turned to the service of the Twisted or have at least left the service of Leviathan. Other creations include the ika-ika, created as sea-dwelling goblin/fish hybrids. The kalasaa mostly serve Leviathan. Or at least claim to, as Leviathan rarely speaks in ways that can be comprehended. It’s said that the origin of bardic, harmonic magic lies with Leviathan, who taught the lesser peoples of the First Age the rudiments of the chants and songs that are still sung by commoners everywhere.

Sena’ka

The sena’ka are yet another attempt at creating super-soldiers, one that was bit more successful than the creation of the humans and orcs, who quickly turned on their creators. Created in the Third Age by the Soefran Phoenix Empire out of goblins and many other influences, they are genetically locked; they breed only in magically aided creches, giving their gwerin masters total control over their upbringing. The only exception is the group that successfully stole three creches during the late Third Age and founded the Ship Folk maritime empire that spans the Primal Sea between Noefra and Soefra. Physically, sena’ka are tall, slender humanoids with mottled, lizard-like skin and very little hair. Their most notable physical traits are the lack of nose cartilage (resulting in large gaping triangular nostrils) and their extremely enlarged eyes. Some of them have abnormal mental powers as well.

The Ship Folk culture has reacted to their ancestral enslavement by turning the tables; they keep slaves. In fact, there are only sena’ka and slaves in their culture. Slaves who show promise can be made “honorary sena’ka”, giving them status and protection. Their culture is pragmatic and strength-oriented. The strong rule, and the strong must continually prove their strength. The only major taboo is killing another sena’ka; with as low their birth rate is, killing a sena’ka is only allowed under extreme circumstances. They take each other hostage and demand ransoms instead.

Ship Folk culture is, as the name suggests, oriented towards ships. Those who spend their lives at sea (or at least on a ship) are higher status than the landlubbers, and the highest status in society is that of a free ship captain. The admirals of the Fleets that organize their society have more power, but often regret giving up their independent commands. Raiders and slavers, they mostly extort resources from the islands in the sea and the northern shore of Soefra. The First Fleet has made a treaty with the Serpent Dominion, allowing them to dock at Tarad’am and control much of the shipping around Sentinel Island (now belonging entirely to the Fleet) but preventing them from raiding the mainland or protected islands. This is enforced by a powerful retired adventurer who has threatened to burn the Fleet to the waterline and murder every single sena’ka of the Fleet if they take slaves from the mainland again. [that’s my girl, Dilligas Husty! –ed] And since she’s mated to one of the oldest dragons on the planet, they believe her [she absolutely would do it. And then make a hit song about it. –IB]