Humanity
"In the days of pre-history, before the beauty of Civilization shone from one end of Zamzara to another, Mankind was no different from the beasts that walked the earth with them, blind and dumb and deaf to themselves. Unaware of the Self, they warred within and without for countless years before one man taught them how to reach beyond pettiness and barbarism. A Hero came forth during calamity to save Mankind from itself, a tale to be told countless times in the millennia to come.
Civilization brought History. Words turned from air to stone, and were given form. Beasts were rendered under Mankind, and it has been their rightful place since. Peace reigned over a new Empire , and the Hero took to travel, as was His way and His divine right. As the Empire grew, so did He..."
- The Chronicles of Zamzara, Vol. 1
Additional Information
Social Structure
As shown by history, humans need one another, but this need arises in a plethora of ways. Human sociality is as varied as human perception, and there is nothing that they will not do to each other and the animals around them. People sink to the depth of sadism and rise to the peaks of glory. Hermits live few miles away from despots and democracies alike. Not even the most intelligent or social of the beasts can come close to emulating the complexity of human interaction or creativity.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Humans once dominated the continent of Zamzara and could be found in nearly any climate or geography accessible, able to adapt to the conditions there. After discovering the Nashya, they not only found a frontier they could never hope to colonize, but the beginning of their doom. Nearly four out of five humans were killed during The Kalyugi, as it later came to be known.
Average Intelligence
While much of humanity's greatest repositories of knowledge were lost, human ingenuity carried onward, rebuilding what it could. Achievements in technology and artistry are made regularly, but in scant few places, and they find their ways outside of the city at great cost. Education, once commonplace and mandatory throughout the Empire, now resides in the bastions of civilization, bestowed upon those whom are deserving or prodigious.
Average Physique
Among the things lost in the fall of the Zamzian Empire, their secrets of nutrition and conditioning were the most drastically damaged, and while traditions and memories meant that humanity would survive, their great works, such as the Rice Plains of Tengoku, would not. As a result, many Zamzians starved for generations, leaving the remnants of mankind even weaker than ever. Not all are so fragile, but these people are few and far between.
Civilization and Culture
History
No one really knows the true origins of humanity. Theories range from the religious, to the scientific, to the esoteric. All agree on only one thing: humans kept no records before the birth of the Zamzian Empire, in some shape or form. Some claim that the Transcendent Emperor bestowed the gift of literacy to his fellow man, having divined arcane secrets while doing so. More assert that there were no humans before the Empire - they were created. Dozens of different origin stories float throughout the continent, none more provable than the other.
This is in stark contrast with the existence of the Empire, which has been heavily documented for the past 2000 years with stunning accuracy - even today it isn't rare to stumble across almanacs detailing lunar movement as far back as the initial creation of the Empire. While many of history books have been destroyed, more have survived into the present thanks to the help of studious collectors, academic retrieval teams, and having been sealed away somewhere for who knows how long, waiting to be found by an intrepid adventurer.
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