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116: Let's Go To Build-a-Snake! · Dungeonpedia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You the adventurer?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you desire knowledge of immense worlds and arcane power?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: A codex of untold stories and lore?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps simply easy listening for your daily commute?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And feast your eyes, or more accurately, yes, upon Dungeon Pedia.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about to get nerdy in here.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm Travis Peasley.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, oh boy.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_04: Oh boy.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_04: So um just uh starting off uh Oh sorry, sorry, sorry.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Lewin, it you should be shamed.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: You should be shamed.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_05: I kind of I wanted to on I wanted to do it on the the thing for a sec for like a like a a bit and then the bit didn't form, and then I was like, surely if I put it all the way over here, it won't um yet it yeah.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_05: So we're cracking open a cold one today.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_05: Very nice.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_04: Anyways, so so uh whenever I initially started researching this topic, I was like, okay, cool.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just gonna do like a quick overview of everything.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_04: And then we started I started doing the overview over like the first one and just kind of kept going.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: And then I realized I was like, oh shit, this is just a whole episode.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_04: So I have now tied myself into doing a multi-part series.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Join the club.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: Without uh without meaning to.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_05: Oopsie.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_05: Oopsie.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, do we ever really mean to?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I guess literally, I I always do.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, people who aren't people who aren't me.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, yeah, I usually don't mean to, but this time I did, so there we go.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that's a thing.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_05: Also, a quick overview of everything in such a mood.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_05: You're just like, Yeah, screw it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_04: Well, because initially I was uh just researching one of the things, and I was like, okay, there doesn't look like there's a whole lot to this one, so it should just be fine.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: And then I went back and was like, oh, I guess I should do it in like chronological order.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then I started researching the first one, and I was like, oh shit, nope, never mind.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no, there's more.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I feel like there's so many things where it's like if you were to do like one, you know, individual part, yeah, or whatever, it's like, okay, well, this isn't enough for like a whole thing.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_05: But then if you try to include all of it, it's like, okay, well, now this is too too big for one episode.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_05: When they were making DD, they should have thought about us.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: They should have thought about us specifically.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_05: They should have put put all the information for things in a concise, uh, you know, perfect size block of information for what for everything to fit nicely and smoothly into one episode.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they should have they should have considered us.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: The uh topic brief history of everything.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: A brief blah blah a brief history of everything.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh this is gonna be fun.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: Hey especially because I already know that there are words that I'm just like I really don't actually know how to do it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there's some good words in here I can already see.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm surprised that we don't have an entire um you scroll, you have to keep scrolling down to the pronunciation glossary.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_04: There weren't really pronunciation guides for a lot of these.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_05: Good.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_05: You gotta do it like like you're like you're me in elementary and middle school, where you just you read a lot of books and you just you have to intuit pronunciations because you you because you are 12 years old.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you hope for the best because you speak English and uh this is a bastard language.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_04: So we are going to be talking about the creator races.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, so we're gonna be talking about the creator races.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_05: Spoilers for the thing that's named two seconds later, and probably is there's a reference to it in the title.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: Spoilers.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_04: So um the creator races.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: Who exactly are they?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_04: Well they made stuff.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_04: They did make things.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_04: People, people and other creatures specifically.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: So the creator races are a group of five ancient races that are native to a Biritorial.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: They were prominent during what is called the Days of Thunder, which is negative 35,000 DR to negative like 30,000 DR, roughly.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_04: I think the timeline is a bit give or take on that, but that's kind of just the rough estimate of the timeline.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_05: I love how for things that happened a long time ago, sometimes it gets into a a mode where it's like what would be a massive amount of time to consider for us nowadays is like whatever.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_05: Like when people talk about dinosaurs and shit, and they're like, Yeah, they existed probably anywhere from 60 to 65 million years ago.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_05: And it's like a literally abbreviated MYA, and it's like, oh yeah, you know, give or take a few million a few million years.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, whatever, it's fine.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's fine.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_04: So the creator races are the ones who gave rise to many of the common races that we know and love or hate.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't hate any of them.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um the Tarask.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's not a that's not a race.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_05: That's a that's one guy.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's one guy.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_04: But still.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, I would I would love to know who among these might be responsible for that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_04: If I had to guess, it would be the uh saruk.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_04: I'm pretty sure that's how that's pronounced.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_05: That looks right.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: So we have the five uh different creator races.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_04: You have the saruk, which were reptilian and uh like saroid creator race.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_04: Dinosaurs.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_04: Dinosaurs.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they created most of the like serpent folk and like the scaly kind, uh like the Yuan T, the Naga, the lizard folk.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_04: Stuff like that.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_04: Then you have the Batrachi, which were more amphibians and amphibio boy amphibian blah.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: Amphibi boid amphibi boys, if you will.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_05: Amphibi.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_05: Amphibi boys.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_05: The amphibi boys.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they were the ones that created most of the amphibious Piscine and shapeshifter races, such as like the bully rugs, the doppelgangers, the kuatoa, stuff like that.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_04: You have the Ari, which were avian.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_04: I was about to say, I wonder.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, very uh avian naming.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, very self-explanatory.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they created the avian humanoid races like the Ara Coker and the Kinku.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_04: You have the Lache, which are the Fei.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I have heard of the Lache before.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think probably in the elf episode.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_04: Probably.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_04: They were the rulers of the realm fairy, otherwise known as the Fey Wild.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_04: They created a lot of the Fey and like small woodland creatures and beings like the choriids, pixies, sprites, so on.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: Makes sense.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_04: And then you have the humans, which I mean humanoid, obviously.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_04: Though I use that term very lightly in this case, because it states that at the beginning they were still very primitive and ape-like.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_05: So this was a a race of people known as humans that made humans, or when you say create when you say creator race, do you mean like manufactured, like or like more like the more common ancestor?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking common ancestor.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_05: Well, or does it get does it get sticky?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: Going to the Savage Frontier from 1988, it kind of gives a brief overview of the creator races.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: So eons before men walked the earth, ages before the elves were civilized enough to record history, in a time when the north was always warm and the seas of the world were deeper.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_04: Pangea land of Abir Toril were dominated by vast empires of inhuman peoples.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, Pangea, basically.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_04: So in the Elven oral tradition, these were known as the Days of Thunder.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Hence the Days of Splender, as previously mentioned.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_05: What do you mean oral?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_05: That was last episode.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus Christ.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus Christ.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_05: That's the last time I'll that's the last time I'll make that joke.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sorry.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_05: Probably for now, for this episode.