Azlanti

Millennia ago, inscrutable, inhuman patrons raised the Azlanti from their disorganized and primitive roots, allowing them to found a legendary civilization that sprawled across the continent of Azlant and farther still, making them the first known human empire to touch the Inner Sea region. The Azlanti built enduring monuments, mastered several fields of magic, and created reality-bending wonders that have remained unrivaled since. Ten thousand years before present day, a rain of meteors descended upon Azlant, quenching the flame of Azlanti civilization and sinking the continent beneath the waves. The cataclysm was known as Earthfall.
The last of the pureblooded Azlanti was Aroden, the god of humanity who perished a century ago, but Azlanti characteristics persist from their ancient liaisons with other ethnicities. Azlanti traits often appear in humans throughout Golarion, particularly among Chelaxians and Taldans. Humans with Azlanti heritage tend to have handsome features, graceful limbs, and a noble bearing. They are often intellectual and artistic, but tend to be arrogant and preoccupied with their reputations. Canny humans with Azlanti heritage often accentuate their ancestry, no matter how diluted, in order to emphasize a connection to the mighty legacy of a bygone civilization.

Appearance

Azlanti heritage is strong. Although true Azlanti no longer exist, their features are often genetically dominant and visually arresting. Their sharp cheekbones, high foreheads, expressive eyebrows, and prominent chins are usually considered beautiful, although some find the haughty appearance these facial features create off-putting. Azlanti had bronze-colored skin and dark hair that formed distinctive widow’s peaks and often had red or even purplish tones. They rarely grew much facial or body hair, and beards or chest hair were generally considered signs of mixed heritage.
Azlanti tended to be long-limbed, with a natural grace and regal posture. Their fingers and toes were long and delicate, which made them excellent at arts and music requiring manual dexterity, but ill-suited for heavy labor.
The most prominent and striking hallmark of Azlanti heritage is a vibrant purple eye color, which generally signals increased visual acuity and outstanding color recognition. However, Azlanti eyesight tended to fail with age, leading many to require corrective lenses, a trait that tends to accompany this sign of Azlanti blood in their descendants.

Society

Pureblooded Azlanti are extinct, and their society has likewise faded into the mists of history, but it is not entirely lost. Despite the antiquity of Azlanti culture, sufficient historical evidence remains for modern humans with Azlanti ancestry to adopt some of the customs and fashion of their ancient forebears. These people consider themselves “modern Azlanti” and often reject their family names to adopt a single given name—a polysyllabic name beginning with a vowel, in the Azlanti style.
Time spent researching an ancient civilization has many benefits. Modern Azlanti tend to be well read, with finely honed intellects that enable them to easily analyze and synthesize opposing academic viewpoints. They often work as scholars, bankers, judges, or politicians. Such Azlanti are well-versed in history, arcane magic, or social theory, in addition to esoteric specializations such as ancient fashion, engineering, or architecture. Because of this focus on the past, Azlanti are usually traditionalists and classicists rather than true innovators. They prefer to use established, even rote, solutions rather than try new ones, and might dismiss modern technology (such as Alkenstar’s gunworks) and social developments (such as Andoran’s fledgling democracy).
Azlanti prefer the clothing styles displayed in the friezes that decorate ancient Azlanti ruins: long robes of deep green combined with a contrasting color such as bright crimson or gold. They wear tall, colorful hats or don head jewelry such as circlets or crowns. Wealthy Azlanti use ioun stones, rumored to have been invented in ancient Azlant, whenever possible. The magical gemstones display both the Azlanti culture’s fashion and its arcane mastery.
Azlanti architecture’s distinctive, majestic style is still copied throughout the Inner Sea region. Sweeping arches, high cupolas, and well-engineered buttresses are common, as are surfaces elaborately decorated with interlaced patterns and lifelike depictions of humans and other creatures. Azlanti cities were replete with public spaces, and plazas, large auditoriums, and airy galleries were common even in small Azlanti towns.
Ancient Azlant had complicated social philosophies that seem contradictory to modern sensibilities. On one hand, the Azlanti were supportive of social programs to minimize poverty and crime. To the Azlanti, providing even the poorest citizen with the opportunity for wealth and advancement benefited the whole of society. On the other hand, the ancient Azlanti were slave-owners, with their vast farming and construction endeavors made possible by the labor of hundreds of thousands of slaves. Many modern Azlanti in Cheliax consider slave ownership to be an ancestral right, while their kin in countries such as Taldor prefer to emphasize the ancient civilization’s social programs instead.

