Editing Kalashtar (section)

==Who Are They?==
The Kalashtar's origins lie on the plane of [[Dal Quor]], the Plane of Dreams for the [[Orrery]]. Specifically, it lies with the [[fiend]]ish residents of that plane, the [[Quori]], and the civil war between them over whether or not their plans to prevent the coming of change to the Quor Tarai, the spirit of the age, were needed or not. Those who felt that they should embrace the change were fewer in number, and butchered by their more numerous kin; attempting to flee, they came partially into the mortal realm, using the dreams of slumbering mortals to take temporary shelter. Ultimately whittled down to 67, these rebel Quori found salvation when their leader, Taratai, used this dream-shifting to speak to the master of a human monastery in the land of Adar, which had traditionally been a place of refuge in Sarlona. The head monk agreed to give them sanctuary, and gathering 66 of their brethren, a ritual was performed to not only allow the Quori to voluntarily possess them, but to permanently merge each Quori with its host, creating an entirely new creature.

The Kalashtar ("Wandering Dreams") were literally born in that moment. As the human-quori hybrids had children, they discovered that their offspring were each mentally linked to the quori of their parents, effectively dividing each spirit between multiple hosts simultaneously. By the time the kalashtar had finished developing into a true race, which is arguably a breed of [[planetouched]], the quori rebels were effectively incapable of directly communing with their humanoid hosts or manipulating their bodies; each quori is a sort of collective subconsciousness, creating a mind hive for all the kalashtars of a specific blood lineage. Only when they sleep do kalashtar commune with their quori, as they spend their slumber soaking in the memories of their founding spirit - that is not to say that the founders cannot communicate with their blood lineage, just that it is difficult for them. When roused however, they can transmit information impossibly far, because each founder exists in the subconsciousness of each of its individual children, and is aware of everything that they know. What one kalasthar knows, others will soon know as well. In Khorvaire, a new practice has risen that revolves around honing body and mind in order to strengthen the connection a kalashtar has to its ancestral quori spirit, imbuing it with a greater amount of quori powers. 

This process has had its physical side-effects on kalashtar. [[Elf|Kalashtar appear very similar to humans, but they have a grace and elegance that makes them seem almost too beautiful. They are slightly taller than the average human, and their faces have a slight angularity that sets them apart from the human norm, but these deviations only make them seem more attractive.]] Most notably, all kalashtars have an affinity for [[psionics]], and are naturally telepathic. Most kalashtar use telepathy any time they are making a comment directed at an individual, and they speak only if what they are saying needs to be heard by multiple people at once. While kalashtar can use telepathy to convey words, they often use it to convey pure emotion; kalashtar art and poetry are telepathic constructs based around interwoven memories and emotions.

In fact, kalashtar telepathy begins when the kalashtar is still in the womb; embryonic kalashtar spend roughly half of their gestation telepathically communing with their mother and bathing in the memories of their founding quori. Kalashtar children mature at a rate that members of other races often find disturbing, due to this strong telepathic link; at birth, a kalashtar is probably as cognizant as a 6 or 7 year old human child. In a kalashtar community, children are taught meditative and telepathic exercises before they can walk, and they begin the basics of martial training as soon as they have the coordination. A kalashtar child born into another culture might be confused and frustrated by the imbalance between his or her physical and mental development.

Obviously, kalashtar are naturally intelligent, but they are not strictly logic-driven - in fact, they can't be; bathed in the womb in memories of a plane where dream-logic is reality, kalashtar are naturally inventive, and younger ones in particular are often surprisingly naive despite their advanced intellect, since they are still learning to separate memory-reality from life-reality. They are generally warm and compassionate, but their manners and ways of thinking are alien to the native races of Eberron, and they often use flowery scientific words which doesn't make them easier to understand.

The centerpiece for kalashtar society is the ''Lineage'', or the mind-hive based around a specific quori founding spirit. Lineages are gender-locked, being in part a reflection of the original Adaran monk who first merged with the Lineage's founder. Thus, when two kalashtar mate, sons will be of the same Lineage as their father, and daughters the same Lineage as their mother. Because a Lineage shares a collective subconsciousness through its founder, Lineages are more central to traditional kalashtar mindsets than biological families. All members of the same Lineage will share distinctive physical and personality traits, although the latter category becomes vaguer as a kalashtar ages and its individual experiences enable it to assert its own persona separate to that of the founding spirit. All members of a single Lineage live together, and the kalashtar have no tradition of marriage in Adar - individuals mingle for pleasure and procreation, and children are adopted by the relevant Lineage. In Khorvaire, this tradition is changing.

Kalashtars are known to be able to interbreed with both [[human]] and [[half-elf]] partners; in this case, the Lineage-bond means that children of the same gender as the kalashtar parent will be kalashtars, but children of the opposite gender will belong to the other parent's race. It's not stated what happens when kalashtar lies with [[elf]], [[orc]] or [[half-orc]]; it's presumably up to a DM to decide if this results in a mixture of half-elven/half-orcish and kalashtar children, or if the union is sterile.

The foundation of kalashtar culture is the ongoing war between themselves and the quori; their religion, the [[Path of Light]], exists in opposition to the [[Path of Inspiration]], and so they engage in an endless guerrilla struggle to bring down their more numerous foes. As a consequence, their culture is naturally austere; they don't shun pleasure, but every activity they do should serve a purpose. Even artistic expression, as in the kalashtar's famous love of artwork and dancing, is ultimately a weapon, as their philosophy centers on the idea that by inspiring joy and hope in others, they can weaken the dark nature of the Quor Tarai and hasten its transformation from il-Lashtavar into il-Yannah.