Creator race

The creator races were a group of five legendary ancient races who dominated Abeir-Toril during the Days of Thunder ( to ) and who gave rise to many of the common races of the world. They were also capitalized as the Creator Races or called simply the Creators. In the Elven language, they were known as the Iquar-Tel'Quessir or Iquar'Tel'Quessir as recorded in at least one text, but it was unknown if this derived from a title the creator races gave themselves or a mistranslation by human scholars or its half-elf author. Either way, the term was not meant to carry honor or respect.

Known Creator Races
Most historians agreed that the following races counted among the creator races: However, there was a long-running debate on whether the avians or dragons should be counted as the fifth creator race. That the apparent aearee statues reported by Captain Neidre, below, had both avian and draconic features did little to clear this up, suggesting they were either descendants of dragons or the ancestors of both dragons and avians.
 * Sarrukh, the sauroid creator race, rulers of the Sarrukh Empires from and creators of the yuan-ti, naga, lizardfolk, and other scalykind;
 * The fey rulers of the otherworldly realm of Faerie from, creators of korreds, sprites, and pixies;
 * Batrachi, the amphibioid creator race, rulers of the Batrachi Empires from and creators of the bullywugs,  doppelgangers, kopru, kuo-toa, locathah, sivs, tako and other shapeshifting, amphibious, or piscine races;
 * Aearee, the avian creator race, rulers of the Aearee Empires from and creators of the aarakocra,  kenku, and other birdlike humanoids;
 * Humans, though still primitive, even ape-like, and dwelling in caves and using simple tools.

Elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, goblins, and orcs are of course not counted as creator races and do not appear in records or cave paintings because they, as well as some human ethnic groups, were immigrants to Abeir-Toril from other worlds.

The Days of Thunder

 * See Days of Thunder, aearee, batrachi, fey, human, and sarrukh for detailed histories of the age and the creator races. The following covers general information and scholarship.

Although five creator races were recorded to have existed in Faerûn as early as, only three forged empires in the earliest days of recorded history and : the sarrukh, batrachi, and aearee each dominated Faerûn in turn, creating or producing as offspring a plethora of lesser races, and through the Ba'etith recording the magic of the more primitive races around them, which would become the items known as the Nether Scrolls. The fey seem to have never dominated the continent; they instead ruled Faerie, an otherworldly realm. Humans, they were certainly present, did not rise to rule Faerûn until after the Time of Dragons and the elven and dwarven empires.

In elven oral tradition and legends, these were the Days of Thunder, a time when immense empires of callous and inhuman reptilian, amphibian, and avian beings dominated the much warmer lands of Abeir-Toril. They were said to have erected towering cities of glass and stone, crisscrossed the wild lands with shining roads. They tamed the great dinosaurs and experimented with the unrefined and unimaginably powerful magic that existed at the time, commanding powers that rival gods. But also they waged endless genocidal wars against one another in their mutual hatred, their mages launching blasts that annihilated armies and mountains alike.

As befits their "creator" appellation, they toyed with creating new lifeforms and released them into the world—even the most monstrous and mistaken and no matter how unnatural. Many perished in the jungles, but enough survived and they and the humans even evolved minds and learned of the gods. These lesser races wisely hid from the creators deep in the forests or in caves high in the mountains, and hence would outlive them all when their doom came. Elven sages had many different theories about the creator races' sudden downfalls, but all accepted a swift climate change had rendered the world barely habitable to creator races and dinosaurs, and most thought it a catastrophe of their own making. The elves believed Chauntea, Corellon, and other deities first manifested and aided the lesser races during this.

Around, the batrachi were losing a war against the titans and, in their desperation, enacted a great summoning ritual that unleashed several once-imprisoned primordials. The gods swiftly opposed the primordials. The primordial Asgorath, the World Shaper, even hurled an ice moon or comet at the planet, in order to destroy what she could not have, in an event called the Tearfall. Disastrous earthquakes, fires, and windstorms swept across all of Abeir-Toril, erasing whole continents and rearranging the seas. Ancient sarrukh legends made cryptic mention of the "changing of the stars". But, before the world was destroyed, Ao split it into two twin worlds: Abeir for the primordials and Toril for the gods. The extreme climate change swiftly led to the end of batrachi civilization. While this was thought to be end of the creator races, the aearee in fact rose and fell after this.

Later History
By the close of the Days of Thunder and the beginning of the Dawn Age, the creator races had passed into memory and the dragons and giants reigned.

Except for the humans, of course, the fate of the creator races went largely unrecorded. A few sarrukh were thought to lurk in ancient ruins and southern jungles. The batrachi lived on in the deepest, darkest swamps and were presumed to have gone extinct, but some fled to Limbo, where they were confused with slaadi. As for the aearee, nothing is known of their fate. The fey continued to rule Faerie. Humans continue to thrive, as they always did.

Seven of the remaining Nether Scrolls of Netheril were mysteriously stolen and returned to ancient ruins of the creator races in. Three were put in the Hall of Mists under the Grandfather Tree in the High Forest and two went into the Crypt of Hssthak, while the fate of the other two stayed a mystery.

At some point in the reign of King Zoar of Evermeet, the elf explorer Captain Eartharran Neirdre sailed a magical flying ship to the coast of Anchorome in search of a lost city of the creator races, in a quest to learn more of their fate. In the far north, the elves found a floating city and statues of the creator race he dubbed the aearee. The expedition was ultimately destroyed by dragons and Eartharran's findings lost until discovered by Loremaster Ignace Dethingeller until the 1370s DR.

By 14 century DR, little more than legends survived to tell of the Days of Thunder and the creator races, but recorded history had begun here.

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