Listeners are one of the dominant Races in the world of Ashen. Their lifespans can be measured in centuries.
History[ | ]
Having beaten back the other Bral, the Listeners built a civilization on the body of the Ashen and took to worshipping it. When the light of the Second Age began to dim the Listeners grew desperate. It was around this time Gefn returned from her travels. Gefn took a Listener lover and, using his seed, created the first human.
Humanity was greeted with open arms by the Listeners, who taught them how to survive and build in the world. Together they built the Human Heart of Lathyrus. Gefn fused this with the Listener Heart to create the Twin Hearts. They were then placed in the Tower of Gnomon where Lathyrian Seers used it to bend the power of light to serve all equally.
When the light of the Third Age began to fade Listeners and Humans blamed each other. War soon followed. The once benevolent Listener Matriarch, Amiren, took back the Listener Heart of Lathyrus. Between war and the ash storms brought by the end of the Third Age, the world they had built together fell into ruin.
Notable Listeners[ | ]
Notes[ | ]
- Bataran claims the Listeners "took to war with surprising enthusiasm"
- Eila's grandmother was surprised to find Listener ships, as she never took them for seafaring folk.
- An official post on lore suggests that man did not arrive until the near-darkness of the third breath, and that the Listeners viewed this as a betrayal by the Listener taken by Gefn as a lover and used to create humans. In this story man grew at an exponential rate and quickly outnumbered the Listeners, forcing them to retreat and splinter into factions. As this is largely inconsistent with any other lore relating to their origins I have elected to only mention it in a footnote.