Heroic Peoples

## Overview

The Heroic Peoples are a collection of races who claim descent from the First Heroes, veterans of the First War. They are anthropomorphic Earth animals, and are predominantly mammalian.

The Heroic Peoples are the most powerful and influential races living around the Circle Sea. The majority of the land along the Sea's shore is controlled by one Heroic People or another, in the form of long-standing kingdoms. While many of the Heroic Peoples have their own independent kingdoms, many others live alongside other races, or live under the rule of other races.

The Heroic Peoples place enormous weight on precedent, especially the precedents set by their Heroes. Their societies were founded as their Heroes decreed, and such decrees are maintained with religious dedication. For example, the Miletes demand peaceful coexistence with other races, as their Hero, Miles, once commanded it. While the Least Peoples are bound together by a deep friendship that their founding Heroes once held, which their modern descendants feel they have inherited, and owe it to each other to uphold.

## History

### The Dawn Era

When The Dao collapsed, the immortal Dao found themselves forced into a new, mortal existence. Their new world was brutal and deadly, and the stranded Dao struggled to survive. They took a multitude of forms, and gathered together for cooperation and protection. These groups roamed the new world, learning and growing as they went.

One such party came across a fragment of the old Dao, that had fallen whole into the mundane world. Pinned through the heart of the fragment was the Tower of Union. The group decided to settle around the Tower of Union, and called their home New Dao. With the Tower granting a direct link to the Sublime, the New Daoans waxed in power and magical learning. They used their many Sublime Arts to reshape the land around themselves, building a paradise without equal.

In time, other wandering parties came upon New Dao. Weary and beaten from their many travails, they begged the New Daoans for relief. But the New Daoans shunned their travel-stained kin, naming them Dren, or "vagrants" (by contrast, they called themselves Din, or "citizens"). The Din guarded their homeland jealously, and their Arts moreso. All the Dren could do was huddle on the border, eking out a living while the Din lived in boundless luxury. Their resentment of the Din grew every day, as did their numbers. Ever more wanderers learned of New Dao, and came in search of a better life.

### The First War

As the Dren ranks grew, a number of individuals asserted themselves. These figures, steeped in Might, roused the multitudes to action. They became the Heroes, and those that swore to follow them became alike in form and body. Thus were born the Heroic Peoples. And with a fury to shake the world, they set forth to conquer New Dao and punish the Din's slights.

The war was calamitous. The raging hordes of the Dren crashed against the Sublime might of the Din. Lives were lost without number, and the Din's paradise was laid to waste. The details differ in every telling. But all tell that the Tower of Union was destroyed in the fighting, sundering New Dao entirely. The Heroic Peoples, hardened by struggle and carrying off many Din treasues, declared themselves victorious. They left the ruin of New Dao, and spread out across the world in search of new homelands, with a newfound strength and determination to overcome the trials of the world.

The Din fled to new lands, also. Most held in their hearts an undying hatred of the Dren, for the loss of their paradise. An animosity that many Din nurse to this day. There was also a small group of Din that befriended some of the Dren amid the War, and fled before New Dao's total destruction. These mutual refugees named themselves Drendin, and sought to atone for the failures of their kin.

### The Settling Of The Circle

The Heroic Peoples reached the Circle Sea by various means. Some came overland, from the northwest. While others came by sea, entering through the Cold Gate in the southwest, and settling the coastline. As each race found land to settle, they encountered other races who were native to the area. In many cases, the Heroic Peoples conquered these natives, taking their land for themselves. The Heroic Peoples possessed Primacy at the time, and so the natives' populations dwindled, as their children were born into the races of their conquerors. Many races were sexually erased in this fashion, only reappearing centuries later as hybrids.

Out of this colonisation effort, the Heroic Kingdoms emerged. Territories that each race held as their sovereign right to inhabit, that none could take away from them. These territories treated the decrees and precedents of their founding Heroes with holy respect, deriving their laws and customs from their Heroes' words and deeds. And when the First Heroes finally succumbed to age, their children succeeded them as the rulers and exemplars of their races.

## Races

Below is a list of all the races of the Heroic Peoples, the Heroes they descend from, and the Earthly animals they are akin to.