Faith

Modern humans who claim Azlanti descent tend not to be particularly religious. Many feel that their race’s spirituality died a century ago with their greatest kinsman, Aroden. The last pureblooded Azlanti, Aroden had risen to be god of humans, but never returned as prophesied. A few obdurate Azlanti continue to pay homage to Aroden out of a loyalty to Azlanti culture rather than religious devotion, but their prayers to Aroden go unanswered.
Ancient Azlanti venerated a pantheon of deities. Of this pantheon, only Abadar, Desna, Pharasma, and Shelyn are widely worshiped in the Inner Sea today, and their worship has taken on a different cast in contemporary hands. Ancient Azlanti revered Abadar as a deity of cities and wealth rather than as a force for law and civilization. Azlanti astronomers and poets venerated Desna as the goddess of stars, not dreams or wanderers. Pharasma has always judged the dead, but ancient Azlanti also viewed Pharasma as the chief deity of prophecy. Only Shelyn, patron goddess of love and the arts, was worshiped by the ancient Azlanti in substantially the same way her worshipers revere her today.
A rare few modern Azlanti pay homage to rarer, older gods that either are dead or have fallen out of favor on Golarion. Chief among these are Amaznen the Magister, god of magic; Acavna the Shieldmaiden, goddess of battle and the moon; and Acavna’s opponent Nurgal, demon lord of warfare and the sun. In many cases, a modern Azlanti’s allegiance to such almost-forgotten gods is as much a way to cultivate a reputation for the sort of ancient, powerful knowledge assumed to come with Azlanti heritage as it is a devout expression of spiritual faith. However, even the most arrogant descendant of the Azlanti is not foolish enough to falsely worship one of these deities and risk drawing its ire.

Culture

The original Azlanti culture is now made up of little more than time-worn, waterlogged ruins and ancient legends. Scholars have made substantial efforts to recover and recreate Azlanti culture from historical records, despite the fact that these records have been substantially revised (such as when the sinful lore of the runelords of ancient Thassilon was expurgated) or are incredibly hard to reach (in the case of records lost in the undersea ruins of Azlant in the Arcadian Ocean). Still, scholars agree that the Azlanti developed a complex civilization in the face of ongoing warfare against magically sophisticated and frightfully powerful opponents. Their descendants claim this great civilization as their birthright.

Azlanti Descent

Because of the widespread nature of the ancient Azlanti empire, markers of Azlanti heritage exist in humans of nearly every ethnicity on Golarion. Even in places where genealogy isn’t culturally important, these traits are usually at least considered attractive. Azlanti traits might lie dormant for a generation or two only to reappear in later offspring, which helps keep the traits rare and intriguing.
Although the Azlanti lived primarily on their own continent and didn’t populate the Inner Sea region extensively, they maintained several outposts in the areas of Avistan occupied by modern-day Cheliax, Taldor, and Varisia. Chelaxians and Taldans are more likely than any other human ethnicity to show Azlanti heritage and understand its significance. Whenever claiming such heritage might be advantageous, most Taldans or Chelaxians gladly overstate its potency. Some ancient Azlanti traveled far from their home continent; in particular, the Azlanti rulers of ancient Thassilon expanded their empires across Avistan and beyond. Uniquely Azlanti characteristics can therefore appear even in Tian humans of the Dragon Empires or Ulfen settlers in Iobaria. Distant, isolated human communities lacking familiarity with the Azlanti might consider purple eyes or uncharacteristic features to be evidence of infidelity or sexual congress with otherworldly creatures rather than a connection to an ancient people.

