Baal

The Baal, or *Homo panthera*, are a large carnivorous species engineered by the gods of Korbaal, from whom they get their name. Arriving on Pohm around 3450 years ago, the earliest recorded interaction between *panthera* and the common Chyrene *Homo classicus* saw a tribe of several hundred Baal led by an enormous warrior said to have been embodied by the gods of Korbaal themselves. This is attested in both Ecrean and Baal histories, and played a major role in early Baal culture. After making first contact in the north-east, the several tribes of Baal, each led by a number of embodied gods, hunted their way through human territory. Almost completely unstoppable to the unprepared and terrified humans, they feasted on humans and their livestock, and multiplied very quickly. Rapidly becoming too strong for the confused and factionalized Ancient Ecrean Empire. In less than a century and a half of existence on Pohm, they overwhelmed the Ecrean armies, and consumed almost the entire Chyrene human population. Following the near complete destruction of their only major food source, the population began to starve, and then cannibalized itself to near extinction. In this, the Baal population went from near zero, to likely between five and ten million, and back to near zero in the span of about 160 years.

Over the following two centuries the Baal population would expand massively on a diet of primarily human. Without knowledge of agriculture, and heavily influenced by their creators, they retained a fanatical devotion to eat every human in the world. Eventually the dominant Human civilization at the time collapsed and an estimated three quarters of the world's Human population was consumed in a span of a few decades. By year 140, almost no Humans remained on Chyre, and the Baal population, unable to procure enough food through game hunting, cannibalized itself. With the few remaining survivors of the slaughter mostly starving in the following months. By the year 200, the total hominid population of all of Chyre was less than twenty-thousand, with an estimated 300 to 500 Baal remaining, and the rest an equal split of Humans and Stranenai.

Since then, the Baal population recovered gradually, and over time they became accepted into wider society. However the monumental legacy of the Baal Destruction has left them with difficult associations to overcome, and they have been both persecuted underclasses and absolutist rulers throughout history. Today, beyond the small populations which rule small countries, Baal people tend to maintain a relatively international, or non-national, identity, and typically identify as a descendent of one of the several surviving tribes. The Baal ethnic pool is highly homogenous likely due to all being descendent of a single tribe, even before their near extinction. With only a few dozen tribes of one or two dozen individuals, the dscendents of these tribes grew into distinctive groups, and branched off, but tended to maintain oral histories about their ancestral lines, which survived to this day.

There are only two distinct Baal cultural groups that survive today, both of which share an almost identical oral history of the brief period after they came into existence and before their population collapsed entirely.