Avatars

“The sun sees only light, all beyond its gaze is dark, but the shadow of the sun sees further still.”

Vosis Fail - Excommunicated Sophont of Yga

The Children of the Shadow of the Sun

Dragons, sheathed in mortal flesh, once walked amongst mankind.

Or so legend says.

Whatever 'Dragons' were in The Diadem of Esh, they were creatures beyond our ability to easily conceive. Existing in dimensions beyond our own, they could squeeze some small aspects of themselves into our reality, like the tentacles of an octopus squeezing through the smallest hole in an aquariums wall.

These partial fragments are reported as titanic, scaled, and glorious monsters.

To speak and act more easily amongst creatures from our level of the cosmos, they made Avatars, magically constructed bodies created with minds and senses roughly analogous to those of 'ordinary' beings, yet capable of channelling the Dragon’s immense awareness, with at least some fidelity.

Sending a portion of their power and selfhood into these constructs, the Dragons were able to walk abroad in the Diadem, participating in its society and culture at every level.

As each mind was inhabited by its creator, it acted like like a seal pressed into wax; that particular portion of the Dragon’s mind-state left an echo in the brain of its Avatar.

Over time, these para-personalities became complex and deep enough to actively run the body, even without the presence of their creator. They were allowed to do so. For the Dragons, these quasi-people were like memories or forgotten thoughts, left for a while and then easily picked up and re-integrated. The Avatars themselves waited, happy and expectant, for the consuming return of their maker, who would fill them from within and nourish them with some slight fragment of its magisterial power.

Then, Esh fell into Uud.

The Diadem fell apart and the world greyed and tore at its edges like ragged paper. The Dragons disappeared.

Their Avatars, creatures imbued with echoes of their personalities, their memories, and their powers, were left to fend for themselves.

The trauma and horror of this abandonment drove the Avatars to the brink of despair, and drove some of them over the brink.

Still, even as mere shadows of the Sun, they could not deny their nature, or their memories and intuitions. They did what they could during the fall to preserve life on Uud. They tried to save, and even reconstruct what they could of the Dragons interdimensional higher-world ultra-thaumaturgy. In this, they largely failed.

Though they persevered for millennia, fighting again and again to retain the memory of a higher, better world, ultimately they perished, and disappeared.

In Blackwater the last Avatar died about a millennia ago, ancient, bitter, and raging.

THEIR LEGACY

They left a powerful, if rather vaguely intuited, legacy.

The idea, the feeling, of this relic of a golden age, a kind of mirage of greatness, glowing with the sheen of a super-reality, endures in the Blackwater culture.

In the Grey-City opera, the character of Kindly Bishop, Wise Wizard, Noble Paladin, Quest-Giver, and sometimes, the Supreme Villain, is taken by an actor wearing the scaled robes and mask of an Avatar, almost always the major baritone singer or an aging, famous, still skilled but less-flexible dancer.

A popular series of legends, usually illustrated for children, has an Avatar hero - the last of their kind, wandering the world and doing good.

The image of forgotten temples lost in the pale jungles below the southern Waste, is always one of carved dragons or dragon heads. The quotes heading chapters in major histories are from the Avatars language. Poets ask "what does it mean to be the Sun at dusk, a dying race dreaming of ethereal wings and other worlds?" Philosophers consider the issue of a dragon who dreams it is a man, or a man who dreams they are a dragon.

These fantasies are of creatures noble and terrible, ineffably tragic, like fallen angels.

And conveniently absent, unable to dispute the cultures view of them.

REBIRTH

Of the Eggs of the Avatars, few remained. Some were in museums or private collections. Many were lost, many hidden. All were dead and cold as stone.

Experiments were made attempting to hatch them. Furnaces of various kinds, magical fires, huge lizards. Nothing worked. All that resulted was shattered shells and fragments of fossilised embryo.

About twenty five years ago, inspired by an unknown source, or perhaps working simply by intuition, a conspiracy was hatched. A team of unlikely heroes (at the time, simply unlikely criminals), banded together to gather all the Avatar eggs they could.

