THE PEOPLE OF EARTH

The stone of your fortress walls. The metal of your sword blade. The sandy bed and great cliffs that bound your seas. The mountains that rise into the sky. The soil your crops grow from. The very ground beneath your feet as you walk.

The Earth insist that theirs is the element from which all the others sprang, and theirs is the element that still more than any other binds and defines the world through which all the Peoples move. Sand and rock enclose the oceans and streams of the Water domains, and not even the lightest-bodied of the Air has been able to completely shake free of the need for solid ground to walk on. Fire, Water and Air are all still dependent on metal and rock carved from the ground to forge and maintain their weapons and devices: much as they hate the fact and tell themselves that this is simply a display of their mastery over this crudest and most inanimate of Elements, the Earth know better. Theirs is the element of true strength, the earth everlasting, and though the dear flesh of the Motherworld must endure abuse after abuse at the hands of the weaklings who have tried to sever themselves from it they know that the resilience of the Earth will always see them through.

The Earth may be the most diverse of all the Peoples. Air, Water and Fire all have their differing factions and castes but all still live in what is basically a single large society, men and women from all branches of their culture mingling more or less freely. But since the schism from their Elementals the Earth have divided into three independent folk so radically different that they might almost be separate races: the primitive, muscular Cragmen, the Savannah warriors with their rolling cities and Biscoferus herds, and the reclusive, deep-tunnelling Earthworm clans. But despite their differences the Earth are united against every enemy and rival by their stubbornness and quiet, fatalistic determination.

Physique
The Earth and Water have this in common: they have done more to adapt to their own element than to adapt it to them. The Air and Fire have both set up their city-enclaves and drawn their element around them while the Earth and Water have spread to the far corners of their own domains and have been shaped by those domains’ extremes. The three factions of Earth each have their own communities scattered across the face of the Motherworld, some dealing with other Earth constantly and others cut off by geography, war or their own dispositions.

All the folk of the Earth have traits in common despite their visible differences. Chief among these is their physiology: a hairy-skinned Cragman and a pebble-smooth Earthworm Black will still both have the same very tough, dense flesh, so hard that a pin pushed hard against their skin would bend rather than pierce them, and Earth bones are rock-heavy and hard to crack with anything less than a sledgehammer. Their blood is thick, dark and muddy and their nails and teeth like pale quartz. Their movements tend to be slow and deliberate, as much a product of their slow, methodical thoughts as the strength and weight of their limbs. Only when surprised or alarmed do the Earth become as choppy and clumsy as their appearance might suggest: their temperament does not lend itself well to snap judgements or thinking on their feet and it shows.

Earth pregnancies last well over a year and their children are typically quiet and watchful by temperament. Their growth tends to be slow: two or three years might go by before a child of the Earth is walking and talking but when they do take their first steps or make their first words it is usually with an assurance and lack of show well beyond their years. When they do speak the voices of the Earth tend to be rough and hoarse, and their language is rumbling and throaty and full of the grind of rock on rock.

Despite all they have in common the physical differences between the three Earth societies are as extreme as that of their lifestyles.

Culture and temperament
The Earth are quiet, solemn and taciturn to a fault, rarely speaking aloud and disagreeing even more rarely still. The other Peoples sneer at them for this, characterising them as mindless zombies or slave-insects. The reality is that the Earth share a deep bond and common understanding that makes the tiresome jabbering of the other Peoples unnecessary. The Earth share so much of their sensibility and view of the world that the reactions of any group of Earth to what is going on around them will be near-identical, similar to the bond that identical twins share. Their emotional and intellectual responses, their ideas and instincts on what to do next - these will all be so similar that groups of Earth are able to act in effortless unison with barely a word passing between them, sometimes for days on end. When they do talk their speech is sparse and curt, with one word doing the work for which any other people would need a hundred.

Such commonality of instinct makes the Earth very effective on small-scale works or military ventures, since squads of Earth are able to act with great speed and cohesion and with no time wasted on orders and co-ordination. However, the Earth are not good at communicating complex ideas verbally and struggle with having to explain and pass on elaborate plans and briefings. This is compounded when trying to co-ordinate movements of large or widely-dispersed forces since so much of Earth communication relies on the other person being able to look at the situation and arrive at the same conclusions before one even begins talking. Long-range planning and co-ordination tends to be scrappy and inefficient, making the Earth excellent at holding the line and countering enemy assaults but poor at planning and carrying out major campaigns of their own.

