Arena of Storms

Gods

The High God also known as the God of Elements, the God of Storms and the God of Lightning

The God of Storms is indisputably the most powerful god. He is also the most ruthless and cruel of them all, and enjoys plaguing the Arena-dwellers with lightning, hail and the dreaded Thunderborn hordes. His cruelty causes the Arena-dwellers (except the Minotaurs) to refuse to give him worship, which angers him and causes him to punish them more, creating a vicious circle of punishment and defiance. It is widely believed that even if all the Arena were to worship him exclusively, the malice of the Storm God's heart would not be contained and he would continue his attacks anyway. His ceaseless cruelty has roused heroes and other gods against him numerous times, but these attempts to depose him have all been quashed under his mighty fist, though some were very nearly successful. The God of Storms ordered the construction of the Arena and the Sands Vast and Burning to prevent further attempts by the mortal races to interfere with his endless brutality.

The God of Rivers

The God of Rivers is lord of the River which flows through the Wall and provides the Arena's inhabitants with most of their water. He is a benevolent god who sympathizes with the Arena-dwellers and has confronted The God of Storms about his torment of them on many occasions, and is therefore the Storm God's chief rival. He is entirely intolerant of those who would pollute or otherwise interfere with his river, and will punish them severely.

Races

Birdmen

Birdmen are nearly as advanced as the Minotaurs. They live atop the Wall, and serve the Air God by preventing other races from climbing over the Wall and escaping the Arena. Their feathers contain a peculiar metallic substance which, when melted down, is forged into tools and weapons. Only down feathers, or the feathers of the dead, are used in this way. A Birdman colony contains at least one Insectoid hive, which are used as sources of slave labor and occasionally food.

Cyclopes

A race of one-eyed giants found mostly in the tundra surrounding Mount Beartooth. Their sentience is hard to gauge, as the other races are too small for them to communicate with or pay much attention to. They appear to live in very loose communities covering huge expanses of territory and can live for as long as nine hundred years. It is not unusual for even husband and wife Cyclopes to go months without seeing each other.

Cats

A race loyal to Humans, though only those they deem intelligent enough to be worthy of their aid. Cats are attuned to the spiritual world and thus have magical abilities, most notably shapeshifting, which they can bestow on Humans who deserve it. Cats often shape-shift into Human form (though they retain some cat-like features as they can't shift completely) to communicate more directly with the Human world.

Dogs

A race loyal to Humans. Dogs are acutely attuned to the physical world, and can grant boons of strength, speed and other physical skills to Humans they favor.

Dryads

An all-female race that hails from many of the forests and jungles of the Arena.

Elves

Elves are children of the God of Death and the Goddess Woodlands, and servants of the God of Sickness. They are putrid, hideous creatures who often mask themselves in more humanoid forms. They spread rot and sickness and pervert any area of woodland they stay in. However, their latent life energies cause the rot and sickness to be undone when they leave an area. They are unable to communicate with the good deities (the High Gods).

Insectoids

The Insectoids are a barely sentient race of winged bug-people who have long served the Birdmen as menial labourers. They speak their own language, as well as an Insectoid-Birdman pidgin. They are very simple creatures, unable to comprehend ideas not related to instinct or direct experience. As such, they do not attempt to flee the Wall to escape to Paradise, because they can't understand the possibility of it existing. They have no real desires or ambitions beyond serving the hive, resting, mating, and eating.

They are genetically related to the Devilflies in the Sands.

They are socially organized into hives, each of which is structured around a queen (the only member of the hive who can incubate fertilized eggs). Aside from a queen, there are two other sexes: "X", who supply the eggs and protect the hive (though hostility to their abusive Birdman overlords has been beaten out of their genes), and "Y", who fertilize the eggs and gather food. Shortly before dying, a queen generate a "princess"; a smaller, softer version of a queen who is, of course, tended to with the utmost care. The entrails of princesses are a delicacy among the Birdman elite. Hives are housed in enormous wasp-nest type structures that adhere to the Wall.

Humans

Humans are found in all places within the Arena, and are the dominant race on Mount Beartooth in its center. They have domesticated animals to use as warmounts, including mammoths, giant rabbits, dire bears and even tigers, in the case of the jungle-dwelling Xinorran tribes. Humans are used as the mortal parents of Demigods much more frequently than other races, even though they are most inclined to defy and make war on the gods. In general, males are warriors and hunters and females are gatherers, with the exception of the aforementioned Xinorrans, where the roles are reversed.

Minotaurs

Minotaurs are the most advanced race, having the capacity to build villages, towns and, in some cases, cities. Other races are permitted to live in their settlements, but they are taxed heavily,e their women may be raped without legal consequence,and the Minotaurs may consume the corpses of dead lower races. Minotaur society is divided into herds, which are led by a bull who has sired at least two adult calves. His cows, along with his unwed siblings, compose the upper class of the herd. Powerful herds usually have vassal herds.

Minotaur Namers are different from those in other races because their Names take the form of pictographic runes depicting the True Shape of things, which are stored in a Bag of Shapes and activated by a Runecaster. This means that a Runecaster's spell is guaranteed to have a predictable result, but he can't change the actual machinations of his spell like a Namer can. Once a rune has been used, it must "cool down" for a period proportional to the strength of the spell before it can be re-imbued with mystical energy and activated again. Particularly powerful runes shatter upon use.

Their open worship of the God of Storms often puts them at odds with other races.

Reptiloids

A lizard-like nomadic race who inhabit the Sands Vast and Burning, between Paradise and the Arena. They are the only race to live outside the Arena, and are almost completely isolated from the other races, except the occasional Birdman runaway, from whom they learned about the gods and law. Their numbers are quite small as a reptiloid female can't lay more than three eggs in her lifetime. Reptiloids are able warriors who practice a unique form of wrestling in which victory is attained by lifting one's opponent above one's head, then dropping them. They also are skilled in armed combat, particularly with their traditional weapon, the spear-mace (comprised of a bludgeoning end and a stabbing end). Combat festivals and tournaments are the main way in which Reptiloid clans petition the gods. Their chief deities are the Goddess of Fire and the God of Earth.

Snakemen

A traveling, merchant race, cunning at many crafts but often seen as untrustworthy. Snakemen can secrete powerful pheromones to deter aggressors; this trait has given rise to many superstitions in other races about Snakemen having hypnotic powers as a result of consorting with Demons or evil gods.

Thunderborn

When the Storm God's thunderbolts strike a stone, this creates a Thunderborn egg, which is hatched on contact with water into several Thunderborn, mindless and savage creatures of mud and earth who terrorize all the races. Even a ceasefire between the races isn't a guarantee of peace in the Arena, as the Storm God will take any opportunity to unleash a new horde of Thunderborn to scare them back into line.

Volgyn

Volgyn are the descendants of a band of Humans who tried to escape the Arena by digging under the Wall. They were forbidden by the Storm God to ever leave the bowels of the earth, but the Earth God pitied them and granted them the ability to survive in their new environment. They have since become a blind, mole-like race who have learned some use of magic from the Titans and Demons trapped underground.

Fauna

Most fauna is similar or identical to ice-age megafauna. The world is inhabited by woolly mammoths, dire bears, tigers (of both the sand sabre-tooth variety), giant sloths and giant rabbits. Most of these animals have been domesticated by Humans and other races. The Sands are also home to Devilflies, gigantic winged insects created by the Demons.