The Telakhim
Beliefs
In the beginning, there was nothing but dust and void. The Great God Telakh wandered the earth alone. He lay in the dirty and looked up into the cosmos, envisioning a world populated by his children. His thoughts fell as eggs out of his head, and from them hatched the lesser gods, the animals of the field, the fruits of the vine, the races of the wide world, and his most beloved children, the Telakhim.
While the other races made war on one another, the Telakhim were content to enjoy the prosperity granted them by their fertility god, whose plenty provided them with food from the sea and land. Though they traveled the lands of the earth, they never settled beyond their marshy lands. Telakh loved them most of all races, but to bestow his greatest gifts, they had to be near him directly.
Settlement
The Telakhim built a sparse city on the reed fields of the Tel'ta'zin Sea. They built large monuments and civic buildings of stone dragged out of the mountains on mudded tracks, but by far their largest monument was their temple, the Loins of Telakh. Small wooden huts dotted the landscape between buildings, and the people laid their eggs in the marshy reeds below. Their skin, a vibrant but camouflaged olive green allowed them to hide from or ambush wandering armies and predatory beasts.
After the Silence
At first, the children of Telakh did not realize that the gods had left them. Telakh was prone to wandering, but never left them for long. It was not until the passing of an entire season that they noticed something was terribly wrong. The women of the village would visit his temple, but the priests would not feel his divine presence, and so no mating could occur. This confusion was followed by panic. How could they continue as a people without their god to bestow his chosen children with his divine seed? Would they simply rut like the animals of the field and the lesser races? Would they not then lose their godlike majesty?
After a year had passed and no eggs chicked, the priests resolved to carry out Telakh’s greatest festival without him. They each took the sacred herbs and supplicated themselves to the women of the village, looking to find partners with whom to conceive the most perfect children. Many women refused to participate, but all the priests found someone to lay with, and though all were disappointed at the lack of Telakh’s sacred touch, all felt a stirring they prayed was purer than that of the animals, and all the women bore children the next summer.