The First Men

The First Men is a descriptive term for a species of humanoid that rose in the time of Pangaea. Tied closely to nature, they showed an extreme range of traits that crossed the boundaries of different life. Some would say it was nature itself in it's infinite diversity was pushing for intelligence to arise while sorting out what the final form would take.
The era these people rose was late in the era of Pangaea, the single supercontinent of Earth 335 million years ago (mya) and started breaking up about 200 mya. By this period, the Empires of the Dragons and the Star Gods were long since gone millions of years prior, and the Giant Empire was starting to wane too. While other empires were starting to take of or yet to set fooy on Earth the First Men arose.
Twisted and degenerate by modern standards, the beings showed many mystical & advanced scientific achievements yet to be matched by many modern civilisations such as the Frankish Empire, the Abyssad Caliphate, China and the Elven & Dwarven empires. They seemed to spring out of nowhere and spent most of their time to themselves splitting into many different cultures with may levels of technology and religious beliefs.
One thing that should be notedd is that they had well-developed communications and recorded their beliefs & discoveries onto rock either by drawings & paintings, or by carvings. Many of their tools & equipment survive till today, and seemed built to last for long periods of time. Thoug hsaying this, the majority have became damaged or lost to the ages as the supercontinent Pangaea broke up, actions of their enemies and time itself beset them. Most of their remains are found in deep out of the way places such as the Underdark, in inhospitable regions, and under the sea. The reasons for this is somewhat unclear, and what records exist seem to point to wholesale civil wars between the differing kingdoms that rose over time, coupled with another empire that arose, that of the Yuan-Ti.
The latter seemed to arise at roughly the same time as the First Men, but were more united under a single overall banner than the First Men. Another was that the Yuan-Ti seemed to be a splinter of the same species yet more stable in appearance and personality than them. The First men were too fragmented and eventually fell by the time Pangaea split up, and eventually died out wholesale.
Rumours persist that elements are still there tucked away in hard to reach areas, and hold secrets that have been gleaned through the surviving millennia that only the other ancient empires would know as well. The price though is something that most may not want to ever know let alone pay. Indeed stories are bound of foolish explorers of younger species encountering them and coming back twisted and corrupted as twisted and corrupted as the First Men.
Certainly what artworks that have been uncovered showed that the First Men had a close relationship with the living world. They are thought of as the two being so closely interlinked that any changes to one affects the other, and their deities were of Nature, with most being related to life, death and rebirth. They seemed to also physically mutable with even close relations showing many different shapes, colours, and traits appearing in close relations. Even their mentality seems to be the same. The only similarity is that they worshipped all three aspects as equal, and had very little fear of actual death as they believed they would be reborm afterwards somewhere, somehow.
A myth that seems to have sprung up after an illfated expidition deep in the Scandes Mountains looking for the cursed dragon Birgin, the Winter Storm. The military assests that were sent in were deliberately misled into an ancient set of caves deep down in the Scandes that had belonged to the First Men. In there they found the remains of an old First Man settlement. It seemed that there were magic present and with examining the walls of the stone carved buildings the expidition seemed to warp and shift. Most died quickly, their bodies reforming into grotesque parodies of men, with only three returning.
Of these three, one had seemed t oshrivel up like an old man reduced to a being of skin & bone with strange osseous potrusions sticking out of his taut skin. The second seemd to be thicker built with wooden growths like miniature tree branches growing ouy of him, along with elements of him turning to bark. The third seemed to grow a mass of tentacles in place of his mouth and seemed to take on an aquatic appearance with fleshy suckers on the palms of his hands.