Pre-Strain

The people that would become the Shapers were once much stranger. Long ago, before they encountered the pearls of the Progenitor Strain, the Tyostel existed as a deceptively complex slime mold endemic to the southern mountain range of the Southern Reaches. Believed to most as nothing but a surprisingly resilient fungus the truth was tyostel existed as hundreds of individual hiveminds capable of thought roughly analogous with humanoids though limited by their ability to interface with the world around them they nonetheless prospered with a contact telepathy for millennia.

Some colonies of tyostel stretched hundreds of metres below the surface of the earth by virtue of their ability to expand through extremely complex paths while rootlike apparatus crept below the earth in search of nutrition. One such colony had long since adapted to live deep underground when it encountered the Strain during a routine expansion for food. That first point of contact changed them fundamentally, as the contact telepathy seemed to be all the instruction needed for the Strain to begin reshaping the Tyostel’s genetic makeup using it’s own malleability. In a matter of months the Tysotel colony had evolved into a loosely humanoid form as it continued to specialise it’s cells. The First Shaper went to work finding other colonies and changing them to match itself and before long the elaborate cave networks of the mountains thrummed with the work and leisure of the reborn Tyostel species.

Their origin as slime moulds, along with natural contact telepathy made the tyostel extremely adepts at fleshcrafting, skills which they routinely engaged in even for pleasure often times transforming their appearance in elaborate displays of fashion. As the tyostel began interacting with the other natives of the area they found it convenient to take forms increasingly similar to those they traded with. At first this was a welcome sight but over time the sentiment soured as rumours spread of rogue tyostels stealing the faces of people and replacing them. Changelings are a specialised geneline that forsook much of their origin species traits for shapeshifting.

As the Forgers and Connected consolidated their technology and positions on the surface their was an escalating sense of conflict with the Shapers. Outnumbered and with less of a sense for conflict the Shapers increasingly retreated to the upper areas of the mountains, reshaping animals and crops to produce more from less under harsher conditions. Even in the events proceeding the Conflict they exported food to many of the major population centres to the north in a bid to earn back the trust of the others.

Tyostels were rarely hostile toward fellow colonies, seeing the immense value in cooperation outstripping most goals fulfilled by conquest. To that end they primarily acted as farmers and caretakers of the land or as fleshmage biologists plumbing the depths of what the Strain is capable of. Most Tyostels were incapable of reproducing unless in specialised forms, however they seemed to have no upper ceiling to their lifespan and proved very difficult to kill permanently as their leftover cells would reconvene and reconstitute, though there was no guarantee the being restored was the same being lost.