And then Life brought rise the Shashnimyn. She built their bodies of stone, earth and silt, filled their heart with the warmth of the sun and the water gave them souls. She made them all over the planet, from the materials where they stood, and thus they became extensions of the world.
She gave the mountain folk strong legs and lungs for climbing, and fur to keep them warm. She gave the peoples of the lakes gills to help them breathe, and stamina to help them swim. She gave the forest folk good eyes to see in the understory, and a feeling to find the plants they needed. She gave the desert folk tough skin and a lack of thirst, so that pilgrimage was a way of life, and gave them magic of the stars to preserve their insights. And She said unto them all:
"This is you Shashnia, from it I make you in your lands. Keep them well as you would your own body, for you are them and they are you. All myn are your brother and together you are keepers of all Our children. If any should threaten their future you must act, for it is aeons of love and life that brought you here, and you shall join the ancestors to bring it to others."
And since, we have travelled this globe, but always know our origins and our responsibilities to our homeland. We are a race of so many faces. There is no denying our place, for that is where we are at home.
lots of dungeon crawls and strongholds to jump between
movement is a matter of survival outside, so it becomes the distance you can withstand being how far you can travel.
Minor Civilizations
Algae Farmers - Inhabitants of the sky, living in great ships that sail the clouds, and drift the globe on the currents of the winds. They farm a floating algae that grows on ambient magic, and trade it to the landfolk at mooring towers as a major food source.
Forest Dwellers - Permaculture farmers and nomadic ranchers that inhabit the temperate transitions between Jungles, Deserts and Mountains. These include the temperate forests as well as the gradations of savannahs they sometimes share with desert folk
Gen-chi mydians - lumberjack fellows and those who wear plaid, build big things out of logs and swagger about through boreal forests. They are friends with beavers and moose and also ride the rivers. Most of their wares are floated en masse as rafts.
River Dwellers
Gen-chi mydians
free passage downstream
trade routes
forage low density off the land
Canyon Dwellers
stilt-beachers. they reincforce the embankments where they live
wanderers; able to live off the land amply to be able to spend a while alone
The wide variety of characteristics of Shashnimyn can be attributed to a very high genetic diversity relative to the human race. The whole planet has a bit higher diversity due to slightly increased mutation rates, but this was also augmented culturally by NERP (new evolutionary reproductive biology practices), and physically by geographic isolations of tribes in early Shashnimyn civilization.
Additionally, this genetic diversity has been maintained due to the local adaptation of ecosystems against pathogens. Shashnimyn are not isolated in their defense against viruses and plagues. The whole ecosystem in which they exist affects their health and protection. A group of symbiotic microbes, fungi and counter-viruses have life cycle stages within the Shashnimyn, but also within plants or animals specific to local regions. So, the diseases that typically survive in these regions are mediated by the health of the biodiversity in that region. This makes travel and life for foreigners to an area more difficult.
Once leaving the ecosystem your body is adapted to, you are also at risk to diseases that the locals harbour but do not suffer from. As such, travellers and those living in foreign lands are at a higher risk to disease. In terms of reproduction, this has also decreased the amount of successful hybrid offspring between different ecotypes of people. Inter-breeding between different tribes results in outbreeding depression and the offspring gain disadvantages of both peoples.
Uncommon Phenotypes
Goblinoid Feral Shashnimyn - small and ferocious
Gigantoids - huge, strong, but usually not smart
Mutants - Retention of ancestral characteristics through freak genetic expression. Rare, a character upgrade option for appropriate SAPTIS category concentration by chance to ~0.01% or by expensive. The three variants here represent the expression of the median limb set which was lost nearly a million years ago by the Shashnimyn evolutionary lineage
Centaur - Animal
Lower two limbsets are designed for running
Ape - Physical
Uppermost limbs heavily muscled and not as sensitive to delicate tasks. Good for smashing things though. Ape mutants use these upper limbs when running.
Spider - Technical
Median limbs thin, elongate and almost vestigal. The hands have been reduced to a single thumb and two fingers. These reduced arms are good for fine manipulatory work but have little physical strength
After the evolution war, there was an exile nation that excelled in technical productions. Their reliance on technology eventually came at the expense of their physical forms. An exploration of transhumanism taken to the extreme, no myn-machine boundary. Some say this was in response to the effects of many regions of people interbreeding and being put onto a single island. However, this is contentiously debated. As with most islands, there was a variety of ecosystems. Groups interbred more readily though, as they did not subscribe to the doctrines resulting form the Evolution War. The reliance on technology cannot be discounted, so the degree to which biology and culture interacted to create their history is an emotional issue.
The test-tubers. They are those that rely on artificial support exo-skeletons. Minor players in the present day campaign since they are limited to their own island for the most part. They would be relevant for an oceans campaign since they have big battleships, but most relevant to far future campaigns, since they were a major player in the space race.
Modes of transportation in between areas.
caravans over the desert
trains through jungles, mountains (they come out deep below the mountains though)
river travel
walking
hitching on an air ship; algae farmers move relatively slowly
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