Your spins on races

[Yora]

I haven't done much with the "core" races besides the following.

All very reasonable for a more believable setting.

[VoxRationis]

Sorry if I missed it in your writeup, kinda fuzzy today -- does their culture have a broad definition of "honor" and like to settle matters thereof with duels?

No, but a different elven culture does. A point of the setting was to make all the nonhuman races diverse in their own rights.

[Belac93]

Well, in one of my settings, high elves are very militant, but have an insanely low reproduction and growth rate. So, it's actually likely that if they wait to fight a war for 100 years, their population will be only a few hundred more than it was when they started.

Genasi are inspired by depictions of Roma (gypsies) in literature.

Wood elves have high speed, good eyes, can hide in anything (including dust storms and thin grass), and don't need to sleep as much? Perfect savanna hunters.

These are some of them.

[VoxRationis]

Well, in one of my settings, high elves are very militant, but have an insanely low reproduction and growth rate. So, it's actually likely that if they wait to fight a war for 100 years, their population will be only a few hundred more than it was when they started.

Genasi are inspired by depictions of Roma (gypsies) in literature.

Wood elves have high speed, good eyes, can hide in anything (including dust storms and thin grass), and don't need to sleep as much? Perfect savanna hunters.

These are some of them.

I presume high elves in your setting are going extinct?

[AuraTwilight]

In the beginning, the world was much like Earth. But there exists an interstellar magical empire called the Eld. They came to the Earth and combined their DNA with a population of humans, creating Elves. Their purpose for doing so is that Elves would research and develop magic, slowly terraforming Earth into a magical ecosystem. When it's ripe enough (when reality has fully eroded), the Eld will return and plunder it, as they've done many times. Nothing remains when they're done.

The Elves don't necessarily realize they're a servitor race, but a lot of their cultural flaws are genetically programmed in. They're not actually in touch with nature, don't believe any Elf that claims otherwise. Many such beautiful, harmonious forests are actually dead, taxidermied graveyards, magically animated through necromancy to keep the flowers always beautiful, the animals always tame and obedient. Elves are all borderline sociopaths to a man, with Adventurer Elves being a rare exception infected with 'humanity', some recessive gene busting their genetic programming.

Dwarves are essentially Earth Elementals; they're not born or raised; they're carved out of the rock fully formed. This is why you don't see Dwarf women and children (though Dwarves are capable of interbreeding). They are the Earth's response to the introduction of magic, creating an antibody race that will fight it at every turn. The mining and work of the Dwarves is to make more of their kind, and to plunder gems and gold that are inherently magically charged. While they make many a magic item with these tools, the Dwarf crafter knows a Power Word killswitch that will Disjunction it. Dungeons are, unfortunately, magic turning this against Mother Earth. Underground constructions where dwarves are defeated, magic permeates, and Monsters are spontaneously generated in a perversion of Dwarven birth.

Orcs are a failed attempt at creating Elves, which were allowed to persist because the Eld found it amusing. Though ugly and savage and violent to other races, within their private homes, sheltered from the sky, orcs can be sweet, loving, tender, artistic. Always in hushed whispers, for their religion, their genetic program, teaches them that the Gods hate their existence, and make them suffer for a laugh, and punish them for all perceived goods they create or experience. Only by being a terror to the other races, they believe, will the gods laugh hard enough to relent their cruelty for another day. There is no good afterlife; all orcs suffer eternally before the gods, they're taught.

Gnomes and Goblins are the same race, both of them fey (more on fey later). Gnomes are vegetarians, but if they eat too much meat, they mutate into a Goblin, a savage and insane creature. Unfortunately, Goblins can breed true. However, a Goblin can be turned into a Gnome if turns down a meal of meat for as many times as the Gnome ate meat.

Halflings are the crossbreed between Humans and Gnomes.

Dragons are magic incarnate, their lifecycles a sign of the Eld's plans. They'll know their fruit is ready for harvest when the planet becomes an entirely Dragon-dominated ecosystem. Dragons created Kobolds out of their own blood. Every drop of dragon blood has the chance to grow into a kobold. Dragonborn are modified Dragon eggs, meant to be a servitor race to lead the kobold masses.

Fairies are born of the Earth, much like Dwarves, but are it's attempt to directly weaponize magic. They spread the infection of magic, but in the benefit of the natural world, providing antibody to Elven advancement. All the fey exist, but few are exactly as in the Monster Manual. Pixies and the like are born from the dreams of children, and so have a child's understanding of the world and morality. They die if the child awakens, so most fairies kidnap children and put them into diabetic comas in the Feywild. Changelings are homunculi, and always grow up into Elves. Elves lacking the Eld Programming, which breeds true...

Dryads are exceptionally beautiful, but are attracted to uglier creatures. CHA 3 is like CHA 30 to them. All dryad children are half-dryads, which become full dryads when they find their soulmate plant and bind with it. They take lovers for the only things a tree can't provide: Sex and conversation. You'll never win their heart, however.

Doppelgangers are a homunculus made up of melting ten or more people together, creating a shapeshifting being with a weak sense of identity. Besides their ESP and appearance-warping, doppelgangers can meld together and divide to switch and share memories and personality traits, which is necessary to prevent Alzheimer's in their plasticine brains. Loss of identity is what all Doppelgangers fear, but inevitable. Doppelganger blood can be imbibed to allow non-doppelgangers to meld for the duration of the drug. Doppelganger pregnancies are rare as there's always a chance of the embryo being permanently absorbed, but when they are born the child is invariably a Changeling, even if it's the child of two Doppelgangers.

Illithids, Aboleths, and other Aberrations are from the Far Realms either directly or through descent. The incursion of the Far Realms is the ultimate outcome of Magic, and if the fruit is overripe, the Eld won't be able to harvest it. A planet slipping entirely into the Far Realms is essentially letting a fruit rot to the worms.

The Gods and all Outsiders are the products of faith and belief. However, they are culture-specific. There are Elven Angels of Pride, Dwarven Angels of Greed, Orc Demons of Charity and Love, and so forth.

