Editing Illumian (section)

==Illumians of the Astral Sea==
Illumians existed in the past of the [[World Axis]] cosmology; here, they were the followers of "The God of the Word", a nameless God of Creation who was ally to [[Ioun]] and who fell in battle during the [[Dawn War]]. After it ended, Ioun was asked by the now-orphaned servitors of the God of the Word to rule them, but she declined, and instead charged them to preserve his former Dominion of Shom in the [[Astral Sea]]. Such was her respect for these humans that she entrusted them with two of the Words of Creation which the God of the Word had created before the Dawn War; the Words of Mind and Soul.

Of course, even with divine approval, no ordinary mortal could contain the power of ''two'' of the divine words that had been used to fashion the [[multiverse]]. So, each Word was entrusted to half of the new race, dividing them into subraces of Mind and Soul. Unfortunately, even with the fact that an illumian of one Word could be born to parents of the other, this division fostered chaos within their society; even as they studied the concatenations of each syllable of unfettered supernal might, the illumians became enamored with their own power. Factionalism grew and fermented, stoked by aid from malevolent deities like [[Vecna]] and [[Asmodeus]]. A series of civil wars devastated the illumian people, until they had winnowed their race down greatly.

The end came when, after the reasonable illumians had either perished or scattered across the planes in the flight from their former home, the fanatics who still claimed Shom as their own sought out the aid of the [[Marut]]s to finally determine once and for all which Word was superior, and thus which subrace should bear the full weight for the destruction they had experienced. In their arrogance, they demanded harsh penalties, and so when the Maruts concluded that neither subrace was worthy of holding the Words of Creation, the divine arbitrators fell upon both factions with brutal force, extinguishing them to the last and devastating Shom, which now floats in the Astral Sea as a wasteland of ruins, traps and monsters.

Rumors persist that the Maruts took a particular delight in this, as they have a rather close tie to the Words of Creation themselves and are believed to have viewed the illumians as unworthy to hold the Words that they did.

The illumians theoretically still exist, but like the [[bladeling]]s they are a scattered, broken people, a minor faction on the backdrop of the planes.