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: For this episode exclusively.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so the L's are actually the ones that gave these creatures the name creator races, but it does explicitly state, uh, quote, no honor or respect was intended when they gave them these or this name.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's so that's so Elven.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_05: They're like, we've gotta like we've gotta find uh like a good way, like a good umbrella term to describe these people.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_05: And like, I guess maybe they did do something kind of important, but like we gotta make sure that they know they're not that that they're not.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they're not they don't like they're not that important, and we do not respect them.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_05: No respect intended is so funny because I feel like you always just hear no like no disagree.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_05: No disrespect intended.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: But they're like no, no respect.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: No respect intended.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, just straight up.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna start using that in casual conversation.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they they tamed the just established dominance, yeah.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they tamed the dinosaurs, built towering cities of stone and glass on the shores of the warm seas, and spanned the wilderness with shining roads, fought constant wars of extermination, you know, dear normal.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, so really they weren't so different from from us.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: No, exactly.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_05: No, except for the dinosaurs.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_05: We don't have those, but yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_05: I guess in D D you do have dinosaurs still.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: You do you do still have dinosaurs?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_04: So back in those days, magic was more in its raw form, less refined and much more potent.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: Pre-Mistra having to do shit to keep things in play.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_05: Pre-weave, pre-Mistra, banning like 12th level spells, pre all that, you know.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_04: So naturally the creator races decided hey, we have all this incredible power magic.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna start experimenting.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: And they experimented endlessly with these magics.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_05: As you as you do, that's never uh ended badly before.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_05: Never, not once.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_05: Never.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_05: Though you know what, this might be the first time in recorded history it did anything bad.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not like you know, it's not like they had fair, they didn't have examples, they didn't have like movies and stuff about it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_05: So it's not.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, okay.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, sorry, I'm a little rusty on my my pre my my pre-weave.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, my pre uh days of thunder history.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: So to give uh example of like the power of these spells, it specifically states that powerful mages hurled devastating bolts of seemingly godlike power that could level armies and mountains.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, yeah.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, much like gods, they experimented with creating life.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_04: As you do.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, instead of you know destroying the life that they created, they instead just set them loose into the wilderness.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: They're like, uh, we don't like this one, so we'll try again, but this one can go free.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_05: Basically, they they did not have Jurassic Park, the film.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: They did not have Jurassic Park the film.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_04: Most of the creations died in the cruel jungles, but there were still many that lived on.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_04: And as those creatures gained more sentience, they hid themselves from their creators.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, so is that how that's how we get us and other things and other things, I see and others.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_04: So, to get a little better of a timeline for the creator races, we can jump to the powers and pantheons for second edition.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: From what I was able to tell, this book leaves out the Aerie race and instead replaces them with dragons, not dragons are 100% sure why, but that's why dragons are cooler.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_05: Dragons are cooler.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_05: And also, if you ask a dragon, they're gonna tell you they they did everything.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_05: So that is true.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's fucking true.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: So this could also be like unreliable narrator, yeah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_05: A little bit of like revisionist history kind of thing.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_05: Even though, like, I mean, they they probably were doing something, I don't know.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_05: Dragon things, just dragon things, just dragon things.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_04: So uh first up was the Surach.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: They were the first to rise to dominance and also the first to fall.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: They were a dinosaurid sort of race that survives today, but only as a divergent species of lizardmen, naugas, and other reptilian creatures.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: Next you had the Batrachi, the aquatic shape-shifting race that became amphibious at some point, and they actually supplanted the Ceroch.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: They also survive today as non-shapeshifting Lokatha and Taco Taiko.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: I I've literally never seen that word before.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I was gonna look at the pronunciation of that and forgot.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: And the uh land dwelling shapeshifting doppelgangers and greater doppelgangers.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting that it kind of happened in the reverse that it happened in the real world where like amphibians sort of gained greater prominence prior to dinosaurs.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, and also in in in this, like I want to know who among these made would have made shit like opabinia or like anomalocaris or something, like those fucked up guys.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, because those were those words you just said they're they're they're they're fucked up little guys in the ocean in like the one of them was in the Cambrian the Cambrian Yeah, the Cambrian you know what I mean.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: The Cambrian explosion.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: The Cambrian explosion, yeah, yeah.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_05: And the other one was in one of the other fucked up.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_05: They were just fucked up little guys in the ocean, you know.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_04: So third is supposed to be the Airy, but again, no mention of them in this book.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_04: Fucking dragons.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_04: So I guess in this case, but it doesn't like the dragons weren't third, also.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: The dragons, I believe, came after the Lachey.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I'm not a hundred percent on that because again, my uh research ended up being just on the Surach.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_04: But then you had the Lache, which were the Sylvan people, whose descendants are, you know, the sprites, the Korid, many other fairy fun, small peoples.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_04: And then less, of course, were the humans.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: They were at that point more primitive than any of the previous races, but they were the most adaptable and ingenious.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: So their rise was both astonishing in speed and planet-wide efficiency.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_04: Kind of like real life.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: I don't like it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's a mirror.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_05: That's the power of thumbs, guys.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_05: That is the power.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think that the lache also have thumbs.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_05: That's also thumbs and human arrogance.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's like a Venn diagram.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_05: The center is like thumbs, standing upright, and then just like hubris.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_05: Actually, the Fei kind of fall in there too, a little bit, I think.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_05: A little bit.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_05: A little bit sometimes.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: A different kind of hubris, though.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's a little more it instead of the hubris that comes from being very short-lived and easy to kill, it's the kind of hubris that comes from being very long-lived and difficult to kill.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, true.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like I said, I was just gonna kind of do a quick overview of all those, but that ended up not happening.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: So uh this episode is going to be about the Saruk, the first in the line of the creator races.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then your next episodes are gonna be the others.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the uh multisodes.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_05: Now I kind of I now I wonder if it would be kind of fun to do an episode on just like humans.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, one day, fortunately, I am going to end up having to do that.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: So have fun.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you do unlike the the specification.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like the human.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_05: It's like welcome to my conclusion paragraph.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_05: It is longer than the entire paper by like several magnitudes.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so actually, I'm gonna look real quick.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_04: So it is actually pronounced, oh my god, it is pronounced taco.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's pronounced taco.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: T-A-K-A-O.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: There's supposed to be another A in there.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they were a race of intelligent octopuses, apparently.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_05: Whoa.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, like Taco Yaki.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um the picture that it shows of them in third shift is one of them is wielding a spear.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: Third shift?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my Jesus Christ.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Are you still gonna work?