Lore - [REDACTED]

A painting of a [REDACTED] noble, created based on the descriptive materials provided.

***

Her daughters and our sisters, who are Forgotten but not Forgiven. The founders of the Hegemony and the instigators of the Legacy of Regret, which led to the Grievous Strife and, eventually, their own demise.

How could this happen? How could an entire tribe turn away from Her Light? From Her Joy and Gorgeousness? To make Her weep? Bringing suffering to others for the sake of bringing the suffering? So many centuries have passed, and their actions still affect us today. [REDACTED] are the reason why the Great Nations, even in the presence of a true enemy, strongly distrust each other, rarely cooperate and do not share valuable knowledge. The fear that one of the four will someday become the new Hegemony never leaves. Only through the intervention of the Herquisition does peace continue, and few mutual compromises are reached for the betterment of all.

What [REDACTED] created was the hatred, which ultimately led to their oblivion. When the Hegemony fell, everything touched by [REDACTED] was destroyed by the other tribes, so that in the future we wouldn't even know of their existence: cities and dungeons were plundered, statues hammered into rubble, books and paintings were burned, bones turned to dust not even worthy of being compost, and any mentions of them were erased from every library of every nation. In the end, nothing was left of the [REDACTED] tribe, not even their name – that is how deep our ancestors' hatred was towards them and all the crimes they committed. Yet even then people couldn’t forget them, all that was accomplished is the hatred towards the unknown.

Over the past two millennia, very few things have been rediscovered that could tell about who and what [REDACTED] were. Many lived in damp cities they built in flooded underground caverns and grottoes, dwelling in the darkness of the night because they hated the light of the day even more than Her Light. The most infamous artefact perfectly capturing their nature, is a single page from a cookbook containing two recipes that someone ascribed with absolute passion on a leather parchment of unknown origin: Roasted Nephew with Moldy Honey and Cheese, and Grilled Grandma stuffed with Mushrooms and Sulfur.

[REDACTED] were cruel, not only to other tribes, but towards each other as much. That is why, even if it would be allowed to utter their name, we still cannot know for sure what that name is, for when the last of royal family was killed, the other powerful families were too arrogant to believe that the Hegemony would loose the war, and thought that they would eventually crush the rebellion and one of their families would become the rulers of the new world, and the entire tribe would be renamed in their honor. Historians themselves are unsure, so in different texts they have different names, either [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED], or even [REDACTED].

Only a handful surviving written descriptions have been found, compiled into an extremely limited source of information. One thing is clear: [REDACTED] were not always monsters, neither in body nor in spirit... after all, they were Her daughters, ours sisters, and our saviors, but due to the intrinsic accelerated evolutionism, towards the end of their existence they had degenerated under the influence of rapacious lifestyles. [REDACTED] are an amphibious tribe, a fact that further reinforces the prejudice against other amphibious tribes; hairless smooth skin, pale as snow, translucent with pinkish shadows and with bulging veins under a layer of fat; little black beady eyes filled with sadism; sharp pointy teeth that they never used because they swallowed meals whole; as tall and strong as the Dova, but shapeless in build; as clever and shrewd as the Ralamians, but heartless in mind; reproducing as quick and numerously as the Ardem, but butchering each other for fun just as much. [REDACTED] were dangerous beings, Forgotten but never Forgiven.