This reliance on an unspoken understanding can cause broader problems too. Every so often there will be a disagreement between the Earth as to how to approach a problem or cope with a certain situation. Since the Earth are not inclined by temperament to discuss or converse, deep misunderstandings can develop and the Earth are so used to instinctive accord on matters that they are ill-prepared to deal with genuine differences of opinion. Usually they will simply try to ignore the disagreements, but occasionally they will burst into desperate violence born of frustrated incomprehension. Thus Earth society mirrors its element: quiet, stable and resilient, slow to move, but at times concealing great pressures and catastrophic fault lines.

In keeping with their taciturn nature the Earth have a largely hidden culture with few outward displays of emotion. They derive feelings of great serenity and wellbeing from the company of their families or comrades but place no particular value on communal activities such as eating or drinking and do not engage in social pursuits such as festivals or games. The simple presence of those close to them is enough for the Earth and they are perfectly fulfilled simply by working or resting side-by-side in silence. The Earth create no art and are uninterested in even the most basic forms of ornamentation: their equivalent to fine art is the creation of tools and devices that are as finely machined as they can be. Seeing and holding a hammer, a weapon, a piece of armour or machinery that is perfectly engineered to be utterly functional, beautifully suited to its purpose with nothing inefficient or unnecessary about it, is to an Earth what seeing a beautiful work of art would be to any other human. It is a paradox of the Earth temperament that total efficiency is what in fact moves them emotionally. Such a surpassing piece of craft is referred to, with typical Earth economy of words, as a “Work”, and it is the ambition of all Earth engineers to produce at least one Work in their careers.

The one exception to this is gems. The reverence of the Earth for their element finds its ultimate expression in jewels and precious stones, which they refer to as “gifts”, symbols of the Earth’s love and gratitude towards its defenders. The Earth do not “worship” their element as such, but discovering a gem is considered a sign of prestige and special distinction and once a gem has come into possession of a particular Earth it is considered the gravest insult for it to be taken or given away, even to one’s own spouse or children. Gems are usually worn on the skin or armour, not for show in their own right but to show that the wearer has earned the greatest of gifts from the beloved Earth.

Their relationship to the Earth is the source of the other great defining trait of the Earth: their quiet, fatalistic but immovable tenacity. The Earth have watched their beloved element endure assault after assault: Water and Air grind away at the rocks and mountains with ceaseless erosion or seep into the Earth to soften and crack it from within; Fire tries to blast the soil into lifeless dust and stone to hot lava slurry. They watch the other elements farm it, mine it, strip it of its wealth, even tear it asunder as the Air have done while the Earth struggle to defend it and keep their world intact. Such a life has left them with a stoic view of the world: they do not have the lofty cockiness of the Air or the fierce conquering ambitions of Fire. They are resigned to their role as defenders, forever prowling their borders or waiting patiently in their deep bunkers for the next assault, constantly on the back foot, constantly working to drive away the invaders. Other Peoples have realms that are harder to attack, living high in the sky or in the ocean, but the Earth realms are always there, always vulnerable, and ever since the wars between the Peoples began the Earth have never had a single day in which some part of their lands was not under siege. The Earth are resigned to their lot, resigned to living under arms, resigned as no other People are to the fact that they will likely as not die battling the abusers of the Earth. But they are quietly and deeply proud that such a life will never, ever break them: no matter what destruction their enemies bring them the Earth will always fight to the last, stubborn and immovable as a mountainside. The expression “digging deep” has even entered the lexicon of the other Peoples to sum up the indomitable will that the Earth embody.

Society
The schisms between human and Elemental were a defining moment for nearly all the Peoples but affected the Earth particularly profoundly, dividing into their radically different communities according to their reactions to the intellectual revolution of science and technology. Although the Earth still share a fundamental bond through their allegiance to their element, they remain radically divided in most other ways.

