The Bal'Grozad

So tell me about the Bal'Grozad then.

What about them?

Why are they so...tall? And physical fit? And intelligent? And living long enough to see a human House rise and fall?

Well, that's something that's a bit of tale. It comes at great cost to themselves.

What, that they're always a tiny bit cold because they're twice as tall as we are?

No, that's just a matter of biology. No, the cost sounds biological, but it's not. They have immense trouble reproducing.

What, too big to plough one another?

They can plough each other just fine you thick berk. They have trouble conceiving. Perhaps one Grozadian child is born to a couple for each twelve couples there are. And some of them die in during the birthing process. Some even prematurely abort.

Well what's responsible for that then, if it's not biology? They're intelligent enough to fix some kind of bug they've got bothering them aren't they?

They're cursed. By a god.

They don't sound terribly intelligent to me. A god? Really?

The Bal'Grozad are desperate. They've explored every avenue of the physical realm they can. Some of their clerics, shamans and Bal'Dahljon have even transcended our realm to explore the Before and After.

And they found out that a god is cursing them?

More or less. A dead god anyway.

A Dead God? Like the ones that twist your face into a mass of tentacles? They worshipped an abomination?

No. I mean a dead god. He's dead. Ate the falsbeth berry so to speak.

How do you do in a bloody god?

Well, there's this legend the Bal'Grozad tell – some two thousand years ago they earned the favor of the god they take their name from – Bal'Grozad the Ascendant. He and his wife, Jalspeth came to what legends say was a tribe of humans that had broken away from the First Kingdom of Ruin. Back then it would have been the First Kingdom of Prosperity.  They were in the ancestral lands of the Bal'Grozad. They came to them as mortals blessed with divine powers and they taught these awe-struck humans the path to ascendency because they worshiped them so fervently.

So the ancient Bal'Grozad were humans that just worshiped some god that was happy they did so he gave them godhood?

The path to it anyway. They began to ascend and reached the form they have now. Taller, stronger, smarter, and they could have kept going. The would have kept going if it wasn't for the Schism.

Some kind of feud?

Yes. Some of the Bal'Grozad were a bit sour that they would not live to see themselves become Ascendant. They wanted the perks of demigod-hood immediately. This split the Bal'Grozad into two camps – those who wished to take it slow and welcome death when it came and those who wanted to eat Bal'Grozad himself.

Eat him? Are they mad?

Must have been. They killed those who didn't align with their cause and then killed Bal'Grozad himself and ate him. His wife fled, weeping and cursing and returned to the Greater Realm.

And...?

It didn't work. You don't become a god by eating one. He was effectively a gifted mortal. So the Bal'Grozad realize all too late what they've done and they trudge down the path of quiet repentance and humility. They shame their forms, teach shame to the few they birth and work always towards the immense penance they feel they must pay to the wife who's husband they ripped from her. They don't think it's working because birth rates haven't changed for close to six hundred years. They haven't dropped though, so there is a belief that the wife carries on the goodwill and trust of her husband by allowing the Bal'Grozad to exist, but exacts her bitter revenge by allowing them to only just exist. They will never become Ascendants. They will never spread much farther than the ancestral homelands where they reside. And they will live always with the bitterness of having killed and eaten a being of immense power and unfathomable purity in the name of hubris.

This is all a legend? It sounds like it belongs in a history book.

To the Bal'Grozad, history books are nothing more than a compilation of legends.

So is this story true or not?

Who knows? I'd wager that it probably is. So do a fair number of the Bal'Grozad themselves. But there's plenty who believe there's something they've missed. There's theories of the land being poisonous to the magical auras of all life there and it inhibits procreation.

So you just leave.

The belief is that the Bal'Grozad's auras are too deeply poisoned. They'd have to leave the land altogether and you can't orchestrate that. Too many would resist the idea.

So all in all, what? The Bal'Grozad are fucked?

In a manner of speaking.