Elementals are direct manifestations of the Earth's will without any filter. Genies are what happens when an Elemental gains it's own ego and personality.

The Undead arise for all the usual reasons. Dead Werewolves rise as Vampires.

If an Aasimar and a Tiefling have a child, it's a human. If an Angel and a Demon (or Devil, or what have you) have a child, you get an Eld...

[Crusadr]

I've slowly been making changes to races for my homebrew world, like many of you I believe in differentiating the other races so they're their own unique races and not just humans in a different shape. One change I'm currently working on is how relationships work among the elves. What I've come up with is that the reason for their low birth rate is that they literally cannot produce offspring until they have found an actual soul mate. Humans, being the opportunistic scoundrels they are would have eventually learned of this facet of elven life and stolen the idea of soul mates and fate tying people together and used it to seduce their own potential mates.

[Admiral Squish]

I've long been tempted to develop a world heavily based on the elements, but I never seem to have the time. Really dig into the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of the elements, you know?
The basic idea is that all living things are made of five elements. Air, earth, fire, water, and aether (magic, mind, that sorta stuff). Humans are made of a perfect of very-near-perfect mix of them all, but the other races have a little more of one or the other. Like, dwarves are more earthy, elves are more airy, orcs are more fiery... And then there are individuals that aren't balanced properly. Like, a dwarf that's even MORE earthy than other dwarves, with some limited elemental traits, or an orc that's literally hot-blooded. There was also an idea for a human variant that's still made of all the elements in balanced amounts, but they didn't mix properly, so they have earthy parts and fiery parts and airy parts and watery parts...

Also, I don't know if this counts as a thing about races, but I always really enjoy messing with languages when I come up with racial twists. Like, one kind of elves wrote elvish two distinct ways, there was shorthand used for most simple messages and longhand, a flowing, beautiful script, kinda like cursive meets kanji, that could convey tone and meaning far beyond the letters alone. Halflings had a sign language that outsiders were forbidden to learn, and could call upon a vast library of caravan-specific slang and references to make what they were saying completely unintelligable, even to fluent halfing speakers. Orcish had a lot of specific words relating to combat that don't have parallels in other languages, many of which can scale up for discussions of strategy, like, a word for a reckless attack that leaves the attacker open to a counter, a word for inviting an attack so it can be caught or countered, and words for fights with different numbers of sides involved.

[Deepbluediver]

I've long been tempted to develop a world heavily based on the elements, but I never seem to have the time. Really dig into the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of the elements, you know?
The basic idea is that all living things are made of five elements. Air, earth, fire, water, and aeth/er (magic, mind, that sorta stuff). Humans are made of a perfect of very-near-perfect mix of them all, but the other races have a little more of one or the other. Like, dwarves are more earthy, elves are more airy, orcs are more fiery... And then there are individuals that aren't balanced properly. Like, a dwarf that's even MORE earthy than other dwarves, with some limited elemental traits, or an orc that's literally hot-blooded. There was also an idea for a human variant that's still made of all the elements in balanced amounts, but they didn't mix properly, so they have earthy parts and fiery parts and airy parts and watery parts...

Somthing that's interested me for a while is that not every culture identifies the same set of elements. The "Earth, Air, Water, Fire" thing is western, AFAIK, but eastern real-world cultures described the elements as Water, Wood, Earth, Metal, & Fire. And if I started going through every fantasy story I've ever read, several more pop up, Light, Void, the aether/energy/spirit one, or sometimes they'll break out ice and lightning as separate elements, etc.

I've never made a whole gameworld based on it, but I once did a little fantasy writing in a setting where there were eight elements that comprised creation, and like you said a metaphysical quality tied in to each:

Metal- compulsion
Stone- endurance
Wood- growth
Water-creation
Ice- manipulation
Air- adaptability
Lightning- destruction
Fire- reincarnation

[shawnhcorey]

I've never made a whole gameworld based on it, but I once did a little fantasy writing in a setting where there were eight elements that comprised creation, and like you said a metaphysical quality tied in to each:

Metal- compulsion
Stone- endurance
Wood- growth
Water-creation
Ice- manipulation
Air- adaptability
Lightning- destruction
Fire- reincarnation

I was thinking of using the cardinal gems:

• amethyst -- air (east)
• ruby -- fire (south)
• sapphire -- water (west)
• emerald -- earth (north)
• diamond -- spirit (up)

[Admiral Squish]

I admit, I did consider other elemental groups, but I find the western one is the most broad and archetypal in my mind. Like, metal and wood are awesome elements, but they don't really abstract very will. But fire... fire is destruction, it's chaos, but it's also warmth and light and energy and change. If you really abstract the concepts of the elements down, you get some really interesting implications. Like, if you think about fire as 'heat', and consider that the movement of molecules is what allows every chemical reaction in the universe to take place, fire becomes the engine that literally drives everything in the universe.

[The Glyphstone]

One of the major aspects of my magnum opus setting is rewriting or outright replacing all of the 'core' races to varying degrees, but off the top of my head:

-The dwarf-analogues are a race of genderless elementals who reproduce via collective budding. Their outermost layer is a thick layer of essentially dead stone, so they practice some relatively extreme forms of body modification to distinguish individuality.

-The elf-analogues are technically all human mutants, from exposure to large quantities of fey magic or descended from a parent who was. They're afflicted with a peculiar sort of compulsion/curse that leaves them constantly searching the world for new experiences and knowledge.

-The halfling-analogues have become aggressively carnivorous toad-people with severe emotional mood swings. They travel in large groups aboard huge ocean-going ships, and are fighting a secret war none of the land-dwellers know about against evil krakens.

