Races of Psammagaia

[Note to self: look at Dragon Magazine 274-363]
	Gods are planets, planets are Gods. Rather, it is more accurate to say any celestial body of sufficient size is an elemental that has a soul which could be considered godlike in status. All Gods are elemental in nature, and all magic used by gods is arcane in nature. The very first God, the initial mover, source of all other celestial objects, Atropus, cast what could be considered the first spell out of loneliness, the first Wish. It was an infinite wish, for something other than itself to always exist, and from it erupted into the empty void an innumerable volume of "others", flawed duplicates of itself. An infinite Wish, however, has an infinite cost, and this would ultimately cost Atropus its life, its infinite positive energy values inverted to negative, transforming Atropus into the first undead, and by extension the first God of Negative Energy and elemental undeath. From the first spell of creation, the gods were born as an array of elemental planetoids. There were the positive energy and fire elemental suns, the closest imitations of Atropus as he once was, the gas giants of air, the frigid dwarf planets of water and the conventional worlds of earth, and lastly the black holes, Atropals, celestial bodies born undead that would follow in the negative energy footprints of the first God. These worlds born live, these colossal elementals, were sentient, though no more understanding of their universe than the lonely being which created them. They however, unlike their creator, were not alone.
	The Gods would dance and intermingle in grand cosmic displays, and were each bursting at the seams with arcane power. Among the powers they held were spells akin to the original Wish but, though still costly, they were not absolutely so, and with the interplay of the Gods came new Gods. Even were they to not cast these spells, it would be difficult for them to suppress the nature of the arcane forces which leaked from them, birthing infant deities in the form of small elementals casually over time. The interplay was a gravitational dance, each world showering the others that would drift close enough with their elements, and would be showered in turn. These clusters of Gods, cycling around each other in grand stellar systems, would become known as Pantheons. If conflict were to be found between gods, it would almost always be ended in a single strike, with the bodies of the gods crashing against one-another, the more durable being the victor though unlikely to be unscathed. From the showering of elements among allied gods, and from the detritus and remains of heavenly conflicts, came the intermingling of elements and with them new elemental ideas. From these new elemental ideas, more diverse and abstract than the original six varieties, came new gods over time. Elemental beings of strange hybrid conceptual elements, like destruction in the form of the original Demons, or order in the form of the elder Axiomites, rose from these interactions and eventually became Gods themselves, contributing to the cycle of interplay and the generation of new elements.
	Each living thing is an Elemental, a magical phenomenon observed as Arcane "threads" collide in their transit across the universe, their opposing ends running along the universe's surface membrane, and the vibrations along them dictating different base elements and their concentrations depending on vibration frequency and number of collisions. Elements are observed as the smallest indivisible portion of matter, identified as the points of contact on an Arcane Thread. Elements are observed via scrying as semi-solid objects of six facets, each face representing a different elemental expression, whose expression is defined by the frequency of the Thread that composes them and the Thread they are colliding with. Elements have been observed in two distinct varieties, First (fire, water, air, earth, positive, negative) and Second (good, evil, order, chaos, ?, ?) Generation elements. Referred to in academic wizardry as Adams, elements are named after their discoverer, Adam "The Savage" Hyneman, a Kobold alchemist of some infamy due to his infatuation with destruction, and subsequent madness at the discovery of the indestructible. The fifth and sixth facets of Second Generation Adams are heavily disputed in academic wizardry to this day, but it is generally agreed they whatever they might be, it is likely they are conceptual opposites. The theoretical center of a collection of collisions is generally referred to as the Soul of an individual, and as an entity progresses through time, they gather more Threads from the universe around them, and a body is formed around the Soul from the elements that each Thread is expressing, referred to as their Adamic Structure. Adamic Structure defines both this, and the elemental composition ratio of all expanded elements, referred to in academic wizardry as Domains. For the longest time Elementals only came in immortal form, the number of Threads colliding to form their soul high enough that they would tangle inevitably, unable to separate or scatter save by external force. Threads of the same frequency tended to interfere least with each other under collision, and would gather most easily, but as different combinations of Threads at different frequencies became more common, the phenomenon of collided Threads throwing each other apart from too many conflicting frequencies would manifest more frequently. By consequence, if an entity could not gather a sufficient number Threads or forcibly tangle few Threads, their being both in body and soul would fray over time as they lost Threads to internal frequency conflicts, resulting in what we understand as mortality, a finite lifespan. Many metaphysical and psychological properties of an individual, even simple character traits, can be observed as emergent properties of their Thread composition. An individual of a particularly strong will or fortitude likely has Threads colliding at higher pressures, and those that appear genuinely as paragons of certain ideals may be much much higher in concentration of Threads at an elemental frequency that composes that Domain.
	The relationship between Domains and Elementals is a curious one. For a very long time after the advent of mortals, existential crises gripped the unstable elemental races, and many built philosophies around certain Domains and the Gods of the local Pantheon which embodied them best. There was the observation that mortals of significant piety to these philosophies could develop magical abilities that seemed to embody Domains of their philosophy which weren't necessarily a part of the mortal's Adamic Structure, and many mortals claimed that these powers were given to them by their gods as reward for this piety. This had turned out to be only partially true, under the phenomena that would later be labeled the Worship Effect. The Worship Effect occurs when an entity directs so much of its focus and being towards another that it forces their Threads to tie to one or both of the ends of one or more of the other's Threads. The means by which one does this is not a well understood property of Souls over their Threads, but it appears to be correlated to psychic phenomena, and may be related to the mechanics behind telekinesis and mind control. As the Threads interact this way, there is an averaging of Adamic Structure, and in extreme cases the wholesale theft of a Thread or more from one to the other, usually in favor of the worshiper who is exerting this mysterious force. This is almost entirely harmless to Gods being worshiped casually, their sheer size and Thread concentration negating much of the damage this can do, but in rare instances vast volumes of worship towards a single entity, the interference from worshipers can actively weaken the God (as happened in the Atropus Crisis) or can tear apart the God (as happened on the homeworld of the Kreen races and the Illithids). Many believed, before the Worship Effect was observed and put into theory, that if one fell out of favor with one's God, they would lose their gained Domains, but the reality is that gained Domains can outlive the God they were taken from, and Domain loss occurs on the worshiper's end, when they believe they are no longer "deserving" of the Domains, disengaging their parasitic Threads. The Worship Effect was, curiously, discovered long before the nature of Adams and Threads, thanks to the Atropus Crisis.

