# Multi-cultural, Multi-racial Fantasy races



## Hainted (Dec 15, 2013)

I've had this discussion with several friends, but why is every single fantasy race white or Caucasian with a different paint job(D&D's Drow for example). If you buy into the idea of an entire world populated with races alongside humans where are the rest of them? I want to expand beyond one race that wears one hat that represents everyone of them that ever lived. Why wouldn't there be Elves in the plains of America, or Naga slithering through the rainforests of South America? I've tried looking for parallels in other culture's myth and folklore, but I can't cover everything, so if anyone has a cultural variation of a classic fantasy race let me know.

For Example: The Abatwa- Tiny beings that are the perfect miniatures of African tribespeople and maintain a clan and family structure similar to that of the tribes. They live underground, but are not warlike, and spend most of their time foraging,and helping the ants with whom they share their underground homes.

Tweaked a little, that makes for a very interesting version of the classic Dwarves of fantasy. Anyone got any other examples?


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## ThinkerX (Dec 15, 2013)

I find the OP's post somewhat baffling.  Perhaps he has not read China Melvile?  Or some of Sandersons recent works?  Or even Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith?

But for 'real world' mythology, India boasts the 'Gandharvas'/'Aparusu' (not certain about the spelling) who certainly come across a lot like elves (Gandharvas being male magicians, musicians, and horsemen, while the Aparusu are female dancers).  Also a race of blue skinned dwarves (also supposedly good at riding horses).


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## GeekDavid (Dec 15, 2013)

ThinkerX said:


> I find the OP's post somewhat baffling.  Perhaps he has not read China Melvile?  Or some of Sandersons recent works?  Or even Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith?



I concur. Even indy author Brock Deskins includes a character from a desert, nomadic society in his very first book.


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## Jabrosky (Dec 15, 2013)

I have to say that if you want fantasy with non-Western settings, you can easily find some on the Internet if you know where to look. I'll also add that the _Acacia _books by David Anthony Durham have a multicultural setting, mixing European, Mediterranean, and African influences.


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## Hainted (Dec 15, 2013)

I read Melvile, Rothfuss, Croshaw, Rowland, Cornish, Smith, Peters, Green, Zahn, Henderson, Lovecraft,Anthony,Williams, Butcher, and even that horrible Strange and Norrell book. In every instance the non-human races have one culture, and one look, while humanity has all this racial and cultural diversity. Looking to give other fantasy races this kind of diversity, and looking for some good real world suggestions to check out.

Gandarvas/ Apasaru are a good start, who else can contribute something useful?


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## AnneL (Dec 15, 2013)

ThinkerX said:


> I find the OP's post somewhat baffling.  Perhaps he has not read China Melvile?  Or some of Sandersons recent works?  Or even Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith?





Jabrosky said:


> I have to say that if you want fantasy with non-Western settings, you can easily find some on the Internet if you know where to look.



I think OP is asking for suggestions and where to look.

Kate Elliott's SPIRITWALKER trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, Cold Steel) is a sort of alternate history/steampunk/fantasy melange which includes humans of different and mixed races (African skin and Irish red hair, for example), and also includes another species, the trolls, so you can see race presented from multiple angles.  Ian Irvine's RIFTWORLD books (A Shadow on the Glass is the first) is a sort of fantasy/SF blend on a planet inhabited by humans from 3 different original "races" or "species," and then there are people of varying skin color within the different groups, so again there are different constructs of what race is.


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## Hainted (Dec 16, 2013)

No I'm looking for real world analogues to the classic fantasy races in cultures other than European. A resource or a few suggestions like Thinker X gave would be most helpful. I'm trying to treat elves, dwarves, etc with the same cultural, and ethnic diversity that humans have so they're not just "white people with funny shaped ears"

EX: Dwarves: Ludki(European), Abatwa(African), Odhows(Amerindian) All are underground dwelling races that are shorter than humans, and would be considered "Dwarves" in the same way that the Vikings, Zulu, and Cherokee would be considered Human.


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## GeekDavid (Dec 16, 2013)

Funny that you mention the Drow in your original post. If you read the Drizzt Do'Urden books, especially the prequel trilogy where it delves deeply into Drow society, you'd see that it's vastly different from what most White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) would know.

It's highly matriarchal, for one thing. Men are worse than second-class citizens, in many cases they're little more than slaves. For another thing, the major houses are allowed and in some cases encouraged to go to actual war against one another -- not a cold war, but actual frontal assaults -- and as long as there's not too much fuss generated, it's winked at by the ruling matriarchs and let slide.


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## Steerpike (Dec 16, 2013)

The various Tiste races in Erikson's Malazan books have different cultures. So do the sub-groups of Toblakai.


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## GeekDavid (Dec 16, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> The various Tiste races in Erikson's Malazan books have different cultures. So do the sub-groups of Toblakai.



Darn it, Steerpike, you're really making me wanna read those books!


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## Steerpike (Dec 16, 2013)

GeekDavid said:


> Darn it, Steerpike, you're really making me wanna read those books!



You should. They're great books!


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## GeekDavid (Dec 16, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> You should. They're great books!



I got a stack of "to read" books already.


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## Steerpike (Dec 16, 2013)

GeekDavid said:


> I got a stack of "to read" books already.



If you add the original Malazan series to that stack, it'll only be an additional 12,000 to 13,000 pages I bet.


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## GeekDavid (Dec 16, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> If you add the original Malazan series to that stack, it'll only be an additional 12,000 to 13,000 pages I bet.



"Only" 12k pages, he says. 

We're getting off topic here. I think the point is, non-stereotypical cultures do exist in fantasy, you just have to find them.


