Lizardmen

Lizardmen are a cold-blooded reptiles (varanids to be specific), mainly characterized by thick scale, sharp thinking and high level of endurance. They populate mainly swamps and sylvan mountains. They tolerate all sorts of climates and terrains, with the exception of very low temperature: cold is their weak point. Unlike normal lizards, they mainly eat meat, but they never prey on sentiment beings (like Humans), they also like fruits, but they never eat grains/cereals (nor alcoholic beverage made out of it). Weaker lizardmen live at least 900 years, while the stronger could live up to 1300 years. The colour of the scales can vary regardless of gender. Their eyes can be green, yellow or orange. On average, they weight 70 kilograms or 155 pounds and are 175 centimetres or 5 feet and 9 inches tall.

Their limbs are muscular and they can endure physically demand work for long, although not as nimble or agile as elves, they can endure running for longer amount of time than Elves or Orcs, either up to hills or on the flat ground. They are neutral to other races, they are not expansive, they are conservative and tradition-respecting. They do not engage in combat with those who doesn't attack first*, although in battle the enemy is clearly enemy for them, they do not hold them back when fighting someone who wants their head. Their warriors are more fond of agility and speed than raw strength, although they don’t underestimate the last either. They usually use spears or missile weapons, but there are some who prefer swords or heavy weapons (such as battle axes). They also use their strong tails in battle! Due to their thick skin, they do not wear armour, and they wear clothes rarely - most of the time only trousers.

They live in smaller or bigger communities, but it’s not rare for the younger to decide to become an adventurer, travelling warrior or mercenary. There are some of them who are spellcasters, mostly shamans who help the community with their magic and teach them in the ways of the religion. There are also some of them who decide to be mages. There are some who aren’t born to their kind. They are usually sociable, but not always accepted due the way they look.

Despite the stereotype, they rarely worship Dragons or other lizards. They easily see trough lies and know when someone’s telling lies or the truth. So that’s why they are honest, which sometimes makes them feel uncomfortable (and their charisma suffers).

Due to the fact that they are peaceful and are reluctant to fight, Orcs consider them “barbarians and cowards”, while elves and dwarves respect them because of their patience.

Reminder: they are humanoid reptiles, NOT mammals (they reproduce with eggs, and there isn't much difference between the way males and females look)

Family
Traditionally, lizardmen had a culture that would be recognized as very much alien from what the mammalian races that dominate Artograch today would be used to. Among other things, the various mammalian races are typically used to having lifelong, or at least long-term marriages, be they monogamous or polygamous, where the responsibility of raising the children typically mainly falls to the mother, even in relatively gender-egeletarian societies where genders share responsibilities - this is very much understandable, given how mammalian races are characterized by breastfeeding their young for years after birth. In contrast, Lizardmen - being varanids - lay eggs, have no mammaries, and therefore nurse their young by feeding them with wet, partially-digested food that contains saliva from the parents, transmitting both beneficial bacteria and immunity to illnesses to the young, something both males and females can do. Due to this radically different way of reproduction and nursing, it is clear that their culture around is going to be vastly different.

Imperial
Imperial-era lizardmen were a highly communal and clannish bunch, but also highly exogamous - mating with someone from your father's clan or mother's clan was viewed as incest, therefore forbidden. Whenever a male managed to sway a female, the relationship would be temporary: the male stays with the female for as long as it takes the female to lay her eggs. Afterwards, the male would have taken the egg or eggs to his clan's hatchery, where it would be marked in regards to the mother's clan, to make sure the hatchling will not mate with either of his parents' clans, even while not even knowing the name of his/her mother or father. Afterwards, hatchlings are raised communally - this was typically done by the females of the clan, as well as retired old males considered too weak for any other occupation (or wise enough to be sources of night tales for the hatchling).

Between being laid, and hatching, eggs were kept in hatcheries that were guarded by armed men, with one man inside regulating the heat, lest the little lizardmen inside the eggs freeze or cook to death.

Post-Imperial
Following the collapse of the Lizardman Empire, the modus operandi changed - smaller tribes would no longer be able to maintain the old clan-based system would inbreeding, so they replaced the old clan-based system with tribes where mating within one's tribe was no longer taboo, however, mating with a close relative (brother, parent, or first cousin) was still taboo. Eggs were now marked not with the names of clans, but the names of the individual parents. Since lizardmen lived in smaller tribes, all children would be still raised communally.

Following the establishment of the Kingdom of Etrand, especially with after the reign of King Tondbert I of Etrand, a number of Lizardmen migrated into human-dominated cities. Influenced by human-Etrandish culture, they would adopt monogamous marriagess and the nuclear family structure, causing a sort of cultural schism between Lizardmen.

