Cave Dwellers

Cave Dwellers were a race of tribesmen native to the Emeraldine. They made their homes in the caverns of the Midland Mountains. They were often in conflict with the Wideface People. It is believed they no longer exist.

Appearance
Shorter than most other races and feet as hard as rock through the build up of callouses. There exists a caste of Cave Dwellers, the Sightless, that have the milky white eyes of the blind. The Cave Dwellers' most abnormal feature are their bulbous heads with little to no hair. Those with the largest heads are revered in their society.

Not an overtly muscular race, their bodies are sinewy and gaunt, built for slinking between crags and narrow passages in their caves. Their intimate knowledge of their land's unseen places make them dangerous to those traveling through their lands.

Culture
The Cave Dwellers worshipped a strange deity who was a gigantic disembodied head deep beneath the earth. The deity's image has been discovered in the form of statues people have found in the shrines of the Cave Dwellers, hollowed out deep underground. The Cave Dwellers believed they were the children created when their god opened its mouth and shouted. Its children tunneled through the world making their homes in the vast caverns. The second shout their god made erupted through the crust of the earth and created trees and rivers for which its children co use. The third and final shout burst into the void beyond and was answered by the shout of an evil deity that wanted its children. It was preached by their shamans that whoever died upon the earth, rather than underneath it, would suffer their unbound soul drifting upward into hell and become stars that were doomed eternally to look down in sorrow.

Their soicety is separated into two castes called the Sightless and the Bounded. The Sightless, as their name implies, include those born without sight. This is a common trait amongst the Cave Dwellers for they navigate by sound and touch more often than their eyes. The Sightless never leave their subterranean homes and are reared as diggers, healers and shamans. The Bounded are tasked with the duty of going to the surface world to bring back valuable things for their communities, such as as food, fuel, wool and wives.

Those who were born with an exceptionally large head were given special privilege in their communities for it was believed they were imbued with favor by their god. They would often become chieftains, head shamans and given the best of food and women.

While not a militaristic race, they nonetheless engaged in ambushes and kidnappings on Wideface, Stoneborn and Reindeer Herders. Taking for wives women of other races was seen as an act of benevolence. according to their religion, if one were to die while not protected by their god's earthern firmament, they could never be reborn.

Relics
It is widely believed the Cave Dwellers were wiped out when an alliance of Velorian and Stoneborn forces rooted them out of their underground homes and killed them. Remnants of their culture are often found in deep caves. The Shrieking Mouth is a castle built by the Horu clan in the cave of a defeated tribe of Cave Dwellers. When the wind blows rough, a keening sound can be heard, said to be the screams of the ghosts massacred by the Horu.

Shrines containing effigies of their giant head deity and cave paintings depicting their religion. These are valued and sought after by treasure hunters.

Some believe the Cave Dwellers were not completely wiped out but merely descended further underground to depths no one has yet ventured.