Races

Ixian

Ixians are born off planet.

They tend to be infernally or otherwise allied, considered foreigners

They use (or are described as, note was ambigious -gb) Old Born, a term referring to the monstrous entities that govern part of New Aetheria

Stonemen

Anthropomorphic beings with 6 legs & 2 arms that were enslaved by humans in order to mine the metals and rift rich material directly from grand fissures. They intermingled with the pre-Aetherian humans, forming mixed communities while maintaining a few isolated communities in the mountains from which they thrive.

Their relative strength to humans is notable. A stoneman is said to have the strength of 20 men combined. They are generally peaceful but are aggressive when provoked.

Their communities were some of the last holdouts against the Aetherian Empire and enjoyed relative peace and calm during the invasion, although they did this mostly by retreating into their communities in the foothills of the mountains. They were able to hold off being conquered for a time by trading precious metals with the Aetherians in exchange for their autonomy.

This peaceful relationship changed with the introduction of gunpowder weaponry though, as the explosively propelled projectiles could pierce their thick, lithic hides. This coupled with the discovery of the military, spiritual, and luxury applications of the metal known as cerulean signaled the end of their autonomy.

While stonemen have rebelled in the past (and at times been rather successful at it) rebellions are rare these days because of the introduction of "stone rot" by the pestiomancers. This disease ensures that infected stonement will radioactively and painfully decay unless they get steady access to serums provided by the pestiomancers or their thralls. In spite of this, stonemen often prefer to live free and resist, so gunpowder bombs are heavily utilized by Cerulean Prefects to keep order among the enslaved.

Use of stonemen within the Empire

Since stonemen eat ore and excrete fairly refined metals through orifices in their body they can be utilized en-masse as far more efficient processors of metal, both extracting and refining at the same time. Once Aetherians discovered this, they conquered, enslaved, and bred the stonemen for use as physical laborers and metal refiners.

Cerulean mining is incredibly dangerous as it only forms near active volcanic fissures or near recent volcanic eruptions. Thus, the stonemen are forced to work in near molten conditions extracting it.

In other contexts, stonemen are simply used as refiners, chained in refineries and fed ore either extracted by small folk, other slaves, or other stonemen, and then forced to excrete the refined metals. The excretion process is naturally quite slow, but Aetherian scholars have discovered that saltpeter and nitrate speed up the process at the cost of excruciating pain and potentially explosive outcomes for the stonemen.

Some stonemen run devastatingly hot furnaces to further refine metal for the production process.

Life cycle

Stonemen propagate through budding. This process can be painfully speed up by ripping the buds early and incubating them in a furnace near the budding stoneman.