Ere Beghin and the Ere Breghin:
The island continent of Ere Beghin lies to the southeast of the Eastern Continent, and is roughly the size of Australia. The entire land mass was pushed up from the ocean floor by a shifting teutonic plate, and a large majority of the land still remains submerged in salt-water lakes. The Ere Breghin cities are built in the centers of these lakes, and are designed to be half submersed in the water. From a distance they look to be shimmering lotus blossoms of magically reinforced glass and coloured spheres and spires of enamelled metal and inlaid marble resting on the water's surface. But all of the buildings are mirrored, and the same shape and space that spikes up from the lake surface also descends into the water. The buildings are connected by tunnels, walkways and canals, and as many Ere Breghin will be seen walking the mosaic walkways as there are swimming the canals.
Although the island has many good ports few boats are to be found. The occasional Lisdanese trading vessel can be seen moored to the otherwise boatless piers. The Ere Breghin make their sea vessels of an elemental creature called a Leviathan. They capture the Leviathan young and crawl inside their bellies and begin to cast their spells and magics and fasten strips of metal and controls to their bodies so that they can steer the beasts from within. Then they graft metal and bone armour to their faces and flanks, mounting spearing spikes and weapons to their exoskeletons. Using these 'submarines' the Ere Breghin travel longer distances, usually to steal or sabotage or spy.
The Ere Breghin are amphibious and cannot breed with any other race. However, they do not even breed with each other. Those who wish to have an assistant in their business fill out an application, and the board reviews their level of need. If they are approved they must take a course in order to received their liscence to have a child. Then they are granted an egg from the stores taken from chosen donar mothers which is then fertilized by males considered prime specimins. The new parents care for the egg until it hatches, register the child with a gender and age to the council, and then raise the infant until it begins to speak. Then all children are shipped off to boarding school from the time they can speak to 18 years later. Then, having received an education in enchantments, spell casting, illusions, prophecy, necromancy and alchemy, as well as any specific skills the parents have requested, such as a certain trade or craft, the child returns home to work for his or her parents.
However, sice the child is not the blood relative of his or her family, and since the child has grown up away from home in a dorm with others like him, hit puberty there, been schooled there and never seen his parents until he returns home a young adult, no Ere Breghin has any special attachment to his family. With this lack of emotional attachment in society, Ere Breghin are perfectly willing to betray or even murder their own famlies if it proves useful or imperative to his goals. The only reason the entire society does not decay and suffer from this free ability to murder is two fold. First the council punishes those who commit murder out of emotional reasons, such as hatred or jealousy, and second, because it is common and likely, most Ere breghin work together because it is useful, and make a point to be useful so that they can live.
Ere Breghin normally live for about 50-65 years, but using their magic the Ere Breghin have developed spells that allow them to add one year onto their natural life span each full moon. Seeing as how the world has two moons, and while hte smaller one becomes full every week, the larger becomes full every month, it adds plenty of time one if you become strong enough to cast the spell. However, the spell in no way makes the Ere breghin less vulnerable, they are still as suseptable to disease and damage as before.
The Ere Breghin have no bones, only a stiff cartilage that gives them form and loose support. They can technically squeeze themselves through holes no smaller than the circumfrance of their skulls. As they are amphibians, they need to keep their skin moist or they become ill, starting with rashes, and eventually dying of dehydration. They stand 5'3 to 5'6, and the females are distinguishable only because their ears point at puberty, and they tend to be a bit paler in complexion. All Ere Breghin have wirey silver hair that often is curly, though some magical orders, namely the Necromancer's guilds, shave their heads. Their teeth are small barbed fanglets that stick out of their gums at odd angles, like disorganized sharks teeth. Their fingers gradually harden until they become hard and sharp like a crab's leg at their tips. But perhaps the most outstanding feature is their eyes. Ere Breghin have three red, jagged-irised eyes that bulge in their skulls and are protected by long thick silver eyelashes that are controlled by muscles around the eye that allows them to flick their eyelashes from side to side to shield their bulbous eyes from light and debris. While exceptionally intelligent they are also exceptionally weak physically, and cannot handle taking damage. However, unless their bodies are braced against a solid surface, their gelatinous bodies merely squish and absorb the shock to protect the body from damage. Thus the Ere Breghin can withstand falls from great heights, and can regrow their limbs.
They are generally mistrusted by the other races and hated for both their unnerving appearance and language of hisses, as well as for their cold hearted nature and their magical experiments which use live specimens of the other races and subject them to the harshest tortures and cruelties imaginable.