The schemes, tricks, thefts and capers involved in this process have become a sub-genre of popular criminal tales merely to themselves (the "Egg-Theft" genre, run down to cliché on the stage ten years ago and now entering a fresh burst of growth and innovation as the creators who grew up on the original Egg Theft stories and productions now draw upon their childhood memories to create modern versions which simultaneously valorise and interrogate the original tales).

The final part of this years-long plan is still obscured from history, but most versions involve this group of rag-tag adventures either going out into the Waste for some reason, or being driven there by pursuit.

Out on the margins, a mighty battle took place between these Adventurers, their pursuers, and the Entropic Wyrm Scar-of-Sublimity, one of the greatest Children of Yggsrathaal.

By its end, half of the group, and half of their pursuers, were dead, and the corpse of Scar-of-Sublimity lay stretched out upon the moraine of the Waste, wracked and ruined by the most violent and furious magics, burning with a fierce, pale fire that chewed at the edges of vision and clawed at the corners of the eye.

The precious eggs, gathered for so long, were hurled into the cavernous furnace of the burning corpse.

They hatched.

The Avatar young were gathered up by those present, one-to-one. Each took the fresh dragon-child and the group split up, taking different routes to different part of Blackwater, and some perhaps, either staying in the Wastes, or travelling even further out.

It is now twenty years later and the first generation of Avatars is reaching maturity and stepping out into the world. They have no dark racial memory of failure and loss, no knowledge of ancient trans-dimensional super-sorcery, and no real understanding of exactly what they are, except what could be learned from books and records.

Each was raised in a different part of the world, by different families and groups occupying different layers of society and with different histories, ideas and ideals of what the world is, and should be.

Now, they wander the world, a race reborn.

BIOLOGY AND APPEARANCE

Avatars are magnificent. Taller and much more still than any human, they make no mammalian micro-movements and can easily be mistaken for a statue freshly cast from bright metal and polished to a fine gleam.

They seem brighter, and sharper, and more vivid than the grey and tonal world.

It has happened that a rather magnificent Avatar has sat down to bask and meditate outside a village of the simplest folk, and risen from meditation to find themselves covered with Garlands and incense, with a slaughtered pig in front of them. They were taken for an idol. (And they ate the pig).

Their long draconic heads are unlike any race of humanity, their mouths are lined with sharp teeth. Lacking molars, they are strongly carnivorous. They were engineered to be able to survive on other foods when absolutely necessary but they prefer strongly to eat meat, which they often swallow whole (social codes permitting).

Their eyelids rarely close, except to sleep, and nictitating membranes flicker laterally over lucid, intense, gemlike reptile eyes.

Vision is roughly equivalent to the human standard, though they are extremely sensitive to movement. They smell normally, but some claim they can taste magic on the tips of their forked tongues. These extend and wave in an unnerving sinuous motion, and are pressed against the roof of the mouth where apparently, is an organ which can detect the scent of breaks in reality.

Avatars seem bestrewn with natural weapons and defences. Their scaled skin is less sensitive than mammal skin and provides some level of protection alone. Their humanlike hands have retractable claws. The heavy claws of their feet can do significant damage with a kick.

And they have magic breath. The power, intensity and effect of this seems to vary a great deal from individual to individual, but in almost every case an Avatar can do some kind of damage or achieve some remarkable effect with an intense burst which seems to come from an internal magical furnace or alchemical lung.

They are like generators of magical power, nearly humming with static energy.

Their low skin sensitivity, natural amour and fine control of their internal temperature (so long as they are well-fed), means Avatars have only a nominal, social need for clothes, which they wear from custom and expectation, or to signal status or group affiliation.

TO BE AN AVATAR

Every Avatar was taken by a different individual, brought to a different part of Blackwater, and raised in a different culture, with different expectations, intuitions and beliefs. As well, it seems there are varieties of Avatar, though what exactly they are, is yet to be discovered as most were raised as the only creature of their kind present.

So the Avatars background is made up of three elements, the nature of their Fosterer, their home culture and their inner, inherited nature. Since the assignment of child to parent was random, there is no real reason why these should line up.

