# More Fantasy Races



## Nameback (Jun 9, 2013)

I liked reading the other two threads on this subject, so I thought I'd add my own to the mix. These are all the races that I have so far, but consider the list below as far from complete. 

*Hominid races:* These are all the races that are descended from pre-human hominids, and are thus closely related. Their divergent evolution is due significantly to the use of magic--their speciation is, therefore, not a product of natural selection--but rather magical selection.

*Humans:* Self-explanatory. Most of the human governments in the time and place where my story is set are city-states or smaller (e.g. independent towns, pastoral tribes, nomadic hunter/gatherers). 

*Errald:* The Errald are a race of giants. Standing between 9 and 12 feet tall, they have pale, almost translucent skin. Their bodies are extremely long-limbed, proportioned more like orangutans than modern humans. They are of generally slight build, with thin bodies, angular joints, and a somewhat emaciated appearance (by human standards). Their faces are flat, long, and narrow with a prominent jaw. They have very large teeth and a pair of small tusks that protrude from the mandible. Despite their thin, somewhat ghostly appearance, they are horrifically strong and quite resistant to injury. They have very little sexual dimorphism, and most non-Errald have trouble discerning males from females, assuming both are free of facial hair.

Culturally, the Errald are the only race to have survived the Sundering (the cataclysmic conclusion to millennia of warfare among the gods) with a civilization intact enough to remember the past. However, for reasons unknown, the Errald henceforth banned all history, making it a sacrilege and punishable by death. Even oral history is verboten, with the exception of lineage and ancestor worship. Thus, three-thousand years after the Sundering, the Errald are just as ignorant of the world before the cataclysm as every other race, having voluntarily scoured the memories from their culture. Once renowned for their erudition, technology, and scientific acumen before the Sundering, the Errald have become insular and stagnant. They are still, however, as brutally violent and savage as ever. A race of warrior-scholars stripped of their intellectual inheritance, they live isolated from other human races, in dwindling tribes.

*Firrens:* Firrens are reptilian humanoids, roughly the same size and build as modern humans. Like many lizards, however, the females are larger and stronger than the males, which in turn are more colorfully decorated. Also, being reptilian, they lack certain mammalian features, such as live births. They lay eggs, although the mothers do give milk for their offspring. Their skin is covered in small, hexagonal scales which are dry and smooth, and come in a variety of matte colors. 

Females are typically brown or green, and no more than dichromatic. Males come in an astonishing variety of colors, and any individual may have up to twenty distinct scale-tones. Both sexes have clawed hands and feet, thick tails roughly four feet in length, and a robust physiology resistant to disease--important given their almost exclusively carnivorous diet, which sometimes includes meat that humans would consider rancid. They are entirely hairless, and their heads are somewhat more oblong than a human's, with elongated snouts and somewhat elliptical braincases. 

Culturally, firrens tend to be pastoral. They are well-known for their incomparable horsemanship, and their tribes tend to be migratory, leading their horses and herds of cattle, goats, and sheep from summer to winter grazing lands over the course of a year. When a firren reaches maturity (the age varies from tribe to tribe, but usually between 13 and 15), they undertake a coming-of-age ritual. 

Though the magic is no longer understood, the firren tribes possess ancient, pre-Sundering artifacts of their people, which they use to open the way to other realms. One realm, in particular, is where young firrens must go to earn their adulthood. There, they will find demons. Each firren must capture one of a certain species of demon, tame it, and bind it to their soul. The species in question is one of six-legged herd-animals, about a third again larger than a bull and of similar build, but with dextrous, clawed feet and humped backs. They are armored in a silvery, reflective metallic exoskeleton that is stronger than steel--when the beasts die, their metallic hides are used for the manufacture of tools and weapons by firrens. 

The demons are violent, loyal, smarter than a horse, and make for battle-mounts without equal. After successfully taming and binding one such demon, that firren is now capable of summoning his soul-bound companion to earth at any time. However, firrens generally let the beasts remain in the own realm most of the time, as they cannot survive for long on a diet of terrestrial animals, which seem to lack certain essential nutrients. When faced with war, however, firrens will summon their demonic steeds and ride them into battle as the most fearsome cavalry force ever seen.


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## Nameback (Jun 9, 2013)

*Korai:* Korai are intelligent races unrelated to humans. When magic was first utilized by intelligent beings, prior to the divergence of the hominid races, some of that magic inevitably crept into non-human species, whose evolution was then altered. There is tremendous variation in korai, as it is a far broader designation than that of the human cousin-races. 

