Ventari¶
"They are also called the children of the gods." — the Terrun Compendium (S372)
Contested
The First Wizards question in Open Questions is pending a ruling (the sources count the Ventari first wizards as twenty or thirty-two), and the Parentage of the Innus question is pending as well; see the accounts below.
The Ventari were the first humanoids, created in the image of the Einar to be their servants and messengers on the Material Plane. Immortal, immune to disease, and "the ultimate spellcasters," surpassed only by the Einar themselves, they are counted among the Elder races of the Age of Titans. Almost all of them perished in the Dragon Wars, and apart from a very small number of individuals the race vanished from history. Their artificial successors were the Lothim, and their rejected offshoot the Innus became the ancestors of Humans.
Nature¶
To a modern observer a Ventari would look like a very tall, muscular elf, averaging about six feet nine inches. They had male and female sexes, but "as an entirely constructed race, they were not fertile and could not have children." The 2014 phylogeny softens this to an extremely low birth rate: a Ventari couple "would labor to produce 1 child per couple every 10,000 years." They were "natural spellcasters, immortal and very intelligent."
Their magic was Astral, drawn from the gods they served. In the oldest history of the archive, before the Worldstone shattered "the only sources of Magic were Elemental (faerie magic) and Astral (Ventari/Rakkari)."
History¶
The Ventari were made in the first age of the world as "a super race of guardians to manage everything," helpers who carried out the tasks of the Einar on the Material Plane. When the gods quarrelled, the Ventari fractured with them: "some decided to follow Rakkor, while most remained loyal to Kalas," the Compendium's spelling of Kalar. The Titan races became pawns in that struggle and "many Ventari were slain." Rakkor's Ventari, the Rakkari, are said to have conspired against the Faeries, and the first Demons were the result; Kalar's Ventari answered by empowering the Primal Dragons with astral energy.
When the demon hordes came, the Einar "collaborated to instruct" a company of Ventari in the spheres of magic "in order that they might teach others. Magic was given as a tool and weapon against the demon hordes." These were the First Wizards, and their staves, channeling the Worldstone directly, "are some of the most powerful magical artifacts in existence." Only one of those wizards, Lothos, is believed still to live.
Foreseeing their own extinction through immortality and low birth rates, Ventari sages "labored to produce the first Lothim," who still lived near-immortal lives but bore a child every fifty to a hundred years. "The Lothim were the chosen successors to the Ventari and soon all Ventari women were bearing Lothim children." The race itself was all but gone by the middle of the Age of Dragons, "most dying out in the Dragon Wars of that age."
Descendants¶
The 2014 phylogeny traces several peoples back to the Ventari. The Lothim were their deliberate creation. The Dwarrow were, in that account, a Ventari mutation unable to work magic (the newest account of the Dwarrow says otherwise; see that page). The Illithids were "born of a forbidden union between Ventari and some ancient and forgotten race." And the Innus, below, were a deliberate experiment that outlived its makers.
The Innus¶
The Innus were a direct offshoot of the Ventari. The phylogeny credits a Ventari sage who "argued that spellcasting ability was the limiting factor in the reproduction rates of Ventari and Lothim," and so made "a similar race to the Lothim without spell casting ability but with dramatically shorter reproduction rates." The Compendium describes the result: "while retaining much of their height, they were physically larger and stronger than the Ventari, but without the innate magical talents. They were also able to reproduce."
"They were rejected as the inheritors of the Ventari bloodline, but due to their fast reproduction rates, ended up thriving anyway. Most Innus evolved directly into Humans (and they appear to be virtually identical in appearance), though Innus lifespans were almost 3x longer than the average Human lifespan." Ogres and Orcs were, in the same account, engineered from Innus stock for labour and war. Most Innus populations "were destroyed in the Dragon Wars and Demonic Apocalypse," but "there are still some settlements of Innus on other continents."
Gap
The sources do not say which continents still hold Innus settlements, how those settlements live, or whether any Innus has been met in the recorded ages.
Earlier accounts¶
The 2015 regional notes and the Compendium's list of Elder Gods make the Innus the children of Izhtari, "precursors to humanoids, but larger, modeled after the Gods," from whom "Elves, Humans and Orcs are all derived"; Dwarves are there "a Innus and Dwarrow hybrid" and Gnomes "a hybrid of Fae and Innus." A revision note on the 2014 deities document reverses this: Izhtari "is mother to Ventari, Innus were accidental/unauthorized alteration of Ventari." The phylogeny, as given above, has the Innus made by a Ventari sage and the Elves made by the Ventari, not derived from the Innus. These readings are the Parentage of the Innus question.
The count of the First Wizards also differs between the 2014 documents: the Compendium has "twenty Ventari in the use of the five spheres of magic," four to a sphere, while the demigods document has "thirty-two Ventari in the use of the thirty-two spheres of magic." This is the First Wizards question.