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so I was gonna find a picture of the shares and I just typed in Taco Yaki.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, that's not taco yaki.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's just literally I will have to have to put it in post, but it's it's literally just an octopus holding a spear.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, and also its eye is fucked up.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_05: It has a weird eye.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_05: It does have a weird eye.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_05: It has one big eye.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: Kind of like a a squid.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, no.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_05: Well squid can have two eyes.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_05: But it's like in the it's yeah, it's it's it's like weirdly.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I guess more the framing is kind of like a a squid eye.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_05: Like yeah, it's like a lot, yeah.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_05: It's more on like yeah, it's bigger and kind of more on a flatter part of the head as opposed to.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_05: I was gonna say it looks like if it looks like if a beholder had um tentacles, but they hey good news.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_05: I kind of already do.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, it does, and it also is holding a spear in the the third uh edition art.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_05: It's just holding a spear and it looks like it's holding it in position where it's waving it angrily.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_05: So it looks like the amphibian, the the the Bitrachi kind of also ended up in the various water creatures, including vertebrates and invertebrates.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, because we've got a more aquatic focus.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we've got an an octopus-looking guy here, and you said Pisine or Piscine earlier.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_05: So this is they just kind of got in there.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's the history of the earth, but out of order, and also there's a face step in there.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_05: Also, there's also there's fairies there, it's fine, yeah, and dragons sometimes, evidently.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_04: Evidently, evidently, yeah.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_04: So the Saruk, the first mention of them as far as like actually, really just the first mention kind of in general was in the Lords of Darkness supplement from 1988.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_04: It was the earliest I could find of the mention of them.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_04: And it doesn't really like mention the race as a whole, like specifically, but uh the book itself is quote, an anthology of short adventures set in various locations in the forgotten realms, and seems to focus more on the undead than anything.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, charmingly nonspecific.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_05: Very an anthology of short adventures set in various locations.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_04: So one of the adventures is called Mummies, and basically the setup to it is like a recent rock slide revealed an ancient tomb that holds a mummy by the name of Eastok.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Eastok, but it's spelled with an H and then way more S's than you think you need.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: Three S's, way more S's than you think you need.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sure that's maybe reflective of a real like pronunciate, like potato like a real language where that might be like how that's pronounced, but I think it's also like kind of a probably like kind of a pun.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think it's a pun.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: It looks like it says hiss.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: It does look like it says hiss, so I think it's a pun.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_04: So East Talk is actually one of the ancient reptilian creator races that guards a collection more or less of very powerful spells.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_04: And just as like a fun side note, one of the random encounters you could run into in this adventure are dinosaur skeletons.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yo, night at the museum, yo.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so like yeah, yeah, that that's fun.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like dinosaur skeletons.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_04: I like it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Me too.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh to chase chase its own femur.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my god.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_05: What are they gonna do?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_05: Eat you?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can't eat.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: You that's what I mean.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: I know, I'm I'm I'm agreeing.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm adding to the joke.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, okay.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: You can't eat, you ain't got no internal organs.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_05: They try, they try to eat you, and you just like fall out at the bottom.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_05: Well, see, that's why you make sure you chew your food.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_05: So true.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_05: Chewing your food's important.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's very true.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: PSA.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: PSA, the more you know.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_05: We're an educational podcast.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, so Eastok was once a noted sorcerer among his reptilian people.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_04: When they realized that their time was coming to an end, he willingly allowed himself to be mummified in order to protect the magical scrolls uh that became to be known as the nether scrolls that held the knowledge to magically modify other creatures.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, that's not great.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_04: Basically, the knowledge that the Ceric used when experimenting with creating life.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_04: Not good.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_04: And like specifically, they put everything in this tomb for him to guard.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: So when the uh serpents races started to try to rise again, they would be able to use that to help.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: So they were fucking around, creating life, and then were like, eh, this kind of sucks.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Just keep releasing them.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_03: But then they're like, oh, but since we're gonna die, it's okay for our people to inherit the earth.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, duh.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_04: Most of the problem.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, that was kind of all the mention of uh of them for that.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_04: Most of their lore comes from one uh single book, which is pretty much not even pretty much, is literally the rest of this episode coming from this one book from 3.5 edition called Serpent Kingdoms.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: Serpent Kingdoms, okay.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_05: Insert Elden Ring joke.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_05: I haven't played Elden Ring.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_05: I can't, I can't get good.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_05: I haven't either, it's fine.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_04: So their empires rose and fell between negative 35,000 DR and negative 33,500 dr.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: Less than 2,000 years?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: That kind of sucks.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they didn't get a whole lot of time in the grand scheme of time.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, they were doing a lot of they were doing a lot of wild shit though.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_05: Like they were like the these various like groups were probably just wiping out huge swaths of each other's population at any just any to any day of the week, and then just kind of immediately bouncing back because they all essentially, with the way like magic was, it sounds like they all basically essentially had unlimited nukes, they're just constantly blowing each other up.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_05: But then also they had but then also they had uh eugenics magic, so they were just like, Oh, let's just make some new guys.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_05: Let's just make some new guys, you know.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: I will say I was comparing them in terms of longevity to the actual reign of dinosaurs, which you know, several million years.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing to sneeze at when I probably should be comparing them to like just empires.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, because they they are serpent-like, but they are still humanoids.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the they have a society.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh a lot of society, and you will in fact learn what exactly caused their downfall.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, fun.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they first appeared in an area known as Okoth, which is you know around the beginning of negative 35,000 DR.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_04: The development of the Siroc was relatively uncontested in their homeland, so um, like their population quickly surpassed the level sustainable by the local resources.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: Makes sense.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_04: Because they virtually had like no predators or anything like that.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_04: They could just kind of grow as much as they wanted.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_04: So they kind of did.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_04: And then, you know, they were forced to expand and spread rapidly throughout Feyrun.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: At this point, they had already learned to smelt iron for steel weapons and armor.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_04: So any resistance they encountered by the quote savages that inhabited the lands was short-lived, if anything.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_04: I wish there was any resistance, it was pretty much quashed.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_05: I wish I remembered anything about like anything, but particularly like you know, human history, because in my mind I'm like, they're gonna smell iron.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_05: That that's pretty that's pretty quick, but I don't actually know how long it took us to figure out how to do that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_05: A while, uh like a bit.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I don't remember.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: Iron Age is relatively recent in the grand scheme of things.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_04: So within a hundred years, they conquered like much of Feyrun.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's pretty quick.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_04: So it took them like a hundred years to pretty much conquer all the land, and that was it.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that that's pretty quick.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_05: But that's apparently only one uh one fifth, that's one fifteenth of their of how long the empire actually lasted.