race_niobraran, niobraran, humanoid, amphibious, whale-like, gills, tall, hunched posture, fluked tail, large webbed hands, claws, short legs, large webbed feet
The Spoken Long ago, something fell from heaven into the sea. Unwilling to join its siblings’ war against Creation’s makers and fearful of their reprisal, it hid away in the ocean’s uttermost depths. Over centuries, its pow- er dwindled until nothing was left but a Voice in the Trench. Hungry for worship, it called out in dreams and found the Niobrarans. Amphibious humanoids reminiscent of gilled cetaceans, they stood taller than humans even with their hunched posture, with fluked tails and clawed, flipper-like limbs. In time, the Voice became patron to Niobraran societies across the Great Western Ocean. The Niobrarans were both allies and enemies to the First Age’s Exalted. But after the Old Realm’s war against the Lintha, other undersea nations feared who might be next. A band of Niobraran heroes sought out power to stand against the Exalted. Guided by strange, elder things, they plumbed forgotten corners and se- cret seas in search of forbidden wisdom. They returned triumphant, bearing the secrets of Exaltation. The Voice spoke the names of its Chosen like thunder beneath the sea, Exalting them as the first Spoken. But the Niobrarans had withheld a secret: Exaltation always has a cost. Already diminished by its exile, the Voice died as it named its Exalted, speaking its final words. The Spoken inherited their divine patron’s leg- endary voice. With an utterance, they swayed minds, commanded terrors of the deep, and raised up under- sea volcanos and other perils from the seabed. They became larger as they aged, growing additional limbs and developing unique monstrous features. Decades- old Spoken rivaled orcas in size; the eldest were vast beyond words. Emboldened by the Spoken, the undersea peoples rallied around them, forming the Niobraran League to stave off aggression from other Exalted. Diplomats on both sides struggled to maintain peace, but in time, a bellicose faction within the Old Realm launched a preemptive strike against the League. As countless Exalted joined both sides of the war, Creation itself was scarred. Seas boiled, islands shattered, and in the end, the league fell. No Niobrarans survive today. The Spoken’s Exaltations still exist, but there are none to be Chosen. A Storyteller could add them back to the setting in var- ious ways: hidden enclaves that escaped extinction, elder Spoken who’ve slumbered for eons, or sorcerous experiments to recreate Niobrarans.
