Golgari

*It was to us that the Ancient the world would come to know as Yarrum The Eternal Worm would come. Deep below the Mother Mountain, the Everworm rose during the time of Rending and our elders did contend with that great ancient.*

*We were arrogant in that time. Our bones were as strong as the stone in which we made our homes and our cities rose high to the sky and deep beneath the ground. As the Eldest of the children of Pangera, we saw this world as ours to inherit and control. From our great fortress capital Marrazan we projected our strength outward from the Mother Mountain and forged the first great surface empire.*

*As the mana rose and the calamity befell us, the first sign of the doom to come was a faint grinding echo reported by the deepest miner Triads. For weeks the sound grew louder until even wisest and most powerful of our Shapers in their towers high atop the peaks couldn't sleep for the incessant noise. As if the mountain itself ground its teeth, the sound was said to drive some to despair as it grew louder day by day. Despite this warning, it was a great shock to our people the day Yarrum came. Who could have possibly been prepared for such a thing?*

*If you go to Marrazan today, and should you be granted entry to the lower tunnels by the Sentinels, there you would find a place guarded by the strongest of our race, watched over by the most powerful of the Shapers. The Zirakkan'nolia, the Gateway to the Underworld. No portal or working of spatial magic, the Gateway is a three hundred metre wide tunnel and stretches beneath the city to an unknown depth. Some speculate the tunnel, created by the Everworm as it rose to the surface, leads directly to the centre of the world. If any have been able to measure its depth, their findings have been kept hidden.*

*Why Yarrum chose to rise to us we don't know. Why the worm chose to descend the same way it came up, we don't' know. The ancient empire battled the worm for many years before the lowering mana levels forced it to retreat below. In that time, only one of the earth kin was known to have exchanged words with the ancient, Igniun Faranon. The greatest of the Shapers in the ancient empire, she sought to commune with monster for reasons she kept to herself.*

*Whatever she learned, she did not share and retreated from the public eye. When the war was finally over and the campaign to reclaim the homeland of the Kin began, she vanished entirely. To where, to do what, is still not known.*

*Excerpt from 'The Fall of the Ancient Empire' by Shaper Scholar Raknos of the Iron Circle.*

## Description

Huge stony humanoids from 2.5 to 3 meters high that live in the depths of the dungeon, after a certain age the golgeri choose a stony mineral to form their "true skin" that is bonded to their own skin, the normal thing is to choose strong and resistant stones so they can have a strong defence without having to invest in armor, but some choose showy materials and flexible. Their natural skills and racial bonuses give them quite a martial bonus. Their skin is so dense and combined with the grayish texture, gave the appearance of rock. Due to this, other sapient races find it hard to destinguish between males and females as they have more similar body outlines. Changes in expression are hard to read, since their faces tend to be quite immobile and their skin doesn't wrinkle like a human's would, the muscle movements are usually small and are unnoticeble due to their stone skin. Despite all this, golgari still have a much easier time seeing these social cues.

They usually don't wear much clothing, other than a garment with a sizable pocket sewn into it that covers their genitals that grow rock fungus. Their lifepan is at least as long as a few centuries to even a millennia.

## Power

The Golgari were always a martial people to begin with. Their natural skills and racial bonuses pushes them in that direction quite naturally. They're large and the biggest of them can get up to ten feet, heavily built, and their true skin provides them with a strong defence without having to invest in armour, allowing their fighters to focus on weapon skills more than other races. They can also choose another stone property as their true skin to boost their potential in another class. The shapers know how to form complex spells like a gate.

## History

They have existed before the system and formed a successful empire that was destroyed during the Rending just like most of the other civilizations on Pangera.

### -Present

Ever since then the Warriors' circle has been dominant in Golgari society and the Shapers have been suppressed and because of that, the Shapers have been pushed to the breaking point lately, which is why the Cult of The Worm was able to bring so many into the fold.

## Culture

Golgari usually choose strong and resistant stones as their "true skin" to boost their combat power but some choose other types of stone for other reasons like replacabilty. They look down on shapers because of their disadvantage in close combat and since the rise of the Shapers was immediately followed by the Rending, the Golgari naturally lay the blame at the Shaper's feet, blaming them for bringing the Dungeon upon them and they've been scorned ever since, despite how foolish it is, fits the narrative they want to believe. Golgari don't often inquire about the worth of another Golgari's true skin. Some Golgari use an expensive, higher grade ore and form an incomplete skin rather than substitute for something worse, but in sufficient quantity, like Torrina.

## Settlements

### Golgari Empire

Just like Liria, they have multiple different organizations which are called 'triads'. The empire occupies a vast amount of Dungeon territory connected by magical gateways, making transportation easy

## Trivia

* Golgari Mages are refered to as 'Shapers' by other Golgari