The Cragfolk are the mightiest of the Earth and probably the most physically powerful humans of all the Motherworld. They are descended from those of the Earth who were most true to the Elementals at the time of the schism, and learned from the Court a horror of machines and engineering. They fled the frightening new technology that had driven a wedge between the humans and the Court and tried to remake their society in the image of old, communing directly with the elemental Earth and drawing their power and life from it. As their Elemental gifts began to weaken with time and they could no longer move through the Earth itself they found the tunnels of the other Earth still repelled them, dug with mechanised drills and lined with cut stone and forge-hammered metal. Finally they emerged onto the surface of the Motherworld and made their homes where the might of the Earth was most comfortingly obvious: in the greatest mountain ranges all across the world. The Cragmen tribes now roam among the greatest peaks and chasms, living a simple and wild life in cave complexes that they carve and shape out of the mountains with will and Elemental arts as much as tools, keeping their own counsel largely separate from the Plains and Earthworm.

Such a life that has built them into towering figures, Cragmen and Cragwomen alike broad-shouldered, heavy-limbed and heavy-bellied, with thick hides like scored leather and manes of wiry hair, in all colours from the dark grey of a mountain face to the white of alpine snows. Their builds are shambling and slab-muscled rather than the sleek Water or the scrawny Fire or Air, but the palpable aura of strength and power they give off is anything but comical. Those with the strongest blood ties back to their Elemental gifts have grown bigger still, the strength of sheer Elemental Earth pouring through them and infusing them with vitality: from the Cragfolk have grown the Hill Ogres and the terrifying Mountain Giants. For all their bestial appearance these creatures are wise in the ways of their Element and of making war, and taking them for mindless brutes is often the last mistake an overconfident enemy will make.

Cragfolk society and lifestyle is as primitive as their technology, not from lack of intellect but from a rejection of complicated artifice. They live in caves and dress in simple hides, but they need little more: they can work Elemental arts on the stone of their homes to draw warmth and strength and use their raw physical power to hunt. Among the tribes the greatest respect and deference is paid to the strongest, both in physical strength and in Elemental power: for the Cragfolk these go hand in hand. They only rarely settle differences with one another through violence, instead battling with feats of strength such as lifting and throwing great boulders, running or leaping. Such contests have a solemn, almost ritual air and are treated very seriously; a contest between two powerful Mountain Giants will bring tribes of Cragfolk from all over to watch.

The Plainsfolk are the least-altered of the Earth. They show the burly build and heavy features of their People, but in height and proportion they are closer to the other Peoples than to the great Cragfolk or the diminutive Earthworm. Their hair is fine, but stiff and wiry, and their skins have the pleasant warmth of stone that has sat in the spring sun; their colouring tends to the browns and greys of sandstone or granite. Their movements are rangy and loping and they can cover great distances without tiring, even without their Biscoferus steeds or mechanical cars.

The Plains folk are the most battle-hardened and most often on the front lines against the depredations of the other Peoples, but ironically they have the lightest contact with the element that is their home. They spend much of their time above ground, moving to and fro across the open country by one means or another, constantly seeking out and crushing any invaders they find or occasionally even raiding into other elemental realms. What permanent settlements they build tend to be fortified outposts rather than homes, dug in on critical stretches of boundary or at the juncture of two patrol routes. Wherever possible these outposts are connected by deep tunnels, but these are only used for reprovisioning and moving garrisons: the defensive patrols must move across the surface where the threats from other Elements are more likely to appear.

The spiritual home of the Plains folk is in what must be the greatest feat of Earth engineering: the Great Juggernauts or Mega-Juggernauts, the mobile cities that the Earth have built on every landmass of the Motherworld big enough to accommodate them. Faced with the need to be constantly moving across the face of the Earth but the desire to spend as little time as possible under the gaping, vacuous sky, the factions that would eventually become the Plains folk and the Earthworm set about building these vast roaming cities, tall enough to blot out the sun, powerful enough to bulldoze a forest beneath them, constantly prowling the land on tracks so big that a single one of them can dam a great river. Great machines buried deep in their shells draw the pure, thrumming energy of Earth up into the engines to keep the treads turning and the giant cannon turrets hunting back and forth across the horizon. Elemental Masters who make their homes on the Great Juggernauts funnel power through the city to invigorate and rejuvenate the Earth inside, to draw up captive Elementals from the ground to carry out the menial work of the city, and to reinfuse the ground beneath the treads to stop it from crumbling or liquefying beneath the Juggernaut’s weight. The palpable Elemental power that each of these roaming cities gives off is enough to stall many assaults by other Elements in their tracks, oppressing the minds of enemy soldiers and shredding their attempts to conjure their own Elemental forces. The Great Juggernauts are an inspiration to the Earth and a terror to their foes.

