Humanoid (Saurian)

Saurian humanoids are divided into two major groups: Reptilian and Avian. In the former group are the Khamai, the Garanu, and the Komombo, and in the latter are the Gyrfolk, the Tengu, and (controversially) the Kobolds.

The history of the Saurian races predates the invention of the written word, and the ancient ancestor of the Saurian peoples was perhaps the first humanoid race to develop on Kothor; certainly, this is what most modern Saurians would have other races believe. In any case, accounts are murky, and nothing short of the most powerful divination magic can shed light on the actual origins of the modern Saurians. Oral histories seem to agree, however, that it was the dragons who raised the Saurians up from savagery and into civilization (the Tengu, however, seem to have developed independently of the other Saurians, as they have few if any ties to the dragons).

It is said that each variety of chromatic dragon became the patron of a Saurian race: the blue took on the vulture-like Gyrfolk as its apprentice, and soon the race rivaled the Gnolls for control of Calyara's steppe lands; the white catalyzed the taiga-dwelling Garanu, now among the most numerous of Saurians; the green took as its servants the tiny, yet endlessly devious Khamai as its minions; the black became lord over the swamp-dwelling Komombo, the truly terrifying, monstrous crocodile-men who hold a firm grip on sewer-systems across Calyara; and the red, needing nothing but unquestioning servitude to placate its infinite ego, cultivated the Kobold as the perfect willing slave. The Tengu, on the other hand, seem to have emulated first Elven, and later Human culture.

A third category, considered an off-shoot of the Reptilian branch, is the Troglodyte. Not an independent race of its own, the Troglodytes are actually Saurians of every variety whose albinistic ancestors (whose pale scales were considered the mark of an ancient curse) were belittled, shunned, and exiled to the Deep. These Saurians adapted to the harsh, sunless world that awaited them, but in the process grew craven and depraved. Today, they have nothing but hostility for this world.