[Bohandas]

Not a core race but I think that Dromites (from the psionics handbook) would be ruled by dragons, outsiders, and fey disproportionately often (and also have disproportionate numbers of half-whatevers) due to the way that authority and reproduction interface in their ant-like society; like they'd seek them out because they're fitter

[Deepbluediver]

I was thinking of using the cardinal gems:

• amethyst -- air (east)
• ruby -- fire (south)
• sapphire -- water (west)
• emerald -- earth (north)
• diamond -- spirit (up)

Honestly, off all the various depictions of the 4/5/7/118 elements in many works of fiction, "Spirit/Aether/whatever-they-call-it" has always been my least favorite. To me it never felt like it fit right, in part because the other elements are tide in to the physical world and this last one just ... isn't. IMO if you want a force like that to be present in your make-believe fantasy world, then relate it to something else. I'm all for having untyped arcane energy, chi, souls, AND all that elemental stuff plus some more things floating around in a kind of fantasy-hodgepodge.

Lots of stories pick mainly one source of magical power and do really great things with it, but for a gameworld I much prefer the kitchen-sink approach.

I admit, I did consider other elemental groups, but I find the western one is the most broad and archetypal in my mind. Like, metal and wood are awesome elements, but they don't really abstract very will. But fire... fire is destruction, it's chaos, but it's also warmth and light and energy and change. If you really abstract the concepts of the elements down, you get some really interesting implications. Like, if you think about fire as 'heat', and consider that the movement of molecules is what allows every chemical reaction in the universe to take place, fire becomes the engine that literally drives everything in the universe.

Fair enough- I just wanted to do things a little different. Part of the in-universe explanation for why alchemists never succeeded in turning lead into gold was that they weren't playing with the full deck, exactly.

And have you already made the connection that the 4 western elements map pretty well onto the four states of matter?
Stone- Solid
Water- Liquid
Air- Gas
Fire- Plasma

I had an "ah-ha!" moment the first time someone pointed that out to me.

[Grim Portent]

Currently I'm toying with a reimagining of dwarves along a line based on their origin in Scandinavian mythology.

In the original myth they originated as maggots living on a giant, so I took that idea and ran with it.

The dwarves I'm creating are a race of anthropoid invertebrate/vertebrate hybrids. Physically they stand 4.5 - 5 feet tall on average, have a sturdy but partial exoskeleton and a partial endoskeleton. Their 'beard' is a mass of hairlike antennae that is used to navigate in the pitch darkness of the underground by detecting airflow and scent, and is found on both males and females. Their limb and neck joints are articulated such that they can comfortably move around on two legs or four, in a fashion reminiscent of a human or brown cricket respectively.

Like real life cave creatures they largely feed off of organic detritus that passes down through cave systems. Eating various small fish, invertebrates and, nearer the surface, bats and plant roots, mushrooms and tubers. Until they began procuring food from surface dwellers their population was limited by food shortages.

They reproduce by laying a cluster of eggs that hatch into cannibalistic maggot like larvae, that gradually grow in size and pupate, emerging as full grown adults. In their larval stage they wander and feed on detritus and other similar sized organisms, including their siblings.

Once they mature they are able to speak their native tongue instinctively as it's a language largely derived from pheremones, bodily interactions and simple vocalisations. Their society is largely based around finding things of interest in their environs and leveraging them to gain social status. Metal ores and uncut gems are common among such items, though the highest social strata are the ones who have managed to acquire items from outside their society. Processed metals, cut gemstones, jewelry and all manner of other goods made by surface races (and expat dwarves) are valued highly as they largely lack the infrastructure to make such items in their caverns. In essence their society is based on the acquisition of wealth, with wealth being measured in abstract fashions.

Though lacking in technology themselves they rapidly adapted to surface technologies, using metals tools to expand and refine their domain, and even building some forges and foundries with the help of surfacers. Their highly sensitive antennae make them highly skilled at feeling variations in the grain of materials like wood, rock and gems, which in turn makes them more skilled at working with such materials than a human of similar experience. They shy away from forgework as the heat pains and injures their antennae, potentially blinding them and rendering them unable to smell.

When living on the surface they rapidly adapt to the prevalence of technologies their homelands are ill suited to. They are capable of most forms of work that don't risk their sensitive sensory organs, and are capable warriors, often fighting as mercenaries. Due to how different their physiology and reproduction is from most other races surface dwelling groups tend to be somewhat insular for fear of prejudice, grouping together into enclaves of their own kind within other communities.

Their religion, such as it is, is based around the veneration of the giant that they believe granted them sapience and humanoid form. According to their lore they descend from maggots that lived on the injured flesh of a mighty giant, wounded in battle, whose wounds were festering and poisoning his mind and blood. Lost in delirium from the poison he was unable to treat his injuries, but the maggots that devoured his necrotic flesh gradually cleaned his wounds and by extension cleared his mind of the poisoned fog that clouded it. In gratitude for this accidental service he worked might magic to warp the maggots into people so that they could lead lives of greater significance than that of mere insects.

[shawnhcorey]

Honestly, off all the various depictions of the 4/5/7/118 elements in many works of fiction, "Spirit/Aether/whatever-they-call-it" has always been my least favorite. To me it never felt like it fit right, in part because the other elements are tide in to the physical world and this last one just ... isn't. IMO if you want a force like that to be present in your make-believe fantasy world, then relate it to something else. I'm all for having untyped arcane energy, chi, souls, AND all that elemental stuff plus some more things floating around in a kind of fantasy-hodgepodge.

OK, don't call it spirit. Call it anima, as in "to endow with a particular spirit."

[ThePurple]

And have you already made the connection that the 4 western elements map pretty well onto the four states of matter?
Stone- Solid
Water- Liquid
Air- Gas
Fire- Plasma

I had an "ah-ha!" moment the first time someone pointed that out to me.

I figured that out a number of years ago, but it always bothered me that, when you deal with certain materials, things start to break down.

Take ice, for example. In the "states of matter" paradigm, ice is actually more closely related to earth than it is to water because it's a solid, which doesn't really make much sense when you consider that ice is actually made of water (which could just be explained as really bad nomenclature). Lava would also be more closely related to water than to either earth *or* fire, which is even more counter-intuitive.

