Editing Setting:Unified Setting/Toltecatl

Toltecatl are reptilian beastmen native to Vilous. They are bipedal scaled creatures, with saurian features. Because of this, they are often refered to as lizardmen.

Toltecatl society revolves around their religion, whose main god and goal both translate into PROGRESS!(1) Toltecatl believe they must learn all that can be learned and use that information to advance their race. It is common for young Toltecatl to go on pilgramages across the world, amassing whatever information they can. When they feel they have learned enough they return to Vekshimar to present their findings to the archivists.

The archivists are the highest caste of Toltecatl society and manage the Great Library of Rs. A collection of stone temples the size of a small city, they hold the collected wisdom of the Toltecatl race. Returning pilgrims present their findings to apprentice scriveners who pass their transcripts up the line to scholars and lore-masters who judge its value. If found worthy the pilgrim is given great status and their chances of breeding soar. More importantly, their discoveries are forever enshrined in the Great Library.

Forever battling against humidity, mold and mildew, the temples of the Great Library are sealed to all but its acolytes. It is said that the words of the greatest Toltecatl heroes are etched on hammered plates of pure doobienite (a rare, rainbow-hued meteoric metal) but none can say for sure. Preserving their gathered information against the hostile environment of Vekshimar means that none but the archivists ever walk the halls of the Great Library.

And it was all a hilarious joke to the other races. Primitive beastmen traveling across the world to bring back maps, poetry, philosophies, ideas and inventions, only to have it locked away in a temple while the race stagnated in a swamp? So much for PROGRESS! Where were the gleaming crystal cities, the towering spires, the evidence that their racial goal had any impact whatsoever?

The Toltecatl were immune to such mockery. They were adapted to their marshy homeland and saw no need for such monuments, they said. Ostentation was not PROGRESS! This was considered a pathetic excuse from a backwards people who could not master the scraps and lessons they gleaned from superior races. Was, as in past tense.

Recently a human naturalist became intrigued about the gigantic tubers the Toltecatl grow and hollow-out instead of constructing buildings. Asking about their history he was told that the Toltecatl didn't just cultivate them. They had made them. Using life-magics previously thought known only to the elves and the deceased draconians they had altered the native flora into a more useful form. One that was appropriate to their marshy homeland and thrived where traditional construction would collapse within weeks. And they had been doing it for hundreds of years.

When the news spread other nations began treating the Toltecatl with greater respect. The elves denounced the work as crude and unworthy of even apprentice level casters, but everybody expected them to. The Toltecatl knew life-magic, and treated it casually. Who knew what other secrets they had in their possession?


(1) A note on language: Toltecatl speech is notoriously difficult for outsiders to interpret. To the untrained ear, the primary language sounds like guttural hisses. So does everything else uttered by a Toltecatl and respectable people question the sanity of scholars who waste their time trying to understand their tongue. PROGRESS! (both the god and the goal) both derive from the same root, are uttered as verbs in a notoriously verb-heavy language and both have imperfective aspect, active voice, imperative mood, are present-active infinitive, future perfect tense. The god form is third-person singular and neuter. The goal form is first-person plural. Because the god-form is a verb, debate rages whether the Toltecatl have an actual god, are animistic or instead follow a philosophy. The name Toltecatl is one of the few words that the Toltecatl have bothered to translate into a form (somewhat) pronounceable to humans. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the Toltecatl language, the word can be used to mean the race, a title an adult Toltecatl wins after bringing proof of progress to the capital, the name of the capital itself, or the name of an archivist. The differences in intonation and pronunciation are entirely lost on most members of other races. Which is why most members of other races just call them Lizardfolk.

[[Category:Unified Setting]]