Creator race

The creator races were a group of five legendary ancient races native to Abeir-Toril who were prominent during the Days of Thunder ( to ) and who gave rise to many of the common races of the world. They were also capitalized as the Creator Races or called simply the Creators. In the Elven language, they were known as the Iquar-Tel'Quessir or Iquar'Tel'Quessir or iquar Tel'Quessir, all meaning "Creator Races", as recorded in at least one text, but it was unknown if this derived from a title the creator races gave themselves or a mistranslation by human scholars or its half-elf author. Either way, the term was not meant to carry honor or respect.
==Known Creator Races==
Most historians agreed that the following races counted among the creator races:
* Sarrukh, the reptilian or sauroid creator race, rulers of the Sarrukh Empires from and creators of the yuan-ti, naga, lizardfolk, and other serpentfolk and scalykind;
* Batrachi, the amphibioid creator race, rulers of the Batrachi Empires from and creators of the bullywugs, doppelgangers, kuo-toa, and other amphibious, piscine, and shapeshifter races;
* Aearee, the avian creator race, rulers of the Aearee Empires from and creators of the aarakocra, kenku, and other avian humanoids;
* The fey rulers of the otherworldly realm of Faerie from , creators of korreds, pixies, and sprites; and
* Humans, though still primitive, even ape-like, and dwelling in caves and using simple tools.
However, there was a long-running debate on whether the avians or dragons should be counted as the fifth creator race. Some sages included dragons and not avians, such as Jenelle Einhorn counting dragons among them in her Encyclopaedia Deifica, while also terming the sarrukh as "dinosauroid". That the apparent aearee statues reported by Captain Neidre, below, had both avian and draconic features did little to clear this up, suggesting they were either descendants of dragons or the ancestors of both dragons and avians.
It should be noted that many more intelligent races lived on Abeir-Toril at the time, and that these were just the five greatest in the eyes of later scholars. This may explain the unlikely inclusion of primitive humans, though elves derided this; the omission of halflings and gnomes, who were apparently not known at this time; and the exclusion of the giants, who though present were not deemed great enough. Elves, dwarves, goblins, and orcs were of course not counted as creator races and did not even appear in records or cave paintings of the time because they, as well as some other human ethnic groups, came later from different worlds.
==History==
===The Days of Thunder===
:See Days of Thunder, aearee, batrachi, fey, human, and sarrukh for detailed histories of the age and the creator races. The following covers general information and scholarship.
The amphibioids were thought to have evolved in the seas, their growth mirroring that of the dinosauroids on land. When they became amphibious, they moved onto the land and eventually supplanted the dinosauroids.
Despite all these five species being called the creator races, only three—the sarrukh, batrachi, and aearee—founded great empires on Abeir-Toril, dominating the continent that would become Faerûn in succession over the course of five millennia. They spawned or created a plethora of lesser races and monsters. Through the Ba'etith, they studied and recorded the magic of primitive races around them and recorded the knowledge in the items known as the Nether Scrolls. Unlike them, the fey never established an empire, instead choosing to reign in Faerie, an otherworldly realm with only loose links to Faerûn. While they dwelled in Faerûn's forests and woodlands, they did so in harmony with nature and hence had little impact. Humans, while they were certainly present, did not rule at all. While the very earliest human cultures began here, they did so under the dominance of the creator races, divided and ignorant of one another.
In elven oral tradition and legends, these were the Days of Thunder, a time when immense empires of callous and inhuman reptilian, amphibian, and avian beings dominated the much warmer lands of Abeir-Toril. They were said to have erected towering cities of glass and stone, crisscrossed the wild lands with shining roads. They tamed the great dinosaurs and experimented with the unrefined and unimaginably powerful magic that existed at the time, commanding powers that rival gods. But also they waged endless genocidal wars against one another in their mutual hatred, their mages launching blasts that annihilated armies and mountains alike.
According to the elves, as befits their "creator" appellation, they toyed with creating new lifeforms and released them into the world—even the most monstrous and mistaken and no matter how unnatural. Many perished in the jungles, but enough survived and they and the humans even evolved minds and learned of the gods. These lesser races wisely hid from the creators deep in the forests or in caves high in the mountains, and hence would outlive them all when their doom came. Elven sages had many different theories about the creator races' sudden downfalls, but all accepted a swift climate change had rendered the world barely habitable to creator races and dinosaurs, and most thought it a catastrophe of their own making. The elves believed Chauntea, Corellon, and other deities first manifested during this time to aid the lesser races and foil the creator races. Moander's Netherese faithful held that the Rotting God appeared at the mountains they called Moander's Footstep and poisoned the creator races' food and water, causing them to die out. A draconic or demonic power was thought to have concocted a potent plague that caused the fey civilization to break apart.
Around , the batrachi were losing a war against the titans and, in their desperation, enacted a great summoning ritual that unleashed several once-imprisoned primordials. The gods swiftly opposed the primordials. The primordial Asgorath, the World Shaper, even hurled an ice moon or comet at the planet, in order to destroy what she could not have, in an event called the Tearfall. Disastrous earthquakes, fires, and windstorms swept across all of Abeir-Toril, erasing whole continents and rearranging the seas. Ancient sarrukh legends made cryptic mention of the "changing of the stars". But, before the world was destroyed, Ao split it into two twin worlds: Abeir for the primordials and Toril for the gods. The extreme climate change swiftly led to the end of batrachi civilization. While this was thought to be end of the creator races, the aearee in fact rose and fell after this.
===Legacy===
By the close of the Days of Thunder and the beginning of the Dawn Age, the creator races had passed into memory and the dragons and giants reigned.
History recorded little of the fates of the creator races after the falls of their empires. As far as sages knew, the majority of surviving sarrukh left for the planes, millennia before the Age of Humanity, but a few lingered in antediluvian ruins and the depths of the southern jungles. The batrachi lived on in the deepest, darkest swamps and were presumed to have gone extinct, but some were thought to have fled to Limbo, where they became or were confused with slaadi. The aearee winged their way west to Maztica, and no more was known. But the fey remained and continued to live on in Faerie, though its link to Toril grew ever weaker. And the humans flourished and became prominent in later ages, as did human hybrids like the yuan-ti and the other creations of the creator races. Orcs migrated to Toril through a portal originally created by one of the creator races.
After its founding in , the human bards of Netheril told legends of the creator races to the common people. The Netherese rumored the Eastern Forest contained some remnant of the creator races, but if there was anything there, it was never found. Similarly, a great hoard of artifacts and lore was said to stashed atop the perilous Widowmaker Mountain; many made the climb but none were able to find anything, let alone bring anything back. They also theorized one of the creator races had mined all the copper out of what they called Stade Mountain in the Lodestar Range, and ignored the gold and platinum.
Seven of the remaining Nether Scrolls of Netheril were mysteriously stolen and returned to ancient ruins of the creator races in . Three were put in the Hall of Mists under the Grandfather Tree in the High Forest and two went into the Crypt of Hssthak, while the fate of the other two stayed a mystery.
At some point in the reign of King Zoar of Evermeet, the elf explorer Captain Eartharran Neirdre sailed a magical flying ship to the coast of Anchorome in search of a lost city of the creator races, in a quest to learn more of their fate. In the far north, the elves found a floating city and statues of the creator race he dubbed the aearee. The expedition was ultimately destroyed by dragons and Eartharran's findings were lost until the 1370s DR, when they were discovered by Loremaster Ignace Dethingeller.
By 14 century DR, little more than legends survived to tell of the Days of Thunder and the creator races, but recorded history had begun here.
==Appendix==
===References===
===Connections===
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Category:History