	Born 3.5 million years ago, the first two Gods of the Ammopetran Pantheon were the Twin Suns. The white Godesses of Positive Energy Aesocar, and the red Goddess of Fire Iomedae, together were young among their kind as Gods of primarily Generation One centric Domains. At this point in time, most new Gods were born of hybrid Domains, or tended towards Domains of Generation Two. They were born into the remains of what was once another Pantheon of lesser Gods, to which the only survivor was Asmodeus, God of Law and Evil, a literal living hell. Rumor abounds on the subject of the previous Pantheon, but most share the single certainty that Asmodeus was likely responsible, whatever his reasons may have been.

Descended of Dragons

	On the world of Psammagaia, most dragons could not naturally survive as well, beyond Brown and Blue dragons which loved the particular climate.



	Red dragons despised Psammagaia, being almost devoid of any form of volcanic activity or conventional mountains to rule atop, and used their magic to leave for the nearby world of Asmodeus. Asmodeus's environment was better suited for their tastes, its sulphurous atmosphere, lakes of fire and heated mountains aplenty, but this better world came with a catch. Unlike Psammagaia, where only dinosaurs and wurms were competition for top predator, more abstract predators in the forms of devils existed here, powerful enough not to bend to the dragons' wills and smart enough to create tools that could counter the dragons' might. To survive, they adapted, learning to make tools of their own, and over time their bodies changed to suit the need to use tools, slowly turning them into forms recognized as Pit Fiends. Elemental beings in nature, the more the Dragons stayed in the atmosphere of the Devil god Asmodeus, the more the adopted the elemental properties of the location. As their interbreeding among devilkind and their integration into the world of Devils became complete, even their impulsive outbursts of destruction became focused into directed conquest against their contemporaries, and they transitioned from Chaotic pure Dragons into Lawful draconic Devils. After carving out a niche for themselves on Asmodeus, influence over many things there gravitated towards them, as infernal political parties and lesser Devil species sought to wed into their ranks for the power they held physically and socially. The vast majority of reptilian devils can have their lineages traced back to the Pit Fiends because of this. Since Pit Fiends established a monopoly of power in the nine circles of Asmodeus, they had phased out very many of the Devil denizens of non-draconic heritage beyond the demigod Archdevils that already existed there, and had even begun attempting to reestablish the five chromatic Dragon breeds as Devils. They did so in the form of the Abishai, colored like the chromatics of old but forged in the image of the newer Devil form the Pit Fiends came to value as their own, whose purpose was to reestablish contact with their draconic goddess Tiamat. The Pit Fiends had hoped that by reconnecting with Tiamat, they could impart what they had learned to the rest of their Red Dragon kin, that they could all be uplifted to the level of civilization the Pit Fiends now boasted.
	Pit Fiends as a culture did not forget about the populated world neighbouring them, and sought to get a foothold there, in a bid for greater power over their other devil contemporaries, and a show of one-upsmanship against their other dragon relatives which they still believed themselves kin to, and still believed lived unchanged. They reached across the astral plane, searching for beings susceptible to their wills, to trick the powerful among them into conjuring gates that would make for easy transport. They transmitted, and the Human Warlock culture of the Red Right Hand answered. Humans, a young alien race on Psammagaia, were a small initially, but very adaptable lot, quickly making tools out of seemingly useless materials, and establishing a particularly diverse selection of casters for what Pit Fiends understood were little more than refugees. The Red Right Hand, a small cult of Humans that had managed to grasp the nature of Pact Magic, and through it had been dealing with Devils since before the monopoly of the Pit Fiends. Though a very small culture, the breadth of their empire spanning but a few closely knit townships, they had established a value of authority established and enforced through power, which had made them both very