Kar'chari
Kar'chari: Arrival
The Kar'chari did not fare as well as some other species when making landfall. Because of the extreme distance from their home-world, there was little choice but to send the scouts in cryosleep. Their ship was damaged in flight, leaving the crew in stasis far too long. As the ship broke up upon reentry many died, and more still were separated from the main craft. Those that survived awoke to find themselves stranded on a new and unfamiliar world. Cut off from their people, they retreated to the oceans of the world as they did in their ancient past, trusting the watery deep to protect and provide for them.
Separated from the Great Mother, the Kar'chari began to turn to new gods. Without their ritualized combat and their Goddess to stop them, it took less than three centuries for conflict to once again break out among them. Those surviving 1st Order descendants either consolidated power or were killed. The three known remaining 1st Order descendants are Trak, 1st Order of the Great Mother, Cuvier, 1st Order of Galeocerdo, and Chondrichthyes, 1st Order of Rhincodon.
Kar'chari: Overview
The Kar’chari are a species of aquatic humanoids hailing from the ancient and massive ocean planet of Hera. Much speculation has been made on their evolutionary origins, but overwhelming evidence suggests that they were, at one time, not terribly dissimilar from the sharks found on Terra, sharing with them to this day the same rough skin, powerful electromagnetic senses, and fearsome teeth. Much like the sharks of earth, they are incredibly long lived, at least from our perspective. In fact, no records exist of a Kar’chari expiring from natural causes, leading many to assume that they are functionally immortal. They are not invincible however, and often die in violent conflict due to their culture’s basis in violence and predation.
Kar'chari: Homeland
Of all the races involved in the great desolation, the Kar'chari, and their neighbors the Fulmin, come from the most remote region of space. Their home-world of Hera, being roughly the size of Jupiter, has oceans covering nearly 85% of its surface. With few exceptions, the land that rises above the surface of the ocean is mountainous and rocky, almost entirely uninhabitable to most species.
One strange feature that had a major impact on the Kar'chari is the fact that Hera is locked in a strange orbit in a binary star system shared with the Fulmin. Once a century the planets orbits would come close enough together to cause world-wide planetary disruptions on both worlds. For the Fulmin, it cause great tectonic shifts while the Kar'chari had to weather the violent oceanic storms and and increased volcanism. Far more rarely, the two worlds would actually exchange orbits with each other in a incredibly rare gravitational exchange, and the each would circle the other star until the next such exchange.
During these periods of close approaches, and in particular during the orbital exchanges, it became possible for wielders from one world to create gates to the other. It was in this manner that the Kar'chari and Fulmin came to be introduced to each other as two groups of apex predators each a master of their own domain, and for eons they, liked their planets, would occasionally be locked in battles that became the stuff of legend for both races.
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.
Kar'chari: Origins
While it’s next to impossible to verify the tales that make up the Kar’chari’s explanation for their existence and sapience, it cannot be denied that there must be some merit to them, as the Kar’chari have but one religion, and nearly all of them adhere to it’s doctrine.
The Kar’chari believe that their evolution was guided, using some strange magic, by a figure known as the Great White Mother, a member of their forebear species that, by virtue of strength, lived so long that she became the largest living being on their homeworld, a veritable leviathan that even the terrors of the dark underworld below the sea dared not challenge. With her age, it is said, she eventually gained her own sapience, and that sapience allowed her to see that her kin had a potential far greater than the simple life of hunting and killing, and through unseen intervention, using a force the sharks call the Ka, and an impossible amount of patience, born from what might be viewed by us as limitless time, she eventually shaped her kin into the form they take now.
If the stories are to be taken as fact, the Great Mother was not idle in her work after her kin were perfected. They needed guidance, and she provided it, be that with rewards for those who pleased her or by devouring entire civilizations who failed to. Even now, the mightiest of their kind respect that their antediluvian is watching them, and does not simply desire their best, but expects it. This respect is what has shaped their society into what it is, as the final and impossible goal of every Kar’chari queen is to not only please their adoptive parent, but to surpass her, and the goal of the most ambitious males is to become a mate worthy of such a goddess, goals that both could only be attained through the strength that they hold in such high regard.
At some point in their history, it is claimed that the Great Mother somehow ascended from her mortal flesh, becoming an ethereal being, a necessity, it is said, because as she continued to grow, it was obvious to her that her presence would decimate the planet, simply because of the amount of food that would be required to sustain her. It is suspected as well, that she somehow knew that her homeworld was nearing a catastrophic change, and the only way she could survive it was to leave her body behind. Though such a story is next to impossible to believe up front, the site of her grave is a verifiable location on Hera, one that the Kar’chari fiercely protect, and on a clear day, the bones that are claimed to be hers can be seen from orbit.