Of course, the counter-intuitive nature of such an "elemental" paradigm can actually be a pretty interesting way to mess with peoples' notions of the properties of the various elemental magicks. "Water elemental" spells are generally either healing or cold damage, in actuality, a damage focused "water" specialist would probably end up using fire (via lava) or acid (via, you know, acid) damage primarily; cold damage is still a possibility though (liquid hydrogen/helium). Healing magic would be more appropriate for an earth elemental magic too (since most of the damage to the human body is damage to the nominally solid parts, like bone, muscle, and skin, not the nominally liquid parts that make up most of our body weight, like blood).

This is a significant deviation from the whole question of race, however, so I'll end it there.

[Belac93]

You know what? I'm bored right now, and have nothing better to do. I'm going to write up some stuff.

Dwarves are the spawn of dragons. While dragons sleep, they do not excrete or take in any substances. The explanation for this is that they consume the energy of things that they eat, which leads them to eat things such as wizards and other magical creatures. Generally, they leave non-magical things alone. So, when they sleep, the magic they have built up leaks out, slowly warping the rocks around them. It can take decades, but dwarves form eventually from the rock. A dwarf almost always has an alignment corresponding with the dragon that spawned it, but is more likely to tend towards lawfulness. Their lawfulness has made them inherently loyal towards the dragon that they were created from. While they can form from their own species, it is a lengthy and hard process requiring magic to complete.

Elves and Drow live up near the arctic. They have a joint society, where drow live on the surface during the winter months, and other elves in the summer. This allows drow to be able to live 24-7 in their time up top, and normal elves to do the same. Groups are organized in clans of about 2-4 families, and drow-elf marriage is common. The family who is living up top will bring food to the ones down below. Drow have a slightly higher standing in the society, for being willing to brave the cold, dark, and wet winters. However, elves are regarded as 'gifted,' for their ability to function decently in both winter and summer. During the times when there are normal length days and nights, everyone goes out at night, with normal elves, and even some brave drow, staying out until the sun rises. They often eat meat, but have also been adapted to be immune to the poisoned lichens and berries of their homeland.

Halflings were created by hags as a servitor race. They were originally human children, and became warped into savage, aged, and partially aquatic beings by hag magic. Some have escaped, and now breed true. They are almost entirely insectivores, but will eat pretty much anything that is put in front of them. Ghostwise halflings are first-generation halflings, the ones who have been personally warped by the hags. No one knows why they have telepathy, but it is a trait not passed on to their second and third generation children.

[Admiral Squish]

In my crossroads setting, aether was a tangible presence in the world. It was kind of like air, but it was the medium through which magic flowed. It had patterns and currents that were sometimes predictable and sometimes not, and related to the regions humans gathered, so mapping it was kinda like mapping weather patterns or ocean currents. Different regions (called spirals) had lingering mystical differences, like, the old world regions had weaker magic due to a catastrophe, whereas magic was alive and well in the new world, and the great plains spiral that was haunted by a dead god that reanimated any intact corpse of appropriate size that was left alone for more than a few days. Spirals were also important because they determined where links could form (temporary and intermittent teleportation portals that could be activated by magic) and where the links could lead.
Still, I will admit, I'm not sure if I want to include the fifth element in my (still very hypothetical) setting, if only because I have no idea what an aether-based elemental or creature would look like. Maybe I'll just stick to four and have the fifth element be a sort of myth or unprovable theory.
I did hear about the connection between the four states of matter. It did kinda blow my mind when I first heard about it. Not sure if I'd use it in the setting, though, because it seems somehow wrong for lava to be considered under the umbrella of 'water'.

Speaking of elements, and getting slightly more on track. I once helped start a game where the players built up the world through the course of their adventures before the main storyline commenced, and one of the major features was that each cardinal direction was tied to an element, and if you kept going in a certain direction, after a certain point the world just sorta stopped being 'real' and started being more... elemental. It became an odd trait of the setting where one would just refer to directions as 'waterward' and 'fireward' and such. We did some cool stuff with the races in that setting.
One of the players was a member of a race that I can best describe as 'coral zerg vikings'. Basically, they're sort of a colony species, a kind of floating coral that grows humanoid 'drone' bodies to protect itself. The drones sort of sculpt the growing coral into warships that they sail across the seas, raiding other humanoid races for the goods they lack the capacity to make themselves.
Goblins were from the mangrove swamps of the earth-waterward corner of the map. They valued large families as a sign of not only personal fertility/virility, but also wealth and influence. So there was a lot of social pressure to form large families, and they had all sorts of rituals related to it. For example, children are born with only half a first name, and when they marry, they add their partner's onto the end of their own. So, Zeb marries Gul. Gul becomes Gul'Zeb, and Zeb becomed Zul'geb. They also tattoo a crest with their married name on one shoulder, and with each child they have, they tattoo black bands around the other arm, starting at the shoulder. More stripes, more children, greater social clout.
Orc were from the arctic wind-waterward corner of the map, and they were obligate carnivores, incapable of digesting plants. They were modeled on inuit cultures. One cultural quirk was the Pak'dan, the last kiss. The orcs believed life force was a finite, precious resource, one not to be wasted, and that the last breath of the dying carried the lion's share of that life force. So, when one's prey, enemy, or even friend was on the verge of death, the last kiss was the only honorable way to kill them. The orc would pin or lay the target down, expose the throat, and sink their tusks into it until they breathed their last. It allowed one to take in the essence of the fallen, to inherit their strength. Before giving the Pak'dan to a friend or ally, it was customary to ask for their unfinished business, and to use the life they gave you to complete it.
Also, dwarves had a massive, roman-themed subterranean empire, with an elemental pantheon composed of different aspects of each element. Like, there was a temple to hearthwarmer aspect of fire, and a different temple devoted to the wildfire aspect(founded by my paladin in the distant past. If you've ever read Guilded Age, think Frigg Akerfeldt, but with fire powers).

[Deepbluediver]

OK, don't call it spirit. Call it anima, as in "to endow with a particular spirit."