*Canis Caelestis:* Although not properly a species, being far too few in number to be considered as such, the Celestial Wolves are, according to legend, the first korai to ever gain intelligence and control of magic. They appear, quite simply, as massive wolves, even the weakest and youngest of which are endowed with magical power comparable to that of the greatest human High Mages in history. Their Eve-figure, the wolf-mother Laika, once rose to godhood, and took part in the Divine Conflict for thousands of years. In the aftermath of the Sundering, she returned to earth, diminished in stature, though still immortal and and one of the most powerful living beings. She survives to this day, and holds tightly the secrets of thousands of years and the gods themselves.

*Se'fallo:* The Se'fallo are a plant people, usually humanoid in structure but not necessarily so. They are composed of large, motile vines that are capable of arranging themselves into convenient body-shapes. Their heads are mouthless and eyeless, vaguely fox-like in shape, and composed of flexible green wood, from which the vines of their bodies sprout. When in humanoid form, they are about seven feet tall on average. They breed by flowering in spring and then planting fertilized seeds, though because they are motile they require no pollination, and as interference by bees and birds would make lineage impossible to discover, their flowers are extremely foul-smelling to all animals, giving off a caustic, sulphrous, chemical odor that even flies disdain. This allows for monogamy and pair-bonding, and the raising of children ("sprouts") by families. They are mono-gendered. 

Culturally, they are foragers, with primitive technology. They are herbivorous, consuming plant matter in small digestive pockets found in their vines, but also capable of surviving without food for extended periods of time through the use of photosynthesis in a dormant, resting state that requires them to root themselves until food once again becomes available. Their tools and weapons are made from stone or plant material--they eschew all metallurgy. They are peaceful and communicate telepathically. 

*Skerro:* The violent, powerful, gargantuan protectors of forests (and Se'fallo), the Skerro are also known as tree-lords. Skerro are made from living wood, with hornbeam bark that is as strong as steel. Four-legged, they are reminiscent of gorillas, with huge powerful forelimbs and somewhat smaller, more agile hindlimbs. They run with a loping gait, and stand as much as twenty-five feet tall when rearing up on two legs. Their faces are, like the Se'fallo, eyeless and mouthless. Their faces look like leaf-shaped shields of bark--elliptical and narrowing to points at the top and bottom. Antlers (small trees, more accurately) grow from their heads behind the top ridge of their mask-faces, adorned with many branches and pine needles. They are often covered in moss, as they tend to remain inactive until their forests are threatened--at which point they can exhibit terrifying speed and unparalleled strength. They are naturally resistant to magic, and some are themselves mages in addition to their physical prowess. 

Skerro are capable of crushing a full-grown bull to pulp in their proportionally-huge hands, tearing down city walls with brute strength, and going toe-to-toe with virtually any creature. They communicate telepathically.

*Dragons:* Dragons are feathered, two-legged creatures about the size of a horse (not including their tails). They stand and run with their bodies angled horizontally, like a bird's, and stand about seven feet tall at the hips. Their snouts are long and their mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. Usually beautifully colored, they have wingspans of as much as forty-five feet from tip to tip, and deadly, curved claws on their second toes. They are, of course, capable of spitting fire--Dragon's Fire is a sticky, combustible fluid which ignites on contact with air and is nearly impossible to quench or remove. They have long, dextrous fingers (one of which is opposable) at the second joint in their wings, which allows them some of the ability of a human hand. 

Dragons live in groups called aeries, which are extended kin-groups of between fifty and two-hundred members, typically identifiable by common coloring. A Brood Mother is a female dragon (or, _"val-drac"_, whereas a male dragon is a _"var-drac"_) who is the founder of an aerie. Older aeries have no living Brood Mothers, but the title is generally bestowed on the eldest living female with offspring in the aerie. Aeries are nomadic hunting-groups, with generally egalitarian practices and strict social codes of conduct. Violation of social rules, including informal ones, can quickly lead to ostracizing and exile--the worst of all dragon punishments. Violence among dragons is rare, but violence towards non-dragon races is fairly routine; thus, dragons generally face little or no competition for their territory, as most intelligent creatures would rather avoid conflict with them.

Exiled dragons often find themselves living among humans or their cousin-races, usually working as mercenaries. 