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## Graylorne (Dec 16, 2013)

You could try this list of Mythological creatures. Perhaps there are some that fit your purpose.
List of legendary creatures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## skip.knox (Dec 16, 2013)

I, too, can't quite figure out what the OP is asking for here. Black cultures create mythological creatures which, if humanoid, are black. Same with Asian, Indian, Caucasian. That's only to be expected. The desire for diversity within an alien or mythological life form is peculiarly modern and Western. Nothing wrong with that, but it shouldn't be surprising that such things are hard to find in historical tradition. 

At the same time, why even ask? I mean, if you want to create dwarves that are comprised of six different racial types, go right ahead. Make them any color you like. Historical precedents aren't really needed, are they?


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## Hainted (Dec 17, 2013)

Historical precedents aren't really needed, but would help give them a "weight", and help carry on the tradition started with Elves,Dwarves, and Orcs being used in fantasy. (Liosaelfa,Svartaelfa, and Orke)
Besides I'm crap at naming stuff, so it would be an immense help.


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## skip.knox (Dec 17, 2013)

I think you just need to do a little looking. There are lots of types of elves, to take only one example. Wikipedia's not a bad place to start, but others have given other references. You'll quickly find that Tolkien-esque elves are not the only kind.

Elf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm sure you'll find similar variations for dwarves. Not so much for other races like orcs. For that I'd turn more to modern gaming systems and other fantasy books.


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## Ireth (Dec 17, 2013)

Tolkien has a fair bit of diversity among his races, especially the elves. There are many groups and subgroups, from the wise and creative Noldor to the music-loving, seafaring Teleri. Those are just two of the main groups, and there are others who don't get as much development (to my knowledge, at least), like the Nandor. They're not quite multi-racial (unless you view the Avari, Dark-elves, as being Drow-like), but there's a lot of cultural distinction.


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## Shockley (Dec 18, 2013)

My primary thought on this is that, by looking for cross-cultural analogs you are kind of saying that the white cultures are the standard and that these other cultural legends are only reflections of these prime archetypes.

Dwarves and elves tend to be white because they are the cultural product of northern European peoples. If you want authentic diversity in cultural depiction, move beyond the analogs and find out what characters make those cultures unique.


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## Hainted (Dec 18, 2013)

I'm not trying to say the white cultures are the standard, and if it comes across that way I apologize. No, I'm looking at a Fantasy setting that is tech equivalent( or a little ahead) of our world. I'm taking a more scientific(?) approach to the races, and taking into account the diversity inherent in the human race from colonizing the earth, and applying it to the standard fantasy races. The parallels I'm looking for are more to add a correct name to the culture so I'm not making something up that sounds ridiculous to someone more familiar with that area of the world. So Abatwa for a culture of Dwarves that live in a sub-tropical clime versus the Shortenhotts


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## Steerpike (Dec 18, 2013)

Part of how you approach this probably rests on how "human" your fantasy races are. The trend the past decade or more has been to make the various fantasy races essentially human. Elves are humans with pointy ears; dwarves are short humans. There may be quirks and idiosyncracies associated with each race, but they increasingly become stand-ins for human beings. 

On the other hand, if your fantasy races are decidedly non-human, there's no reason you can't have a more monolithic culture, even despite separation by time and geography. You don't have to look at the real world and say "Hmm, here's how human cultures look" and mimic that, unless you _want_​ to mimic it and make your fantasy races more like the human race.


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## Hainted (Dec 18, 2013)

Yeah, but I find White hat or Black Hat on a whole race to be boring. I like the idea of these fantasy races being as diverse, divisive, and messy as we are. If they all sit around and sing Kum-by-ya, and never disagree about anything...What's the point?


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## Mindfire (Dec 19, 2013)

Hainted said:


> Yeah, but I find White hat or Black Hat on a whole race to be boring. I like the idea of these fantasy races being as diverse, divisive, and messy as we are. If they all sit around and sing Kum-by-ya, and never disagree about anything...What's the point?



But one might ask, if your fantasy races are going to look like humans, act like humans, and bicker like humans... why not just make them humans?


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## Hainted (Dec 19, 2013)

Who says they look like humans? Well, no more than most fantasy races look human. I've been trying to sketch out various ideas that keep a humanoid appearance, but play into the fact that they're not human. Look at The Elder Scroll games or better yet, some of my notes on Dwarves

Dwarves aren't just short humans with beards. At 4 and a half feet tall they're broader than a 6 foot human, and possess a strength equivalent to a similar sized primate from our world. Their eyes are large and very sensitive to light necessitating light blocking goggles even at night to cope above ground.(light pollution is a big concern for dwarven culture.)Their ears are likewise large, like a bat's, and offset from one another slightly(The right is 2 inches higher than the left) like owls so they can orient themselves better through sound. Their clothing seems oddly colored to most races because, One color's not as important in low light, and 2 most other races don't have vision that extends into the range of dwarves so they're not perceiving the actual colors.


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## Erudite (Dec 21, 2013)

Likely a result of the people who kept the histories we base most of our fantasy off of.

Norse, Greek (close enough to white), Roman... I mean, truth is we're conditioned to think Sword and Sandals relates to white people, and black slaves abound (because they were white, and the slaves were black).

You need to change it via your own writing, and have good excuses for it. Most films, books, etc, just don't have the space to explain why the black people are in command of the cities, and the white people serving them.

And equality just speaks to lack of consideration to culture in a novel, so most writers steer clear of it.

I personally don't find too many conflicts of dark-skinned peoples being persecuted against in novels. There were traders in a series I used to read who were dark-skinned, and they were portrayed as cunning and shrewd businessmen. Just write it well enough, people don't actually hold too many prejudices today.


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