compatible with morality of the Lawful Evil Devils they contacted, and also easily manipulated through promises of power. Through these Human Warlocks, the Pit Fiends made their way back to Psammagaia, and began subsuming the territories of their worshipers into their own the same way they did on Asmodeus, through force and interbreeding. Through breeding with their human worshipers, they produced the first Half-Devils and Sorcerers of Infernal bloodlines, to ensure the future of their race on this world, and promised the Humans that remained the chance to become Lemures, the lowest rank of Devil, on Asmodeus after their death if they served loyally. This would seem like a poor deal to many, living as slaves only to become the weakest of devilkind, but the opportunity to become a Devil and climb the infernal political hierarchy was too great for most within the cult of the Red Right Hand, and shortly after the first contact with Pit Fiends the majority of the empire operated under Devil command.
	The new foothold of power, however, did not go unnoticed. For some time now, Lizardfolk local to the area had been in territorial and religious disputes with the Red Right Hand, having been familiar with the schemes of Devils for longer than Humans had been on Psammagaia. Additionally, Lizardfolk generally opposed interacting with Dragons of any sort, regarding them as false gods leading great spirits to stay in the world of the physical and away from the sides of the true gods, so the Draconic nature of these new, more powerful Devils sat even worse with the Lizardfolk. To the lizardfolk, in these times of rising conflict, came Humans, former members of the Red Right Hand who had lost faith that the Devils had their best intentions on mind, and saw the monsters being made of their dead and their children as abominable. They allied with the Lizardfolk tribes and informed them of the vulnerabilities their cities and their peoples had, in return for a safe place to settle without being in conflict with the Lizardfolk. The Lizardfolk agreed, and together, the Lizardfolk/Human alliance set out to purge the Pit Fiends from the area, if not the world. The Pit Fiends were powerful, but very few due to their preference of Asmodeus, whereas the Lizardfolk were many, and rode Dinosaurs that could challenge the physical might of the Devils while the allied Humans could manage antimagic to counter their arcane prowess. Quickly, the Pit Fiends were pushed back through their gates into Asmodeus, and at one point looked as though they might have to deal with counter invasions from the Lizardfolk. To prevent themselves from suffering such a fate, the Pit Fiends collectively fled and ended the gates behind them, shutting themselves off while leaving their Half-Devil and Sorcerer progeny behind. Knowing themselves to be on the side of a losing battle, the Half-Devils and the Sorcerers scattered, fleeing to whatever reaches of the desert they could to escape their counter-conquerors.
	Descended from forces of nature, and sired by the nobles of hell, Half-Devils and their Sorcerer kin would not be wiped clean from this world so quickly. As time went on, they used their magic to find each other over the distances they spread, and regrouped to survive in seclusion, as far from their enemies as they could manage. They sought to return glory to the old ways, but their warlocks were gone, and their Pit Fiend lords no longer answered the few calls they could make, and so a new path was to be made. They transmuted the sand of the land to metal and with it forged thrones of iron to seat this new order, and focused on the future. Unable to get aid, and fearful of the wrath their enemies might have upon them were they to be found again, magical practice began to become more dedicated towards staying hidden rather than staying strong. They forged domes of polished steel and used their reflective surfaces to augment the growing prevalence of Illusion magic with mirages, and divination became very prominent in their culture for finding resources and retrieving them without detection. They drifted from the old ways of worshiping the might of Devils, over time focusing their skills to their new venue, and as consequence something curious happened. In training on the power of sight, the magic of illusion and the influence of light and heat in both of these, as well as perhaps their own infernal affinity to heat, the Half-Devils began to worship the Twin Suns. They came to see the hot desert suns under which