Has any possible explanation ever been offered for why the daelkyr look so human?
Funny, I was wondering why humans look so daelkyr....
(No, no there hasn't :P)
Nope. But that is a really good question.
The easy answer is that there aberrant entities from xoriat so how are we suppose to explain it? However, if we actually use are brains and start thinking about this, perhaps they don't actually look like humans. Now they may look like humans, but that's only to our eyes. Because they are aberrant we cannot physically see their true form becuase it is incomprehensible to us. Or perhaps there body's naturally adept to appear like the most prominent race of world around them.
I thought there was a mention somewhere about the goblins being freaked out when the humans first arrived from Sarlona because they looked so much like the daelkyr. I can't find the reference now, though.
I remember that reference too. I think it might've just been a post by Hellcow? I remember the resemblance was credited as part of the reason why humans were so successful conquering goblin territory.
I also credit the resemblance with why Daelkyr Half-Bloods are almost always exclusively born from humans. There's just something about humans that ties them to daelkyr.
Has any possible explanation ever been offered for why the daelkyr look so human?
I always figured it was irony. In a world where giant worms, floating eye stalks, ooze monsters, and brain eating squid men are normal; the Daelkyr- which are the most horrible, twisted, and insane lord and masters of the realm- look normal by our standards. More than normal. They look absolutely beautiful.
It's like that one episode of the Twilight Zone.
Thank you for giving me that set up.
Back when Syrania was the primary abode of angels in Eberron, I thought that daelkyr could have been former solars (the biggest, toughest angels) who had long ago explored Xoriat and been corrupted by it. The corruption of so many angels millenia ago is what caused the angels of Syrania to adopt their "No direct intereference" policy.
Crazy thought: What if the daelkyr are actually children of the Mourning? Whatever the cause of the disaster, one consequence was that many Cyrans were not killed, but actually cast backwards in time, passing into Xoriat, and eventually evolved into the daelkyr?
They might be apocalyptic mutants of a house like Cannith or Vadalis. Both are human and both are deeply involved with creation. Perhaps the disaster hit the Cannith enclaves and through them backwards, driving them mad. They in time became the daelkyr, and Xoriat changed the Mark of Making into the power of "enchant" creatures with the forces of madness.
If true, this may mean that every dragonmark may have its own manifestation of madness when its heirs are exposed to Xoriat.
That's a really cool idea Sarlax. My only criticism is that they needn't be cast back in time, just cast into Xoriat.
Time has no meaning in Xoriat.
A very cool idea indeedy. After all what is time in Xoriat, Xoriat is just... well whenever you (or some other nameless entity who's very existence scars your mind) want it to be.
Truth be told I think the Daelkyr look human because right now humans are the most populous and influential of the younger races. Xoriat is the realm of inspiration and the mirror of our sanity, so right now that mirror shows us. Kinda gives you a queasy feeling when you think about it for too long :P.
That's a really cool idea Sarlax.
I concur. In fact, this fits very well with my current plot which has the Mourning as being the result of a Daelkyr artifact's interference and manipulation of Merrix d'Cannith.
My only criticism is that they needn't be cast back in time, just cast into Xoriat.Time has no meaning in Xoriat.
Which means that they needn't have 'evolved' into the Daelkyr; the Daelkyr were waiting for them when they arrived, captured them and, over instantaneous millennia of timelessness, agonizingly transformed them into the Daelkyr, who awaited the arrival of the Cyrans, captured them...
If Xoriat is a Lovcraftian realm beyond the mortal conceit of time, perhaps they simply had the "foresight" to cast themselves in the clothes of the race destined to hold the reigns of history more so than the others. Perhaps some of the Daelkyr once appeared as Giants or, better yet the product of a dragon, cthulhu and some light jazz?
I've played it that they are not in fact native to Xorat but are humans who are high priests of the real old gods of that realm. They were high cultists of Those Before who went mad and were drawn into Xorat back in the human stone age when the stars fell out of alignment. Those Before sent them to take Eberron because that's where they came from.
Even so, they only pass as human from a distance. If you get close enough you can see that they don't really have skin. Their faces are made up of bony plates that form a semi-expressionable mask. When they change expression a viewer gets the impression of overlapping and interlocking plates moving in bizarre ways and ending in a new expression.
Going from a grimmace to a smile a viewer sees the face slowly slide around, new plates slide into view while others move around or hide finaly setteling in a smileing face. You don't just see the lips close them turn up at the edges while the eyes relax. It seemingly takes it's face apart and puts it together in a new appearance. That also means they don't move their mouths when talking unless they really want to creep the viewer out because that kind of quick facial movements would look nightmarish.
If they want to, they could slide that bony mask away and show you what their masters have truly made of their humanity. Which would send you tearing you eyes out and screaming yourself horse.