Firstborn

The Firstborn are an ancient, intelligent species that have existed on Ethos far longer than humanity.

Biology and Natural Philosophy
The Firstborn were created by the goddess Ogdilla and do not obey the traditional rules of life on Ethos. All accounts of Ethos' creation--orthodox and apocryphal both--agree that the Firstborn are the only things on Ethos created by Ogdilla.

The Firstborn exhibit more extreme diversity of form than any other species on Ethos. They are divided into six elemental castes: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Metal, and Wood. Each Firstborn's individual nature will be reflected by its caste. All known Firstborn stand between 12 and 21 feet tall. This concludes the uniformity within the species.

Individuals vary wildly, even within the same caste. The most common number of limbs is four, but specimens have been noted with none or over twenty (individual count was not pragmatic at time of observation). Most Firstborn have independent heads and visible faces, but the presence of one does not guarantee the other, and Firstborn with multiple heads and/or faces have been recorded.

The high degree of variation is because each Firstborn was created by Ogdilla herself. Firstborn do not eat, sleep, or breathe. They do not age and have no perceivable life cycle; each Firstborn currently alive is in the exact state it was upon creation. In addition, the Firstborn do not reproduce, meaning all Firstborn alive have been so since before the creation of humanity and the fall of the Eldest.

The Firstborn do not use magic, per se. The Firstborn have the extraordinary ability to ignore certain natural laws, but they seem to do so passively and cannot consciously change how they interact with these laws. Noted Firstborn exceptions to natural laws include: There are no known diseases that affect the Firstborn.
 * Immunity to erosion, weathering, or other forms of physical age.
 * Despite extreme age, the Firstborn do not exhibit signs of Chronophilia.
 * Immune to kinetic energy resulting specifically from falling. A Firstborn falling from a long height does not exhibit effects from sudden impact and does not impart them on the object (usually the ground) it hits.  A Firstborn falling acts the same as a Firstborn coming down from a single step.  Curiously, this does not extend to other forms of kinetic energy--shooting a Firstborn with a cannon will push it back as expected.
 * Firstborn seem immune to the concept of language. They speak and are understood by all able to hear them, and can understand any language spoken around them. This results in very strange diction that is often difficult to follow; it is unknown if this effect has always been in place or is a unique human reaction to Firstborn speech.

Despite defiance of natural philosophy and the known laws of magic, Firstborn will heal injuries over time (note, however, that injuring a Firstborn in the first place required extreme effort). It is unknown how the Firstborn acquire mass to rebuild their forms, as they do not eat.

Behavior and Culture
The Firstborn are solitary by nature and rarely interact with humans. They seem to possess motivations for their behavior, but these motivations are largely incomprehensible to humans. Major theories on Firstborn behavior varies from simple alienness resulting from their radically different day-to-day needs to the suspicious that the Firstborn have lost their minds in Ogdilla's long absence and have no true motivation.

As they are naturally isolated from each other, there is no known Firstborn culture to speak of. The Codex Baruc tells of a time when the Firstborn built a city. It was destroyed by the Eldest, and its location is now the magical anomaly known as the Stitch in Time. This event destroyed the overwhelming majority of the species, sparing only those outside the city. It has also been theorized that the surviving Firstborn were outcasts or hermits, hence their absence from Firstborn civilization and opaque behavior.

Firstborn have very long names consisting of specific phrases. Firstborn names are similar to those customarily taken by wizards but much longer. For example, a documented water-caste Firstborn is named "The Trees That Line the Edges of the Lake in the Latter Half of Autumn." It is theorized that this naming custom is so that each Firstborn has its own unique name. This theory has been approximately confirmed with interviews with some Firstborn, though is not considered flawless because of the difficulty of understanding Firstborn.

As new Firstborn are never born and existing individuals are destroyed extremely rarely, it is believed that the Firstborn population is within 90% of its size at the time of the creation of the Stitch in Time. This number is debated across Ethos, but believed to be no less than 300 and no more than 5000 by mainstream academia. The nature of the water, air, and earth castes (aquatic, aerial, and subterranean, respectively) makes this number difficult to pin down.

Here Be Spoilers
Firstborn have the inherent ability to sense magic. This was not documented until the return of Halil, as the Firstborn are apathetic in regards to the use of magic by humans. The more powerful a spell, the further it can be sensed from.

The Old Mother Tree in downtown Goethelburg is a wood caste Firstborn.