they lived not as hazards, but protectors, steering from them the dangers of their past and shining the way to prosperity for their people. Much of their technology came to reflect this, figuratively and literally, as the use of highly reflective sphere, semi-sphere, and gem-encrusted crystalline tools created through Transmutation proliferated. Their attire itself seemed to adopt a sunny palette, with bright whites, sky blues, and orange-yellows overtaking the once brutal blacks and reds of the old regime as the Half-Devils transitioned into the new. It is under this new light focused regime that the Half-Devils and their Sorcerer kin would boom back from near extinction, and in doing so establish not only a new independent culture, but also a new independent race. Cut off from most other cultures, both unintentionally and intentionally, the Half-Devils and Sorcerers would continue life, the distinction between them disappearing as they homogenized into a single uniform people, the Tiefling race. Not true Half-Devils, yet obviously not wholly human, charged with arcane prowess but dedicated to an increasingly more passive culture, the Tiefling people would even to this day be masters of seeing and of not being seen.
	That is, of course, until chance took the reins and Human culture remade contact with their Devil-blooded cousins. Over the rise of the Tiefling culture, fear of outsiders was ingrained into their culture's myth, but the history and reasons to why were lost, and as they expanded it became more and more of a challenge to construct homes without encountering outside observers. At one point, a small group of Tiefling settlers had been discovered mid-construction by a travelling Human merchant clan. Initially defensive, despite their military skill having diminished as their people drifted from their militaristic and monstrous roots, they braced for the worst, fearing they had finally been found by their long-lost blood enemies. They were met not with conflict, however, but with commerce. Though curious about what exactly they were, the Humans were mostly unfazed by the aberrant look of the horned, red-skinned people before them. It had happened that Human civilization, at this time, had already intermingled with many nonhuman cultures, and whatever Humans had held grudges against the Half-Devils of old simply were around no longer to tell the stories. Initial contact, or perhaps recontact, was rocky due to the fear of their aggressors that been built into their ways, but as diplomacy continued and the benefits of trade became apparent to the leaders of the Tiefling people, they relented and opened proper communication. What's more, both peoples had found themselves in a place of very similar religious beliefs in regards to the Twin Suns as their chief deities, albeit for different reasons, which made for a good medium through which they could communicate their cultures. Since then, Tieflings have maintained themselves as an independent people in their rigid chrome domes, but their people can be found all throughout Human civilization, mingling with the population and even spreading into other cultures humans have contacted. The Tiefling people have, over the course of their interactions with the rest of the world, found themselves in very good position for trade, their formerly isolationist drive placing their settlements at convenient midpoints between locations that would have been too treacherous to cross without aid, and their excellent skill in Transmutatiuon driven by their religious and arcane practice saw them with an overabundance of what most other cultures considered riches. The Tiefling people themselves have generally little understanding to why rare metals and gems are actually as valuable as they are, the greed of their dragon lineage having been selected out of as it became more important for scarce resources to be shared throughout their people in their initial exodus, and due to the fact their culture had become adept at producing these "valuables" for a while now, as little more than tools and religious symbols as opposed to status symbols. Tieflings mostly offer the talents of their people for the purposes of political information trade in modern times, but recently leaders in these networked civilizations have been discussing a means of simplifying divination/illusion crafts and replicating them via artifice for the theoretical purpose of widespread communication, though any development in this front is likely very far off.



