Asar | |
---|---|
Reputation | Skilled, beauty seeking, collectors |
Features | Humanesque with amphibious characteristics |
Prevalence | Home polity Vishaza, found sparsely across the continent |
Height | females 5'11" - 6'5"; males 6' - 7'3" |
Weight | females average 210 lbs; males average 280 lbs |
Lifespan | 120 years |
Key Features
- Dark skin and hair
- Gem colored eyes
- Long lifespan with late maturity
- Webed digits
- Gills
- Tall and stocky
- Enhanced leaping strength
Aging Table
Stage | Age | Human Equiv. |
---|---|---|
Maturity | 20 years | 13 years |
Prime | 35 years | 25 years |
Middle Age | 60 years | 40 years |
Senescence | 90 years | 60 years |
Max Lifespan | 120 years | 75 years |
Features and Abilities
While mostly humanoid in appearance, Asar are fairly distinct on sight with gem-colored, translucent webbing between their fingers and toes. Long powerful legs and overall muscular builds on tall frames add to their distinct appearance. The Asar have dark coloration, both in hair and skin, their brightest feature is there eyes in colors to mirror the gems they revere. Their most prominent feature are their gill crests in colors just as vibrant as their eyes, while hair grows around them, their bright color makes them difficult to miss.
Swimming
Webbed digits make Asar wonderful swimmers, averaging 11 mph across long distances, however when hunting they can exert more energy into a sprint, reaching nearly 17 mph in a burst. Such sprints are not easily repeated without rest, but create potential for underwater ambush.
Leaping
The musculature of an Asar's legs allow them to leap across long distances reaching up to 10 feet, but only 8 on average. Vertical jumps are more limited, reaching no more than 5 feet, but more typically only 3 feet.
Reproduction
Reproduction among the Asar is revered for it is often difficult to conceive a child. Gestation among the Asar is seven to eight months, expecting mothers will often spend greater time in water to help limit the stress on their body. If the father is not Asar, the pregnancy tends to be more difficult for the mother but provides a greater chance of conception.
Pregnancy between two Asar is highly unlikely to produce more than one child, but with other races the chance of conceiving more than one child is far more likely.
Psychology
Above all else, Asar seek beauty. While this desire often manifests in the physical both on their person and in the world around them, it is more importantly cultivated within. To cultivate beauty is a task of spiritual and external efforts, creating beauty in themselves through compassion and love, general care for themselves, through the expression of craft skills, and care for their surroundings and environment. Their call to beauty does not limit their intelligence, nor does it lead to pride or condescension, such acts would not be cultivating their inner beauty.
So strong is this understanding of their world that the Asar take jobs in craft skills. Other skills may be learned and added to the work of an Asar, but the first job of every Asar is to learn a craft and master it.
The Asar hold a strong affection for (the earth goddess?) who is believed to have been their creator. This leads to a reverence for the earth and environment as well as a strong community of spirituality. Because of their adoration of the (goddess?) the Asar often keep gardens, decorate their homes with earthenware, or cultivate jobs in nature. There reverence for nature includes more than plants and the earth, extending across living beings. This means that children are loved by their community, and the Asar in general are open and welcoming people.
There is a shortcoming to the Asar's kindness to one another, the Asar believe in a heart skill, something gifted to every Asar. They send young children to watch others in their early years, going out to explore the work of others while their parents tend their own. When children come of age, they choose a mentor to teach them the skill that they believe is their heart skill, chosen by their interest after their observations. There is a highly respectful relationship between the child and their mentor, teaching a heart skill being as important as learning one. However, there are Asar who denounce the population's belief, moving outside of crafts into other work. These Asar are considered other, because to be without a heart skill is not to be Asar at all.
Prevalence
Asar prefer watery biomes but are spread widely across the continent. They congregate largely in Vishaza, but originated in Hulota. While easy access to large bodies of water is not necessary for an Asar, most find it uncomfortable.
Reputation
Asar are looked upon as vain and overly spiritual, however their long lives and collection of artistic skills mean they are welcome in most communities.
Given that marshes are relatively shallow water, and the Asar are more "mud" than "fish" race, it strikes me that fish-like gills might not be the most apt feature for them. You might instead have them breathing through their skin (like a frog or other amphibian), or have a frill/crest/fan with external gills (similar to larval salamanders and lungfish). External gills might make a frill along the jaw or behind the ears, mix in with their hair (though could they be cut?), or maybe be fin-like and fold up against the forearms. The gills could also be brightly colored to complement the eyes.
I was also thinking the Asar might benefit from strengthened leg muscles / enhanced leaping ability. It would help with catching waterfowl, for one.
Are we thinking spring fed marsh? River delta? The gill/ fin debate will depend on that.
I do think that the leg/leaping is a great idea. Gills may not even be necessary, but I was imagining the "prairie potholes" as tide pools, and it made the whole idea much neater. If they could dive in tide pools to fish or gather muscles and clams and the like or even raise them, it would seem like a neat addition to Vishazan agriculture and make the Asar exceptionally apt for the job.
