So I've been speculating for a while and I'm wondering what everyone elses view is on it.
While reading about the illithoid, I stumbled along this post:



So, it is my understanding that an illithoid can breed with a human. If I'm not mistaken,(correct me if I'm wrong, not quite certain of this is canon or just people talking) humans are the shard of the Son of Yudhe. The Son of Yudhe was responsible for imbuing spirit, or 'awakening' creations of Dynara and Magnora if I'm not mistaken? Essentially giving them souls.

With that being said, would a illithoid/human hybrid have a true 'soul'?
Or is the Inner Worm something that defines your illithoid heritage?
This is being asked from both an IC/OOC perspective.
I think I remember reading somewhere that faelings do not hold the shard of Elfenhoala, albeit having relation to elfen. Despite this, any opinions, theories, or ideas on the subject? If any Divine want to clarify, please do.

Just an idea.

I'm not sure if humans being related to the Son of Yudhe is accepted Lusternia cannon or not actually.

As for the worm/soul question, if a human and illithoid had a baby and that baby had hair and blue eyes and ears and all, but had a worm, the kid would be considered an illithoid. If the baby had grey skin and no hair and looked all veiny but didn't have a worm, it'd be considered human. Like the ability to breathe water makes a merian merian or feathered wings make a trill a trill, the worm is what makes an illithoid, even if their human genes have altered the way they look.

At least, that's how I understand it all. If I'm wrong, someone'll prolly say so.

That seems pretty canonical.

Ah ha! Thanks! I'd forgotten that.

The only issue I see now is if breeding with a human and inheriting their shard(if at all possible) bears any effect. From a genetic standpoint, if you are an illithoid and still have a worm, I would assume your worm would be slightly altered. Don't know how IC that is though.

It'd certainly be a neat concept to RP, a more humanoid Illithoid. So would it be like Humanoid Illithoids = Cylons? Like, they're mostly human, as in look exactly so, except they have the whole inner-worm deal? Is that kind of what you were thinking?

I thought Cylons were robots...

It's the whole "look like humans but aren't even 'alive'" concept he's referring to with the Cylons.

Oh! Would they be like those Goa'uld from Stargate SG1? Only different cause the worm's not a different person from the host or anything. But it'd look similar, don'tcha think?

BOW BEFORE YOUR GOD, CTHOGLOGG. JAFFA KREE.






But I really do think Illithoid and Kephera RP is one of the neatest race roles there is. I personally would have reincarnated into a Kephera ages ago if I didn't have this horrible streak of Shadow Faeling vanity. I want to see an Illithoid/Kepheran married couple and all the strangeness that would entail. I mean, as it is, the SD's have Illithoid Lei, and Kepheran Luxi, but I think Luxi is only Kepheran because they-so-tanky.



Though..maybe when I am not Queen of the Night anymore, I'll go Kepheran just to keep the Queen title.

Yes, sort of like that. For me, I don't find the whole Soulless mortal thing very appealing while I'm sure there are some who do. If any of this were true or made sense it would make illithoid a viable option for me to play.

I was invisioning a sort of fully humanoid-looking being with regular features but sallow/purple skin, illithoid teeth, and slate white hair. Something like that.

And if any of this DOES make sense, why stop illithoids from joining Celest or Serenwilde?
Glomdoring has no problem letting the Kephera into Glomdoring as long as they declare their allegiance to the forest and not the Queens.(From an OOC viewpoint this allows people who want to be kephera, and be in Glomdoring play their character and works fine I think).

The question of cross-breeding has never been satisfactorily answered to my mind. HELP MERIAN makes clear that there are half-breeds which are like both races, and posits a merely cultural, not physical, rule about what is or is not a merian -- which means other races might not have such a rule, and no one's obligated to follow it. Which would suggest that, within the limits of who can breed with whom, any level of cross-breeding is possible.

However, game mechanics offer no option for being a cross-breed: no combinations are actually available, and everyone always has precisely the same stats and advantages and disadvantages of every other member of their race. (Faeling is a crossbreed, but not between two other playable races.) So people can describe themselves as being half-elfen-half-human but they have to pick one to be closer to, and which they will turn out to be physically exactly like.

People talk about shards like it's something you have but it makes just as much sense to say it's something you are. If you take a big block of red putty and break it into shards, each one is a little bit of red putty, each one is a shard; but if you mix half of one with half of a blue shard, what you get is something that derives properties from both of the original big blocks of putty, and there's no paradox.

However, souls, that's a sticky wicket of an issue. Is the name "Soulless" really a physical name of an actual thing, or more of a descriptive way of referring to what it's like to be derived from the Magnora side instead of the Dynara side? I think the Magnora/Dynara issue is the crux, and "soul" is just a distraction from it, or a representation of it.

So the real issue of Estarra's post is that it suggests that those derived from Dynara and from Magnora can mix. I would have guessed that they can't, and maybe they can't at the Elder God/Soulless God level, but sharding "diffuses" the essence of Dynaraness/Magnoraness enough that they can. What does it mean, then, that someone derived ultimately from Dynara can merge with someone derived ultimately from Magnora and produce a progeny that's half of each? Is that progeny driven by Magnora's destructive impulse, the need to consume, or by Dynara's creative impulse, the viritidas? That's a much bigger question than whether they have hair, or even whether they have souls or worms, in my opinion.

And then there's a whole second layer to the question: are humans from either side? The Son of Yudhe is pretty vaguely defined but I think it's fair to say that he wasn't particularly Dynara-ish or Magnora-ish. So we could certainly posit this theory: those who are of Magnora and those who are of Dynara cannot cross-breed, but cross-breeds within either side are possible (hence, fae/elfen), and those of Yudhe can cross-breed with those on either side.