	While Black dragons and White dragons, like their Red kin, could not stand the world of Psammagaia, the world of Asmodeus was even worse for them, and they were forced to improvise. Making a bid for survival, they dug under the surface of Psammagaia for their immediate survival and plotted. Though it would likely mean the end of their purebred species, they agreed on a solution: Breed with their desert-loving Blue kin. They believed their sand melting acids and air freezing ice powers, if combined with the natural resistance to the environment the Blues held, could produce a race of dragon that could exist unimpeded by this harsh new world. They did not factor in, however, that with their heritage would come their collective instincts of preferring dark, cold and damp atmospheres. They bred over ages, each new generation of Blue/Grey dragon producing more like itself, until Black and White dragons, and the distinction between them, were no more. These mongrel dragons, fueled with powerful elemental diversity, but driven by an urge to find a home better suited to their tastes, dug deeper rather than returning to the surface. Over time, they became more sleek, their various horns shaving down over generations as they became more and more focused on digging, and their scales once a variety of greyscale and blues slowly unified into an almost chrome dark blue. Their acid breath faded from use and the howling winds of their White cold breath and the bolts of their Blue lightning breath averaged out into a single booming shriek of sonic energy, and with their new sonic power they made a home for themselves in the true dark, their vision enhanced with sonar. At this point they had become what from then on would be recognized as Deep Dragons. While not the goal their ancestors the Whites and the Blacks dreamed of, they had managed to find a home in the bowels of Psammagaia, and they were able to thrive once again. But, dirt makes for a poor kingdom, and dragons will be dragons, so they looked for a race to rule.
	They found, under the sands of the world above, something new and foreign to the races of lizard and snake that ruled in the sun. A strange race, whose body was hairy rather than scaled, whose alien faces contorted with discomfort and whose forms huddled together in the caves, had been discovered by the dragons of the deep. They called themselves Werewolves, and the dragons saw opportunity in them. The Deep dragons offered their lineage, resistant to the harsh world, in return for servitude. Many rejected the offer, choosing to remain true to their pure form, but others relented. Through this union, a race of monsters was born that would eventually become known as the Draegloth. Hideous in appearance, they took the colors and lean six limbed bodies of their dragon parents, but their canine/humanoid characteristics of their lycanthrope family. Where once wings branched, now massive clawed hands grew. Where dark brown fur covered, wispy white hair and shiny dark blue skin now decorated. Bulky and fast, and still retaining their ability to return to humanoid form for the management of delicate tasks, they made for effective servants to their dragon overlords. A new paradigm in the old werewolf culture came to be with this new form. Their habits became more focused to the reclusive life in the caves, and their religion came to adapt their newfound multi-limbed bodies into its design. Where once they served unified in undiscriminating horde under the worship of Jezelda, the demonic goddess of the moon and all lycanthropes, they shifted to a more matriarchal system, imitating the female-dominated Deep Dragons they served, and came to adopt their value for tricks of intellect over brute force solutions in casual conflict. Seeing the multi-limbed form and the descent into the caves as a sort of divine salvation symbolically to their people, they took to idolizing cave-dwelling arachnids, and this impacted their goddess. Where once werewolves worshiped the Demon Wolf Goddess Jezelda as the origin and protector of their species, the Draegloth began to adopt more and more attributes of the spider into her depiction, over time changing her to Js'lelda the White Wolf of Six Legs, to Je'Leld the Great Wolf Spider, to J'Lolt, and then just "Lolth", the Demon Queen of Spiders. Few things they idolized escaped the super-imposition of arachnid motifs, even their Dragon saviors being seen as arachnid-like, their plate-like scales seen like the exoskeleton of spiders, their wings with their long fingers and membranous surfaces the legs and webbing of their spider obsession. They became a highly religious people, actively constructing a Matriarchal theocracy around their warped religion and rulers, to such an extent that even the name of their people, "Draegloth", is derived from "Dragons of Lolth". Over all her incarnations, the once-lycanthropes never forgot their Demonic heritage to her, and this remained manifest in their Draegloth form.
