New Race of God-Blooded

[Obsidian Soul]

I have created a new race of God-Blooded that, like the Lintha, do not fit with the standard divisions.  They are named the Tylalyt.


The Tylalyt were created by the Dragon Kings before the Primordial War in order to make mortals useful for something.  They were changed so that their bodies and souls could use Dragon King Paths.  They soon became the greatest of servants of the Dragon Kings.


During the Primordial War the Tylalyt were decimated.  They were freed from their bonds of servitude to the Dragon Kings and were given a small piece of land in the Southeastern portion of Creation to call their own.  This land, a rough circle 60 km in radius, was simply known as Refuge.  There, they built seven Great Cities, arcologies disguised as giant volcanos, and transformed their land into a giant park.


They hated the Exalted for becoming more than they, once the greatest of servants, and they secretly helped the Dragon-Blooded hunt down the Solars, in a hope that the Exalted would annihilate each other.  They suffered greatly in the Great Contagion, but still managed to support Creation against the forces of the Wyld.  They retreated into isolation after the Fae Folk were defeated and were soon forgotten.  Now, however, they sense a great change and, for the first time in over eight centuries, are sending scouting parties into the rest of Creation.


The Tylalyt may learn any of the Dragon Paths up to the limit that their Essence allows.  That means that even the most advance Tylalyt will never learn above the fifth level in a Dragon Path.  They have a technology more advanced than any save in Yu-Shan due to their knowledge in the Paths of Solid Earth and Growing Wood.


All Tylalyt are Inheritance 5.  They have the least variation of any God-Blooded.  They must buy the following Merits: Awakened Essence, Breed True, God-Body (the fourth level), Dynasty of Inheritance, Longevity and Magical Attunement.  They must also buy the first level in one of the Dragon Paths.  They pay the same cost that a Dragon King would for a non-Breed Path.  They will have no more points left over from the Inheritance.  Their Heritage Power is the same as the Half-Castes.  They may only buy General God-Blooded Merits and Flaws.  The rare Tylalyt still born outside of the Seven Cities do not have any further bonuses, but Tylalyt born in the Seven Cities generally have Experience 2 and Knowledge 2 by the time they are adults, at age sixteen, due to the education system.

 

[Haku1]

what do they look like?

 

[Obsidian Soul]

They are humaniod with bronze-red skin, jet black hair and eyes like obsidian chips, but other colorations are not unknown, as they commonly breed with normal mortals to add hybrid vigor.  That is the only reason they are concerned with Creation at all, without normal mortals they fear that they would run into reproduction problems in ten or twenty thousand years and face possible extinction in about fifty thousand years.  They take the long view.


Tylalyt have one other feature that marks them.  On their inner thighs, going from their groin to their knee, they have an abstractly patterned beauty mark that is, in reality, a coded message in the High Holy Speak.  By reading the patterns, they can tell the bloodline of the individual Tylalyt.  It was a genetic marker left over from the initial breeding program by the Dragon Kings ten thousand years ago, so they could easily trace the best bloodlines.

 

[Flagg]

What beings were mortals interbred with to beget these creatures? Gods worshipped by the Dragon Kings? Something else?


-S

 

[Lurker in Darkness]

Any special reason for this race's name being a palindrome?

 

[Obsidian Soul]

The first successful Tylalyt, there were many failures, was created by chimerizing a mortal with a Dragon King.  This is why they are capable of learning Dragon King Paths and Terrestrial Sorcery.  This is also why they need to occasionally interbreed with mortals because, if they don't, strange things happen as certain recessive traits become more common.  They lose no more than a handful of babies a year to this, but it would reach critical level if they isolated themselves for ten thousand years, resulting in their extinction after fifty thousand years.  They cannot breed with Dragon Kings, the chimerization was just enough to allow a fertile human to learn and use Dragon King Paths.


As for the name, it has three syllables, Ty-la-lyt, with the inflection on the first syllable.  It means, roughly, Our Beloved Children, in the High Holy Tongue of the Dragon Kings.  


They were the favored servants of the Dragon Kings until the Primordial War, when all but one in one hundred were destroyed by the forces of the Primordials.  Once, their Great Cities numbered in the hundreds, they all but the Seven were lost in the last struggles of the fallen Primordials.  All that remain are their names.  The rise of the Exalted were a betrayal to them, for they had reached the point where they were becoming partners, as opposed to servants, of the Dragon Kings.  Before the Primordial War it was thought by the savants of the Tylalyt that Creation would soon be ruled by a Triparte; the Dragon Kings, the Jadeborn and the Tylalyt.  With the fall of the Dragon Kings, the enslavement of the Jadeborn and the near extinction of the Tylalyt, that dream died.  


The Tylalyt are not comfortable with the Celestial Exalted.  They never liked them, preferring to deal with the Terrestrial Exalted or the God-Blooded children of the Celestials.  A century before the Usurpation, a Solar king by the name of Ulric sent agents into the land of the Tylalyt, they kidnapped ten young girls to feed their master's perverse appetites.  In the choas of the Usurpation, the Tylalyt hunted him down and, after a hundred of their number died in the chase, captured him.  He still lives, entraped in a core of unbreakable crystal, tortured for every moment of his life.  He has been there for fifteen centuries and, based on the long life of certain Solars, could be there for another fifteen easily.  The Tylalyt do not forget.