Origin of the Shapers

The Shapers were the smallest of the three factions of old, keeping mostly to themselves as tensions rose and instead working to master the Progenitor Strain's many capabilities. Before encountering the Strain the shapers were a myriad collection of slime mould colonies that lived in the southern mountain ranges, often penetrating hundreds of metres into the rock through tiny cracks and crevasses. Capable of human level intelligence but only able to communicate via contact telepathy they flew under the radar of the other populations.

They changed fundamentally when they encountered the dormant pearls of the Progenitor Strain as they quickly exchanged genetic information. Within a very short period the First Shaper emerged in a humanoid form from the caves beneath and began converting other colonies into the race that came to be called the tyostels.

Tyostels, due to their origin, are adept fleshcrafters and staunchly defend nature, choosing to take the more difficult paths to live in harmony with nature and eschewing conquest and subjugation where possible. Due to their deep understanding and extensive use of the Strain there is a sense of fluidity to form and appearance with tyostels. As the tyostels began interacting with other humanoids on the surface they changed themselves to look more like them in an attempt to ease tensions, which worked for a time. As tensions rose between the Connected and the Forgers despite efforts to quell them the peoples of the Southern Reaches grew increasingly distrusting of outsiders and with rumours that tyostels were capable and willing to steal the faces of others and replace them it became increasingly dangerous for them.

In the closing years before the Conflict, the tyostels retreated further up and into the mountains they first evolved from, reshaping their livestock and crops to ever greater levels of efficiency in harsher environments. Fortunately for the tyostels their biology made them difficult to kill permanently as they didn't age in a standard way, dismembered parts would liquefy and reconvene, extensive damage would regenerate eventually, though there was no guarantee the being that came back was the same one laid low. On the flipside, tyostels have no ability to reproduce so almost all remaining members of their species have been around since the beginning. A specific geneline of the tyostels became the changelings or doppelgangers, lending some truth to the fears held by those people so long, whose evolution traded some of the traits of their slime mould heritage for a more stable and believable humanoid form along with the ability to reproduce.