THE PARENTS

It's not necessarily the case that whoever retrieved an egg from the burning corpse of Scar-of-Sublimity always acted as the main parent, but they were always a major influence on the life of the growing child.

In every case, this individual was really, exceptionally good at whatever it was they did. They may have been supreme mages, masters of a body-weapon art, the most brilliant thief, the most noble knight or paladin, the most faithful and enlightened of theists or simply really good at killing stuff.

Whoever they were, they left an impact on the immediate society they were a part of, and their skills may well have been available to the growing Avatar. This does not necessarily mean they were in any way a good 'parent', or that the Avatar would have had any use for those particular skills, but still, they had a chance to learn something from the best.

THE SOCIETY

An Avatar could have been raised anywhere from the deepest recesses of one of the megastructure palaces in the heart of a Grey City, to the furthest river-pirate haunted tributary of a mighty river, to the peaks of the Mountains of Reality, a wandering Homon caravan, the high moorlands of the Zomia between the cities, a watch-fort on the margins of the waste, a simple village, a merchants bazaar, from the private tutors of the elite to a nest of thieves. They might be on first name terms with the Emperor of a City, or wanted by the law.

The Avatars language, accent, assumptions, world-view, politics and behaviour will be shaped by wherever they were brought up, perhaps even more than any other race as, growing as the only example of themselves, they tend to absorb strongly the culture and beliefs of whomever they were raised by, and with.

THEIR OWN NATURE

Most Avatars know almost nothing about their own nature except what they can work out through direct experiment. Even the few brought up in privilege and with access to some of Blackwaters fading libraries, can discover only what they can read from books and the many-times-translated records.

What they know is that they stand taller than most people. That they have remarkable natural weapons and abilities that most do not. They know that people, especially those outside their local community, tend to treat them with surprise and awe, or sometimes with a seriousness or gravity which they have done nothing to earn.

Avatars know they see the world differently to those around them. Compared to those they know, they feel strong, independent, singular. Some have researched history, biology, psychology and the legends of Esh. They learn that almost everyone around them is something called a 'mammal', a particular form of life, with intuitions and responses they may not share. They are Other. They are bigger with more natural defences than those around them. This knowledge can lead a foolish few into regrettable high-risk behaviours, even feelings of superiority.

Though they do not always 'feel' like those around them (they rarely hug for instance, and so far have no strong sexual feelings), they do care deeply for their immediate group and friends, though with a different tonality and, sometimes, a hint of possessiveness. Their friends are their friends.

Many have discovered a surprising acuity for money matters. They make quite adept merchants, bargainers, capitalists, and dealers.

And they are discovering a taste for quality. They like the things they own to be the best things, and they do not always like to share. Respect for property is respect for self.

Almost universally they have no natural affinity with riding mammals. They can't process the behaviours needed and it’s hard for them to intuit what, for instance, a horse is feeling. They can work it out in time, but there will be bumps and bruises along the way.

THE AVATAR’S QUEST

Most Avatars literally do not know what they are doing, but they are working to find out.

They have no idea what kind of Dragon they are, or if it even makes a difference.

They have no strong or set social position, yet. Some are protectors or servants of their local community, several seem to have talents for Sorcery or body-mastery. Many are healers of some kind.

The strange thing is, when they go outside their community, they are usually treated in a way roughly equivalent to dignified, wise middle-aged men, regardless of their actual age. Or gender. It's hard for mammals to tell their sex without any obvious signifiers and the only Avatars anyone knows are those from the stories and the stage.

They are considered 'good luck' and regarded as high-status individuals, at least potentially. They can usually get into parties and are afforded enough respect and assumed authority that they can often get away with defying convention, and even the law, whether just or unjust.

Though they can, there are no guidelines about whether they should.

Much is expected of them.

Should they try to live up to the already-existing impression of them, of flee from it into obscurity, or even rebel and turn 'bad'?

And what about the dark and tragic history of their race? Is it even their history anymore? Why should they care? Why not do something entirely new?

Of course, history may have its own interest in them.