Hey everyone, I hope you’re all doing well. I’m having a nice holiday with the family, it has been good to change pace and unwind a bit. I’ll be back on Monday to work on colouring that latest Humanity Lost page, I’m looking forward to it!
Introducing the Maäliset. These are a Neanderthal-like people in Concavia that can cut stone with a form of magic called “stone-song”. I’ll get round to drawing some full bodied character drawings of them at some point and what their women look like too. I also have plans to draw what their settlements are like, that will probably come first. I have so much I want to get around to drawing, it’s just a case of finding the time. There are many other hominid-like races like this in Concavia, but these Maäliset drawings should give you a good feel for what is to come. Some are more man-like, others are more ape-like.
Anyway, without further ado, here is the lore on the Maäliset:
“After the great flood that began the Days of Iron, Mehter brought forth the land-wights, watchers of the wilds who show themselves when men take too much from the earth. Yet one folk has found a way round these land-wights by living underground, so as not to upset the wild things above. The Maäliset they are called. They are a low, thick-set breed of men with long bodies, big heads and short but strong limbs. Their skin runs from grey to coal-black, their eyes from brown to fire-yellow and their hair from brown to white.
Yet in the deeps of Concavia, away from the land-wights, there were other fearsome things to dread. Since they dwelt underground, the Maäliset in time crossed paths with scattered bands of Dwalves. To stay there, the Maäliset bought their safety and staved off the wrath of the Dwalves by yielding a share of all their gain and offering it to them at holy cave-pools. They came to worship their Dwalven betters as lesser Gods, and the Dwalves in turn took Maäliset women now and then as their share of the tithe. Children born of these minglings became the high-born houses of the Maäliset, and it was they who held sway under their Dwalven overlords.
Dwalven blood brought forth gifted bloodlines that could wield the darker sides of the craft. Men of this line could shape stone with stone-song; women could shape dreams and toadstools. With stone-song the Maäliset hewed towns into the stone faces of deep hollows under the earth.
Though not all bowed to the Dwalves, some among them broke with their kin and settled in the high hills and fells above the ground. These sundered folk took a new name, the Vuoräinar. They never ceased using Dhegoma’s gift of stone-song, yet they heeded not his dark pull. The Vuoräinar carved their towns through the peaks and hollowed them to make their halls. Yet their break from their nether-kin made them foes both to the Dwalves and to the land-wights, for their folk were many and needed much from the land above.”