the snowflake project

Humans

Human beings in Kos’s world are very similar to human beings in our own world. They range in appearance as much as they range in personality. One trait that nearly every human being has in common is a fear of the unknown. That fear leads the men and women in Kos’s world to be slaves to their routines, to voluntary blindness to what may be happening around them, and to foolish reactions to anything “other”.

Humans are by far the dominant race, occupying the central land masses of the known world. Their short life-span and tendency toward conflict has enabled them to spread over a large area in a relatively short history. Humans are a young race, raised to awareness by The One only centuries ago. They learned a little culture from the races that went before them as they swept across the world, but not much. Their warlike brashness pushing the elder races from their lands. Human society is still virtually tribal, with warlords ruling holdfasts and conquering the lands around them, or leading packs of nomadic raiders. The empire rising from the west is the first of its kind.

Humans were wild creatures with a fairly advanced social structure (like apes or bees) who lived in remote areas. The One (the God of this world), seeing that his first two created races had fallen prey to the corruption of Gurik Sal, decided to try again, and raised humans to a state of awareness. Like Prometheus in Greek myth, The One’s servant, the dragon, lived as a man, leading the newly awakened race for a lifetime, teaching them to build weapons and make war in preparation for the rise of evil. As humankind spread out and conquered the straggling remains of the fleeing elder races, Gurik Sal turned to them. Before too long, humans were fighting humans, and their population was utterly fractured. The dragon, refusing to be corrupted himself, but unable to compete with Gurik Sal for humanity’s ear, exiled himself and his dragon progeny.

The dragon wasn’t the only one to choose exile over senseless war and violence. A small cadre of men and women struck east by sea, learning to build boats from the ruined ships the Eldest had left behind. They found a large island and built a city there, advancing their culture apart from humanity and in complete peacefulness. It is on that island nation that Kos is born and raised by an order of monks trained in the Way of the Water Dragon – a way of fighting that does no damage to the enemy, only subdues and disarms him.

Elves

Elves in Kos’s world are more commonly known as the Eldest – they were the first race created by The One. Collectively, they call themselves Shihasa’inu, “the Breath of The One”. The Eldest are tall, long-limbed and lithe, their ears are pointed and swept backward at the tips, their cheekbones are high, and prominent, their noses high and broadly bridged, giving their faces the barest hint of a feline quality. The skin of the Eldest is pale with cool undertones (thanks to the copper in their blood), their hair is often snow white, but some have tinges of icy blue in their locks. Their eyes are piercing blues and greens.

The One placed the Eldest on a small collection of islands, and gave them to the kraken to foster as a seafaring people. Soon they built vessels capable of crossing oceans, and found the mainland continents. They followed a river inland to a lake, and there on an island in the calm, they built a city. When The One created Dwarves, the second race, Gurik Sal whispered his poisonous lies to the kraken and the lords of the Eldest, making them believe that The One was against them. Gurik Sal led the high lords of the Eldest to use their advanced knowledge to birth a subrace of warriors capable of swallowing up the Dwarves. Too late, the follow of the Eldest lords was revealed to them, and the world was covered in the darkness of war for thousands of years. In the end, it was the sacrifice of the Eldest that saved the world from the Griind, the monsters they had created, and drove them into the west, into Gurik Sal’s wastelands.

The Eldest were broken, their city in ruins, and when Humankind began to spread across the land, they fled to the deep woods and the northern lands.

Dwarves

Dwarves, sometimes known as the Stone Men, were the second race created by The One. They were given the spark of curiosity – the tinker’s curse – the need to understand the secret workings of things. They were compelled to delve deep into the most hidden places of the earth, and the giant, their link to The One, made them masters of stone and metal and fire and the treasures underground. Dwarves were built to be sturdy and robust – they are short and thick, almost apelike, with strong, barrel-shaped bodies with short bandy legs and muscled arms ending in large hands, ideal for the back-breaking work of digging, shaping stone and working metal. All male Dwarves wear beards and their skins are darkly colored. It’s said that Dwarves have hearts of coal, but their blood is pure white, sparkling like diamonds.

Dwarf society is fiercely patriarchal. In fact, Dwarf women are kept annexed from public society and are tasked solely with birthing and raising children.

Dwarves are curious and clever. They dig deep and have a knack for learning the why and the how of things. Where Elves, the Eldest, found ways to work with nature, Dwarves bend the natural world to their will, exploiting its properties to do their work.

Just as Gurik Sal warned the Eldest that the Dwarves were a threat to their way of life, so did he tell the Dwarves that the Elves were plotting genocide. Less patient and more comfortable with action than with inaction, the Dwarves attacked first. The Endless War left the Dwarves no better off than the Eldest – weak and impoverished, they retreated from the dawn of the race of humankind.

The Griind

The word griind means “mistake” in the language of the Eldest. Under the influence of Gurik Sal and the leviathan, whom Gurik Sal had turned away from the will of The One, the Eldest used their knowledge of nature and magic to create a race of fearsome warriors. The Griind were created to be like a viral plague – the more Dwarves they killed, the more they multiplied.

There are three distinct classes of Griind that make up a sort of hierarchy or social structure. At the top is the queen and her consorts. The queen, as in an insect colony, is the mother of all Griind. Her consorts are her mates. When required the queen births an enormous litter of breeders, the lowest echelon of Griind society. Griind breeders are the first wave of any Griind attack – they are base, animalistic organisms – unintelligent and, left to their own devices, completely chaotic (in order for Griind breeder packs to be effective, they must be led by a mature Griind, the third tier of Griind society). Griind breeders reproduce asexually, in that when they kill and devour the flesh of any creature, they injest and incorporate the properties of their prey in their young. If a Griind breeder kills and eats a dog, it will birth a new Griind/dog hybrid. When breeders prey on intelligent races, like Humans, Dwarves or the Eldest, the result is a similar hybrid, an intelligent Griind (mature), the third tier. From that stock, the best are chosen to be the queen’s consorts, thereby completing the cycle of life.

The Griind are difficult to describe, especially the mature Griind, because they might look something like Dwarves or Humans or the Eldest – but whichever race they are based on, all Griind have skin the color of gray ash, and blood red eyes with bone white pupils. Griind are often a cruel caricature of the host race. Griind born of dwarven prey are even more apelike than the Dwarves themselves. Griind born of Eldest prey are extremely lean and long limbed, to the point of appearing almost insectile. And Griind born of Human prey are clawed and toothed like animals.