The Duvrhen

The Duvrhen were physically identical to each other using ornament to identify oneself, with only slight skeletal differences between male and female. They were a 10' tall humanoid, hairless, with aesthetic muscle definition. Females did not have breasts, and neither sex had genitalia, as the species relied on magic for procreation. They lacked a structured nose, but holes above the mouth allowed them to smell, and they did not blink due to a lack of eyelids, their eyes however, never dried. Their ears were more close to an elf's then a human's, and their foreheads were slightly elongated compared to both. While their digestive system was omnivorous, they lacked molars, instead their mouths were filled with teeth sharper and pointier then an orcs, although not long enough to stick out of their mouths. The nails of a Duvrhen could be better described as claws, and the tips of their spinal segments breached the skin of their backs.

Upon mastering the essence of life, the Duvrhen began to mix their souls externally, extracting a piece of themselves to mix with their mates. the resulting hybrid energy would be kept private until it condensed into a child. This process however was very long with a new child taking anywhere from 2-4 years to develop. As this practice became more widespread, the Duvrhen lost their reproductive organs, something they thought was purely advantageous until it became their ruin.

The developmental cycle of the Duvrhen was extraordinarily long. An embryo would take 2-4 years to develop into a child, who would not reach their "teen" years for another 20. From there they would slowly develop into maturity over the next 200 years. Once a Duvrhen reached maturity however, their body stopped aging, sustaining its longevity by drawing raw magic from the atmosphere directly into their cells. This, when combined with their invulnerability made them effectively immortal.

During the time of the Duvrhen, their was only one landmass surrounded by endless ocean, they claimed everything. Starting small, placed in the lands center directly by the gods, they spread and build great cities which they congregated to. While over the span of time the existed for, they did inhabit every corner of their world, never did they do this at any one given point, instead filling their cities up until they overflowed, or fell. Despite their expansive presence, nature was never fully pushed out.

Hunger was one of the few needs they never managed to rid themselves of, instead they dedicated entire city districts to the production of food. They built massive garden spires to grow their plants, and grotesque breeding chambers where they produced mortals for meat.

The Duvrhen were capable of and showed the full range of human emotions. At times they unified under single dynasties, bringing terror to the mortal races, but they could also grow jealous of each other, rejecting the concepts of class and hierarchy claiming no Duvrhen was above another and so none could be sovereign. These periods saw the Duvrhen tear their societies apart as they waged war against themselves, the severity of which Bregule has been fortunate enough never to experience again. They viewed the lesser mortals as so beneath themselves, that while engaged in conflict with other Duvrhen, they turned a blind eye to the mortals, during which many found the chance to escape captivity and create new lives in the wilds outside the cityscape, their safety lasted for as long as it took a Duvrhen to fancy a new city in the lands they called home.

Originally the senses of a Duvrhen would be comparable to that of any mortal, however after being shown how to infuse their very beings with the magics of their reality, their senses were heightened generation by generation with each child being more enhanced then the last until they had developed a sort of truesense, simply being aware of their surroundings.

When the realm of earth was touched by the other elemental realms, it became merging point where all the elements could intermingle. To their surprise, the gods found that this intermingling birthed new life forms they themselves had not created. For a time the gods simply observed as the valleys flooded, the mountain tops grew cold, Forests grew and burnt down, then they watched as the elementals they had created to be so perfectly pure in essence mixed, and took on new hybrid forms. These changes did not stop and over time the realm of earth became a realm of beasts. Some beasts were small and fragile, and others towered over the trees, eventually however they all were replaced by new beasts, and then replaced again. It was during this time that the first great wyrms were born, and became one of the few sights the gods never saw disappear.

While this new realm of beasts proved ever entertaining to the gods, it was equally an eternal shame. They could not fully accept the thriving wilderness that had developed without their will, and eventually they decided it was time for them to intervene. They created the Duvrhen, the first humanoid being in the realm of beasts. Ever confident in their own creations they simply placed the Duvrhen into the realm, assuming it would swiftly dominate all it encountered. They had underestimated nature. Drowned in a barely moving river, stepped on by a tyrannosaurus, mauled by a bear, sucked dry by a swarm of bugs … eaten by a dragon. The Duvrhen were completely mentally and physically unprepared for the chaos of unguided life and found death at every turn.

Unwilling to be bested in creation by nature itself the gods found a simple solution, give the Duvrhen a piece of divinity. This gift came in two forms, the first, blessings of invulnerability to protect them from natures wrath, and the second was knowledge of the very same magical essence that holds the gods form together. It did not take long for these gifts to prove invaluable, no land was too dangerous for the Duvrhen, no beast was exempt from becoming a meal, even the dragons fled and made personal sanctuaries. The Duvrhen spread across all the lands in less than a millennium.

