Races of Eden: Inaw

Perhaps the strangest of the many races that commonly inhabit Adel’s societies is the Inaw, because it is the only race that is manufactured. The Inaw are not born, but made, and often times not voluntarily. Undead beings stitched together from carefully selected parts and then animated with a complicated ritual, the Inaw are flesh automata with unsettling emotion and feeling left in their undead bodies. Because of this, they are treated like people, given the same rights as any living humanoid race in society, but also subject to law and order. Inaw are often referred to as victims of a Necromancer’s crime and their creation is outlawed. But that does not prevent more from being made by malevolent magicians.

Physiology

Inaw are basically humanoids stitched together from parts of other humanoids, but the process is much more complicated than that. An Inaw’s body can look like whatever the parts stitched together dictates it will look like – it can be tall, skinny, stout, short, etc – but there are some key requirements for the Inaw to “function” correctly. To start with, Inaw have basically two body types without much variation. They can either be very large and stout like a muscular monster, or about the same dimensions as a lithe Iomadi or Athirua, slender and agile. Inaw that don’t conform to these – for example, very tall and thin Inaw, or very short and stout Inaw – will suffer a strange phenomena where the body parts used will not mesh properly.

When a person dies, most of their eternal essence dissipates into the air, joining the worldwide essence flow. However, some will remain with the body parts – essence permeates everything, after all. If body parts from many different bodies are stuck together and reanimated in this way, their myriad of essences will not mesh. The resulting body, when reanimated, will be incapable of speech or learning – it will thrash around violently like an enraged animal, if it can even move at all. Necromancers have little idea why this happens, but they know they can get around it by tricking the disparate auras with a better-proportioned body, where all of the parts are carefully measured so that on the whole the resulting creature exhibits near-perfect dimensions. This blends all of the auras and the resulting body can then be reanimated. Due to the blending, the Inaw will have no memory of its previous life. If any kind of magic is attempted to get it to recall past events, the Inaw will receive only a random jumble of thoughts from the meshed auras, and it’s impossible to know if any of these influences is actually dominant.

This results in that Inaw bodies would, under normal circumstances, make them paragons of physical beauty. Though Inaw are perfectly proportioned, and their body parts preserved through a variety of high-quality techniques, they still suffer from their undead condition. Inaw skin is painfully discolored. Where they are not a bruised kind of grey or purple they are a sickly yellow or green. These colors vary by the body part, so a single Inaw could host a pitiable display of sickly skin colors. They are covered in strong stitches. If they are lucky, these stitches are only joining together the arms, legs and head.

Some Inaw, however, are made from even smaller portions of bodies, and might have stitches running across the center of their faces, or at every joint, or even across the middle of their chests and backs. Inaw hair and nails grow as normal for whatever race each particular body part is from, so there’s at least that. Inaw also heal as if “naturally” from wounds, though there’s nothing altogether very natural about it when examined. Inaw don’t suffer rigor mortis unless they were made by a particularly amateur necromancer, or the necromancer couldn’t be bothered to preserve them correctly. Inaw suffering from this can be treated, often by appointed government specialists (kind of like a visit to a doctor) and properly preserved for a few years.

Inaw’s internal organs are usually still there, with a few exceptions. The heart is usually left there, as well as the circulatory system, because moving liquid through the body might sometimes come in handy. The heart, as well as the lungs, are also left there for another reason – so the Inaw can “simulate life” by involuntarily faking breath and heartbeat. So if the Necromancer wants to hold an Inaw in its arms, a heartbeat and breath will be felt. It does not really need the oxygen or blood, however.

On the other hand, the stomach, kidneys, and other digestive and excretory system parts are removed, because Inaw don’t eat and don’t digest things normally. These are replaced with a small leather bag that holds things inside them. They can taste food, and it often tastes different to them than it would for a living person, but after tasting and swallowing the food just accumulates inside them until it eventually disintegrates or evaporates from the necrotic essence empowering the Inaw.

Inaw have no brains, either. Inaw’s necrotic essence holds their identity, whatever memories they make, and all of their knowledge. Their skulls are usually given some kind of stuffing to give them adequate weight. During the brain removal and stuffing process, special runic carvings are made in the inside of their skull that will be used to store the most important information for their functioning and identity – in essence, those markings inside their empty skulls are their sanity. This is why if an Inaw is drained of enough essence it will become inert, often accompanied by things like its stitches failing and its eyes falling out of its sockets, but when they recover they will be able to go on as usual. This is also why Inaw can’t be disjoined like a magic item. Though Inaw will usually have all the necessary anatomy for reproduction, all of it is either inert, or if very special care was taken in manufacturing, it can only be “activated” for periods too brief to have anything to do with pregnancy.

History

The Inaw are a fairly recent (compared to other races) addition to Adel’s population. Around the time of the intolerable war each of the burgeoning resistance movements that would eventually become new national governments, as well as the central Aptoan government, rushed to produce new weapons that would annihilate their opponents. One tactic proposed was the use of necromancy to raise undead armies in fallen battlefields, but this was unanimously met with disgust. Even in a time of war, the Adelians kept their strong religious convictions and would not defile the bodies of their honored dead this way. But this led to a new proposition – if instead, new, comely beings were made from those bodies, with new identities, would that be acceptable? Though this was brushed again as a despicable act no matter the pedantry involved, some academy wizards wanted to test this avenue, and they did in secret. They poured over taboo texts and forbidden lore.

