Month: Friday June 26th, 2015

After the break during which we have dealt with Corporations topic, let’s talk again about races and we do it with the Tamiaras, namely the ‘arboreal’ people of Redemption The Third Era.

T a m i a r a

Tamiaras have an agile and deft musculature providing them speed and fluidity of movement. As they adapted to live in wooded areas, place that are often dangerous and inaccessible, they developed an almost genetic attachment to the nature. Their footsteps produce in the forests the same sound of the falling leaf and thanks to the wingsuits they usually wear, they can move from tree to tree with the same agility of flying squirrels, the name by which they are often identified by the other races.

The close contact with nature have made them real experts in outdoors living, also modifying their physical appearance. The thick and olive-colored skin is not scorched if it is exposed to the sun, it does not chap due to the wind and it allows them to withstand the most variable temperatures.

The thin and slightly elongated shape of their eyes is due to the continuous tightening of the eyelids for the focalization of any movement in the woods. It gives them a perpetually attentive and absorbed expression. Their continuous scanning saved them over the centuries from the dangers that the forest sets aside and it helped them to overcome the lack of food and clothing. Ears, with theslightly larger and elongated auricles if they are compared to the Humans’ ones, allow them to catch every little noise. The curly and dark hairs are usually styled in dreadlocks varying in size and shape, that males and females wear in the most various ways.

Tia’Miara, the capital city of Tamiara region, is placed, like all their cities, on the crowns of towering Khun, the centuries-old trees of their forest, at the height of about forty meters and built with hundreds of elegant aerial walkways connecting the suspended platforms on which the villages are developed. Tamiaras are reluctant to leave their green arboreal homes, but they do not disdain contact with members of other races if these prove respectful of their customs. Tamiaras have a natural talent for adventure and exploration, they prefer a rest under the stars rather than a closed room or a cave.

They are skilled carvers and tanners, but what makes them really famous and respected is the mastery achieved in the woodcarving of Gata, the precious wood extracted from Khun. It is hard like the steel and the light like the wood and it is symbol of survival for the entire race. The Gata, through a process that involves the use of fire and of a glue (also it is obtained from Khun), provides flexible, light and very resistant weapons; the Tamiara particularly prefer crossbows and bows decorated with melt metal inlays, but they do not even disdain hand to hand weapons if these are made of Gata.

They like everything is natural and unaltered, they disdain, for example, the excessive Salkes’ ostentation and eccentricity, a more alien peolple, even though geographically closer.

They are extremely bond to traditions and they consider indissoluble every taken oath. At the death of one of their brothers, a new young small bush is planted. In this manner the life can continue in nature.

Tamiaras like dressing with soft suede or leather. The clothes have an elegant dressmaking and very fine finishing touches; the embroideries, embellished with small pearls and wooden buttons, make their garments refined clothing appreciated by the other races. They like the fine jewelry made in Gata that skilled carvers can create, with mounted precious or rough stones and fine embroidery made of liquid gold or varnish.

Despite their living in their forest, in the cities on the trees and in close contact with nature, there is nothing distant from a ‘barbarian’ than a Tamiara, so much so that one of the popular sayings concerning them, the most used by the other races, goes: “If it’s beautiful it’s Salk, if it’s beautiful and elegant it’s Tamiara”.

In order to get to the heart of the matter of the Third Era society, we must start from one of its basic aspects that is Corporations. Since the dawn of the world, man has always had the innate spirit of aggregation, for safety, support and development. After the Catastrophe, the new climate of desolation and destruction made necessary, for young people also, the use of the association forms that would guarantee a better organization of society and its multiple interactions.

Corporations include the most prominent and valid elements of each race, giving, in terms of game, additional skills and upgrades to the members of their band (deck).

At the beginning we will have 12 Corporations, to simplify we can say 2 for each race and following this logic we will present the first six below. Firstly we will analyze those referring races you already know: Human, Damas and Graunt. Each of them comes from a specific ethnic group, but it has some characteristics that make itself attractive to elements belonging to other races. In future we will propose the remaining six. For now enjoy!

Humans Corporations

H E R A L D S

They are an elite group of human soldiers that are trained and subjected to a ‘Controlled Mutation’ (a treatment based on small and prolonged radiation doses) which enables them to withstand rather high radioactivity levels. They are best suited to operate in inhospitable places where their physical resistance makes them less prone to diseases or genetic damages. Given the treatments using radiation during training they are subjected to, they may be physically or mentally altered, starting from heterochromia (in milder cases) until changes being much more serious and visible. One of those most used common sayings, among humans and not only, recites: ‘ It’s rarest than an aged Herald ‘, this reflecting the fact that these soldiers rarely die of old age.

W A R L I K E S

They’re the real human old-fashioned army. They’re trained to use any hand weapon and firearm, they’re also formidable opponents in the hand-to-hand combat. They adopt excellent defense and camouflage techniques helping them to overcome their lack of psychic powers due to radiations and common to other races. Another of their characteristics is the ability to transform into any weapon what goes on in their hands, managing to extricate themselves from the most desperate situations. Not everyone can pass the training and become Warlikes, but who makes it, he is a real war machine that is difficult to stop or oppose to.

