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A multi-species world

Ermol

Dreamer
So my main story takes place on a continent (call it Heartlands) which is inhabited by several species. Nothing massively original. I am just thinking how do you approach writing other species.

These are all relatively “young” nations or tribes, with some races occupying the continent only for about, let’s say a thousand years, though the exact time frame may change. Most of the history from before has been lost. There was a lot of migration and resettlement going on prior to that.

Takes about 40-50 days by horse to travel South to North, 60 or so days from East to West, at their tallest and widest distances - I'm not talking galloping but normal horse speed, I guesstimated at 25 miles a day to travel that far. That's how far my geographical planning went.

So we have:
- One very prosperous kingdom (Seleiro) to the south east, founded by elves who are rapidly going extinct and form a fraction of the population, with the rest predominantly humans;
- Dwarven mountain holds - living above and under the mountains, the dwarves hold and control a huge % of the market on mining all throughout the continent. They are currently highly unoriginal and very formulaic dwarves. My apologies :). They live largely south, but dwarven miners are sought after and are everywhere;
- Forest tribes - humans with shamanistic powers living off the wild in a large sprawling forest encompassing a lot of the east of the continent. Many tribes, lots of in-fighting within and raiding outside the forests;
- Vanami - amphibious creatures living predominantly underwater off the north of the Heartlands, but maintaining outposts and towns above water for trade. Will quite happily eat other races;
- Plaeri - basically lizardmen, living in the deserts in the west; quite barbaric and rarely stray outside of their desert;
- Veks - white furry humanoid creatures, tall, long, thin, living mostly isolated far to the north west, highly mysterious.

Notes:

- A large proportion of the “unclaimed territories” is taken by cities and towns and villages and hamlets and crossroads inns, predominantly settled by humans;
- Seleiro has also established several trading posts in some areas where these villages are, slowly bit by bit extending themselves through all of the Heartlands, allowing trade to smoothly flow through the continent;
- There is strong trade going on between the dwarves and Seleiro, they are very amicable neighbours;
- Seleiro and the dwarves are the only ones who actually have seafaring capabilities to engage in any kind of trade.

The conflicts inherent to the setting are:

- Vanami regarding all other species as meat;
- Plaeri and Veks fighting for reasons unknown, so far not involving other species;
- Elves being mistrusted, as one way they’ve been battling complete extinction is to mate with other races
- Raiders from a nearby “pirate archipelago” (it’s more sophisticated than it sounds) attacking all around the north and eastern coastlines - central conflict to the story;
- Infighting among the tribes and also raids outside the forests.

My main characters would largely be the few survivors of the Elven population. I am currently writing a prequel short story with one of them, for me to both practice my writing and assist with world-building and just how it all works. Any advice on that would be great as well. Effectively my MC got screwed in a bad way, and he's doing a bit of a world tour trying to get back home, an Odyssey of sorts.

PS: The post itself was also an opportunity for me to just write this all out in brief which was a useful exercise. A lot of decisions have been made while I was doing that.
 
When I'm creating different species I tend to take time to develop distinctive cultures with customs and beliefs. A good way of getting ideas for this is to read of past earth cultures and how they saw the world.

For entirely different species (such as your amphibian race) you could perhaps even base their culture off the biology of the creature's life cycle. Do they have a larval stage? is it free swimming with adults just emerging some months or years later or are the larva looked after by their parents? Is there on top breeder that fertlizes all the eggs from dozens of females? getting that clear helps define the species and their beliefs.

Each species needs to have at least a few distinctively different ways of looking at the world otherwise there's no point having them really.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
"One very prosperous kingdom (Seleiro) to the south east, founded by elves who are rapidly going extinct and form a fraction of the population, with the rest predominantly humans"

I like this. This is good. I don't like the whole "this is the nation of elves, this is the nation of dwarves" cliche. In my setting, the nations all have, you know, diverse populations with different peoples coexisting. You know, like actually real-world nations. And there are several races of elves and several races of humans with distinct cultures.

"Plaeri and Veks fighting for reasons unknown, so far not involving other species"

I don't like this. The idea that entire species inherently are one way, such as hating another species is kind of terrible. Saying that French and British people dislike each other is acceptable because that's more of a political/historical thing. But saying "elves naturally hate dwarves because race" is like saying all white people hate all black people. It's a very shallow, ignorant way to give a species an identity or relationship.

I might be missing something since you don't really specify how civilized the species are. Like are Plaeri capable of speaking human language? Are the Veks? So, I'm just giving you some thoughts based solely on what info you gave.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
I don't like this. The idea that entire species inherently are one way, such as hating another species is kind of terrible. Saying that French and British people dislike each other is acceptable because that's more of a political/historical thing. But saying "elves naturally hate dwarves because race" is like saying all white people hate all black people. It's a very shallow, ignorant way to give a species an identity or relationship.

Well, I guess the question is, does the OP really mean "species" or "race". Because these are two very different things, biologically. It makes perfect sense to say that entire species behave in certain ways. Though you may need to give thought to what biological differences might cause two species to be at odds with each other, other than a predator/prey relationship anyway. However, if they are merely different races within the same species, you'd need to consider rather more environmental and societal reasons for the way they are.

I'll admit, it's a pet peeve of mine when people confuse race and species.
 

Ermol

Dreamer
Cool stuff.

First off, I did mean different species, that was my bad, and the distinction is something definitely to note for future.

The Veks are incredibly fanatical in their religious belief and for centuries they have been protecting a McGuffin (let's call it that, although mine actually does something) from all outsiders, as they believe they must. The Veks don't care about the Plaeri specifically. They do care about ancient Plaeri land, which is where they settled when they arrived in Heartlands about a thousand years ago. The Plaeri were killed or displaced, and they want it back. Where the Plaeri live now is locked by sea from the south and the west and they have few ships of their own. To the east lies a huge mountain ridge, providing limited access to eastern lands. There is trade with the dwarves and the humans, but the fast-breeding Plaeri are struggling.

As for the biology of the Plaeri and the Vanami I'll confess I haven't thought it through as much as I should, not yet. I'm definitely not going the way of Star Trek, i.e. all humanoid with extra appendages/different skin/etc. The Vanami and Plaeri lay eggs, they would not be compatible with each other (fish & lizard) or with "usual" humanoids, and certainly not in a pretty way.

All useful questions, thanks guys.
 
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When I'm creating a species I don't feel too restricted in terms of the story requirements etc. Terry makes good points with actually species design. However, when creating a city or a kingdom for them, which isn't the primary setting, I ask myself a few questions. The general ones tend to be:

Is it logical? Is there a good reason for them to be settled there? Resources tend to be one of the most common reasons, as well as environmental advantages.

How much connection do they have with the protagonist culture? If there is a history of interaction have they learned a common language? Is there a technological difference? If so has interaction assimilated any new technology into their society? If they have a long history with them, have there been any problems with racism or religious differences?

Are they politically logical? Is there some relationship that stops these all these groups turning on each other? Remember a society will do what's best for itself, so in order to achieve something they would be cautious about indebting themselves to another city state or otherwise handicapping or limiting themselves while there are other options. Is there a strong and continuous motivation for their current diplomatic relationship with the other states? Going back to the last point, if they are in an alliance is there enough benefit for them without being problematic? Likewise, if they are at war with someone else, is there a strong enough reason to justify such a dangerous and resourcefully expensive situation?

Hope that isn't overwhelming, that's just the kind of planning I do.
 
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