All was pleasant as they expanded, town were built, families grew, and elders passed. But eventually they forgot the wilderness they came from, and their towns turned to cities, and as they did, the Duvrhen began to differ in thought. At first these differences were trivial, but with time, much like their cities, the differences grew too, until eventually differences turned to conflict. The first Duvrhen war saw mostly only the destruction of what they had built, as they could not harm each other, and from the ruins they created came a Duvrhen who sought to unify his race and put a stop to the destruction. The first Duvrhen king, it is said, was able to enlighten the people, and convince them that no matter how bad the argument, if they can not harm each other then conflict was pointless and hurt both sides equally. While the idea itself was not extraordinary, they accepted what he had to say and looked to him for guidance, and so the first Duvrhen dynasty began.

The first dynasty lasted longer then any myth cares to explain, however its fall changed Duvrhen society for the rest of their existence. A group of Duvrhen opposed to the idea that any one of them could lead them all, dedicated themselves to studying the magic that protected their bodies from harm, until they could craft weapons capable of removing the gods blessing. Once they had succeeded in crafting these weapons, they immediately unleashed them on the first dynasty, toppled it, and made themselves the new leaders. The second dynasty tried to remove from history exactly how they crafted these weapons, but were unsuccessful, and thus Duvrhen society fell into cycle, as dynasties rose and over threw each other, never again seeing the peace of the first.

The creation of technology capable of removing a blessing granted directly from a celestial being was the first alarm the gods received, foolishly however the thought it would end there. They found themselves sorely mistaken when a king of the 8th dynasty ordered all Duvrhen to study the very nature of life and death, as he wished to avoid the later. Having access to the same magic as the gods, the answers he sought were not hidden from him for long, and while the Duvrhen were too slow to save his life, his son was the first to have his aging halted. This the gods found to be a transgression of the highest caliber, invulnerability they had decided to share with Duvrhen, but immortality was meant to be theirs and theirs alone. The gods, angered and rightfully worried about the growing power of their creation, decided to personally intervene in the material plane, they amassed armies of their loyal creations from the 4 unchanged elemental planes, and entered the realm of beasts to destroy the Duvrhen themselves. The Duvrhen however, had long been prepared, the weapons they used on each other had a secret even the gods were unaware of. The weapons did not truly remove their divine blessings, instead they were sealed away, and the gods were made of the same magic these weapons affected. Unknowingly, the greater deities lead the march into their own demise, and were quickly sealed away themselves, ushering in a godless age, the length of which is unknown.

During the godless age the Duvrhen continued to build magnificent cities, destroy each other and repeat. They learned how to reproduce without sexual interaction, they further rejected the idea of living with nature and receded more and more into the structures the set up. They created a stunted version of themselves, which the withheld immortality from, and breed for food, this species was cross breed much like humans with their dogs, until a whole range of flavors had been created, and these would become the mortal races of the present. The Duvrhen would likely still exist if not for one single oversight, when they waged war with each other, they neglected the status of the mortals in their food chambers, and often many would take the chaos as a chance to escape, fleeing into the wilderness the Duvrhen so despised, hiding in the forests or the mountains. Over time the lesser mortals found that within them was a faint reserve of magic left over from the stunted clones they originated from, they studied this and learned to harness the magical forces in their own weaker way. Unseen by the Duvrhen, some of these mortals explored the wilderness, finding that they could in fact make a life for themselves thanks to the reclusive nature of the beings that fed on them. While the Duvrhen were not completely unaware of what was happening, they became too caught up with their own conflicts to give proper attention to the lesser mortals, feeling no threat by creatures they had intentionally made weaker then themselves. However much like with the gods, their arrogance proved fatal, as the ages passed, Duvrhen ruins became more and more common, and the lesser mortals were curios creature who could not help themselves from exploring the unknown. Without necessarily knowing it, the artifacts containing the greater gods were discovered, they were passed from hand to hand, as heirlooms, or simply sold by a merchant unaware of what was inside the ring a farmer bought. Eventually, not all at once, the secrets of these object was discovered and the greater gods were released. They kept themselves hidden in the Astral plane, a place the Duvrhen were never informed of, until their numbers had fully recovered, then in the only act of complete unity amongst both the greater and lesser deities, they stripped the Duvrhen on their magic, their invulnerability, and their immortality, leaving them defenseless and surrounded by a now wizened array of mortals who never forgot the horrors the Duvrhen were capable of.

Despite their biological supremacy, without the powers and abilities they had become reliant on they were vastly outmatched by what magic the lesser mortals could awaken, and since altering their bodies for so long had cause their development to slow tremendously, they were unable to recoup their numbers as the fell. The Duvrhen were hunted to the edges of realm, their cities burnt to the ground, their works destroyed with roaring cheers, their texts eradicated until there was nothing left to prove they ever existed other than the stories told to children.