The Immortals
The Crovirs and the Bastians: two races of immortals that have lived side by side with humans since the beginning of civilization and once ruled an empire that stretched across Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Each possessing the capacity to survive up to sixteen deaths, they have been engaged in a bloody and savage war from the very dawn of their existence. This unholy battle has, for the most part, remained a well-kept secret from the eyes of ordinary humans, this despite the fact that they have been used as pawns in some of the most epic chapters of the immortal conflict. It was not until the late fourteenth century that the two races were forced to forge an uneasy truce, following a deadly plague that wiped out more than half of their numbers and made the majority of survivors infertile.
Each immortal society is ruled by a hierarchy of Councils made up of nobles. The First Council consists of the Heads of seven Immortal Sections: the Order of the Hunters, the Counter-Terrorism group, Human Relations, Commerce, Immortal Legislations and Conventions, Research and Development, and Immortal Culture and History. The Head of the Order of the Hunters is the most powerful member of the First Council. The Second Council, or the Assembly, comprises the Regional Division directors under each Head of Section, while the Congress of the Council is made up of local authority chiefs. Though they have been instrumental to the most significant events in world history, religion, and culture, the Immortals’ existence is known to only a select few humans, among them the political leaders of the most powerful states on Earth, and the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Immortals normally reach full maturity at around eighteen years, at which point their ageing slows dramatically. Depending on how powerful the individual immortal is and how much regenerative powers remain in their cells, they will visually age by around ten years for every one to two hundred years they live. Their ability to heal and recover from a death is also proportional to how strong they are, with the most powerful among them being able to resurrect in minutes. Crows come for most immortals upon their final death. Nobody knows where the birds take their unearthly remains. All that is usually left behind is ash.
Like humans, immortals have soulmates, although it may take many of them several lifetimes to find their intended mate. Some never will. Since the plague that almost exterminated the two immortal races, this situation has been made doubly worse. The Crovirs and the Bastians are forbidden to mate with each other. Ancient and immutable, this law is enshrined in the very doctrines and origins of the two races, and stems from a warning that was given to the very first immortals: the offspring of a pureblood Crovir and Bastian could potentially be more powerful than either race. If an army of these halfbreeds were ever created, they could wipe out the two immortal races and humans from the face of the earth.
Although few in number, there are immortals who will have human soulmates. Many choose to end their lives when their human partners die.
The descendants of pureblood immortal-human offsprings do not possess the same healing abilities, strength, or combat skills of true immortals, and would never survive a death. They have however inherited delayed ageing to a degree. Similar to their immortal progenitors, their ageing slows at the age of physical maturity. They will visually age by around twenty to twenty-five years for every one hundred or so years they live thereafter.