The progenitors are a nearly extinct species, and little is known about them. Humanity’s knowledge comes mostly from the observation of ruins and half-forgotten legends - fragments often twisted by time and error, that few humans know.
Whatever remains of the progenitors that can be found lie deep within damp, shadowed caves. They seemed to shun the scorching sun and suffered greatly from the scarcity of water. They might have been amphibious, or at least partially so, as their lairs contain vast networks of pipes, basins, wet chambers, and pools.
Their minds were far more advanced than those of any amphibian, reaching extremes that not even human intellect can fathom without risking madness. Their tools have often been salvaged for human use, suggesting the presence of hands and feet, though some of these artifacts may have been crafted for their human thralls instead.
The way their bodies are depicted in art and myth reflects this dual humanoid and aquatic nature. A common motif is a powerful human-like body crowned with the head of a water-dwelling creature such as a crab, octopus, or lizard. Others portray them as disembodied heads or brains suspended in liquid, connected to robotic shells or grafted onto decapitated human hosts. Wilder storytellers speak of tentacles, bat-like wings, bioelectronic appendices, claws, or amorphous blobs twisting into unnamable shapes that defy all classification and analogy.
Progenitors were mostly solitary and arrogant beings. They viewed other creatures as mere tools for their purposes and their own kind as little better. Though they seemed to share a common language, they rarely shared common homes. Their lairs were cloaked in secrecy and often protected by cruel locks and traps, their experiments jealously guarded from even their peers.
They possessed powerful, but limited, means of communication across vast distances, aided by strange machines and immense psionic abilities.
They appeared obsessed with experimental science and technology, using humans as guinea and creating incredibly intelligent machines, on the verge of artificial intelligence, to serve their whims. The planet itself, like all other life, was exploited with little regard for the future. The regions surrounding their dwellings remain especially grim and lifeless even by the standards of this already hostile world.
The Progenitors and Humanity
Humans were very likely the progenitors’ favored thralls. Their versatility and aptitude for tool use made them ideal servants. Any inclination toward rebellion or resistance seems to have been suppressed through psionic or technological means, though bloody uprisings and wars certainly occurred.
Humans were likely bred, cloned, and altered to better serve their masters. They were also subjected to endless experimentation, their capabilities tested and catalogued. The abhorrent treatment that lingers in humanity’s collective subconscious would appear as wanton cruelty and sadism, but in the eyes of the progenitors, it may have been explained as scientific curiosity akin to what a human would nurture for an unusually clever group of mice.
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