I appreciate the effort, but it doesn't really matter what it's called, it's what it does that just doesn't seem to mesh well with all the rest. It's like having a pair of sneakers, a set of combat boots, some stilettos, a pair of sandals .... and a tophat. It just doesn't fit the theme.
And I full admit this is my opinion and no one else's.

[The TechnoGnome]

I've got a couple odd race changes for my in-progress homebrew setting, but since it's still in the early stages I'll only mention the one that stuck so far.

Gnomes are a race artificially created by the genasi empire that ruled my setting in the distant past. The genasi, who were incredibly powerful spell casters, enslaved an entire continent's worth of races, and when they couldn't find a race that fit what they wanted, they used magic to mutate an existing one to fill the role. Gnomes are the result of a group of them wanting a 'pet race' that could also do simple household tasks for them. So they basically took regular elves, shrunk them down, made them 'cuter', and altered their natural talents towards illusion magic so they could entertain them with parlor tricks that weren't actually dangerous. While a lot of genasi still kept elves around as a more refined servant/concubine race, gnomes had their own niche admirers who wanted something more 'family friendly', as the modifications made to gnomes supposedly made them less of a danger to children if they got 'feisty' and tried to rebel. Plus, they were just seen as adorable, so a lot of genasi kids wanted their own gnome the same way ours would want a puppy or a pony.

Needless to say, the empire eventually fell to, among other things, widespread slave rebellions, but their past has colored modern gnome culture quite a bit. While most modern gnomes have accepted that they won't ever be elves again and see themselves as a unique race, they still share many traits with them, including their pride. They tend to get offended if anyone calls them 'cute' or similar things, and hate being looked down upon for their appearance and size. And while they still have a connection with nature, they also value their new knack for illusions, both to compensate for their weaknesses and to honor the memory of those distant ancestors who had used their new 'gifts' in order to sneak or deceive their way to freedom. Oh, and rather than being instinctual inventors, they tend to be very wary of people who decide to experiment with magic, and have a very defined sense of the 'right' and 'wrong' ways to use magic, which puts them at odds with the more curious high elves, who believe the ancient genasi empire may have been on to something with the whole 'magocracy' thing...

[shawnhcorey]

I appreciate the effort, but it doesn't really matter what it's called, it's what it does that just doesn't seem to mesh well with all the rest. It's like having a pair of sneakers, a set of combat boots, some stilettos, a pair of sandals .... and a tophat. It just doesn't fit the theme.
And I full admit this is my opinion and no one else's.

In that case, fire doesn't fit the theme either. Fire is a process, just like life.

[VoxRationis]

I have an issue with the use of the classical elements as literal laws of a game setting, even in a fantasy world, and this is because on a surface level, everything still functions normally. A human under a setting or system with the classical elements functions just like a human with the chemical elements: they eat, they drink, they sleep, they have blood in a closed circulatory system, fire burns them (and this fact combined with their need for air and water kills any idea of humans being from equal parts of the elements), swords cut them, etc. Presumably, at the lowest level, a four-elements human has to function in a different way, but the place where they transition from this to the familiar biology is rarely made clear.

[Admiral Squish]

I have an issue with the use of the classical elements as literal laws of a game setting, even in a fantasy world, and this is because on a surface level, everything still functions normally. A human under a setting or system with the classical elements functions just like a human with the chemical elements: they eat, they drink, they sleep, they have blood in a closed circulatory system, fire burns them (and this fact combined with their need for air and water kills any idea of humans being from equal parts of the elements), swords cut them, etc. Presumably, at the lowest level, a four-elements human has to function in a different way, but the place where they transition from this to the familiar biology is rarely made clear.

The idea would generally be that living things need all four elements to some degree, but an excess of them can still kill. An open flame can burn you, but you must remain warm or you'll freeze to death. You need to drink water, but you can still drown. Not sure how an excess of air could kill you, but...

[Deepbluediver]

In that case, fire doesn't fit the theme either. Fire is a process, just like life.

Yes yes, I'm well aware that fire should be called "reactionals" and all that, but it's still a common and relatively straightforward phenomenon. It's a physical (or chemical) process that actually exists- you can touch it (kind of) and feel it's effects. So it doesn't seem as different (IMO) from the other three as "spirit" does.

Not sure how an excess of air could kill you, but...

Look up "the bends" from scuba-diving. Or just "oxygen toxicity". Those are little less indirect or common than some of the other examples, but to much air can definitely do nasty things to your body.

[Roxxy]

Well, for starters I made every race a variety of Human. Makes it easier to relate and explains crossbreeding, especially between certain races (Orc/Dwarf is common enough to effect the average height and build of Dwarves). I also gave every race the same average lifespan. I haven't had Elves live long in my worlds since I first played Dragon Age. Also from Dragon Age is my tendency to treat Elves poorly.

The closest race to Earth people is Orcs. Orcs are also the most numerous race by far, and hold the bulk of political power. They are pretty tough compared to other races. Used to be they'd hunt prey by jogging after it in the hot sun until it dropped from exhaustion, but that was before cable and pizza delivery were invented. Still, they are quick to adjust to strange new climates, possess remarkable stamina, and eat capsaicin for fun. That's why they are so numerous compared to other races. A high level of toughness mixed with Human intelligence makes for a very adaptable race.

Dwarves have commonly lived side by side with Orcs, first as slaves, though they were typically trained/educated and expensive slaves, not plantation fodder (one used specific groups of Orcs for that purpose) Their higher status kept them from becoming much of an underclass after slavery ended. They do get stereotyped as all being highly educated rich doctors with overbearing parents. Dwarves have lived side by side with Orcs for so long that a lot of Orcish blood runs in Dwarven veins (the inverse is also true, but Orcs are a much bigger population, so it shows less). On average, Dwarves are around 4'8" to 5'4", but without all the crossbreeding they'd be 4 to 8 inches shorter (Well, maybe. The protien and calorie rich modern diet makes people taller, so causation is hard to attribute.). Dwarven hair tends to be lightly colored, and their skin pale, but Orcish influence can change that. Plenty of darker haired and ruddy Dwarves. Dwarves tend to be strong moreso than tough, but like everything else, they often have Orcish traits.