Serpentfolk

Although Azlanti are Golarion’s oldest human ethnicity, they are not its oldest sentient race. Long before the rise of humanity, a vicious and cunning serpentfolk magocracy dominated the Inner Sea. This empire had already peaked before humans appeared, but was still pervasive enough to attempt to subjugate the fledgling human race. However, the Azlanti resistance surprised the serpentfolk, who were unprepared for the vigor and magical aptitude this younger race exhibited. The two races—one ancient and already in decline, the other just beginning its ascendance—fought in several skirmishes on Azlant that flared into open war across several continents and into the Darklands. The final blow came when the Azlanti hero Savith beheaded the serpentfolk deity Ydersius, hurling the god’s body and followers into deep subterranean realms. Before the Azlanti could eliminate the remaining serpentfolk, Earthfall destroyed their civilization. Echoes of this war influenced the development of Azlanti culture, as Azlanti artists considered reptilian shapes and textures inauspicious or threatening. Although modern serpentfolk lack their forebears’ might, they still remember their many defeats at the hands of the Azlanti, and thirst for revenge against all of modern humanity.

Pureblooded

To the best knowledge of scholars, there are no pureblooded Azlanti living on Golarion, but even these sages admit that they can’t be entirely certain. Powerful resurrection spells might have revived an Azlanti whose body had been magically preserved to survive the intervening millennia. Azlanti were masters of magic unknown in the modern age, and a living Azlanti might survive in a stasis chamber in some undiscovered ruin, waiting to be released by daring explorers. Powerful Azlanti wizards even experimented with manipulating time itself, and might have hurled their pupils or slaves into the present with missions or warnings, or even come to the modern day themselves to escape impending doom.

Relations

As heirs to the first massive human empire, one still unrivaled in human history, many modern Azlanti consider themselves inherently superior to all other peoples. They see other Azlanti as their only true equals, but also as their most worthy rivals, and attempt to outdo other Azlanti while barely noticing the presence of other people in their communities or fields. Driven to make their names famous and swollen with pride in their personal accomplishments, Azlanti can come across as haughty and aloof or relentlessly self-aggrandizing. Yet they also enjoy the company of others, make genteel hosts, and encourage diplomatic solutions to conflicts.
Modern Azlanti tend to at least acknowledge Chelish and Taldan cultures. Most Azlanti today are born into those societies, and both cultures have a long history and strong aristocratic traditions. On the other hand, the “barbaric” lives of Kellids, Shoanti, and Ulfen usually horrify modern Azlanti, who are personally ill-suited to the constant threat of privation and the extreme rigors of daily life that those cultures must endure. The rare Azlanti-descended humans born into such societies often leave them as soon as possible for the civilizations to the south, though the few that choose to remain find it easy to rise to positions of prominence and authority. Modern Azlanti often find themselves at odds with Keleshites, whose pride rivals that of the Azlanti themselves and whose trade networks and sophistication have begun to rival those of past golden ages, though the Azlanti are loath to admit it. Modern Azlanti have little interaction with other human ethnicities, but can find something worthy in any culture that combines ancient history with modern achievement—they admire the Garundi respect for antiquity, the Vudrani drive for self-perfection, and the Tian emphasis on genealogy.
Azlanti appreciate elves for their great antiquity and mastery of magic, although some are aware of long-ago wars between elves and Azlanti. The causes for those wars are long forgotten, but a few Azlanti harbor a nebulous distrust of elvenkind as a result. They find dwarves’ stodginess offputting, and frequently underestimate gnomes and halflings, considering the former to be reckless inventors with no sense of tradition and the latter to be no more than able assistants. Half-elves and half-orcs often share the Azlanti drive to forge their own place in the world, leaving behind family connections; these races can become good friends with Azlanti, so long as they can suffer the arrogance. The mysterious aquatic azarketi have a distant genetic connection to modern Azlanti, who tend to be more suspicious of azarketi than most humans, seeing them as secret allies of Azlant’s ancient aboleth enemies.