Pre-Imperial
Before the formation of the Ancient Lizardman Empire, the Lizardmen were part of the caste system that the Massenpreost Despotanfras race created for their civilization, occupying the Warrior caste.

It was a Lizardman rebellion/coup started by Hwortrang Zarrek that led to the ultimate downfall and extinction of the Massenpreost Despotanfras race and the formation of the Ancient Lizardman Empire.

Imperial
The Ancient Lizardman Empire saw the prolifiration of the Lizardman race. If it wasn't for all the archeology and written records, no one would think today that this race of pacifistic, anti-expansionist, naturer-respecting and tradition-nurturing race of hummanoid reptilians was once a race of expansionist and imperialistic revolutionaries, slave-owners, legionaries, explorers, scholars, architects, pyramid-builders, and most importantly, colonizers. However, as the history books tell us, the Lizardmen of that time were keen to expand their farmlands, to conquer new territories and and prolifirate their race.

Off course, as their empire lasted 17 000 years, it is important to note, that their expansion was a lot slower than that of humans. While an impatient human ruler may decide that he wants to be the Emperor of Artograch in just one decade, the Lizardmen were slow and careful expansionists, slowly and gradually expanding from their homelands.

Roughly around 6000 BEKE, the Empire colonized Lizards Island, which broke off to form its own state around 3700 BEKE.

Post-Imperial
By the end of their empire's lifespan, the Lizardmen had to deal with food shortages leading to famines, plague, natural disasters, climate change (cooling), as well as a mixture of rebellions (both popular and slave), high corruption, hyperinflation, religious schisms, inner conflicts and so much more. In truth, the sacking of the capital and massacre of the ruling family at the hands of the invading Dwarves didn't really cause the fall of the Empire - more like it gave the mercy kill to an Empire that has already fallen in all but name.

The end of the Lizardman Empire however did not mean the immediate end of the Lizardman domination of Continental Artograch, or the immediate end of urban civilization. While a new religious movement that captured the souls of an increasing amount of Lizardmen advocated for returning to a simpler and closer-to-nature lifestyle to prevent repeating the mistakes of the Empire, not every Lizardmen followed that direction until the aftermath of the Proto-Elven invasion.

While the majority of Lizardmen would live in villages and tribes after the fall of their Empire, several city-states sprung up on the coastlines and rivers and continued to prosper well into the last centuries preceding the eventual Proto-Elven invasion. In fact, there were also a few tribal kingdoms that existed, with their leaders all harbouring ambitions to recreate the Empire.

The Proto-Elven invasion is remembered as a cataclysmic holocaust in Lizardman history - that event when the world as they knew it ceased to exist, when from being the race that used to dominate the continent, they got cornered and pushed into the obscure swamplands that no one else dared to traverse. This event is known to the Lizardmen as either The Great Erasure, or the Rain of Tears. Untold numbers of Lizardmen were killed, their settlements burned to the ground and completely erased from history with no remains at all - basically all of the post-Imperial Lizardman history up to that point was completely wiped from history, all archeological evidence destroyed by Proto-Elven raiders looking for loot. Ironically, it was the post-collapse abandonment of Imperial-era facilities (such as the pyramid-temples) that preserved these buildings from the wrath of the initial wave of Proto-Elven genocidal colonists and raiders looking for loot, letting them later be visited by adventurers and archeologists alike.

This cataclysm was the event that finally led to every surviving Lizardmen accepting a new way of life: to live simply, to live close to nature, to be pacifistic, isolationist and non-expansionist. This, however was not to last, as even after being effectively cornered into the swamplands of Southern Etrand, the Lizardmen of Artograch still had to fend off later Human incursions, such as the expansionism of Fathred the Great.

History however has strange ways of injecting irony into itself, and later course of events would ironnically pair up the Lizardmen and the Humans as allies against the Wood Elves during the Great War. This wasn't the first time when Men and Lizardmen would be paired up against a common enemy, as the alliance between the two formerly rival races was revived during the Orcish Invasion of Etrand and Dragoc, and eventually cemented under the rule of King Tondbert I of Etrand, who forbade the violent colonization of Lizardmen lands, and promised to guarantee protection (from the overzealous human colonists) and autonomy (freedom to keep their own religion, language, customs and currency) to those Lizardmen tribes who accepted Etrandish suzerainty.

Attributes (FRPG)
Enabled aligment: any

Disabled secondary races: Vampire, Theriantrope