[LPJ Design] Races of NeoExodus: Prymidian Preview

Prymidians are regal, red-skinned humanoids with their stately demeanor and formidable build impress other races, and their learning follows suit.  The prymidians are a communication and language-inclined race, dedicated to scientific reason, research, expansion of knowledge and discovery.  Their culture seeks to know all there is to know in Exodus, plus be able to communicate that knowledge to others.  None know better than the prymidians that knowledge truly is power.

Personality:  Although Prymidians pride themselves on logic, communication and reason, they rarely fit the stereotype of the shy scholar.  The typical prymidian possesses a forceful, even arrogant personality.  A prymidian’s knowledge of communication and language is unequal to any.  Prymidians skills in the area of communication and language so extraordinary, they have found ways for it to effect and manipulate eldritch and arcane magic at a basic level.   A prymidian is contentious, skeptical, always questioning and probing the opinions and thoughts of those around him and arguing with anyone who disagrees.

Prymidians strive to be objective and insist that argument is merely the crucible in which understanding forms, and certainly many of them hold to this ideal.  To a prymidian, one who grasps the truth is truly wealthy; generous prymidians seek to increase the understanding of all and how to communicate that knowledge and information to others, while greedy members of the race hoard knowledge and lost languages or even attempt to impose their truth, whatever it might be, on reality.

Physical Description: Prymidians are tall, lithely built humanoids with rich red skin, ranging from smoldering near-ebon to bright crimson.  They are taller and heavier than humans on average, their bones and muscles denser.  Most prymidians have silver or white hair; the rare dark-haired examples of the race are often looked upon with suspicion by the colleagues.  Roughly one in one thousand prymidians has a most unusual feature physical feature, a throwback to their ancestral nature.  These prymidians have long, rubbery tentacle beneath the skin of each of their arms.  A prymidian with this physical feature can extend these tentacles to manipulate or strike objects at a surprising distance.

Relations: At best, prymidians look upon other races with pity.  At worst, they hold the other inhabitants of Exodus in contempt.  All consider their race a small flame of enlightenment in a benighted, even savage world.  Most humanoids look up to prymidians for their learning and regal bearing, but the scholars of other races have come to resent the prymidians’ dominance and predominance.

Alignment: The typical  prymidian is true neutral, unconcerned with morality and torn between his creative and passionate side and his reason.  Virtually no prymidian gives in to chaos, though, while many hone themselves to their concept of law.  Prymidian arrogance sometimes leads to outright evil, but most reject extremes of morality.

Prymidian Lands: Prymidians are relative newcomers to Exodus.  If they possess a homeland of their own, it apparently lies on another world or plane of existence.  On Exodus, they primarily make their homes in the Arman Protectorate and the Dominion, but few prymidians gather in one place for long.  They are usually encountered in small scholarly groups, and even these are nomadic as they scour the world for new tidbits of information to shed light on the universe.

Religion: To a prymidian, religion is a subject of logical consideration like any other.  Virtually all prymidians reject the multitudinous deities worshipped by the benighted masses, which they consider either illusory or a type of energy being.  Some prymidians do find their reason leads them to belief in a “first cause” that set the universe in motion and may have a rational plan for it.  Others are agnostic, postponing such speculation until they possess more information.  Still others are true atheists, believing in a perpetual material universe entirely without cause or direction.

Language: Prymidians have a language of their own, which they employ strictly for scholarly debate among themselves.  Because it is known only in closed scholarly circles, the prymidian language is considered a secret language, like Druidic.  Due to a quasi-magical genetic quirk, prymidians can speak and understand the language of any intelligent creature, whether it is a racial tongue or a regional dialect, and can read even magical writing with supernatural ease.

Names: Prymidians’ secrecy about their language does not extend to their names.  Unlike many creatures that often travel to new lands, they decline to adopt appropriate nicknames in the local tongue, considering these barbaric.
Family Names: Aponi, Chenoa, Eyota, Meda, Ogin, Tehya
Male Names: Gryn, Kynon, Moren, Oth, Yna
Female Names: Amser, Eys, Garan, Kieve, Talar

Adventures: Prymidians adventure to acquire new information and experience new languages.  Exodus is littered with scraps of knowledge from which a prymidian may derive new theories and make new discoveries.  Magic, particularly in the form of tomes and scrolls, interests the prymidians as a branch of the sciences they have yet to properly codify.  Language is even more important to a prymidian than magic, however; meeting isolated tribes and strange creatures who have never spoken the common tongue is a rare thrill for most members of this race.  Prymidians are naturally nomadic, and most have little fear of danger, so they find it only natural to seek the hidden secrets of Exodus in person.  Besides, few prymidians are willing to trust the safety of the legacies of ancient science to a band of unwashed swords for hire.