The solimonds are the driven children of the bright and dancing fire, the wild laughing wrestlers against foolishness and sloth. The sun is their father and the flame that burns at the heart of volcanoes is their mother. Once, they were the proud warriors of the Empire of Flames, but that court has since been overthrown and few of its children have managed to remember their names.
According to the stories, the solimonds themselves caused the downfall of the Flame Court in the morning of the world, for those spirits who first committed the sin of falling in love with the meat were numbered among them. Driven by this ill-advised passion for humankind, these traitorous creatures spent ageless days secretly watching the little meat men and women, studying the workings of their strange and miraculous hearts in the way that lovers have always studied the most trivial habits of the beloved.
They could not bear to hide forever, however, for subtlety and restraint are alien to the solimond nature. As the days wore on, the watchers revealed themselves to the meat one by one, showering them with the secret workings of the Flame that have the power of metamorphosis and truth. In so doing, they doomed the inanimate world to enslavement at the hands of flesh, for the humans were quick to put their tamed fires to practical use. Everything that needs to be said about the essence of the solimonds can he found in that single display of all-encompassing lust, magnanimous generosity and idiotic — yet innocent — impetuousness. They were one of the noblest of all the phyla, and that very nobility led them unwittingly to bring down the Making War and sunder the inanimate world from itself for the remainder of Time.
As the meat made its first tentative experiments with the power of the Flame in its hands, the inanimate empires had no choice but to turn their faces from the treasonous fires who had turned to devouring Seedlings, boiling Wavelings, and reshaping Stones into instruments for the exploitation of their own kind. All Inanimae, Kroft and Glade alike, know the horror of the Making War, and the only possible punishment for inadvertently causing the War was excommunication.
So it was that the fires were cast out of the Glade, their seal broken and their children scattered. Natural Flame Husks were methodically sought out and quenched by the Glade, eventually being almost completely eliminated from the natural world. Only those fires in the service of the Kroft were protected by their own unnaturalness, but these poor enslaved creatures have since become dumb and pass from form to form without ever waking up.
In the fullness of time, only the solimonds and a scant few other fire spirits remained in the work untouched by human hands. Fugitives and outcasts without a court of their own, the solimonds wandered the sun-blessed face of the world, keeping their own council and pursuing their own quests to where their passions take them.
Although, today, the fires still feel the old attraction to the flesh, centuries of persecution and Making have not caused them to be so charitable toward those Inanimae who were remade by human will and now dwell within the Kroft. Never given to stifling their true convictions, the solimonds look around and see a world where humans have been enslaved by the very spirits they first molded to suit their own whims, and the honor they feel as they watch their old beloved mortals in the thrall of dolls and other junk drives them into a white-hot, righteous fury.
With very few exceptions, all solimonds who still walk the world are passionate avengers of the Glade, using their purifying wisdom to cleanse the flotsam from its stranglehold around the necks of human beings. Their dedication to burning away the Kroft has redeemed the bright warriors in the eyes of all but the oldest and most conservative grumps — the Glade has almost had time to forgive the crimes of its fiery court, now that it is nearly too late to do any good. If the solimonds were not a phylum of exceptional spiritual character, they would not have survived the centuries of excommunication.
However, they are numbered among the finest creations of the Dreaming, making worthy examples from whom even the sidhe can learn a few of the secrets of nobility. Solimonds are universally brave, outspoken and tempestuous. They say what they mean, do not speak when they have nothing important to say, and have a gift for poetic gestures that they rarely display. When a solimond is enthusiastic about something — anything, no matter how trivial or mundane — that enthusiasm is contagious, energy sparking from their spirits like oak knots snapping in the fire.
Their word is their holiest bond, to the extent that the mere act of telling a lie wounds them terribly. Tmth comes easy to them and they find it difficult to recognize anything else. The Art of Memory was never the forte of the fires, and the solimonds are rarely able to keep their memories beyond a handful of years before they burn away. Even in the short term, they have no head for trivia or any wisdom that does not persevere from ages past — little facts are too weak for fiery minds and are almost always consumed by the burning love, quick fury, and timeless willpower of the bright warriors' own hot spirits.
Appearance: Solimond Husks naturally tend toward the tall, athletic builds that characterized them so long ago as the "warriors of the flame." With the exception of truly corrupt specimens, they are uniformly muscular and trim, suffused with an inner glow that would indicate good health in the meat. Their hair tends to flow naturally, jutting in waves and even unruly spikes in all directions. Preferred skin tones are ruddy, growing warmer and darker in robust individuals who have Glamour to spare, and tapering off into a tepid, sallow color in those sick with Banality. All solimonds can be distinguished by the fact that they all radiate heat at all times — most noticeably in cooler ambient environments — and that their eyes are the flashing color of fire.
Lifestyle: These orphans of the Fire Empire inhabit Husks for poignantly brief but intense periods, literally burning themselves out in a handful of years before being forced to find a new natural source of fire to mold. In the meantime, they occupy their time on Earth in the hot pursuit of various personal quests and crusades. On some level, the solimonds still remember the task set before the Flame was to purify the world through transformation, and so they move throughout the dreaming countries of the fae in a continual drive to trigger radical change, testing the worth of all they encounter. The ages have made many of them solitary, but there is still a wide gregarious streak in their character — many solimonds have joined the knightly phyla of meat changelings or other, stranger fellowships.
Outlook
Glomes — Stodgy and stifling. A glome can smother you with hours of pointless conversation.
Kuberas — Burn! Burn! Burn!
Ondines — They are the one thing we fear for they alone can quench us.
Parosemes — They are the most like us… they understand our lust for freedom.
Mannikins — Odd creatures. They can be fun, but they are not like us.
Kithain — We know little of them other than that they burn nicely….
• Childlings are uncontrollable, wild flames. They are new to the world and want to experience everything at once. Once all solimonds were of the Glade but now many have joined the Krofted. Childling solimonds, more than any other, can be found among the Krofted and they revel in the opportunities that it offers.
• Wilders are more common and make up the bulk of the solimonds' crusade of redemption against the Krofted. Most of these spirits, in fact, begin by inhabiting Kroft fires with some connection to Glamour — cottage hearths, sacred candles, traditional forges, eternal commemorative flames — but foreswear their Kroft modality - and become champions of the Glade instead. Most kindle fierce attractions toward those creatures weaker and cooler than themselves, feeling responsible for their protection.
• Grumps are much more aware of the fear and hatred that many of the other phyla have for their kind. Some grumps are beginning to curb their kind's activities in an attempt to form alliances with the other empires.
Affinity: Pyros
Birthrights
• Clarity of Vision — Once a solimond knows what it wants, it allows nothing to get in its way. Subtract 1 from the difficulty of all Willpower rolls a solimond makes in the pursuit of one of its goals.
• Gout of Flame — By spending a point of Glamour all solimonds can let loose a gout of flame. This flame is normally chimerical, but can be Wyrd if the Inanimae has Called Upon the Wyrd. The flame causes 6 dice of damage but can be increased by 2 dice for each additional point of Glamour invested.
Frailties
• Ring of Truth — Solimonds are constitutionally unable to understand the concept of lying. Not only can they not learn the Subterfuge Ability in phylum to tell or recognize lies, but if they attempt to consciously manipulate the truth, they must make a Glamour roll or immediately take 2 points of temporary Banality.
Quote: Everything comes to an end. I am going to walk down to the warren of gibbering smoke and it and I will extinguish one another. Remember for me that I love you, and remind me of it when you next see me. I will be different, but you will know me by my eyes. Do not weep.