Kar'chari: Era of Desolation
During the Era of Desolation, the Kar'chari and the Fulmin worked together, forming a large empire dominated by the spear of the Kar'chari and the staff of the Fulmin. While they primarily colonized worlds not inhabited by other sapient species, when the necessity arose, any resistance was easily overcome.
As the era wore on, the energy needs of their empire grew, driving them to look for ever greater sources of mana. When other races began offering tetrandite crystals as a fuel source, they turned a blind eye despite quickly realizing that the kind of power required could not be harvested without extreme devastation. This, in the end, was their sin. They allowed the want for more power corrupt their vision, and thus, over time, they were drawn into the galactic war that followed in the wake of tetrandites production.
Unfortunately, their origin in the galaxy fell along some of the stronger galactic leylines, a fact that was in no small part responsible for their very existence. As more stars were collapsed, several waves of wild mana ripped through their systems. More that two dozen star systems were completely obliterated. Worse, however, were the edges of the wave, where the weakening force of it allowed for more unfortunate survivors. An epidemic of Fayne broke out across dozens of worlds. In the most extreme cases it lead to the complete eradication of sapient life on the planet. Infestestations were often cleansed by planetary destruction, as there was no known cure for the horific condition.
Kar'chari: Society
These three head the three factions that predominate modern Kar'chari culture. Trak and his followers founded and maintained the first city, Carcharias. Nestled within a reef shrouded coastal inactive caldera, Carcharias lies some seventy-five meters below the surface. The Kar'chari have long known how to make use of the geothermal energies of the sea. When the original scouting party discovered the location, it was a simple decision as to where to start their new civilization.
Centuries later, the city has grown to be a thriving underwater metropolis. The natural defenses of the location make it nearly unassailable by land, air, or sea, and the rich food source makes siege nearly impossible. That didn’t stop others from trying. Three centuries after landfall, Curvier led a band of Kar'chari in a rebellion against Trak, trying in vain to cut off the city and depose Trak. In the end, the rebellion was thoroughly crushed and Curvier fled to the south to settle an uninhabited archipelago.
The new settlers found rich hunting grounds, and perhaps more importantly, precious metals and gems that were richly abundant on the mountainous islands. Exploiting the vast wealth of natural resources, the Cerdonese quickly became an economic powerhouse via trade. Two centuries passed without incident, though it is rumored that both Trak and Cuvier are nursing old grudges and waiting for the other to show weakness.
Chondrichthyes was the least hostile of the three, and took a group of settlers to sea, far beyond the coastal waters, deep below the surface. Chondrichthyes wanted nothing to do with the fighting, but instead longed to study this new world and its magic in peace. An adept level mage, Chondrichthyes did something likely no other Kar'chari could: choosing a natural intersection of deep sea ley lines, much further beneath the surface than even the deepest of the surface dwellers, she created not one, but an entire henge of heartstones.
Drawing from their combined power, Chrondrichthyes was able to carve a new home for her people out of the bedrock itself, and she called it Kamchatka. Over time, she crafted numerous wards and spells, all tied to the power of the heartstones, which were in turn connected to an almost limitless source of power. Among the spells she set were wards of sealing and illusions to hide it from sight, while others geased the population so they would be unable to reveal it to an outsider.
The story goes that Kamchatka is a unparalleled university of magic, where the masters go to be educated. There, they dedicate their lives to a study of magic so profound that they choose to live out the remainder of their lives there. Of course, the other story is that it is a baited trap waiting to draw in powerful, gullible mages greedy for yet more power, luring them to their death. However, no one truly knows. There is only one way to find Kamchatka, and it is a path almost exclusively available to Adept level magic users of great power and skill. Follow the ley lines…..if you can.
Heritage Facts
Homeworld: HeraContinent: Article Link
Region: Article Link
Capital City: Article Link
Government: Article Link
Religions: Article Link
Military: Article Link
Social Structure: Article Link
Family Unit Article Link
Holidays: Article Link
Average Lifespan: Article Link
Heritage Member Species
[section]Heritage Feature
Heritage: Kar'Chari
Aquamancy: The Kar'Chari evolved to be the apix predators of an aquatic world, and as such, their mastery of the element of water is unparalled among the sentient races. Kar'Chari are able to breathe normally in any type of water and gain +4 CR to Water based spells and abilities.
Starting Attributes and Pools:
- Hitpoints: DED
- Stamina: EDD
- Mana: EEE
- Fade: EDD
Comments