The potholes are definitely not tide pools. They operate on seasonal timeframes, not daily, which means much less nutrient flux/inflow. I'm not sure there's any inland shellfish at all, I would have to research. We probably also have to decide if these are mostly saline or mostly fresh. Waterfowl would probably be the main harvestable protein.
This seems like a nice thorough discussion of pothole water flow and ecology. In our case, most of the water should source from snowmelt/runoff. There could be a central spring source, perhaps the most important / culturally significant location — a pool that (almost) never dries up.
Alternately, we can still stick them out on the coast and you can have all the tidepools you desire…
It's a hard trade to be on the coast because that puts Vishaza far outside the traveling and starting play area. I really do like the idea of the tidepools. Would coastal shellfish farming still have access to land that could be used for rice paddies?
As I think more and more I want the Asar to have gills, webbed digits, and I do like the idea of increased numbers of fast twitch muscles for jumping. They would work in a near aquatic landscape if feasible a marsh off the coast where they could grow rice, farm shellfish, and forage in tidepools.
It may perhaps make sense to say that their eyes reflect the colors of the scales of fish or corals, pushing them more towards coastal lore rather than crafter from dirt lore… still they shouldn't be fish, I don't think they would still be truly aquatic, but rather well suited to life off the water.
Okay, so that's definitely more sea-related traits rather than inland. I see two possible ways to run with this:
1) The Asar live on the coast. It does put them outside the main travel zone, but we can make individuals playable as immigrants in Kothinar/Okudan/Rasumbel, and Vishaza itself the point of first expansion. They would be about as far from Rasumbel as that polity is from Okudan, although there are more mountains to cross on that side.
I do want to put a thing on the coast at some point, but I am thinking of that as an expedition/discovery scenario — possibly even a settlement founding, someday. Something plot will involve the coast eventually, anyway.
2) Vishaza remains sited in the prairie pothole region, but the Asar who founded it immigrated from somewhere coastal, either the southeast coast (past Rasumbel) or… wherever else, perhaps the northeast whence the Okudani came. In any case, I would suggest they immigrated before the Okudani.
You would still not have the tidepool and shellfish farming environment in Vishaza's marshes, but there is potential for future expansion opening up a different population of Asar in their original native biome. You could have some interesting ramifications regarding saline vs. fresh water in the potholes, and the Asar's compatibility with and regard for different water conditions in the prairie marsh. There's an outside possibility that the Asar could have brought some kind of estuary shellfish over with them and coaxed it into surviving in certain pothole conditions — probably not thriving and not their chiefest food source, but say they held on to the practice as part of their original traditions.
You also have the makings of an epic saga there, if these sea-adapted people struggled their way over the mountains a few centuries back…
There's also the trivial solution:
3) We take the Asar out of Arbannin altogether and plan them into the second nodal region, on the northeast coast — the area where the Okudani came from. Doing so would most likely make the race unplayable until that expansion happens, however, or at least until we got the first region well-established in terms of plots etc.
I like the idea that the race has made the city work for them. Their biology could perhaps manage the fresh water but thrive in salt..?
Which just brings us back to the prairie potholes (or a more typical marsh depending), a city of artisans, and the Asar with biology that isn't quite suited to the place they live.
So the idea of a polity primarily made up of Asar on the coast would be part of the first or second expansion, and would maybe be better suited to the natural features of the Asar. Features for tide pools and coastal cities would be useful in a marsh biome, making this a city that is reasonable for the Asar. Perhaps they come from a culture that values beauty which is why they choose to settle in a polity where art is so highly regarded.
I think you've got the cause and effect turned around there. More like "create a polity".
I'm definitely sold on the prairie potholes. Those are going to figure somewhere, might as well be where the Asar settled.
I will probably write up the biomes / geography in the near future, which should help frame the biology, relationship with the environment, and their city.
I'm going to say you need to pick just one, skull or arms or ribs. Those do not share common developmental mechanisms.
As usual I've made things up with little idea what I'm doing. When y'all get a few minutes to spare I'd like to know what you think of the changes and the abilities I've defined. Abilities are based off human average with the addition of arbitrary amounts so that I could offer firm rules for behavior.
The abilities seem fine at first look.
The rest I think is fine, with the caveat that stuff may be tweaked when the full picture of the race and culture come together. I'm not sold on the "not surviving pregnancy w/o aid" bit — that's pretty serious consequence for not being justified biologically — but I'm not going to get into details there right now either, so it can stand.
Home polity should remain Vishaza, because that has more to do with their distribution in game, not their history. That is basically shorthand for "if you want to play an Azar, see Vishaza".
No problem. I don't have to build a biological reason to celebrate children. Difficulty conceiving is more than enough of a reason to celebrate both pregnancy and birth… because then I can justify my desire for veils to be worn / used in fertility rites and celebrations
It is, and so is just culturally valuing children without any biological factor. In any case, there can be veils. ;)
Ha. Are you telling me that my compulsive need to justify everything I say or do comes out in my writing too?