Early Abyssals

In the beginning there were three great races of evil that dwelt upon the embryonic Planes of Darkness. Most planar scholars agree that before the Yugoloths came the Baern and before the Baatezu, the Ancient Baatorians held sway over the Hells. But this leaves the Abyss empty and unpopulated. The multiverse abhors a vacuum (even Vacuum is growing more and more filled with the stuff which is antithetical to its nature) and when one finds two things a third is probably somewhere to be found.

Flame. The ancient Abyss was a place of fire and destruction. Flames have always been associated with evil and chaos and in those early times the plane of Chaotic Malevolence crackled and danced with an unearthly blaze. They say that the Abyss was not yet infinite in those days, the layers were bounded but uncountable. In this proto-Perdition, a race of beings dwelt, beings composed of fire and malice and little else. With complete control of their physical selves, powerful mental abilities, and a host of other strange and exotic powers these beings were known by many names… Fernals, Dakaath, but the name most scholars use to refer to them is the Burning.

The Burning were fiendish beings that epitomized chaos. Their forms were ever-shifting, each Burning deciding its chosen form to reflect its personality and philosophies. Most of the Burning conformed to a reasonably set shape, humanoid in size with long claws and sharp fangs. Their eyes glowed with internal fire and lines of brilliant embers traced themselves across their muscles and emaciated forms. Their bodies were continually cloaked with an aura of burning flames. Burning had near complete mastery of their shapeshifting talents, able to alter their form, grow limbs, increase their size or their mass, become invisible or intangible, and perform other such feats with procrustean precision. They were far stronger and faster than mere mortals and far more resistant to injury, and they had senses far outside the range of most mortal races. One of the Burning’s most powerful abilities was their telepathic, psionic, and telekinetic skills. They could touch entire layers of existence with their minds and rewrite the memories or command the bodies of even the most powerful mentalists. Their final and most devastating ability were the beams of concussive force that they could fire from their eyes, beams that could decimate entire mortal neighborhoods.

The Burning were terribly efficient killing machines, laying waste to the vast expanses of the young planes of Pandemonium, the Outlands, the Abyss, and Carceri. The Burning threatened to engulf all of existence in their flames of destruction, but two things held them back. First was the fact that they wanted to war with themselves more than they wished to conquer existence. In addition, the Burning found themselves completely unable to planeshift except by utilizing portals. Because of this they were limited in their choices combat locales to the areas metaphysically near to their homeplane. The fledgling races of Good watched the Burning with worried eyes but the flames of sheer destructive chaos burned in a way that made them quail in their wings and halos.

Then, from the prime, came a race of beings dedicated to maintaining Order. These creatures had near unlimited power, their souls tapped into a primordial font of power that reached forth from the beginning of the multiverse, its roots buried in the time before Time existed. These nameless protectors of Good and Order found the Burning and saw in them potential. The creatures had potential, their raw creative talent and natural power made them powerful forces for whatever ideal they chose to represent. These beings detested such “hands on” activities as genocide – preferring to manipulate and mold other races. Using their powerful magical abilities and their abilities that seemed to stem from a near infinite source, these beings manipulated the very essences of the Burning. They robbed the beings of the Fire, stole their burning desire for destruction, and placed in them psychological barriers that kept the fire away. From thenceforth, the sight of flame caused the newly formed beings to destabilize psychologically and physically, draining off their power and threatening to destroy them. Because names have power, the Burning were renamed the Zznoj, a word whose meaning is lost in these modern times. The manipulators of essence left the new fledgling race to find their own path, their spiritual meddling steering them away from evil.

The entire race of fledgling beings set forth from the plane which was now antithetical to their existence and began a great trek. The migration lasted many centuries, as the young race, led by a great leader and powerful orator named Jelar the Green, traversed existence in search of a proper home. Many of the secrets learned during these wanderings throughout the still cooling multiverse are now known only by the most powerful Deities of Secrets. It is not known exactly when, but eventually, the Zznoj colonized an uninhabited Prime world and retreated from the multiverse at large to live lives of aestheticism and meditation, hunting through planes of thought unknown to most mortals.

The first person (who hasn't been told) who spots the little gag in this piece and identifies the inspiration for this race gets a metaphysical cookie.

Also, there's more of this story to tell, but I'm getting lazy.