EDIT: The next two are copy/pastes from RPG.net:


Elves are the poorest and most marginalized race, as well as the least numerous. Used to be they were foresters, herbalists, and some hunters, and many have magic in their veins (In D&D terms, Elves favor Sorcerer, not Wizard). They once lived in cities built into the forest itself, but with the onset of industrialization, the Elven population exploded to a degree that carefully managed treehouses just could not support. Especially with the need for factories, railroads, and electricity. The forest cities are now dilapidated, overgrown, extremely impoverished, and crime ridden, and the majority of Elves have long since moved away from those hellholes to live among the Orcs, Dwarves, and Aasimar. In those cities, they form a largely poor or working class that, while discriminated against, isn’t as poorly off as those still stuck in the forest cities.

Elves are a few inches shorter than Orcs, with slender, almost androgynous builds, large pointed ears (which often perk or droop with emotional state), and no external hair other than that on their scalp. Their skin ranges from pale pink to greyscale to blackish, depending on how hot a climate they live in. Lighter skinned elves have forest-like hair colors, typically brown, red, or green. Darker skinned elves usually have pale, almost white hair, with pink, blue, or grey tints to it. Elven eyes can be any color. Around a third have stripes or spots, which can range almost any color but usually are only slightly lighter or darker than their skin.

Drow are just an Elven ethnic group.



Artifice (Warforged)

To animate a construct with actual human emotions, one needs to consume somebody's body and use the energy to wipe the soul clean. This creates a soul that lacks any memory of its previous life and personality, but because the body is consumed it needs an artificial one. The soul needs to be instructed as to how to act, much like a child, but grows far, far faster, reaching adulthood within a year or two. This being is an Artifice.

Originally, the nations of Breland and Vendalia comissioned Artifices as a more humane version of the death penalty (not that a lot of people don't see creating Artifices as just another version of the death penalty). The rulers of Breland and Vendalia wanted to use the technology to remake murders and rapists and return a new person with potential to contribute to society. Unfortunately, the dictator of Leontiny got ahold of this technology, and saw the potential not just to remake condemned criminals, but the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the vagrants, the career criminals, the political dissidents, the sexual deviants, and various other undesirables, all for the "good of society". Thus occured The Advance, which saw millions who did nothing to deserve it sent to the forges. The aftermath of this horror encouraged Vendalia and Breland to finally admit that creating Artifices involves an execution and encode it into their laws that none other than a convicted murderer may ever be made into an Artifice. Even that is extremely controversial in the wake of The Advance, with a significant portion of the populaces of Vendalia and Breland wanting a complete ban on the creation of Artifices.

To make matters worse, the revolutionary Leontin government that deposed the dictator exiled all Artifices after banning their creation completely, despite the Artifices having no fault in the circumstances of their own creation. This has created a large and mistrusted refugee race, many of whom were brainwashed by the tyrannical government during their adolescence. A great many of these refugees have ended up in Vendalia.

Artifices are largely made of metal and alchemical circuits, with plates colored and shaped to give as humanoid an appearance as possible for a piece of metal. Artifices frequently have their bodies decorated as a show of individiality, and therefore can look like whatever a metalworker or painter can achieve. Artifices have no need of clothing except for storage space, but most Artifices wear them both as a further means of showing individual taste and as a means of looking more human.

[Durzan]

In my setting, High Elves use magic to bioengineer their forests, keeping the forest in perfect conditions suitable for elvish habitation, and tend to be academically minded. If they seek to colonize an area, they will use magic to terraform their forests into the landscape itself. High Elves tend to be a bit arrogant and prideful. They are self proclaimed environmentalists, and often look down upon them. This of course is hypocritical, as while they are professing to love nature, they are using magic to force nature to follow their whims.

Wood Elves are more spiritually minded than their Northern Cousins. They are more easy going, and are basically hippies. They regularly smoke a mixture of rare herbs and plants found in their forests, which basically has the same effect on them as weed (or the magical equivalent to weed), and they spend most of their time getting high off this "weed", writing bad poetry, and encouraging pacifism.

Dark Elves (My take on Drow) arentreally evil at all, just misunderstood, because their culture is so alien to the rest of elf-kind. They keep to themselves in their caves, and rarely venture into the sunlight, as it hurts their eyes. They tend to stay in the shadows, focusing on stealth and deception to defend themselves.

I still laugh whenever I think of these three elvish races and how they'd interact. The Hippie-Elves always puts a smile on my face, lol.

[Carl]

Hmm. Interesting thread. I recently for random reasons decided to sit down and spend a few hours thinking about how you could have the three common elven archetypes, (Drow/Dark Elves, Wood/Nature Elves, and High/City Elves), in a single society and the general idea i came up with was to port them into an existing setting concept which is basically post apocalyptic, but in a very literal "End Of The World as We Know It" kind of way. The two factions i'd allready got in are littoral judeo-christian hosts of Heaven and Hell, (with humans as part of both, and presumably the classical pantheons of other civilisations such as greece, egypt, rome, e.t.c. are aroudn with their own human elements). Though both really need some expansion on my part TBH.

The main thing about the setting is that whilst it's now all smushed together, previously the elves and the humans and the various divine factions had little or no contact. Well the divine factions probably had some to be fair, but not in the "directly present and visible at all times" way that the elven gods have allways had and that everyone has now.

The fact that the gods have been such a visible and indeed active part of Elven society for so long and willingly grant power to those who embody qualities they represent or value if they so desire the risk that come with it. Currently since i'm representing just the 3 common elven stereotypes i've only got 3 major gods. They can be broken down to match the three stereotypes. The major goddess maps to the nature side. And the two major gods, (the goddesses Husband and Master respectively), to the remaining two.

