Manamorians

The Manamorians, or Manamores, were an extremely old race thought to predate even ancient humans by millennia. For this reason, while the term "ancient" mostly refers to people from the Age of the Sun and the Grey Era (roughly 2800BD - 0BD), and the term "prehistoric" refers to humans before that period, the term "archaic" in a strict historical sense refers to races that predate humans entirely. This is why the archaic wonders of the world are usually called Archaios.

According to the Red Temple, Leuvana, the daughter of Nikina and bringer of life, created the Manamorians, but after their civilisations failed, she created humans and made them much weaker than the Manamorians, to reduce the chance for corruption and war.

Description and Cities

Scholars place the archaic age of the Manamorians anywhere from 5000 to 500,000 years ago. Some say these estimates are far too reserved, and that the Manamorians lived in a time beyond human comprehension. All that is known about the Manamorians comes from the little that is known about the Archaios ruins themselves, and the snippets of information given by deities such as Nikina. Manamorian Archaios can be found mostly in northern Benevis, and eastern and western Armalia. It isn't known whether these three regions were home to separate civilisations of Manamorians, since they are all built out of the same stone and bear the same patterns and similar artifacts. Given the size of the seven known Archaios, the total Manamorian population in these cities alone is estimated to be, at most, around 1 million.

It can be deduced that the Manamorians at least resembled humans. Archaios artifacts are all around the right size and shape to be utilised by modern humans, and structural features like windows and doorways are also of similar sizes to be perfectly usable. Manamorian cities seem to utilise rooms and hallways of varying sizes, indicating that they had all kinds of spaces, from homes of a few rooms, to temples and public spaces, and even palaces. Too little evidence to determine what specific areas were used for, but it is known that their architecture utilised a lot of symmetry and elaborate stonework. One of the most remarkable things about Manamorian Archaios stonework is that, despite the amount of erosion and weathering on the stone, no signs of pickaxes or chisels have ever been discovered, and no trace of mortar exists between the stones themselves. Indeed, some stones, both horizontal and upright, are thought to weigh around 1000-3000 tons and can be as large as 30m by 10m by 10m (100 x 33 x 33 feet), making them not only the largest excavated stones in Riiga, but it was apparently all done without the use of any known tools.

The unfeasible nature of their stonework, as well as their highly advanced magical artifacts, combined with the speculation that Garukavar was once a Manamorian, is all evidence that the Manamorians were an extremely magically powerful race. Some magic scholars say that the Manamorians were the ones who invented magic, and that this event would tie in to the origins of Monsters, claiming that the link between Archaios and monster-infested areas is no coincidence.

Fate

Nothing is known about how or why the Manamorians went extinct. No skeleton that could be identified as a Manamorian has ever been found in any of the Archaios. The only indication that these people ever experienced anything catastrophic is the damage sustained by all the Archaios save Dalmuvar in Nor: Many gigantic stones cracked and blown apart suddenly, inconsistent with damage sustained from disasters that might topple stonework such as earthquakes, though it isn't known whether this happened during or after Manamorians inhabited the archaic cities. Literally all that remains of the Manamorians to this day is their Archaios cities and their artifacts and -- according to the Red Temple -- Garukavar himself.