Volume II: The Lineages
Overview of the Mortal Races
The Three Inheritors
Three sparks survived the Sundering. Three ways of being persisted when infinity collapsed into one. We are not the children of gods—we are the consequences of their failure.
The Pale Chronicle, opening passage
Volume II: The Lineages
Overview of the Mortal Races
"Three sparks survived the Sundering. Three ways of being persisted when infinity collapsed into one. We are not the children of gods—we are the consequences of their failure." — The Pale Chronicle, opening passage
I. The Inheritors
When the Veil shattered and Vaelthur emerged from the cosmic wreckage, three races arose from the chaos. Scholars debate whether these peoples existed before the Sundering as threads within the Veil, or whether they were formed in the cataclysm itself—shaped by the death throes of the Shaelim as side effects of divine annihilation.
What is certain: each race bears the mark of a fallen architect. Each carries within their very biology an echo of the powers that once wove reality. And each views the others with a mixture of kinship and revulsion—siblings who share a common trauma but remember it very differently.
II. The Three Lineages
The Aethyn — Children of the Fading Light
The Aethyn (AY-thin) are marked by Aurathos, the First Light who died holding the Veil together. Their blood literally glows—a faint luminescence visible in darkness, the same cold light that burns in the corpse-sun overhead. They are beings of structure and preservation, driven by an instinctive need to maintain, protect, and codify.
The Aethyn see themselves as inheritors of Aurathos's sacrifice, duty-bound to prevent further unraveling of reality. This manifests as an almost pathological devotion to order, law, and tradition. To an Aethyn, change is synonymous with decay, and decay leads inexorably to another Sundering.
Other races view them as rigid, cold, and dangerously inflexible—tyrants who would freeze the world in amber to preserve it.
The Velorath — The Everchanging
The Velorath (vel-OR-ath) carry fragments of Nethyrra, the Deep Mother who shattered into all living things. Unlike other races, the Velorath never stop becoming. Their bodies adapt, their features shift, and their very biology is a negotiation between form and potential.
The Velorath embrace change as sacred—the only true constant in a broken world. They see stasis as death, viewing the Aethyn's obsession with preservation as a slow suicide. To a Velorath, the Sundering was not an ending but a beginning, the moment when potential finally became free to actualize.
Other races view them as unstable, untrustworthy, and potentially monstrous—beings who might wake tomorrow as something unrecognizable.
The Kethran — Hollow-Touched
The Kethran (KETH-ran) are marked by Vorathen, the Hollow King who alone survived the Sundering intact—only to withdraw from creation entirely. They exist in uncomfortable proximity to endings, their souls brushing against the threshold between existence and void.
The Kethran understand death as the Aethyn and Velorath cannot. To them, mortality is not tragedy but transition, and the Sundering's ultimate lesson is that all things end—but ending is not the same as ceasing to matter.
Other races view them as morbid, unsettling, and potentially dangerous—beings who have looked into the Void and found it looking back.
III. Common Ground and Eternal Division
The three races share Vaelthur. They intermarry (rarely), trade (frequently), and war (constantly). Their conflicts are not mere territorial disputes—they are philosophical battles made manifest, each race believing that their understanding of the Sundering's meaning should guide the world's future.
The Aethyn believe Vaelthur must be preserved at all costs. Change leads to destruction. The Rifts should be sealed, Veth use minimized, and society frozen in sustainable patterns.
The Velorath believe Vaelthur must be transformed. Stasis leads to stagnation. The Rifts should be embraced, Veth used freely, and society allowed to evolve without artificial constraint.
The Kethran believe Vaelthur must be accepted. Neither preservation nor transformation addresses the fundamental truth: everything ends. Wisdom lies in preparing for the inevitable rather than denying it.
These philosophies cannot coexist peacefully. For millennia, they have fueled the conflicts documented in Volume IV. And for millennia more, they likely will.
IV. A Note on Interbreeding
The three races can produce offspring together, though such unions are rare and socially complicated. Children of mixed lineage are called Sundered—beings who carry the marks of two architects, often in conflicting ways.
Sundered individuals are viewed with suspicion by all races. The Aethyn see them as contaminated. The Velorath see them as incomplete transformations. The Kethran see them as caught between endings, unable to fully embrace either inheritance.
Despite this stigma, Sundered individuals often possess unique capabilities, combining traits from both parent races in unpredictable ways. Some of history's greatest—and most infamous—figures have been Sundered.
The accounts that follow detail each lineage in full: their origins, their biology, their cultures, and their complicated relationships with each other.
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