Where they fall on traditional human morality is honestly a little hard to define. Elves view almost anything as acceptable though the survival and well being of the community as a whole is extremely important, but how this manifests varies with the god. In general most elves like your average human are a mix of types. And moving between communities is both entirely acceptable and even quite common. Indeed at the lowest rungs of each group the differences are much more cosmetic than actual. They live in a very different kind of building in cities with entirely different layouts and due to the influence of the higher up some significant functional differences. But you could take an Elf from each of the three groups, dress them in neutral clothing and sit them down in a room and you wouldn't be able to tell who came from where. They'd probably still come off a little odd by human standards but you wouldn't be able to tell assosiation easily. As you go up the ladder and individuals increasingly embody one or more aspects of the divine being in question their favour and thus power rises. At the very top each community has a single individual who most directly embodies the overall nature of the Divine being and directly below them a collection of individuals who embody singular aspects best.

It is important to note however that aside from those at the very top who directly embody all aspects, the next level down can also have other aspects of the same or even a different divine being, thats all perfectly acceptable. Also whilst the Divine beings handle the aspects of their ivine hierarchys in the mortal Realm the day to day ruling of each realms is left to their highest Elven community member.

One common point you'll see as i cover each divine being is that certain protections exists in the system for all three deities. here's limits on what you can do or on the circumstances under which you can do it or who you can do it to, e.t.c. because whilst he gods want the elves to embody the qualities they value they also want them to thrive and if they're getting killed, crippled or otherwise subject to nastiness, (mental or physical), then that isn't going to happen. Think of it like a parent, each has a different view on what makes a great elf, but they all want all elves to thrive regardless.

The Goddess is often, (and mistakenly), seen by humans as the elven equivalent of judeo-christian god. The good one who embodies virtues. This isn't strictly acurratte in that she's not viewed as any more or less good than the other two by elves. But she does embody many of the same things. She's very much about responsibility and duty as a particularly great ideal. But she also embodies the concept of communities, balance with nature, frugality, fertility, healing, the hunt, and many of the aspects of nature amongst others. All members of her communities can to varying degrees be called upon to serve in one or more roles embodying one or more aspects she embodies to the benefit of the community, (subject to the obvious limit they have to be adequately capable ofc). In this respect there's very much an aspect of the needs of the community. Everyone is expected to work towards seeing that these are met. However there are also protections. Aside from the obvious point of not being able to be called up to do somthing your unsuited to. The lower you are the shorter time period you can be required to serve for before being released and the longer time period before you can be called upon to serve again. As you dedicate yourself more and more to one o0r more of the principles and virtues of the goddess the higher you can go in the hierarchy, but the greater your obligations and the lower your protections. However you don't have to advance if you don;t want to and within some obvious but fairly broad limits you can drop back at will. The goddesses community also provides a number of good, as well as individuals from it's higher ranks to the other communities.

The way the goddess, (and her highest ranking Elven representative) interact with the 3 Elven communities is also unique compared to the other two. Whilst all 3 communities to varying degrees provide members to each other to cover certain required tasks, the Goddess and her community provide the most as many of the bare basics of life and their supply are within her purview. In turn the Goddess is the Husband of one of the Gods, and through an ancient pact, (i haven't worked out the Divine cosmology behind this one yet), the Slave of the other God. She deals with her triplicate responsibilities by having 2 lesser Goddesses as her handmaidens. She spends a third of each century in each divine realm, (the divine and physical realms are seperate though the divine is accessible if the ruling god/goddess allows it). When she is in her own realm she is her traditional self and rules over her people there whilst her Handmaidens handle the two other realms. When she is acting in her role of wife she lives in her husband's realm playing the role of dutiful wife and ruling over her people there whilst her handmaidens again handle the other two realms, and a third of a century is spent in her role as slave to the third major divine. The Handmaidens it should be noted rule in the other realms but do not take her role as wife or slave. The highest ranking member of the Goddesses community mirrors her Goddess, (as the highest ranking members of the other two communities mirror their Gods in the same way), by having two handmaidens and serving each of the three roles to her people and the other two highest members of the other communities. And don't assume that makes her time as a slave the worst, given what that God embodies it's physically traumatic in a whole slew of ways. But despite the fact that in the case of these two she very much does love her husband his culture that he oversees is as alien to her as her Master's. In effect each of the three sub communities highest individuals so thoroughly embody one god/godess so thoroughly that the other two sub cultures are mostly as alien to them as any of the three would be to humans with all of the negetive emotional consequences that brings.

The First of the God's is often viewed as the Elven equivalent of the Devil by Human's. But it would again not be entirely acurratte. He embodies Barnds, War, Slaughter, Rape, Slavery, Murder, Greed, Torture, Drunkenness, Feasts, Revelry, and Hedonism.

It should be noted that not all of the above should be taken literally. There's definitely a lot more obvious of a cultural difference here from human norms than with the goddess, (she's much simpler in some ways, she's the one who sees to the needs of survival which makes her the most relatable to a human by far). For example embodying War isn't about being a great martial champion, thats more properly slaughter, (which itself can be fulfilled by being a great gladiator, or even a great hunter technically. If you hunt for the joy of the kill first and the survival second, it''s slaughter, if you hunt for the good of the community and survival via food acquisition it's "The Hunt" even if you enjoy the kill also). Instead War is about all the preparation and forethought and effort that goes into the War. An armourer producing weapons and armour for the purposes of battle is embodying War just as a Great Tactician or Strategist or a breeder of beasts of war does also. And of course breeders f beasts and armourer can fall into categories of one or more of the other deities depending on their reasons for doing so. Slavery is about enslavement and the keeping and maintenance of slaves, not the act of being a slave, that belongs to a minor Goddess who is nonetheless surprisingly important and a permanent concubine of the Major God under discussion. A particularly confusing point for humans is that a Planner of Parties would fall under one or more of this Gods area's despite his otherwise seemingly awful other aspects. Arguably the two cores tenets that underpin a lot of this are Slavery and Hedonism. He's very much a god of personal self gratification, even at the expense of others. But because he also wishes to see all elves thrive this is handled via the aspects of him that deal with Slavery. Like with Duty and Responsibility for the goddess there are limits and protections in place and these are somewhat extended. Not only is being a slave subject to time limits and protections, but what your required to do as a slave impacts it. Naturally of course making someone a slave requires somthing a bit more forceful than words. Conversely whilst they can fight back to prevent being captured, once made a slave they are required to serve until released. At the same time whilst the protections have additional rules, so do some of the higher ups have more ways around them.though only the highest two layers, (i..e the one who most embodies all aspects of the god and the ones who most embody singular aspects of his ethos), can take permanent slaves, and even then the lowest layers are if not protected, nearly never allowed and the numbers are strictly limited. At the same time permanent harm to the slave is generally frowned upon, (though given divine presence really only death is permanent). Murder is a very interesting case protections wise. It used to use a very complicated highly restrictive system to keep the death rate down. But a long time ago one Elf combined it with greed and became what amounts to an assassin, (a novel concept at the time), which is now the only legal method of engaging in murder, (unless obviously someone willingly divests themselves of said protection, and whilst elves are culturally prideful there's certainly enough willing to do so, especially at the higher power levels, in some cases it even makes defending against attacks from people below easier). Interestingly as well he was the first of the bings to be completely clear that any outside species or half breeds are subject to the same protections as any Elf, (naturally he was the first as they appeared as slaves captured in battle).