When they finally produced Inaw who could think and feel, the blank, stable states that they had worked and wanted for so long, the scholars were chased out of whatever governing bodies they reported back to. Treated as criminals, beheld as monsters, these necromancers fled for their lives and hid in the most desolate corners of the world. Scorned by those they sought to aid, they began doing their own small campaigns with unrestrained undead warfare, lashing out against whatever power they were most enraged by. After the Intolerable War, each new national government quickly began to purge or contain its rogue elements, and the old Necromancers were quickly dispatched. In certain nations they were only locked away forever, forgotten in hidden prisons – in others they were brutally slaughtered. But their arts spread throughout the war. Today, there are still many necromancers using the exact same anthologies of dark knowledge compiled in the Intolerable War.

The true moral dilemma was not with the purging of the necromancers, who were seen by the vast majority as monsters deserving of death, but instead with their creations. The confused Inaw were the sole manufactured undead that was not considering “purely evil.” A zombie or a skeleton is mindless, and many other undead creatures are insane and hostile to any who approach them, but the Inaw thought and acted “like people.” Many Inaw, at the death of their masters, merely surrendered, lacking any source of morale or motivation anymore. Many others broke down like children watching their parents die. The inquisitors took pity upon the creatures, feeling that they were victims of a horrendous crime. It was decided that any created Inaw would not be denied their new “life,” and, if they could be re-educated and re-adjusted, would be given full rights to liberty, property and anything that they could earn for themselves.

Today, Necromancers view Inaw as the pinnacle of their art. They create Inaw as their most esteemed, sometimes beloved, personal companions, assistants or lovers. Some more old-fashioned Necromancers treat Inaw as their children, though that does not prevent them from effectively blending in the previous roles as well. They usually create only one Inaw. If they create another one, or a series of them, they always keep the best one as a “masterpiece” and that one is usually very well put-together and esteemed. Inaw are never made en-masse like troops anymore – that’s what reanimating things like skeletons or making abominable zombies is done for. To the new generation of dark wizards, Inaw are a capstone to their careers.

Way of Life

Inaw find it hard to adjust from a life of essentially slavery to a free life. Many of them try to replicate the environment they lived under in their new workplace. For example, an Inaw transplanted by the government and made into a construction worker would develop a hierarchy in its mind, and respond well to orders on the job, as it knows who its superiors are in such a structured environment. But when it “goes home” for the day after work it might be confused, unless specifically ordered to “go home and rest.” During lunch time, it may not know what to do unless told “go buy a fried fish from a vendor and eat it” (particularly because it doesn’t need food) or something similar.

Some Inaw have far less trouble, however. Inaw that were particularly well-made and well-trained, usually to very specific tasks such as assassination or ritual magic use, can perform on a vendor-client relationship. The Inaw “Seven,” a female inaw assassin, hardly ever gets confused by any situation involving someone purchasing another’s death and her carrying out the murder. However, despite her intellect and poise, she would very likely get confused and awkward if attention or even worse, affection, by someone who isn’t a client, target or an obstruction to her target, and not know what to do with them. Such a thing is too far outside the scope of what she views as the world she operates under.

Social Standing

Whenever an Inaw is discovered, if it cannot seemingly take responsibility for itself, it is “requisitioned” by the government and then placed in a new environment under some focused task, often in construction, the military or guard, or performing whatever’s closest to the sort of work it used to do. Inaw who are relatively more independent are given citizenship, put on some kind of welfare program (both to keep track of them, and to keep them afloat), but are otherwise left to their own devices. Welfare for Inaw tends to involve giving them a bit to live on and a voucher for a free room at an Inn for a few months so they can do something with themselves, but they only get these benefits if they check into a welfare office once a week. For “government-owned” Inaw, they live in “government housing” which sometimes means a small room in a military base and other times means a closet in a government office. This varies from case to case, but the Inaw is usually thankful.

People in Eden are fairly tolerant of Inaw. They see Inaw as victims, like everyone else does, and unless the Inaw looks particularly volatile or threatening, they treat them like anyone else. They’ve seen weirder things, after all, in a land where small Gods walk among the people. Only the smallest and most out of the way places really fear Inaw, and this fear is bred from ignorance more than anything else. However, few people are actually aware of the mental deficiencies of Inaw, and will expect them to act like anyone else. This can cause problems when the Inaw is inevitably confused by social etiquette.

Inaw In Play

Inaw are defined by the details of their creation. What effect has the creation left on your character? Where do the parts come from, what do they look like together? What role did your Inaw play under the Necromancer and what role does he or she play now? Under what circumstances was he or she rescued and how did that affect him or her? Try to have characters that function well with other characters from other players – though you can justify almost any quirky personality with an Inaw’s early education, it’s important to try to mesh with others at least a bit, rather than being utterly incomprehensible.