Agorah

We are a cursed people. A people with no hope and no future. On death our souls are devoured and our experiences lost and then there would be nothing but empty buildings. That was until we found the Shards. The Shards have saved our civilization. The Soul Shards protect our souls and our experiences. It will allow us to grow and expand even without children. We will survive.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Although they do look like normal elves, dwarves and other races, their bodies are very unique compared to the other races. Most of their features are slightly dulled. For example, the elf ears may be slightly shorter than most elves.
Inside of every person is a Soul Shard that holds their souls and is passed to a new body when the current one dies.

Genetics and Reproduction

The people of New Seradin are unable to reproduce. They can not have children and their souls are destroyed when they die. The people of New Seradin grow new bodies and protect their souls by binding them to Soul Shards.

Growth Rate & Stages

Upon death the Soul Shard is removed and prepared for regrowth.

1. The Soul Shard is stripped of most of the memories to avoid degradation.
2. The Soul Shard is planted in an earth plot
3. The new body takes two weeks to grow around the Soul Shard /
4. The new body is reeducated with details about their life and who they are. This process can take over a month.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Although they still eat normal foods, they only need 1/4th of the food most normal people need. They usually only eat once a day or have two tiny meals in a day.

Civilization and Culture

Beauty Ideals

The dulled features of the Agorah usually means beauty is not something they see on the surface.

Relationship Ideals

The Agorah can't have children, so the primary goal of relationships is companionship. There are no taboo racial divides in relationships as they are all considered one race despite their origin race. Although some have stayed with their surface partners from the beginning, others have drifted and created new relationships.

Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals

As a soul shard degrades, a person will start to lose memory and motor function. A family will bring the weakened Agorah to a Soul House to await their new body. There is very little ceremony involved and the soul is transferred in private. One or two family members will usually stay to assist their adjustment to the new body.
In order for the shards to last longer, only core memories are left in place. It is up to the families members that stay to teach them who they were.

Common Taboos

One of the greatest insults is to leave a new body with no one to teach them. Without someone to guide them, some Agorah can become lost and may eventually forget themselves. Many of these may fall to lawlessness to get by and create their own stories to fill the gaps.
Sadly, this happened all too often with war and tragedy.

The Threefold Curse

As the ground shook and shattered, a demon attacked the capital. This Demon would go down with the city. Everything crumbled with it and it was trapped with the rest of the survivors. The demon was horribly wounded in the Quake and used the last of its strength to curse the survivors.
The Threefold Curse would prevent all the survivors from having children. It would seal their bodies and their souls to Underground and finally, their souls would be destroyed upon their death.
This curse would have destroyed the remnants of this civilization if it weren't for the discovery of the Soul Shards.

Soul Shards

While exploring the outer regions for a way out of their prison, the survivors found special crystals later called Soul Shards. These crystals have a unique property allowing a soul to be bound to them. Doing so ensures that their souls aren't lost in death.
These shards will degrade over time though. Having too many memories stored in the shard seems to weaken it and the process to remove memories was started to allow the shards to last longer. The shards also weaken with each additional regrowth. Sadly there is very little that can be done except to avoid early death as a soul only gets one shard. When that shard is destroyed, that soul is lost with it.
The Soul Shards are found the at the Edge of the Mud Sea. There was a mine there when it needed a lot more often, that mine is abandoned now. All the people have a Soul Shard and there was no reason to continue the mining process. They have a few extras used for research purposes.

Lifespan

Most Agorah have a lifespan of about 120 yrs regardless of what race their form suggests. This seems to be the limit of the bodies they create.

Regrowth

The process of creating a new body has improved over time. The first attempt tried to use the remnants of clockwork style bodies. These early attempts failed as the bodies seem to bleed energy off the shards to power the bodies.
The growth of replacement bodies came with the discovery of energized soil. Using the generator to energize the soil allowed for a body to grow around the Soul Shard. It used the memories in the shard as a blueprint for body. Although, the regrowth bodies weren't perfect and later would show a loss of some details, they did function and saved the people from destruction.

Cynosure

Surveying the scene was heartbreaking. The city was in ruins and the dead and injured laid upon the ground with others crying over them. There was almost nothing left of the beauty of Seradin, the city was lost. I knew the people were not lost and we needed to rise above this catastrophe and let the world know the Wrath of Cynosure.

Seradin was the heart of the Cynosure on the surface and although very few of the priests remained, they did their best to keep the faith of the people. This would not last long as the curse put a toll on the people. Their faith would waver, until a few generations later, Cynosure was one of the memories that would eventually never return. There is no god to the people of New Seradin.