	Draegloth culture, though unseen, was widespread for some time. Beneath the surface of the sands they dominated, digging out vast subterranean cities in which they erected obsidian temples to worship their spider goddess, large enough for their dragon rulers to live in as kings and priests. Instinctually driven by the cruelty and vanity inherent to their draconic lineage, and the predatory nature of their lycanthropy, their culture became one centered on superiority and subjugation. As the Deep Dragons subtly ruled over their Draegloth slaves, so too did the Draegloth rule over all that ventured too deep, gripping whatever they could within their spiteful claws. This put them at dangerous odds, and even occasional war, with the surface, as they would take adventurers for prisoner or prey. In their minds, what they did was not wrong: They were mighty and clever, chosen by their goddess to stand as blessed holy figures to which all were obligated to either serve or feed, their bodies proof enough and their demigod "adviser" rulers there to enforce this fact. In their devotion to spiders, they came to understand the usefulness of poison through observation, and sought to emulate the tool of their idols. They eventually became skilled alchemists in this pursuit, and a bloody pursuit it was, for a great many of their unwilling subjects were the means by which they advanced in discovery. These dark acts would forever mark those from the Draegloth civilization with distrust, even after its end, but few to this day can say their people have an understanding of alchemy that rivals the Draegloth at their prime. Rumor has it that practitioners have even been able to replicate the augmentive effects of Draegloth lycanthropy to a lesser extent by studying their alchemic texts, though this is also rumored to bring with it something akin to a dual personality also observed in lycanthropy.
	Prior to the end of their empire, the Deep Dragons made a unique breakthrough in the alchemical arts: Chimera technology, a means by which a gestalt could be formed from the essences of different creatures. Disguising their experimentation in the alchemical field as a ritual of faith to Lolth, they would test on their Draegloth servants, claiming that the worthy would be empowered and the unworthy would be transformed into something more worthy than they actually were. The reality of the situation, however, was that the results were orchestrated from the start, the dragons giving half their experimentees healing potions while the other half were transformed into creatures that would become known as Driders. Driders were Centaur-type Chimeras, taking the aspects of a Draegloth's humanoid form suited for complex tasks and affixing them to giant spiders, where the spider's face would normally be. The use of spiders here was partially to maintain the illusion of the religious facade, but also as a practical decision, to turn Draegloths of dissenting opinion into more effective labour workers while controlling them with the guilt of "failing Lolth's test". This was reinforced by the fact that the Alchemical process which allowed gestalt to occur cured lycanthropy and most other diseases before applying new traits, removing from Draegloths access to their previous monstrous "divine" form. With their web-spinning ability, unlimited range of movement with their arachnid legs, enhanced strength to their non-monstrous limbs, and ability to reason better than their transformed Draegloth kin of equal strength, these self-perceived failures were in fact very rarely inferior to their kin in any physical or mental respect, which was exactly the proof of concept the Deep Dragons desired them to be. It is theorized that many other deep dwelling races might have in fact been results of such experimentation undocumented by the Dragons out of perceived lack of success, but as no such documents remain, few can comment on the matter. Chimera technologies, and the underlying principles behind them, would be later used for many things, peoples and places in the advancement of the biomantic and necromantic fields within the alchemical and arcane arts.
	After the Advent of Atropus, when all the local true gods opened direct diplomacy with the moral races, "Lolth" was not among them. This, understandably, shook the foundation of Draegloth society to its core, and there was a violent internal upheaval across the culture. For what reason were males lesser than females if their divine female goddess didn't exist? What value were their bestial demonic forms, hated by all races beyond their own and their dragon rulers, if the sacred nature of the spider meant nothing? For what reason did they waste year after year in their plots against the other races if the minds of their people were not truly enlightened? With these questions, the godless Dragloth challenged the rule of the Deep dragons and the Matriarchy of Lolth. Driders were some of the most profoundly afflicted by the revelation, discovering that they were in fact not failures of any divine test, but rather the subjects of experimentation, many Driders would rise in their fury to become leaders in rebel communities within the Deep Dragon empire. Though the Dragons were powerful, the godless outnumbered the faithful, and the matriarchy was dismantled. In a last act of defiance, the godless Draegloths returned to their humanoid forms and, with the aid of Human Alchemists, cured themselves of their lycanthropy. With nothing of their old civilization left, its core destroyed and even the very distant bond to their demonic lycanthrope lineage severed, the godless Draegloths, dubbing themselves the Drow to remove even the barest association to dragons from their name, cast themselves across the sands, to live on the surface as a free people. They live as nomads or as part of Human civilizations now, riding the sands and spending each day struggling to survive. Initially there was outcry against the black skinned people, due to their often at-odds cultures and their history of monstrous natures and monstrous acts, but that has mostly died down as more and more races of nonhuman nature have been integrating into human culture, though some prejudice still exists today. Many live as raiders, many led by the few Driders that remain, hunting the empty wastes for those foolish enough to try and venture too far from safety, but mostly the Drow exist today as nothing more than living relics among the masses.