The Earthworm are the smallest of the Earth, having grown adapted to their tunnels and the stifling confines of their complex drilling engines. Their great eyes are attuned to the slightest traces of background light to the point where they must often wear visors to venture into the daylight. They are hairless and their smooth-crowned heads and large, dark and unblinking eyes can give them a sinister appearance; the soft, harsh whispers of their voices make them more unnerving still. Their skins are smooth as polished stone, and usually dark, although some are shot through with swirling patterns of white or orange like fine marble. Their body temperature is low and in humid conditions condensation will often form on their slick, hard hides. Although the Earth use the terms “grey”, “white” and “black” to distinguish between their sub-castes these refer to levels of lighting rather than colour and the Earthworm are indifferent to the odd variations in skin.

The Earthworm are the Earth faction who have been most beguiled by the sciences. Their devices are powered, as are all those on the Motherworld, by cells that draw out and concentrate the natural Elemental forces of the world itself but they make little use of captive Earth Elementals or of the classical Elementalist arts. They shun the surface as much as they can and dislike open spaces, riding to and fro deep underground in their excavator engines or in magnetic railcars running between the little clusters of bubble-caves in which the Earthworm families make their homes. Their totem is the Great Earthworm, not the tiny creatures that live in the topsoil but a great armoured thing as thick around as one of the Earthworm clans’ tunnelers and up to three hundred metres long, creatures charged with Elemental power who writhe through solid rock as though it were soft mud and leave a wake of rare and precious metals and minerals. The tunnelers follow the trails of the Earthworms and bring the precious ores back to their foundry-caves to be worked, and from there it is either kept in the deeps for the laboratories and machine-smithies of the Earthworm themselves, or carried to forges nearer the surface for the devices that the Earthworm make for their fellow Earth, the Plainsfolk, to use in war. Those Earthworm who make such journeys the most often are called the Earthworm White, after the bright light (by Earthworm standards) which they must endure as they come closer to the surface. The Earthworm Grey is the name of the more senior Earthworm who live in the dimmer light of the deeper chambers and only rarely lead the most important missions to the surface. The most respected, powerful and puissant of the Earthworm are the Earthworm Black, who work in the lightless realms in the very deepest reaches of the Earth realm, hunting the rarest and most precious of minerals. These extreme depths are the home of strange and exotic creatures of Elemental Earth which often try to prey on the Earthworm teams, and there are times when infiltrating fighters from Water or Fire will find a foothold deep underground which the Earthworm Black must repel in desperate, deep-buried battles. Most disturbing of all to many of the other Earth are the reports that the Earthworm Black occasionally encounter one of the great Elemental nobility from the self-exiled Court of Earth itself, and that these encounters end in open combat as often as the two simply pass one another by. If such stories are true it would seem that the Court of Earth has still to forgive its brash human stepchildren.

War-making
Although they are one of the most numerous of the Peoples the Earth are also one of the most stretched, their domains under constant siege. Every Earth must be familiar with the arts of war and although there is often misunderstanding and mistrust between their factions the one thing that will bring them into instant and unquestioning alliance is the arrival of invaders in their realms. Earth warfare is overwhelmingly defensive, but savagely so: the Earth will rarely settle for simply repelling an enemy incursion but will attempt to destroy the invaders through trapping them or misdirecting them into ambushes and killing zones, cutting them off and wearing them down through guerrilla warfare, or simply manoeuvring them into a position where they can be obliterated in a great artillery barrage from a fort or Juggernaut.

The Cragfolk have the simplest tools of war. They outfit themselves with stone axes and clubs, sometimes with wooden hafts but often made from pieces of stone, simpler than the mechanised equipment of the other factions but well-balanced and showing few of the crude chip-marks that one might expect: they are made as much by Elemental arts as by blows with other stones. From afar Cragmen simply pelt their enemies with stones, an attack more powerful and deadly than it might sound. Their Ogres and Giants can fling boulders that can crush a human to pulp or shatter into deadly flying shards, but even the fist-sized rocks that the Cragfolk themselves employ are sped on their way by the Cragfolk’s empathy and bond with the stone. A rock thrown in a leisurely underarm swing can accelerate and curve in flight to strike home with pinpoint accuracy and skull-cracking force. Despite the simplicity of their weapons the Cragmen are crafty warriors, using their knowledge of their mountain ranges to lure the enemy into dead-ends, traps and ambushes.

