Peoples of Ashar: The Dawning

Keratoplexans radiate throughout Kemesh, becoming the dominant tetrapodal life of the continent.

The first primates arise in the vast jungles of central Xusmalat.

The versutids, intelligent, tree-dwelling keratoplexans, arise in the forests of north-central Kemesh.

The ancestors of the ulanids, a branch of the Coleoidea superfamily of molluscs, the Nereids, emerge in the coastal seas off the west coast of Okaluan. They are vaguely cuttlefish-like, and have eight arms, two tentacles and vestigial fins. Their internal, chitinous mantle extends along the dorsal length of their body. Rib-like extensions from this mantle extend along the length, providing rigidity and protection. They are pack animals, using complex signaling with color, gesture and texture to coordinate during hunts. Males compete to mate with the larger females, going through senescence afterwards. They are very successful and spread along the west and south of Okaluan and the northwest coasts of Kemesh.

Food collapse causes some Nereids to evolve new strategies of survival, leading to the emergence of the Ulanids. They are characterized by females becoming larger and sedentary in adulthood. Males both hunt and scavenge in groups, bringing food to the same female who lives in rocky crevasses, coral crevasses or other protecting structures. Some older males are always nearby to guard against predators and ulanids from other groups as well as help tend to the young. They are the first eusocial molluscs.

Mutations involving distal bifurcation of the tentacles in ulanids are useful for opposition grips and become selected for, allowing finer manipulation of found tools.

Tool use in ulanids becomes more specialized and complex, employing food refuse at first, such clam shells as cutting tools, fish teeth or spines. These aid in acquiring food and defending their clans from rivals as well as excavating and building shelter. They are able to out compete other ulanid groups and defend themselves against the most dangerous predators. Their communication abilities become more complex and technologies are passed to offspring.

Some ulanid species spread into the Torvalen Sea out of the western ocean as sea levels continue to drop, seeking food and warmer waters.

Early excultids spread out of Kemesh east into Kalmasa and west into Okaluan, crossing narrow landbridges created by the current glaciation event lowering global sea levels.

Another land bridge forms between northeastern Xusmalat and southeastern Utanar. Homonin species cross northwards.

The landbridge between Kemesh and Okaluan cuts off populations of ulanids in the outer ocean from those in the Torvalen Sea.

Over time and the high selective pressures of survival in the depths, some groups of U. tenebrae develop the ability to control their own physiology by conceptualizing their physical needs.

This manifests itself at first by the ability to consciously regulate metabolism, but through cultural transmission, these rudimentary abilities improve to the point where the most advanced females, whose lifespan and intelligence is already greater than the males, learn how to modify the proteins in their venom to produce morphic compounds in a wide range of applications. Here in the lightless depths of the Torvalen Sea, the first example of intentional magic, in the form of biomantic esoteric magic, is first implemented by sapient beings.

The abyssal ulan begin to spread across the length of the underwater mountains and out onto the abyssal plains, where life is even more challenging. Fierce competition erupts for scarce resources between demenses, these pressures selecting for the most ruthless, intelligent queens’ survival.

Modern Homo sapiens appear in northern Xusmalat.   Modern Labio silvans appear in Kemesh.   An archaic species of genus Becco migrates into Heimval.

Modern Labio perditans appear in southern Kalmasa.

Modern

Labio callidans

Homo sapiens first spread northwards into Utanar, crossing a landbridge in the northeast of Xusmalat. With their superior tools and adaptability, they quickly outcompete existing homonid species on the northern continent.

The beccans of Heimval speciate between those adapted to the colder tundra, boreal forests and highlands of northern Heimval, the ettnir (Becco borealis) and those adapted to the warmer plains, marshes and coastal environments of southern Heimval (Becco occidentis and Becco orientalis).

By this time, the civilizations in the depths of the Torvalen Sea were already highly complex. All the valuable territory, that had enough to support abyssal civilization, was occupied. These territories were necessarily vast, given the poor resources available. The intense competition led to the increased use of biomancy by the abyssal queens to make tools and slaves of their offspring and other creatures. Their society became rigid and stagnant. Increasingly complex political games were being played between the queens, sometimes over real resources and other times simply over prestige or more petty reasons. The queens became psychologically inclined towards what would considered in humans as psychopathy, sociopathy and narcissism. Those without this ‘killer instinct’ rarely survived.

But then one daughter, Sharpest-Eye-Quickest-Beak's-Third-Daughter, a low ranking overseer of her mother’s scavenging parties, changed that. Her mother’s realm was in the western Torvalen Sea, some eighty kilometers offshore near the continental slope of northern Kalmasa. Knowing she was not well favored, given her more kind predilections towards her brothers, and would likely be killed eventually by her younger sisters, she planned her escape. When the time was right, she fled with twenty males. With them she established the first coastal ulanid community in eons, beginning the era of the coastal ulan (Ulano lucides).

A population of Becco occidentis living on the coasts of the Vrede peninsula in southwestern Heimval had developed their keratoplex, originally used as elaborate mating displays, to gliding, using the strong winds to hunt prey, mainly large aquatic and semiaquatic keratoplexans.

When the last glaciation event began, new islands emerged southwest of the peninsula. Over the course of thousands of years, these beccans continued to migrate island to island until some of them arrived on the shores of northeastern Volenar, making it the last continent in Ashar to be settled by an intelligent species and heralding the beginning of the ejdehan (Becco occidentis volenaris).

Most of western Heimval, west of the Sutberg range is blanketed in a dense, temperate rainforest. It is a sanctuary of relative warmth, proctected by mountains to the east and north and nourished by the warm, moist southwestern air currents. The beccans of these forests gradually adapt to this environment by the conversion of their long, movable keratoplex quills into simple but strong hook like limbs that help them climb trees and cliffs as well as hold young and other items, developing into the modern drakir (Becco occidentis uncus).

The Ak'thri, a tecuhtli tribe on the western coast of Kalmasa, develop a close relationship with the nearby ulan commune and in time adapt the biomantic arts of the ulan for themselves, learning how to enhance and change their bodies to suit their purposes and to pass on desired traits to their progeny.