Post by Admin on Jun 20, 2021 12:00:06 GMT
𝐋𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐤𝐢𝐧
Biography
Swamps are, by their nature, quite inhospitable to most reasonable folk; folk who don’t much enjoy having to put their homes on stilts to avoid having swamp dragons burst down the doors and catch limbs still leaden from sleep in their jaws lined with serrated flesh, only to then roll and flail about so that the bones of that eviscerated limb crack like dry branches—and that is to say nothing of always having to maintain the window-nets and bed-drapes to keep out all manner of disease-carrying insect.
All told, a quite unpleasant lifestyle with little chance for material gain; certainly, some swamps conceal ore deposits, swamp dragon skins fetch a fair price at market, and peat as well as tar are sought after for alchemical and engineering purposes. However, farming is- in peaceable times- much safer work for much steadier pay. So what draws folk into the swamplands, especially those misguided fools that set into the true jungle swamps—never to be seen again?
Gold.
Or rather, the promise of it. The allure of riches just beyond reach; a bounty all other hands failed to claim, but surely one’s own hands won’t fail as theirs did! For none have actually seized the gold rumor swirls and myths attest to laying by the tonne in the deepest, densest swamplands for one, simple reason: Lizardmen.
To the lizardman, all are equal in their status as prey. The fact that those whose blood turns the turbid water of their swamps red with their blood came to steal the wealth of their hidden temple-cities never crosses the mind of these bestial kin; or rather, it is not the driving motive behind their slaughter—they need no reason beyond the simple fact that strange creatures with strange scents trespass in their territory. The lucky ones in these attacks are the ones slain straight out—the more unfortunate are dragged back to the temple complexes for sacrificial dismemberment, devouring, and offering at the pyre; often kept alive throughout by the twisted magics of the lizardmen sorcerer-priests who oversee the rights to their primal gods. So it is that those who tread into the swamps seeking a bounty, give a bounty of their own instead—a bounty of their own flesh and essence to fuel the great ritual feasts and orgies of bloodshed.
How, then, do the folk of more civilized lands learn of these things, if no survivors are ever found in the ruins of their colony settlements?
Exiles. Exiles of the lizardmen are the only ones ever seen outside the sodden lands of their vast swamp-jungles, cast out by their kin for some crime or another—typically heresy or profaning of the gods or priest-caste of their rigid class-system. These outcasts are all too happy to speak of their lost homes, though finding them to ask about it is another matter; these folk tend towards waterway banditry, either on the vast rivers of the myriad realms or on the open sea—and some, considered odd by their kin, take up arms in land-based mercenary companies and guilds.
Physiology & Sociology
‘Men’ is a poor term here, for when one thinks of ‘men’ they think of human, or elf, or whichever folk one is part of—but for the most part, ‘men’ invokes an image of civilized- after a manner- peoples going about their business in a cordial enough fashion; this image in no way suits a lizardmen, no more than a nobleman’s suit fits the packhorse. These two-legged swamp dragons boast maws of flesh-rending teeth and bone-powdering muscles; muscle-corded frames of scale-covered flesh glistening hues of every shade from the light shining off the water clinging to them as they rise—rise from the swamp itself, to put to death every trespasser from every land, every race, every calling.
If a drunk human or yon pirate is difficult enough to speak to without offending, lizardmen are exponentially worse—taking offense at things as innocent as a polite ‘hello’, or offering to fetch a fresh mug of ale for them. Thus, intelligent folk who prefer to keep their heads firmly attached to necks give a wide berth to the scaled giants; those among the guilds tend to be more cool-headed, though their cold-blooded psyche is no less alien despite their ostensible acclimation into the wider world.
Of notable absence from the ranks of these saw-toothed bipedals are females—no female lizardman has ever been spotted abroad, and the exiles themselves are quite tight-lipped about the matter; preferring to throw wry looks that suggest the questioner is a fool for asking if females of a species clearly able to produce multiple generations of themselves exist. Provided, of course, that they don’t just rip out the questioner’s throat for offering some sort of offense in the way they inflected their words. Equally rare are lizardmen mages, with the magically attuned comprising only one in every one-thousand exiles; these casters most typically being attuned to the elements of earth and water, with their ritual hemomancy being a racial permutation of the latter.
When held together, the rarity of these two groups of lizardfolk raise a theory. A theory that perhaps the sorcerer-priests play a role in the reproduction of the unseen females of the species, and thus cannot be allowed to be sentenced to exile as freely as their more base kindred; perhaps, some particularly fringe scholars suggest, these blood-mages of savage intellect are critical in the proper utilization of their captives beyond just the display of excess brutality inherent in ritual sacrifice. Perhaps, they put some of that population to use in darker rituals that perpetuate their bestial species in ways best left unsaid in good company.
Perhaps the exiles are all just lures—singing a siren song, to draw ever more fools to the trap of the swamps.
Displacement
Naturally, lizardkin's origins are hard to track, though for the most part their dens are suspected to be within the swamplands of the continent of Ferran as the most likely choice, there have been theories revolving the origin of Lizardmen that go as far as to pinpoint their homes as within the cursed lands, or as far north as the continent of Tao, due to it's marsh lands. Still, there is no certainty of specific locations in which the lizardmen, and while they are keen to speak of their homes, never will they reveal the precise locations of their homes.
Naturally, lizardkin's origins are hard to track, though for the most part their dens are suspected to be within the swamplands of the continent of Ferran as the most likely choice, there have been theories revolving the origin of Lizardmen that go as far as to pinpoint their homes as within the cursed lands, or as far north as the continent of Tao, due to it's marsh lands. Still, there is no certainty of specific locations in which the lizardmen, and while they are keen to speak of their homes, never will they reveal the precise locations of their homes.