The Earthworm, when they go to war, prefer to use their ability to tunnel easily through the ground to stage a shock assault, erupting into the middle of an enemy and then disappearing back into the ground and collapsing their tunnels behind them, often on top of any foes foolish enough to take up pursuit. They make little use of firearms or missiles, weapons which are near-useless in their narrow winding tunnels where the enemy are on top of you if they are visible at all. Instead the Earthworm White and Grey equip themselves instead with deadly mechanised piston-fists and the near-unstoppable Excavator blade, while the Earthworm Black, the bravest and most skilled, use specialised sapping tools that allow them to crisscross the battlefield creating trenches, sowing mines or simply opening craters beneath the enemy. The Earthworm are armoured in thick granite carapaces, so skilfully shaped with hand-carving and elemental skills that it moves seamlessly with the wearer, bearing its own weight with the elemental force that courses through it.

The Plainsfolk are the Earth who are most commonly at war and in the most diverse and unpredictable ways. They have the most flexible equipment and training, since they must often do without specialist reinforcements from Cragfolk or Earthworm allies, and are the most numerous. Many warriors from other Peoples have campaigned against the Earth for years without ever fighting against any soldier other than those of the Plains. The basic Plains soldiers arm themselves with weapons built in the workshops of the Earthworm, based partly on scientific principles of magnetic impulsion but also on the magical “charging” of each shot to the point where it is alive with the concentrated spirit of its element and will accelerate and seek its targets in flight in the way the hurled rocks of the Cragfolk do. The armourers of the Earth tear each slug and shot out of the ground by force and then tune it with almost tender care: as it is charged with energy it becomes semi-animate, as is the way of things on the Motherworld, and begins to be able to feel grief and anger at its parting from the ground. This primitive animal emotion mixes with the magnetic energies of the gun’s field to form a physical/magical mix more potent than any gunpowder and the shots leap out of the muzzle at stunning speed. These railguns (so-called, although that forms only part of the principle of their operation) charge and fire with a piercing crackle of energy and the shots close on their targets with a furious scream. Producing such ammunition, with the deliberate cruelty to the semi-sentient Earth that it entails, is draining and exhausting and the Earth greatly respect their armourers for the rigours they must go through.

The troopers who make up the bulk of the Plains patrols and the garrisons of their bunkers are simple infantry, moving between outposts or along well-established patrol routes with tireless, loping strides. The Plains warriors carry rail rifles and are accomplished sharpshooters; when at close quarters they unlimber heavy, two-handed hammers with heads of magic-tempered rock. They are supported by the Savannah Warriors, the cavalry of the Earth, who tame and ride the powerful and feisty Biscoferus beasts. These creatures can shrug off enemy shots to their thick, stony hides and their thunderous charges can plough through the most determined line of defenders. From their high saddles the Savannah riders can keep up constant volleys from their rail rifles as a mobile fire unit, or urge their mounts into a thunderous gallop and lower their shard-lances. These are long, jagged spikes of stone set into a metal grip that the riders clip onto their gauntlets. The stone of the lance itself has been teased out and stretched by the Elementalist armourers, carved with flaws and given a delicate set of internal stresses so that when the shard-lance strikes an enemy on the correct angle the stone will shatter, razor-fragments hurtling into and past the target to shred and lacerate the enemy. The Savannah riders provide a highly-mobile strike force, able to circle out on longer patrols, quickly reinforce the Plains warriors against sudden incursions or pace an enemy army and wear it down with continual hit-and-run attacks.

The most powerful weapons of the Earth are the frightening Magnapults. These enormous machines spend much of their time as fixed defences in the larger border-fortresses, but every such fortress has at least one gun-carriage on which a Magnapult can be mounted and carried out into the field. Most such carriages glide over the ground on a cushion of powerful magnetism, although the more skilled Elementalists can craft pedestals with jutting ploughlike blades that actually glide through the earth as though it were water. When the power of the Magnapults is needed in the field they are fixed to their carriages and set out in an artillery train that includes the fortress gun-crews and Biscoferus or minor Elementals carrying panniers of ammunition. Magnapult shots are carved from marble and jet and charged in the same way as rail weapon shots, although Magnapult rounds are far larger and heavier and take two or more Earth to lift. As they are brought out to be loaded into the Magnapult’s breech the changes in their shape can be seen: the inchoate rage that flows through them shapes them into snarling faces or crude fists ready to smash into the enemy.

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