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: So what did they do for the rest of the time?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know, I don't know if those numbers are good or not at that point.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I'll tell you what they ended up doing because it did a lot not great.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oof.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_04: So they had you know their three biggest empires were Okoth, the Mer Sulk, Mer Shalk, Mer Shalk, Mer Shalk, uh, which was founded in negative 34800, and then Istosefifi.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Estos.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_04: Istosefiphil.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_05: I feel like I feel like you gotta really drag out the S's, right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, which that one was founded in negative 34500, so 300 years more or less.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_04: As they spread out, they discovered that the shamans of like other races living in the wilderness held like magical lore that they had not yet encountered.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_04: So as they conquered everything, they studied the primitive forms of magic and consolidated all their discoveries into a series of tomes.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and then decided to take these books to Orim, which is the capital of Isocephapil, where the most magically gifted among the Sarok and their servitor races poured over the tomes, got as much of the information as they could, and then put it all together in a couple of scrolls.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_04: The collection grew into its own secret organization called the uh Beetith.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Which got some fun some fun apostrophes in the middle of the word.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_05: I love I love when there's apostrophes in words that aren't just possessive.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_05: Possessive, yeah.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like Baetith, Bayetith, something like that.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_04: But it was create uh sorry, it was.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_04: This organization specifically is what created the golden skins of the world serpent, aka the nether scrolls.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_05: That's such a good name.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: I like that they have a have a good, like a really good original name that like they're because the nether scrolls is very um well, first of all, it makes me think of the elder scrolls.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, same.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_04: But it also makes me think of netherill.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then, well, that's probably what named it the nether scrolls, is that they don't be.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the uh actually, yes, the netherill uh I think ended up discovering it first, if I recall, and then they are the ones that named it the nether scrolls.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I I like that they actually had an original name that the people that made it called it.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: And also that it's the golden skins of the world serpent.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, okay.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: Because uh they worshipped the world serpent, that was their deity.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_04: Ah yeah, their empires continued to grow until the Ceric had conquered so many races that they became the minority in their own empire.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_04: Ah and uh by conquered I also mean enslaved.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I think I'm starting to see I think I'm starting to see maybe the beginning of their downfall a little bit.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_05: We may.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_04: So as they were conquering everything, they decided that, you know, they were going to enslave all these other races too.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_04: As you do.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: So like there were thousands of other races that fulfilled their needs, satisfied every desire, and then the Cerok became increasingly dependent on these other races because of how they were living.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, these other these other races that came to outnumber them.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_05: Interesting.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_05: And they were probably uh largely a lot of them not very happy about the situation.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_05: More than likely.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_05: I think I know where this is going.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_04: It uh yeah.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_04: So, like, you know, eventually this ended up leading to their downfall.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, they're shocking.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_04: They overwhelmed themselves.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_04: When you become the minority of your own empires because of how many slaves you have, that's gonna cause a problem as soon as any of them realize yeah, when they outnumber you the uh parable of the grasshopper and the ant.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was gonna say when they invent movies and they watch a bug's life for the first time, it's fucking over.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_05: It's over, it's fucking over now.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: So Ocath was the first empire to fall, and it fell around negative 34,100, followed by Istocephil in negative 33,800, and then finally Mershulk in negative 33,500.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: Most of the Saruk died in the collapses of their empires, um, but again, there were still like many that survived, and the ones that survived from the different major empires basically kind of did different things.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they like ran and did like their own things to survive.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_04: The ones from Isocephal retreated into Lichdom in the depths of Orim.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_05: That's always a good fallback, fallback plan.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, turn into a lich.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, where uh they are protected by a Sabi, which are a seven-foot-tall reptilian humanoid race that they created.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: Could couldn't go wrong.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing bad could happen with that.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_04: Nope.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it hasn't so far.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_05: We'll see.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, no.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_05: The the difference is this time they didn't just like conquer some people and enslave them.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_05: This time they made them for the express purpose of being there, and that's totally fine.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, obviously.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_05: That always works out good.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_04: And uh don't know, don't worry.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_04: I know that it seems like I am skipping a lot of the uh in-between here, but I'm basically covering their general like empire timeline, and then I'm gonna go back and cover like the more specifics of their like yeah what happened, the the goings on, yeah, and their relationships and like how they live and all that.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_04: So just a quick overview of their timeline and then into the more juicy fun stuff.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the uh Sark that you know retreated into Lichdom, they have the asabi that protect them, and that's where they just kind of sleep still to this day.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_04: The ones uh Mareshulk face starvation, so they began a cycle in which thousand-year hibernations alternated with brief periods of activity during which food gathering and procreation took place.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_05: Like cicadas.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_05: Cicadas, except instead of 17 years, it's like one thousand years.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a thousand years at a time, they'll hibernate, then they'll come out, they'll eat, they'll reproduce, and then they go back into hibernation.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_05: That fucking sucks.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_05: The brief period is like two years because it's maybe it's brief in comparison to a thousand years.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_05: So they're just they're just screaming and fucking for like two years straight.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_04: Two years straight, and then all right, everyone back to sleep.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_05: All right, everyone, everyone back to your back to your pods.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_05: Back to the pods.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_04: And then the ones from OCath wondered the planes for millennia, never settling in one place for more than a generation.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_04: They basically just became nomads, more or less, but they increasingly embraced their darker natures as they did this, which it caused a few dissenters who didn't like this push towards evil to break off from the main group.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: So so they didn't like the uh eugenics empire, but they or sorry, they did like the eugenics empire, but this it was a bridge too far.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, the going into like pure evil is a bridge too far because they weren't pure evil before.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_05: Also, I like that this is the the cohort of them that they talk about embracing their darker natures instead of the ones that became liches.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_05: Became liches.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: So what did they do?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_04: You don't want to know.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: Don't want to know.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_04: So this uh small group of dissenters went to uh Jazeerian, which is a fragment of the world serpent, for help.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_04: The help was granted in the form of being turned into coattals.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's so cool.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know that's where coattles came from.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so uh oh, so this was the group of like dissenters.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yes, the group of dissenters.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_05: I would turn into coattals are good.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_05: That's yeah, because I was like, wait, coattles are nice.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, so uh quick brief aside for the world serpent.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_04: At some point, and I didn't cover any of this, but I just remember it.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_04: At some point, the world serpent actually ended up splitting itself into numerous fragments of itself that were like basically their own deities to help like cover all of these other like races and stuff.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Aww.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_04: So the world serpent, you know, did that, but the world serpent's really also not very nice either.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: It seems like a multi-aspected sort of being.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because whenever the world serpent first uh like came, he the world serpent actually came to the circ before they were as intelligent as they were, more or less, and was like, hey, I can make you guys smarter and stronger.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_04: You just have to worship me and also sacrifice to me.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that's pretty that's that's pretty normal.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not saying it's great.