*Jraka:* Jraka are, essentially, flightless dragons. Too huge to fly, they never stop growing and can live for centuries. A typical forty-year-old adult is, on average, thirteen feet tall at the hips and forty-five feet long. A centuries-old Brood Mother could be in excess of one-hundred feet in length, able to eat a horse in one bite. Less feathered and more robustly built than winged dragons, their wings are small and vestigial. They are, due to their size, stature, and fire-breathing, obviously formidable opponents if challenged. 

Jraka (male: _"bar-jrak"_, female: _"bal-jrak"_) are few in number, due to the fact that their huge size and carnivorous nature demands an extensive territory to support even one jrak. They typically live alone, ranging over their vast territories for prey, though mothers will live with their children until they are old enough to leave the nest, at about twenty years of age. Broods are much smaller than dragons', with a bal-jrak typically only laying two-to-four eggs, and becoming fertile no more than once a decade. Although they do not live together, jraka do have strong loyalty to their kin-groups, which are called "sieges," and which are typically identified by coloring. 

A meeting of dragon aeries and jraka sieges (very rare, as hostility between the two species over territory is not uncommon) is called a Convocation, and usually only occurs when matters of species-wide import must be decided, such as decisions to go to war.


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## Tom (Jun 9, 2013)

Wow! Most of my races are just variants on humans, but yours have completely blown away any competition I could give you. I love how you took the time to fully develop each race's anatomy, history, and culture. You seem to have a very distinct, biological approach to how you describe them.Wow...that's all I can say.


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## Nameback (Jun 9, 2013)

Thanks! I've given them a lot of thought so far. One thing I find is that it helps to write about them in a non-fiction style--like you said, sort of with a biological or anthropological style. I find that when I set out to write what I know about a given fantasy race in that style (even if I don't know much at all to start with), that details start to fill themselves in.

Heck, just as I was writing the OP, I realized the bit about Se'fallo having really awful-smelling flowers. I already knew, from what I had written before, that they had monogamous couplings, and I knew because they're plants, that they must reproduce by some kind of pollination. But when I wrote those two things down next to each other, I realized that they must have a way to avoid accidentally pollinating one another, or else establishing paternity would be essentially impossible. 

I find the best world-building happens that way: you're not trying to come up with details, but they sort of just come to you, as natural consequences of what you've already established. And each detail brings forth new details as further consequences. It almost feels more like you're reading about something already written than writing something new--it's more like discovering than creating.


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## Canz (Jun 10, 2013)

I really like the way you described your races, they all seem really well thought. I really liked the giants and the jraka; flightless yet bigger dragons is a nice idea. 

One thing I couldn't take my mind off though, was the dragons being _feathered_. I don't know, maybe its just me, but I cannot avoid thinking of a giant fire-breathing chicken when I read that. I think feathers give them a really less intimidating look than scales. But then again hey, that's just me.


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## Nameback (Jun 10, 2013)

Canz said:


> I really like the way you described your races, they all seem really well thought. I really liked the giants and the jraka; flightless yet bigger dragons is a nice idea.
> 
> One thing I couldn't take my mind off though, was the dragons being _feathered_. I don't know, maybe its just me, but I cannot avoid thinking of a giant fire-breathing chicken when I read that. I think feathers give them a really less intimidating look than scales. But then again hey, that's just me.



Yeah I think they're definitely less intimidating that way--but that's sort of what I wanted. Dragons are definitely formidable foes, no two ways about it, but they're not the godlike monsters you see in most fantasy books. I mean, with a lot of skill and a little luck, you could imagine a scenario where a non-magical human warrior could kill a non-magical dragon in single combat. So I think feathers goes with that.

Plus I had just seen Jurassic Park again in 3D and had been reading way too much on wiki about dinosaurs, so I made my dragons basically just Utahraptors with big wings. 

Edit: Also, getting the reader acquainted with the idea of smaller, more mundane dragons will provide the opportunity for some good surprise when they get to see the actual dragon gods.

They may have feathers, but a fire-breathing, clawed, flying, razor-toothed god the size of a town will still be intimidating.

Edit2: Also, feathers or not, I definitely wouldn't wanna meet any of these guys in a dark alley:
http://www.nhmu.utah.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/g1835_Utahraptor_1.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Baltow_JuraPark_utahraptor_ostrommaysorum_02.jpg
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2...r_ostrommaysorum_by_teratophoneus-d4oq7xm.jpg

and for the jraka:
http://cdn0.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1399185/SgSJk.jpg


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