Golats

In the time after the creation of Faelon, the Creator split itself into nine beings. In its wisdom and hubris, It believed that Its design could better understand Its nature when divided into nine aspects. Each of these aspects represented an attribute and personality of the Creator. Each had immense power and presided over a part of creation. They were known as the Ga’al.
Each Ga’al created servants after their own aspects to help them run Faelon. These creatures took different forms and had many functions according to the needs and whims of the Ga’al.
While splitting into different aspects may have helped conscious creation understand its maker, it also unleashed the negative aspects without mitigation from the positive. Before, there was balance, but in the aftermath of separation, these forces were no longer held in harmony.
With nothing to balance the positive and negative aspects of the Creator, war swiftly came to creation. Three of the Ga’al rebelled against creation. They sought to create a world after their own image rather than that of the whole.
The war was terrible, but the selfish nature of the Kehinnin, as the rebellious Ga’al were called, worked against them. One by one, they were imprisoned in Kashorm by the combined forces of the loyal Ga’al and their servants.
During the war, the servants of the Ga’al went from being caretakers of Faelon to weapons and warriors. Some were better suited to this than others. For some of the Ga’al, it was a vast departure from their nature to wage war instead of nurture.
After the war, many of these servants were decimated through combat. Many others were put into hibernation by their masters. Faelon was sundered by the war and drug into the three realms of Faelon, Varan, and Kashorm. It was no longer as it was at creation. Magic was divided between spirit and energy, and its combined use, unobtainable by mortals, was forbidden throughout Faelon.
Some of the Ga’al retreated, distancing themselves from creation while recuperating from the devastating war they had fought. They would later seek followers from among the sentient races, becoming more involved with Faelon after mending. Others, like the Hearth, set about trying to repair the damage done to Faelon and cultivating it to once again become the creation that it cherished.
Hearth represents creation itself and felt responsible for repairing the immense damage done to Faelon during the war. The Hearth created many servants to aid It. Still, the Golats were perfectly suited to bettering the world and restoring the beauty of creation after the war.
The Golats were created by Hearth to tend, nurture, and restore Faelon. While most of the Hearth’s servants were natural parts of the ecosystem, the Golats stood outside of it, meant to help sustain creation while remaining independent.
Golats are larger than other sentient races, much taller and broader than other humanoid species, which they slightly resemble. They have a variety of skin colors, ranging from deep green to light olive skin. Loremasters who care to investigate such things, and those who worship the Hearth, have also noted that Golat skin color is often tied to their places.
Golats seem to have little intelligence, but that is far from the truth. They are not like the sentient species of Faelon. They have been given purpose by the Hearth, and they carry out that purpose with every ounce of their being.
Golats don’t have a leader because they do not need one; each Golat knows its place, and each does its job to keep Faelon in balance. They live collectively, and each work exhaustingly to fulfill their place in Golat society and Faelon.
Golats have communities called Groves in almost every place on Faelon. Wherever there is nature to tend, the Hearth placed Golats to keep nature’s balance and cultivate it as a garden. They do this through several means, primarily magical.
Golats were gifted with a magic known as Treespeak. They used this magic to help grow and tend to creation. They also used it to travel quickly across the world, using the trees as conduits.
The Golats have many other magical qualities. They are blessed with a resistance to the magic of others. They also use collective magic that they sing to help things grow to their true potential.
One of the most impressive sights and sounds of Faelon is of one or more Golat Groves singing a new planting into maturity. This has been witnessed by very few people, each of them blessed and chosen by the Hearth. Their recollections, those that have survived and are extant, are housed in the Temple to Modo in Erladan.
The sentient races lived in harmony with the Golats, seeing them as the helpers they were intended to be. They had no reason to come into conflict with them. This state continued for ages, and some chose to venerate the Hearth through religion, making them tolerant of the Golat’s purpose and allies with them.
The Trilian people venerate nature and have a special relationship with the Golats. They were among the first to ally with the Golats, who taught them their Treespeak magic. Though the Trilian were limited in its use, they could wield it with the blessing of the Hearth.
Over time, the Kenhinnin began to grow strong again. Some in Faelon were turned against creation and thus the Hearth. No one was immune from this corruption, and as the world fell out of balance, more races came into conflict with the Golat, whose nature and mission had not changed in all these years.
Many began to see the Golats as mindless monsters and sought to eradicate them. Since then, Golats have become increasingly sparse, their remaining numbers trying desperately to keep to the tasks given to them by the Hearth and stop creation from destroying itself.
As the Kehinnin gain more power from their prisons in Kashorm, they infect more races with their selfish and destructive forces. Initially, The Golats acted as a buffer between sentient and non-sentient creation, teaching and partnering with the different races to keep the world in balance. They spend more time actively keeping the Faelon from destroying itself rather than tending and growing it. They find themselves in direct conflict with the sentient races as they try to balance their world.
Most cannot fathom the motivations of these giants. They attack logging camps, mines, and places where hunters ravage the land. Destructive monsters are all anyone sees, so the Golat has now become the hunted in many lands.
Those that worship Hearth have tried to warn those around them, but as the Kehinnin’s power gains sway, the old ways are lost, and modernity beckons, their warnings often fall on deaf ears. The Golats, for their part, don’t understand the enmity they have earned from the sentient races, nor their reputation as monsters. They continue to carry out their mission and will until the Hearth tells them to stop.
There are many different kinds of Golats, each with its purpose, skill set, and level of individuality. The sentient races only encounter some.