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not saying it's nice, but like that's not it is pretty normal.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_05: See, the they were like, okay, cool, and then they and then they like started doing eugenics and killing each other a lot, and the world server was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_05: I I just wanted like a goat every now and again, you know.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_05: We just can we back this up a little bit.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: I just wanted a goat in reptilian domination.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: Was that too much to ask for?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_04: You only wish it was a goat that he wanted.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_05: Oh that it wanted the five goats, maybe.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like that vine.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: A bagel.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: Two bagels.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_05: Two bagels.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_04: So naturally, whenever they became quadles, a war broke out between them and the Ocothian.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_04: The Quadles were able to hold their own for quite a while until uh Merchulk, which is a darker fragment of the world serpent, was able to kill Jazerian.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_05: Which is sort of also a ha like it looks like a I forget if it's homonym or homophone, I don't remember, of the one empire.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_05: That was also called Merchulk, but spelled a little different.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_05: That that might be that might be like part of their like mythos.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_05: Even yeah, even before like the world serpent like formally split, maybe that was like an ass like they considered the aspect of the world serpent.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_05: And so they named one of their capital cities.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: I will say one of the pieces of the world serpent eating another or destroying another piece of the world serpent is very much Ouroboros.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and it's also yeah.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, I don't think I noted it down anywhere because it wasn't necessarily specific to just the Sark, but it did mention, I think, something about a civilization or a continent called Ouroboros, more or less.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I mean so why not?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_04: So when uh Jazerian was killed, the Quatles were then forced to flee to Iber Torel, eventually settling in a place known as Mastika.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: Ah, yeah, okay.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: So that's like the South American-styled continent in Forgotten Realms.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_04: In Mastika, the god Kodal, I think is how it's pronounced Kodal, Kodal.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: Q-O-T-A-L, I think Kodal, yeah.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_04: He or they ended up embracing the Kawodal race as his divine minions and acknowledged him uh and they acknowledged him as uh Jazeerian Reborn.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_04: So they fled once their god was killed, they found this new god who was like, Hey, I will take you.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_04: And they're like, Oh, hey, this must be our god, just reborn.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_05: They they like showed up to the party and realized that they had like very similar names, and they're like, Yeah, we're friends now.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, we're friends now.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: I I I do like that.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: I experienced that a lot in grade school of like three or four people being named Taylor, and so we all felt like we had to band together.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's like two or three people in the same class.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_04: So the Saruk, uh, not any particular ones.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_04: This is just kind of as a whole, took the scaly animals and monsters that were native to Tauril and modified them into sentient beings with the magic that they had, basically.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they enslaved or sacrificed other creatures in the name of the world serpent.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_04: So before they had dealings with other species, enslaving their own kind was viewed as right and proper as long as the slave received proper care and fair treatment.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean lots of yeah, I mean lots of real world examples on that one.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I yeah, I guess it yeah, yeah.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um Saruk slaves uh lived in their masters' homes, they received good food and were not overworked.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_04: They were occasionally they were occasionally sold or traded from one Saruk to another, but for the most part, they remained with the same family for life.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_04: And then eventually, when a slave became too old to work, they might be freed, assigned to rear the master's young, or be sacrificed to the world serpent according to his own wishes and his past performance.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_05: Just said, All right, I'm I'm too old, I'm tired of sweeping, just throw me in the volcano, you know.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: Bye.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean, on the on the one hand, it is like, you know, given and you know, given that this is being discussed in the in the in the source book, like, you know, you do have to assume it's true, as opposed to the testimony of people who are like, uh, say like people, for example, who were like, yeah, no, I bet they I bet it was totally it was totally fine.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_05: It's totally chill.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: But it's also like obviously it's still, you know, I I think you can I think one way to look at it is like this was sort of the expectation, whether or not it actually this was the societal expectation, whether or not it fit the um fit every single scenario.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and also in general, regardless of how well taken care of someone is, you're still taking their freedom away from them.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's still wrong.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_05: It's still wrong.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: But I do think there's a little bit of a baseline probably, because I can assume that when they started conquering and enslaving various non-Saruk people, it probably wasn't like Oh, yeah.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_05: Then it sort of becomes this like there's no pretense of it being like a quaint, like oh he's my slave, he's my housekeeper.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, things like that.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: It so it's more of like the pretense for this, and whether or not it actually is true.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: This is the pretense.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, but I can imagine that once we get into once we start getting into the the non-Saruk people, it's like uh oh, yeah.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_04: Which uh we are going to get into right after our break.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll be right back.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_05: We'll be right back.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you everyone for listening to this week's episode and first episode of apparently a potentially five episode series.
• 41:42
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• 41:44
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• 41:47
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• 41:50
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• 41:57
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• 42:02
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• 42:04
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• 42:05
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• 42:07
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• 42:13
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• 42:15
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• 42:16
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• 42:19
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• 42:19
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• 42:26
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• 42:30
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• 42:35
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• 42:41
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• 42:45
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• 42:48
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• 42:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's fall now, so it's basically Halloween first.
• 42:52
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• 42:54
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• 42:56
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• 42:58
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• 42:58
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• 43:05
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• 43:06
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• 43:10
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• 43:24
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• 43:32
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• 43:38
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• 43:44
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• 43:51
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• 43:54
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• 43:58
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• 44:03
  SPEAKER_05: Just like we appreciate Alexander Nakarata for our theme song Blacksmith.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: And with that, I want to get back to it.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: I want to hear more.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_04: Well, back to uh the Saruk.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_04: Now we're going to delve into the more specifics of their society and uh other stuff like that.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_04: And uh, like I said before the break, first we have the uh other races as slaves and how those were treated.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, we thought it was bad before.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's about to get it's about to get worse.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_05: He thought it was bad when it was under Saruk.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_05: Now it's probably worse.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_04: So um other races weren't so lucky.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_04: The Saruk felt little social responsibility for creatures of other races, so they were treated much worse.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_05: Saying little social responsibility feels so funny.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, thinking about slavery, like yeah, I can believe that the people who were super duper into slavery and sacrificing people maybe didn't have the best sense of social responsibility.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_05: Social responsibility.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_05: Probably not.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe, maybe not.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_04: The other races were called scalless ones, and uh they might be starved for days at a time and then beaten for their inability to work.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_05: All right.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_05: You you did that to yourself right off the bat, yeah.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_05: You all did that to yourself.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_05: In the early days, specifically.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_05: The Saru, yeah, but by not giving them food, it's like, oh, you haven't eaten for three days and you don't want to work.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_05: What's wrong with like what do you think is wrong?