But all of these are precisely the kinds of questions Lusternia can't answer. Someone's going to play a half-human-half-illithoid assuming one answer, and someone else is going to do it assuming a contradictory answer, and nothing makes one of them more right than the other, or provides a way to settle who is "right" -- in fact, the whole structure of how racial roleplay happens in Lusternia inevitably compels us to come to some wishy-washy answer where "everyone is right" and thus no answer actually means anything. And how long until someone plays a kephera-illithoid crossbreed?

Then again, maybe the admins will preempt the question with some kind of event that results in canon. Frankly, the idea of using this as a hook for an event sounds cool to me. But if they don't do it soon, someone will have created a character whose premise would be contradicted by the outcome of the event, and (for understandable reasons) the admins don't like to do that.

Agreed. That is why the whole "Faelings don't have shards" bit confused me. Regardless if they are purebred elfen or not, that faeling is related to Elfenhoala no matter which way you cut it. Also, the idea of a race being shardless is an extremely detrimental and unnattractive roleplay machina.



I personally don't think so. ICly, the illithoid stigma/arguement is basically, "You don't have a Soul, so that means you're an abomination unworthy of existance". Apparently the Sixth Circle of Awakeners could never truly imbue spirit into the Nature Spirits, they could only guide and 'tutor' them. So basically, White Hart is Soulless? Mother Night is Soulless? Apparently illithoid are Soulless too but that doesn't stop people from worshipping the Nature Spirits.

The real excuse for IC-hate towards illithoids should be something like, "Hey, you splintered from Illith and she did a lot of bad stuff, so I have a preconceived notion about your race".



My thoughts exactly. Essentially a bridge that made balance with all three if you will once one barrier has been taken down maybe?

I can picture an elfen-human-illithoid in my head already. Sort of sloppy and drawn out but you get the idea.



I would honestly love to see that happen. I can name a few people who would be very excited about that*cough*Leiliadhe*cough*.

Faelings are not halfbreed Elfen.

Faelings are their own unique race, which combines Fae (which don't have shards, they existed long before the first Divine splintered), and shards. It's something completely unique, so as to what they are... it's really not clear.

Also-- how is it detrimental/unattractive? We already have a race of things which aren't shards (the Fae). They may not be playable, but they definitely exist, and are lesser spirits of Nature. It's plausible that Faelings are an extension of this, but somewhat more grounded (less flighty) than the fae-critters due to the Elfen heritage. It really could go either way.

As to the "have a shard/are a shard" point: Thus far, it's generally been discussed as "having a shard"-- also known as the "Divine Spark" mentioned in Help Demigods. "Have fanned their divine spark into full-fledged divinity." It's never really been discussed (on the forums at least) what happens with the whole merged-Shard aspect that Humans bring, however-- either in "are a shard" or "have a shard" fashion.

"Faelings are not descended from an Elder God. Rather, they are the cross between an elfen and a creature of the fae." - as found on the faeling Races page.

A faeling can't exist without having elfen lineage.

It's detrimental because people will feel inadequate compared to other races that splintered.
And I am aware of the fact that fae are unplayable and are a real race, just like dwarves, and centaurs.

They also cannot exist without the heritage of the Fae-- that is, spirits of nature with no shards. They are, quite obviously, something different from Elfen-- so no matter what, they are not pure shards of Elfenehoala. Do they have a Shard? We've been told no by an Admin, but we also know that this isn't necessarily the End Of The Matter (as it wasn't the Estarra-Admin). It's debatable until then.

And why would people feel inadequate? That doesn't really seem to be a valid reason. You're a race with a heritage that is even more bound to this world than those of the Divine are-- you're descended from the very spirits of nature that made life here possible. I'd think that wouldn't be detrimental at all-- it adds some uniqueness / special nature to the race which none of the others (save Viscanti) can really claim. Even Illithoid are just the shards of a specific Divine, even if it is a Soulless.

To you, it's detrimental that one's character might feel inadequate, to another person it might be a golden RP opportunity. They could play their character as determined to prove themselves as worthy despite the seeming inadequacy. They could play their character as bitter and jealous of the sharded-majority. They could play their character as proud of the fact that they don't need to be a shard of a dead God to make it in the world. And on and on and on.

You're assuming everyone would let this 'inadequacy' limit them, when, hopefully, someone choosing to play a Human or Faeling or even Illithoid would instead use it as a great way their character has been shaped and molded by their race.

Not that it's an inadequacy at all, IMO.

Too true!

Buff dwarves, plz

Yes, I know that already...


We can talk about how the sum of a faelings parts make something new, it does not change the fact that a faeling is made from 1) Elfen blood, 2) Fae blood.

They have elfen heritage, there is no arguement here.


Where does it say the fae were around before the gods? The gods created the Major Nature spirits, so how do fae; the lesser nature spirits be around longer than the gods?

You don't have to be full elfen to have elfenhoala's shard.

A shard is a spiritual aspect. Blood is a genetic aspect. When you are part elfen, you have said fraction of their physical being in you in terms of percent depending on the parents, etc. But to me it makes sense they should have a shard just because of the fact that they are descendants of elfen on a purely spiritual level.

Just read the little Histories of the Divine Wars. I didn't say the Fae are older than the Divine-- what I said was that the Fae existed long before any of the Divine splintered. There have still been no Splinters in the Histories, but the most recent chapter just brought together all the Fae and created Maeve as their voice. Each of them existed for some time before that point.

As to the last part: They are just as much descendants of the Fae on a spiritual level. They are not Elfen, but something completely different. Do they have a shard of Elfenehoala? Perhaps, and perhaps not. All the evidence that you're putting up for them 'having a shard' so far is just as easily used to say that they don't-- just apply it to the Fae-half of their heritage instead of the Elfen.