NOTE: Posting this now, will come back to the third Divine sometime tomorrow with luck. But it's late here so bed soon and i don't want this getting lost to a power cut or a crash or a miss click or something given how much typing it took.

[Carl]

Okay to pick up where i left off:

The Third God is in many ways as different to the two existing ones as it's possibble to be. Though as should be obvious there's a Blue/Orange/Yellow morality scale going on in general.

He represents Magic, Technology, Experimentation, Inventiveness, Intellect, Civilisation, Bureaucracy, Industry, The Art's, Beauty, and Individualism.

If that seems a short list it's partly because in this case i've combined a number of detail elements under fairly broader categories. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that i haven't pinned down the exact technology levels involved here for the elves. The goddess is very obviously a one with nature type, very survival focused. It's her influence that got the elves through their equivalent of the stone age. The Master is about living and loving life, about personal self gratification and violence. He's the counterbalance to the other two that ensures the elves don't turn into highly regimented obsessive compulsives, or other mental health affected types. The Husband however is very much the one who helped the Elves progress technologically and build a more than stone age society He took them from a tribal hunter gatherer existence and through his influence brought them into a city dwelling nation state status. Those cities might be tree house based, or ground based human like, or somthing else entirely. But they grew out of his influence and how it interacted with the other Divine's influences. As his focus on individualism probably tells you his part of elven society is the one part where there's no medium or concept that allows another to require a specific action of you. You're not going to progress up his hierarchy by being a lazy layabout, but you have no real obligations or requirements placed upon you that you don't accept. In this respect advancing up his hierarchy is a bit like taking on a Job and then advancing up the promotion ladder. Of course those Job's cover a lot of ground not all of it analogous with things we'd think of as jobs. And as noted previously a lot of his stuff can overlap with the other two. An armourer can produce armour to meet a practical survival need, and thus be associated with the goodness, to produce armour for the purposes of providing the finest gear for the fighting of wars possibble, (i.e. the production of armour specifically for combat), is associated with The Maser. Whilst production of armour for the purposes of producing the most technologically capable, or most beutiful, (e.g. ceremonial), armour, or the most mass producible armour, or, well you get the idea i think. As Magic is one of the things that he represents and values he is also the easiest from which to acquire such gifts. The others hand out such power only to their upper echelons, (though far from just the topmost layers, but you can;t get magic without progressing a good way all the same), he hands it out to anyone willing to put in the effort and dedication to it, the practising of magic for it's own sake is of value for him, not merely as a power and a means to other ends. Of course these lower level magic users are much less powerful, but conversely much more common as only the very bottom most layers can't get at it as opposed to the majority with the others. Whilst as noted i haven't totally laid out the details of their tech i can say i don't want to go steam punk here, but if Elves had giggling mad scientists, (and they have their fair share of Archimedes/Da Vinci/Leonard of Quirm type mad geniuses), they'd go here and would be value by him. And you'll certainly see a lot of alchemical, technological, and magical experimentation going on.

Militarily all 3 groups have allways pooled their resources but The Husband is interesting in that beyond a certain point, (and much like citizens of medieval and classical times), of advancement you have to be part of the standing militia as a matter of course, but it's not a lifestyle so much as an extra job responsibility. As a result he provides the bulk of the mass elven infantry as well as the spellcasters to the elven armies. The Goddess through hunters and foragers provides much of the scouts and other light units, and the Master through great tacticians, strategists, and collections of martial champions under the command of a single "War Leader", or War beasts under the command of their breeders and Trainers provide the leaders and shock troops of the Elven armies.


Also this has got my brain bubbling, spent most of this morning working out my Dwarves, anyone interested in hearing about them?

[Bohandas]

I have an issue with the use of the classical elements as literal laws of a game setting, even in a fantasy world, and this is because on a surface level, everything still functions normally. A human under a setting or system with the classical elements functions just like a human with the chemical elements: they eat, they drink, they sleep, they have blood in a closed circulatory system, fire burns them (and this fact combined with their need for air and water kills any idea of humans being from equal parts of the elements), swords cut them, etc. Presumably, at the lowest level, a four-elements human has to function in a different way, but the place where they transition from this to the familiar biology is rarely made clear.

One possible solution would to be slightly tweak the elemental planes to actually exemplify the four states of matter, which they already map to anyway, with the elements idea merely being a common misinterpretation. This gets less easy to do if you're also using paraelemental and quasielemental planes though.

[VoxRationis]

One possible solution would to be slightly tweak the elemental planes to actually exemplify the four states of matter, which they already map to anyway, with the elements idea merely being a common misinterpretation. This gets less easy to do if you're also using paraelemental and quasielemental planes though.

"A common misinterpretation." That leads me to an interesting question. How often do people have it such that lore regarding how magic (or anything else, really) works is false?