Destined am I to hunt down and slay the half breed called Rachat, for only his demise can bring me what I yearn for...

Large lizards about 5 feet long, nothing about them seems to stand out. As drab and colorless as the parched brown stone of the desert, these things come across as your average (admitedly huge) reptile residents. But what most wouldn't know is that these scaly things are virtually unkillable, thanks to a unique gift that they possess.

'Rrrbit! Rrrbit! Great Jove has found you unworthy, human! Now prepare to die !'

Suffused with a love for probing every inch of the darkest and most unexplored depths of the ocean,this adventurous octopus like being possesses a dashing courage most odd for one of his race.

Not very surprising perhaps,when you consider the fact that this young explorer is insane.

‘‘By the strength in my sinews, I swear upon the spirits of my ancestors that this Curd will not forget the mate and children he has lost, nor find rest until his jaws have crushed the life out of the scum that dare to call themselves the Brave People!’’

''I am so very sorry to interupt your grand schemes for seizing control of the nether-realm, but I am afraid that my master, the Lord of the Desolate Shore, has raised some serious objections..''

Nestled between the towering cliffs of the Zorian plateau, lies a vast cavity that is wide enough to swallow an adult bull elephant with enough space to spare for a small herd of draft horses on either side. There you will find gold, an abundance of it. But what is that you say? That the natives tell you that it is a place of death and home to hideous monster that will devour you? Ignore the savages. They only seek to protect what they are too indolent to grab for themselves.

-A Khanate offical assuring a bunch of miners.

Blessed enough to enjoy friendly relations with many nobles, some of them very close to the king of Haracon himself, the Guild leaders of the Keepers are the criminal big-wigs every wealthy and famous animal collecter wants to invite to the grand opening of his exotic zoo or animal park.

The Quarsooth stands regally, watching impassively with its disturbingly beautiful golden eyes, as masses of sweating labourers haul massive block of lime stone towards the river banks of the Obo, the most majestic and the largest body of moving water in the little barony of Farkhon. Ample in fish stocks, the new masters of the land have deemed it perfect for humanity's first fledgling attempt at advanced aqua-culture. If this ambitious prject proceeds as planned, the Quarsooth colonizers will introduce into the rivers, aquatic life-forms from their own native home-world that breed abundantly and are platable for the digestive system of most creatures, thereby guaranteeing their subjects a bulwark against mass starvation in the disastrous event of crop faliure or a cattle disease epidemic.

Some see him as a loathesome reminder of their faliure to cow a race humanity deems unworthy of existence. Others deem him a noble hero and resistance-fighter, a beacon of hope and courage to all the downtrodden of the galaxy.

Regardless, you don't want to smell his breath. Or ever see him up close.

The jewel of the imperial shoal, this aquatic city is the emperor's seat of power.

As the officer strides into the thick and oppresive pitch-black gloom of the jungle, he silently signals to his men to fan out in a classic Quarsooth battle-formation with a nervous hand-gesture. He is very tense, almost afraid. The soothing, omnipresent presence in his mind tells him that he has no reason to worry, assuring him that victory will belong to those noble warriors that carry the standard of the invincible race of Zor-Tanis.

But there is something else cutting through the easy promises offered by that pleasant, gently commanding entity in his mind, as if determined to seize all his attention and use it to torment his imagination until it begins to scream for mercy. This something he cannot define and put words to, but it makes his skin crawl nevertheless. Despite the heat of the jungle, his blazing gold body-armor had suddenly become a chill prison that raises uncomfortable goosebumps along his chest.

Woried muttering from the rear tell him that his men like him, are unsettled. Turning aound in irritation, he begins to hiss at them to remain silent, afraid of alerting the very band of murdering monstrosities they have finally tracked into this eerie wilderness. It would be a rather embarassing matter for their commander if the very quarry they had been relentlessly pursuing for the past week or so, were to suddenly turn around and massacre all of them.

Too late he feels a something slithering around his neck. Fearful that it might be a pyhton, he reackes for his massive ''fire-bow'', determined to incinerate the scaled menace before it can crush his larynx. But before his fingers even have a chance to close around the handle of the weapon hanging from his belt, another coil slithers out of the darkness and out of the darkness and pinions his arm, holding it in a painful crushing crip. As agony swamps him, he can vaguely hear a grim sound of cracking bones through the pain-filled haze that now holds him. His arm is being crushed. And then so quickly that his stunned mind has no time to register this new fact, there is no time left for more thought. The coil looped around his throat begins to squeeze, suffocating him. As the officer's head begins to swim in the final moments of his life, he finally gains an excellent look at the thing that is stealing his life.

It is not a snake, but a vine. As if in response to this discovery, a now terrifyingly familiar roar of bestial fury rings through the gloom of the jungle..

‘‘We are the Lords Of The Straits, Rulers Of the Sea, and the very ocean acknowledges us as Her children! Men of Pan-Kor, nothing sails on the waters without acknowledging our might !’’

Residing in the core of this giant black megalithic structure built to resemble a crude representation of a lightning bolt, lies a Shard of the Storm.

And a lot else..

Can a demon ever learn what it means to feel pity, grief, fear, despair, joy and the rest of those tangled emotions and feelings that plague humans? Can beings who obtain their deepest satisfaction from the suffering they inflict on others,ever embrace those very things they so passionately despise and hate about the mortal races? Mozrak,wisest of the half-demons and beloved of the Mother Godess, believed it not impossible. The Staff is both his curse and gift to his pureblood cousins.

Whenever the earth trembles and shakes, it is the children of the Stinging One furious that the nourishment due to them, has been denied. Honor them unceasingly by sating their hunger, or the earth itself will swallow man-kind whole to feed them''.

-Taken from the Arahuain Codex, the most sacred text known to the priests of Ixtili, the Stinging One.

Feared throughout the southern seas, the Jurokang are a deadly menace to any that intrude into their domain.

Throughly despising the intrigue and scandals of the royal court,Prince Michael has never mourned the loss of his crown and inheritance to a treacherous advisor of his father's. No,inflicting vengeance on the usurper and reclaiming his throne is too petty for him. He has a more important quest to fulfill..

8.) The Revolutionary
This guard is a secret revolutionary. He has a deep hatred for members of the aristocracy, and has made getting this job his lifes work, with the sole intention of assassinating members of the royal family when he gets the chance. So far he has been unsuccessful, first because he needed to gain their trust and then because he has never had the chance-other guards have always been in the right place at the right time. He did once use poison, but the result was not fatal for the target, who put it down to badly cooked food and sacked two of the royal cooks. In battle, he would try and kill as high-ranking a noble as he could: And if he could get away with it, a noble on his own side.

Honored and cherished by the people of the Ragosi mountains, the Osaki have allowed them to retain their freedom in the face of those who would enslave them.