[Green dragons, on the other hand, had the best time of things of their not-well-adapted-to-survive family. They too dug underground, though not too deep, and started using their magic for the purpose of making tools like fans that could keep them cool in places where they could not unfold their wings. Eventually, they started getting smaller and their wings became less and less useful, while in contrast their tool usage and magical understanding increased with experimentation. Eventually, green dragons ceased to be green, the color of their scales now taking on an imitation of the auras of magic they practiced, nor wholly dragon as dragons were traditionally understood, nearing an almost yet significantly smaller humanoid form. They had become what is recognized as Kobolds.]



[Now, "surface lycanthropes" you say? but if dragons couldn't survive on the surface too well and dragons are, well, dragons, why did lycanthropes?]

[This is because they too had to change to adapt. Unable to leave to underground because >fur, the once unified lycanthrope invasion armies began to split into factions based upon what they believed they should do. The werewolves, believing that hell waited above, though it best to stay below, while the weretigers, determined and hopeful, did not believe that all was death above ground, and left to hunt for a place on the surface that would not cook them alive. Over time, both races could not waste the energy to transform fully into animal, and for the most part stayed in hybrid mode, until after generations the hybrid mode was all that remained, the art of shifting lost to time.]

[The Werewolves, staying underground, eventually lost the need for most of their fur, and with the leaving of their moral anchors in the weretigers became more and more savage, eventually turning into the race understood to be Gnolls. These became furious at the sun above, and rallied to strike back against it, only to climb above the surface to discover that other worlds have nights too. The dumbshits. Since then, they have become a race of nocturnal raiders, burrowing during the day and conquering during the night.]



[The weretigers, however, had a less terrible time. Though they did encounter hardship, eventually their determination payed off and they discovered the north jungle cap of the world. Not bogged down by the brutality of their werewolf cousins, the weretigers decided here to make a utopia for themselves, a second lease of life away from the drives of their demonic progenitor goddess. They established temples, and went to work mastering magic and might, to steel themselves for the day when their goddess would come for them.]

[Eventually, specialization in certain arts over long familial trees resulted in a variety of breeds of former weretigers, now werecats, and as the art of transformation phased out of their systems, they became what was recognized as Catfolk.]




[World I'm working on is one mostly dominated by different kinds of reptile people. Lizardfolk being like orcs and dwarves depending on if they're aquatic crocodile-types or desert-wandering dinosaur-types, dragonborn being like humans, kobolds being like halflings and snake people being like elves. There are also bird people, which are dinosaur-type lizardfolk from the future, attempting to cheat at making a better civilization by teaching their ancestors their knowledge. They try to keep themselves and their technology secret, and it hasn't been hard given their ancestor's marveling at their "divine" tools and their otherwise xenophobic tendencies.
The cultures of these various races has been significantly shaken up by the advent of conventional humanoids in the form of conventional humans, and with them a variety of invasive races have been popping up all over.]