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, not the scaleless ones.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_05: It was the scalpers.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_05: Right, yeah.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_05: What do you think is wrong?
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, in the early days of their expansion, scaleless ones were not viewed as worthy sacrifices for the world serpent, which I guess for them was good or bad.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I don't know for sure.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's interesting.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_05: So the world serpent did not want goats.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, got it.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_04: Nope.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_04: Their uh quote, abysmally low status meant that they could be killed with impunity and eaten by their masters.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_04: Delicious.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: Fun.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_04: They eventually stopped fighting their own wars and instead trained their slaves to fight for them.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's a great idea.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, really seeing how their empire ended up falling, huh?
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, see, we talked about the hubris with like humans earlier, but you could definitely see it.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: I thought that this was grade school reading level.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Turns out it's teaching you to read reading level in terms of being able to see it coming.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_05: Like they're like, guys, I have a great idea.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_05: You know, all those, all those, all those uh people that we've like enslaved and like routinely abuse.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_05: What if we what if we armed them and taught them how to fight?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_05: It's a good idea, and then everyone was like, You fucking genius.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_05: You're a genius, and then smash cut to like the the Empire on fire.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_04: Who could have predicted this?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_04: No one, no one could have predicted this.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_04: They would promise the best warriors freedom, which they would occasionally actually keep that promise.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_04: Mostly they did it just to show the other games like it was technically possible to earn your freedom if you were uh they're dang they're dangling that, they're dangling that.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, because um not only you know would they promise them freedom, they also promised them that they would live the same way that they do.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_04: So with everything taken care of.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_04: So the lore of freedom and wealth created an enormous and loyal fighting force initially.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_05: Initially.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yep, and then they watched a bug's life and they realized and they're like, hey, they realize how this actually works.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_04: Part of the reason non-scaled slaves were treated so poorly was also the fact that their masters actually loathed them.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_04: So uh direct quote they found the scaleless ones odor offensive, their primitive languages grating on the nerves, and their smooth skins unsettling.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: Smooth skin.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_04: Smooth skin.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, all I can think about is fallout.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_04: So, because of this, they decided, hey, let's try to make a new intelligent race to serve us, and then you know, we can make it to where we don't completely loathe them.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_04: We can make sure that their odor isn't bad.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_05: We can make sure they smell good.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_04: And that's where we enter with their experimentation.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_05: Here I like I like the section just called experiment.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_05: Experimentation.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just a log series of bullet points.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, here's all the fucked up shit they did.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh goodness.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_04: While exploring Feyrune, they encountered numerous scaly animals in the wilds, you know, such as like dinosaurs, snakes, lizards, all that fun stuff.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_04: And this was their starting point for creating new creatures slash races.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_04: They collected thousands of these creatures and started breeding programs to try to breed sentient and intelligent versions.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_04: They quickly realized that breeding programs alone would not be enough.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_04: So instead, they decided it was magic time.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: Of course.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_05: So they did it the old-fashioned way at first.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and and then introduced the magic.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and they were like, okay, this isn't working, or this is gonna take way too long.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_05: So let's just bump up some magic in there and they got they got through like two generations and they were like, Okay, I'm bored.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_05: Get out the scrolls, get out the scrolls.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_04: They started using magic to experiment on the creatures, combining a few of the like scaly specimens with uh humans or humanoids to see if they could make a servitor race that was less offensive to them.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_05: They just keep they keep throwing them back in there, and they just they're like, Man, they keep coming out smelling bad.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_05: Get back in the lab.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_05: Get back in the lab.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: Except uh not so much back in the lab.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_04: They would just release most of them.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the early experiments were, well, bad.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_04: They resulted in badly deformed creatures that really didn't survive for very long.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_04: That tracks.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_04: But through selective breeding and more subtle forms of magical manipulation, they managed to create viable races much more to their liking.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_05: Good, I guess.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_05: Good for that, I suppose.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_04: Their first successes were the uh Asabis, as mentioned earlier, uh the lizard folk and the terrafolk.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: Ah.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: Terra as in but pterodactyl.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_04: They weren't as intelligent as humans, but they were relatively easy to manipulate.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: So uh once they realized that they could kind of trust them more, they began giving them like fairly easy tasks, train them as like personal servants, and then eventually as warriors.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_04: And then eventually entire groups of them were planted in the wilds of Feerun in hopes that they would multiply and conquer these surrounding territories, you know, ones that they hadn't already conquered.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_05: Which was a lot of it, evidently, very quickly.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_04: Because, you know, why not?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_04: The next successful experiment produced the Nagas.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_04: They were more difficult to control.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_04: So they kept the ones that posed very little threat as guards and then just released the other ones.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_04: Said, all right, we can't actually like control you so well, so you can go to the wild.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_04: Like you can just go out there and do something.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: This is like this is like the the incredibly magnified version of someone in South Florida getting an imported variety of snake that they probably should not be able to obtain.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_05: And then when it gets bigger than they thought it was gonna get, they're like, Oh, I'll just let it out in the Everglades.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_05: It'll be fine.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_05: It's not the snake anybody's worried about.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_05: It's gonna be the everything else.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_05: The everything else, yeah.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_05: Everything else.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_04: Their final and you know, perhaps finest creation was the Yuan T.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um the Yuan T represented the first truly successful cross between human and saruk with a very small touch of serpent thrown in.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_05: Small?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_04: Small, small, yeah.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the Yuan T greatly enjoyed being in charge of scaleless ones, so they actually ended up becoming the slave masters, the military leaders, and managers of the uh Saruk Empires.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_04: Again, you're causing this to happen yourself.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like you have given control of like everything to other races.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_04: So you can sit there and be fed grapes from a vine, but that would be a few.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_03: I wonder if there are any real-world analogs to this.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and the fact that that they were just like, oh hey, we have engineered this race of people that are very intelligent and uh, you know, perhaps that you know they enjoy being in these roles may sort of speak to a tendency to be conniving and manipulative and ambitious.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_05: And also there's all these other people that we have enslaved and like regularly abuse.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: Surely, surely these are this cannot go wrong.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_04: Now we are going to jump to the uh sacrificial ritual that they did.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, good.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_04: Saruk were originally the ones that were sacrificed to the world serpent.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_04: Most of the religious zealots uh readily gave their lives to their god.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_05: That tracks.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_04: Sacrifices occurred on a weekly basis.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty frequently.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, if it's like one person, that's fine.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not fine.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_05: Sacrificing people's not good.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: But you're hey, sacrificing people, not good.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, with other other hot takes from this episode, slavery not good.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_05: But like, it's not like they had a line of everybody to the volcano, you know.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_04: You know.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_04: So like the priests gave the designated victim, like, you know, whatever they desired for a period of three days.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_04: Food, drink, indulgence of the flesh, everything was provided on demand, and they were permitted to stay in any accommodations that they desired.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_04: They were watched closely by security, but otherwise they were treated like royalty.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_05: Dang.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_05: So they didn't just get a last meal, they gotta last like three days.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_05: They gotta last three days of just absolute hedonism and debauchery.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, pretty much.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_05: And then that's good, at least.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's I mean, that's nice, I guess.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_05: I guess.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you for your sacrifice.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_04: Literally.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_04: On the night of the sacrifice, the uh serk gathered the community together to pray to the world serpent.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_04: The victim was then treated with incense first, and then the sacrificial victim carved his own heart out with a ceremonial dagger.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sick.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_04: That's wild.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like carved own heart out with a ceremonial dagger.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_04: With the still beating heart in his hands, the high priest then smeared the blood of the sacrifice on his own body and those of the other clergy, then all the priests would drew to their temples.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_04: Cool.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_05: I wonder at what point, if you're carving out your own heart, which is not something I have experience with, at what point would you have to stop doing it?
