Humans

Humans are the youngest and perhaps most numerous of all the major races of mortal beings that dwell in Urva (if not the most numerous, they are second only to orcs). They are the dominant inhabitants of most of the continent of Orithea, and much of Achuirea and Thelbiron.

The human race was created by the Thaedonu-Vaati (with, it must be noted, the indispensable aid of the goddess Touz). The first humans were the Unbegotten Men, placed upon the face of Urva in the verdant and now long-lost sanctuary called Ulshanru. Scholars guess that this was anywhere from seven to twelve thousand years before the present day, but none know for sure. The Unbegotten Men and some number of successive generations dwelt in Ulshanru for an idyllic period of unknown duration. During this time, the Unbegotten Men were instructed by the gods themselves in a primeval version of the cult of Utara-Vaati, and knew and worshiped them directly. Concurrently with this they were taught the First Speech, the aboriginal form of what is now called the Tuvai language, by the goddess Auruu.

After this era, in which several new generations were born to the Unbegotten Men, their more numerous descendants set out from Ulshanru and spread out in different directions across the lands of Orithea. This began what scholars call the archaic age. Some settled relatively nearby and founded young civilizations there, around the western end of the Sarpic Seas; these are the earliest human societies from which surviving records exist, albeit ancient and fragmentary in the extreme. (The oldest verifiable age of any of these, roughly seven thousand years, provides the near limit for scholarly guesses at the age of the human race. This estimate is based on a presumption that these first records date from quite soon after the departure from Ulshanru, and that the primordial humans dwelt there for only a couple of generations, several decades at most, before departing it. Other estimates assume a much longer time gap between the departure from Ulshanru and the first known written records.)

At the same time that these new civilizations were emerging around the Sarpic Seas, other groups among the descendants of the Unbegotten Men set out in other directions, scattering and diverging, eventually reaching far-flung corners of Orithea and beyond before settling in diverse new lands. Their speech changed over time, developing into new languages no longer recognizable as Tuvai, and they forgot the worship of the Thaedonu-Vaati and turned to strange other cults instead. Tradition has it that this is the origin of the human tribes of distant places like Thelbiron and the Kesh Karkhan, who were encountered much later by explorers from civilized lands, and seemed to have nothing in common with them.

The Schism Wars, roughly five thousand years ago, triggered the next major migration of humans to a new part of Urva. At the conclusion of these devastating religious conflicts, a great number of refugees took ship from Orithea and crossed the Emerald Ocean to go into exile on the continent of Achuirea, unknown to mankind up until that point. Their descendants are now the Achuirean peoples. The Schism Wars and their underlying cultic dispute also led to the division of civilized mankind into two great religious factions, devotees of rival pantheons: The Vanir-Vaati and the Rhantashani, dominant in Orithea and Achuirea respectively, a divide that persists to this day.

In the two millennia following the Schism Wars, pioneers from the civilizations surrounding the Sarpic Seas spread out to the north and west, settling new lands in Orithea; some never before seen by human eyes, others inhabited by strange and barbaric tribes descended from those early descendants of the Unbegotten Men who had wandered far from civilization before the dawn of history. Some among these pioneers went west across the Gated Fells, into Kelimaria, and from there south into Vastemar or north up the Medrenesse into Enyrion and Khadoa. Others crossed the Great Plain of Tethas heading north, traversing Kamuria to come upon Tirnavon and the edge of Thelbir lands.

Today, humans are divided into numerous diverse tribes and ethnic groups, which can be grouped into several major families. Tradition holds that each of the one hundred couples of the Unbegotten Men gave rise to offspring whose descendants became a distinct kindred, so latter-day scholars have spilled considerable ink trying to explain how all the extant tribes of mankind actually add up to an even hundred when defined and grouped correctly.