Iwi Awa - The River Folk

The Iwi Awa are a race of people born from the world river Ao Awa. One of the first races to inhabit the Islands, legends say that many millennia ago a group of mortals, persecuted by others, fled their home in search of a safe haven. They built ships and sailed out towards the horizon of the endless ocean. After many hardships, storms, and starvation, the world river, with the help of an Eternal named Romorah, accepted these people as its own and gave them a place to call home. It's water became their blood and the light of the Eternals body was fragmented, becoming their life energy. The world river used its currents to guide their ships to its islands and let them use them as their save harbor and refuge. Over the millennia these people evolved and grew strong in their new environment and abilities.

the life sacrificed by the Eternal gave them not just the ability to live longer, the average Iwi Awa can live anywhere from 5 to 10 millennia, but also the ability to move between the astral and corporeal worlds. they are also harder to kill due to this reason, but also find it harder to have children, often miscarrying due to the child's inability to control its corporeal/astral state.

Using the energy of the world river (called Rowa), the Iwi Awa have become adept healers, shifters, and seers. and those few that travel to other plains are often revered as miracle healers, prophets and, in some regions, as gods.

The Iwi Awa are humanoid in appearance with a slightly blue tint to their hair and skin, and depending on which island they are from, can have pale or a deep tan skin and from a silvery white-blue to a dark blue-black hair. They always have either blue or gold eyes that will very in shade. they will stop aging physically at their ideal age, which can depend on the individual what that will be, but towards the end of their lives they find it harder to control this ability and will start to show their age. the purer the Iwi Awa bloodline the stronger their ability to absorb and manipulate Rowa, and the longer they live. the oldest Iwi Awa to ever live, lived almost 15 millennia and died in the last Chaos War due to a fatal wound and not of old age.

Due to the Iwi Awa's natural affinity to light and water, that have two natural forms. the first is a human form and the second is a creature form, which can be anything from a snake, or a tiger, to a seraphim, or a dragon. the more legendary or mythic the creature the more rare the form and the stronger the Iwi Awa's ability to manipulate Rowa. at the age of 100, Iwi Awa will go through a coming of age trial where they will find this second form.