Hera
Kar'chari: Pre-Era of Desolation
To understand the Kar'chari's Great Mother, and their connection to her, is to understand the Kar'chari themselves. She is not known for being either particularly cruel or forgiving, particularly of weakness, but her displeasure is shown through unparalleled savagry. The pathway to civilization was not an easy one for the Kar'chari. Because of their predatory nature, the Kar'chari’s first attempts at civilization quickly devolved into savage blood-feuds. For eons the Kar'chari roamed their oceans in loose tribal collectives, defining their territory as protected waters and hunting grounds.
Displeased with her children, the Great Mother intervened in two fundamental ways that would shape their history forever. Knowing her children’s proclivity to violence and temper, she set in place an arena of sorts where blood could be spilt; a particularly active volcanic region surrounded by a barrier reef with one of the few inhabitable land masses at its center. Secondly, she gave them a single language.
With a unified language and prohibition against large scale violence, the Kar'chari people began to develop rapidly, and even as they united, they also stratified. Pedigree is of paramount importance to the Kar'chari, and those with traceable pure bloodlines back to the Great Mother are given deference.
The Great Mother was a central figure in both their religious and political system. Because her species grows as long as it lives (and she has been alive for a very, very long time) she physically dwarfed all of the Kar'chari. Over time, she came to realize that her continued presence would quickly empty the ocean of life merely by feeding her. With this realization came the beginning of her second ascendancy. Transcending her physical form, she ascended to the energetic realms of the gods.
Due to the constant exposure to mana, the species began to evolve away from their shark-like origins into more humanoid forms, allowing them to build great underwater cities. Eventually, their studies of mana allowed them to develop a way to keep their skin moist while away from their natural habitat. Still, some remnants of their ancestry remain. Their skin is still shark-like, they still possess functional gills, and their teeth, though adapted for the change in facial features, are still needle sharp.
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