Damas Corporations

E N G I N E E R S

They are the mechanical and beating core of Damas’ civilization. They devoted their live to the study of chemistry, physics and creation of weapons and technology equipments that can protect them from possible dangers and improve the community’s lives. They spend most of their time in underground laboratories where the flows of steam from underground are continuous and provide energy for the experiments. These represent a threat revealing when, after the conclusion of the testing phase (sometimes can be fatal), it gets to the setup of the outcome. In that case it’s better, for any enemy, not to cross their path.

M I N E R S 

Damas galleries are constantly expanding to intercept the escape of underground steam output channels and to obtain energy or, more simply, to find new areas to make habitable, perhaps by linking existing natural tunnels. Miners, besides supervise the expansion works so that the excavations proceed smoothly and as quickly as possible, moreover are expeciallyl explorers trained to eliminate any underground threats could put the drillers’ and of the entire population’s safety at risk.

Graunt Corporations

G U A R D I A N S

They are an elite Graunt group watching over their own tribe and the in process awrmis vein where they are located. They attend both to security inside the enormous camps and to public order, going from suppressing the ‘inn scuffles’, very common among Graunt, up to face more serious threats as invasions or awrmis thefts. They are trained in hiding their presence and engaging the enemy in close combat. This type of combat allows them to take the bigger advantage from their extraordinary physical strength, resistance and potential lunges thanks to massive awrmis-tipped spears.

S C O U T S   O F   T H E   P L A T E A U 

They are troops of Graunts trained in combat and survival and they watch the enormous Plateau where they live. They ensure passing caravans or wild animals herds don’t threaten the safety of the nomadic tribes or of the Mothercity or of maturing awrmis deposits. Usually they control from a distance without revealing their presence and they intervene only when the possible misconduct of ‘foreign’ forces them to do it. For most of the time they live isolated from their people and they are trained to be able to face any threat while fighting when outnumbered.

This week we will talk about the third people that live in the Redemption – The Third Era lands and it is for conception the ‘tribal’ race of our world, the Graunts.

G r a u n t

The Graunts have strong and slender bodies, that are well suited to the rude and tribal lifestyle they have adapted to avoid the comforts from the Old Era .

They are rude, hasty and they have frank and candid behaviors. They do not are duped by words and they are enough suspicious about everithing is related to technology. Their leather colored skin and hard and pronounced features increase their harsh aspect. The only sweetness note in faces is represented by the long eyelashes that protect the eyes from winds ever present in their region. The thick, smoth and dark colored hair are often woven with leather and small colored perls in both males and females in order to not obstruct movement and line of vision.

The Graunts are one of the few peoples of the Third Age to be still nomads. The Mothercity , located in the middle of the huge and arid Plateau they live in, is the unique fixed settlement they possess, and it is the metropolis where the whole people’s administrative and religious institutions are located. Large and populous tribes, move in the enormous Plateau  to the continuous search for new Awrmis’ deposits (Auto WRaith MIneral cellS) and they remain in the same place until these are exhausted. When this happens, the Graunt treat the ground so that a new vein can form and grow, and in the meantime they go to another free zone of the Plateau where old and already exploited veins are again in the maturation phase.

Awrmis is a plant with roots that, once sinked in the soil, crystallize in an azure mineral and start to realease radiations. The Graunts ares able to manage it and it used for weapons’ tips (solid to lacerate and powdered to poison). Among Graunts are the Awrmis-setters, masters in setting awrmis crystals in the skin of the wearer, in order to increase, through the manipulations and radiations, the mental or physical strength, resistance, etc… Once that a still living crystal is setted, blue roots will begin to grow and, branching off, they will sink into the skin (just as for the plants in the soil). The awrmis grafts can be replaced or removed: in the second case the scars will be well visible.

They dress of leather obtained from breeding of Kepaks, big long-pelt quadrupeds with which Graunts live almost in symbiosis. They feed of their meat, ride them to fight and use them as pulling and pack animals. Their skin, thick and resistant, is also used to realize the enormous tents Graunts live in. The large scales covering Kepaks’ chest and front, as well as bones, are used to obtain tools or accessories (from sharp knives for the leather working to colored small pearls used to adorn hairstyles and clothing). Even their entrails are reused for yarns, ropes, ties and and so on.

The strong winds that blow on the Plateau in the shadow of a lukewarm perpetual sun, affect the entire race’s nomadism: in fact the tents used in the camps are placed on excavations ranging from one to two meters deep, in order to be more sheltered, and over the years they may undergo further works of lowering. The severity and the privations of the outdoors living, forged Graunts into real war weapons. The long and heavy awrmis-tipped spears they employing in battle, are excellent death tools and the mental powers arising from radiation make them appear as fearsome and deadly enemies.

As a Third Age’s popular saying goes “It is better to face a tornado that one angry Graunt “.