Adventurers

Azlanti hunger to learn more of their ancestors’ glorious empire, and though most see adventuring as beneath a people that produces outstanding scholars, diplomats, and artists, only a limited amount of Azlanti lore can be found the safety of a dusty library. This appetite may compel Azlanti to explore distant or dangerous locales, and their pride and drive often translates into an individualism that can lead them to undertake arduous adventures so that they earn fame and wealth to match their majestic ancestors’ achievements.
Azlanti naturally gravitate toward positions of leadership, and their keen strategic minds, regal bearing, and deep understanding of magical lore often back up their desire to command. It can backfire, for an Azlanti leader is likely to become petulant or resentful if not obeyed in times of crisis, and their haughtiness can rub companions from more egalitarian backgrounds the wrong way. Whether or not they are in positions of authority, Azlanti prefer roles that emphasize diplomacy or arcane knowledge over skullduggery or brute force. While not immune to the lure of wealth, Azlanti adventurers can usually be motivated by the prospect of lost bits of lore or unique magic items from forgotten kingdoms.

Where on Golarion?

The descendants of the Azlanti have no surviving ancestral homeland other than a shattered and sunken continent. The Azlanti legacy survives throughout the Inner Sea only through diluted bloodlines, ancient ruins, and traces of lore. Any human might bear a hint of Azlanti heritage, although humans in Cheliax and Taldor are most likely to demonstrate Azlanti characteristics and refer to themselves as Azlanti.
A group of powerful renegade Azlanti founded the empire of Thassilon in modern-day Varisia. Although the rule of those pureblooded Azlanti ended before Earthfall, Varisians and Shoanti might also display Azlanti heritage.
The reclusive azarketi of the Inner Sea are the most direct descendants of the ancient Azlanti, and their haughty features and purple eyes make this obvious. These “Low Azlanti” congregate around the Isle of Kortos (perhaps due to Aroden’s connection to that island), occupy a ramshackle neighborhood in Absalom, and maintain an embassy in Escadar.
The brutal morlocks of the Darklands are descended from the ancient Azlanti who were driven beneath the surface to avoid Earthfall. The morlocks have experienced so much inbreeding and mutation over the intervening millennia that their physical similarities to ancient Azlanti are nearly nonexistent, but their clergy tell remarkably consistent legends supporting the idea of Azlanti heritage.

Diverged ethnicities

• Taldan

Encompassed species

• Human

Playing an Azlanti

Although the Azlanti are extinct, some folk bear the imprint of their legacy and strive to uphold Azlanti tradition in the face of a changing world.
If you identify as a modern Azlanti, you likely:

• Consider yourself an heir to ancient traditions superior to anything practiced by modern humanity.
• Were born to another ethnicity—in all probability, your parents are Chelaxian or Taldan.
• Are more interested in the triumphs of the distant past than the paltry accomplishments of the contemporary world.
• Think of yourself as having a great destiny, and expect to make a lasting mark upon the world.
• Don’t have strong ties or a sense of obligation to your family, but view your fellow modern Azlanti as your true peers and kin.
• Assume most other humans are jealous of your obvious superiority, and see them as inherently less capable.

Others probably:

• Think you are pretentious at best, and outright delusional at worst.
• Consider the concept of “modern Azlanti” to be an affectation for the idle rich, not an actual ethnicity.
• Expect you to be an expert on Azlanti history, lost magic, and ancient traditions.
• Suspect you are part of a conspiracy or secret society, or that you have a hidden agenda.
• Assume you venerate strange, ancient gods or follow long-outdated philosophies.
• View you as a foppish pretender or a mysterious scholar.