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_05: I wonder.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_05: Like at what point would you have to do it?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_05: At what point would your body no longer Yeah, would your body be like not able to do it?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_05: You know what I mean?
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: I imagine um very shortly after the primary delivery vessel is cut.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_04: Probably.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_04: So I didn't uh notate it down, but it did also go into later on the scaleless ones were eventually accepted as sacrifices.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like they basically talked to the world serpent and were like, hey, we have like all these other races that we can sacrifice to you.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_04: I know the original deal was we sacrifice one of us, but like we sacrifice them instead.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: And the serpent said, Okay, I mean, fine.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_04: And I think they ended up fails, I think they ended up sacrificing like at that point three a week or something to equal one sark.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's crazy.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_05: That's crazy.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_04: The uh scaleless ones could not commit to carving their own heart out.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_04: The priests had to do that for them.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_04: And because the scaleless ones smelled so bad to them, they completely got rid of the ritual part of smearing the blood on them.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_05: Oh god, and they probably I would hazard a guess that they didn't get the little three-day farewell part.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_05: Probably, they were probably just like, all right, get it, get up there.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_04: No, I am pretty sure it was basically like, hey, it's sacrifice night.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_04: Let's just pick like these three people listening.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, that was fun.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure you are not visible on sacrifice night.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: Or visible doing something very important.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_04: Or that, because if you're doing something very important, they're gonna look and be like, you know what?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_04: You might be a little bit more worthy than these other ones.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: So or my thought is if you're doing something very important, they're like, Oh, I don't want to sacrifice you tonight.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: I really want that done.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, this is yeah, you're the most valuable, you know.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_05: You're the you know, you have the you know, you have the best like PR uh like lifting, so I can't sacrifice you because who else is gonna haul all this shit around for me, you know?
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you don't make yourself always super important because then you do turn into that maybe you are a little worthy, but like at the very least on sacrifice night, you need to be doing something that is very important.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, feels a little indispensable.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um then we jump to their relationships.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, not with other races because we know how that goes.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I've gathered.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_05: They're like, ooh, stinky.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_04: The uh saruuk form lasting friendships.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_04: That is uh this is a direct quote, unmarred by the petty jealousies and bickering that mark many of their servitor races.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_03: I doubt that highly.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I don't know.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_04: They take mates for life and treat other uh saruk with respect.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_04: In the uh good old days, one or two Saruk constituted a household.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: Oh fun.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh nowadays, due to their circumstances being uh what they are, uh-huh, it has forced many to live in like smaller communal groups.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_04: So now a household can consist of between one to like probably twenty.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yik.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's kind of like reverse humans.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we're like back previously we it was much more common, yeah, for like whole kind of family groups and stuff to live together.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas like nowadays, you know, it's like the the the cynical part of me says that it's you know the nuclear family propaganda, blah blah blah blah.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_05: But then also part of me is like I am currently alone in a house with three cats, so like you know, it it's also just probably also just an enjoyment of more they were all they were all um personal space.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_05: I almost said I almost said neats.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_05: That's a different thing.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_05: They were all they were all danks, you know.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_05: They were all living that double income no kids.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_04: So their life cycle is, I mean, fairly typical, what you would expect.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they hatch from eggs that are protected and tended by both parents.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_04: They can live up to a thousand years or much longer if they undergo periods of hibernation.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_04: Makes sense.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_04: This uh specifies in this case their hibernation can last for years at a time rather than you know, a thousand years like from the previous ones.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like hibernation, you know, does it preserves the uh body, temporarily eliminates its need for food, water, and other valuable resources, and pretty much shuts down to a very minimal effectiveness, more or less.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_05: Except instead of, you know, for a like instead of temporarily meaning a few months, it means a few years.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_05: A few years, yeah, potentially.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_04: So with their organization, uh, while the three great empires, you know, were still around, the Saruk were organized into several like great clans within the within those empires.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the clans that commanded the most troops and held the most political power made up the leadership structure.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_04: And I actually love the names that they have for like their leadership structure and stuff.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_04: The leadership body of each empire was called the uh Sharum.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_04: Sharum Sharu?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_04: Sharim.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_04: Sharum.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_04: Gotta draw out the S and consisted of five to eight uh Saruk.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_04: The Sharem elected an emperor called a Kuzdar.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_04: Kuzdar?
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_03: Kuzdar, maybe?
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Kuzdar.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_04: Their judges who administered and governed the laws were called Klagmasters.
• 1:00:44
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I don't know why the German sound just stumbled in, but it did.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_04: So funny sentence.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, funny about the uh govern the laws and everything.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_04: So the Saruk actually disliked jailing citizens.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_04: So the preferred methods of punishment were death for more serious crimes and disfigurement for minor ones.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_05: Whoa.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_05: That's funny.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_04: If they did jail them, they were typically, I think, uh used as sacrifices later on.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_04: But for the most part, they just didn't jail people at all.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_04: It was just like you did a minor theft, so we're just gonna disfigure you and send you out of your way.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_04: That's so funny.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yikes, you know?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_04: Like, hey, you killed someone, fine, then we will just kill you.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, you burnt someone's house down in arson, we'll just disfigure you and off you go.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't know what the answer is here.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it's not good.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_05: I guess it's not.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_05: I guess, I guess depending on the kind of person, it's either like uh, you know, I guess depending on the the some people might prefer it, yeah.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, whereas like you know, some some people would definitely be in the camp of like, oh, okay, I burned down this person's house, and you know, I think that makes me really cool and edgy.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_05: And now all you've done is given me a cool scar, cool edgy scar, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_05: Cool edgy scar over my eye.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_05: So now I'm gonna go burn down another fucking house.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_05: Like, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like fucking lizards I feel like then you do run into it.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is a serial arsonist a uh a more serious crime, and does that warrant death?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_04: If not, then how many disfigurements until you hit that quota of you went from minor to major?
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_05: Or is arson even a is arson even a big deal?
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_04: Who knows?
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_04: Who knows?
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they don't care about arson or like killing, but like jaywalking.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_04: Bad, very bad.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_04: So finally, the last bit is I'm I saved this part for watch just because I thought it was fun.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_04: Their physical like description.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I have no clue what these things look like.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so uh their bodies come in two different shapes.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_04: There's the bipedal, which has a humanoid upper torso arms and legs, and then a snake-like lower body, and then snake-like, which resemble certain uh Uwante abominations with snake-like bodies and heads, as well as like powerful arms that end in vicious claws.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and also have distinctive gleaming red eyes.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, because you know, they do still, in fact, like live and are around, you can fight stumble upon some and fight them.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_04: So I just took a small bit of their stat block from this because I thought it was kind of fucking insane.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, they are, you know, ancient creator races, so they're strong.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_05: So this is from third edition, right?
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, yeah.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_04: So that's so these numbers are what you would more or less see now.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, their hit dice, it's just not like a whole lot.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_04: It's 14 d8 plus 70.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_04: Their average is about 133.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, they have a plus six to their initiative, their speed is the normal 30 feet, but uh big butt here.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I see that.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_04: Their armor class is 30.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty high.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_04: 30 fucking AC.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_05: I I am I'm really stuck on the parenthetical there because it says that their AC is is such from a plus two decks and then a plus eighteen natural natural.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_05: What?
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_05: Why?
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, yeah.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um I mean, probably.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_04: I guess.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: I j just just be being who they are.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they're just literally I feel like the the the the term like the use of the word natural there literally just translates to like they get a plus 18 because they're built different.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_03: Basically, they are just built different, they're just like that.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they're I mean their CR is something around like 20 or 21.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_04: So like obviously, if you're fighting them, you're either in a very wrong place or you are up to that level of being this would be difficult, but not automatically deadly.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's doable.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, usually they like if you're fighting them, you can uh run into them as you know, just a single, a pair, or a group of three to eight.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_05: And this is just a normal one.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_05: This isn't like any of the ones that made themselves the liches.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, these are not like lichens.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh God.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to really cover the the lich ones.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_04: God didn't actually look up any of the lich uh stat blocks, so that's actually a little frightening.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_03: I I feel like they open uh your next episode with that.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_05: The the ones from like what was it?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_05: uh were the ones from mershalk the ones that became liches no i think it was the it was the other one uh okay yeah like those have been a a specter over me for this entire episode is like i'll be like oh no sorry it was uh istocephophil oh okay yeah right the where like i just remember that there's a there's tombs or whatever of some of these just being protected by the a yeah being protected by the the sobby and there's just some of them in there just chilling they're just liches it's like oh yeah that's right that's fun that's something that's out that's something that's out there yeah yeah funny enough their alignment is always neutral evil that tracks yeah yeah that that makes sense to me like out of all that I would have thought that their alignment would have been like chaotic evil I would have thought lawful evil okay lawful evil would also make sense see I I see I think neutral evil fits I I think neutral evil does fit but the full spectrum yeah the full evil spectrum evil spectrum my least favorite and that includes spectrum that includes the company Jesus I like it so that is all the information that I have for the Saruk and the beginning of the creator races very nice I uh I hated it but I loved it what yeah and you've got your you've got your you've got your topics sorted for the next few weeks the like the rest of the year probably basically yeah god hey Lillian join us in multi-episode hell what I can't hear you what well okay see listen that's the part they that's the that's the fun part that they don't tell you is that you could do a mul you could do a multiparter but you don't have to do it all all together that's the part that's the this is the part they don't tell you very rigid mental blocks in the way of doing that yeah so so do I they're just different and probably worse for what we're trying to accomplish here for what we're trying to accomplish here yeah but I do actually want to take the time to say that um not at the time of the posting but at the time uh that we are recording and live currently right now tomorrow is Travis's birthday it is you are correct happy early birthday Travis uh thank you so we're gonna go out tomorrow and uh have dinner for his birthday and yeah when uh the rest of you hear this when it goes live Travis will be old years old years old yep approximately one year older than I was uh this time last when this was recorded yeah approximately one week older than you were when one week older I don't know why we're like this thank you guys so much for listening don't forget to follow us on threads Instagram TikTok perhaps that is all I can tailor tailor sounds Taylor sounds um like she doesn't know but those are those are social media players those are the ones that just because Taylor doesn't know doesn't mean that they don't exist uh um spread the word to your friends uh your family your snakes I'm sure your snakes would like to listen to it it's a very snake centric episode after all it is your snakes your lizards your skinks your terra folk not not your salamanders yet save it for the salamanders yeah and not your not your ferrets either because they're furry and they're a little stinky so they probably wouldn't like this episode that's true they are but we really appreciate it yeah um if you have anything that you would like to suggest as a topic for us to cover whenever Taylor and Travis finished their their multi part.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_05: If you would like an episode for Lewin to cover in the next four weeks uh you can email us at dungeonpedia.podcast at gmail.com and uh thank you once again for listening and we'll catch you next week here on Dungeonpedia's maybe it really is actually reflective of the real world like the rise of different kingdoms of animals and maybe fairies are next fairies unfortunately that means we have to meet you for a hundred I'm okay with it's okay with it I'm okay I'm okay with the two actually we don't deserve that at this point honestly so true