New races / races that are not used very often. and how you use them

[Dr.Dorkness]

Hi all,

Just curious here. Do you have your own race or races? if you do why don't you share your view. I myself use 3 new/not much used races.

The Autians
The Autians are half animal half man, like Minotaurs, Centaurs and Fauns. Only with more animal mixes. like camels, elephants, lions and tigers, even mice. The name Autian comes fron the language the minotaur (supposedly) origanaly speak. (can't remember what it is )

The Burwinians
On the coast of Bur there was a small village, called Burwin. The inhabitants of this little village where very peculiar. For they where of a race that only lived there and not anywhere else in the world. Thus they where called Burwinians, not a very original name but it was a fitting one.
Burwinians are small of stature smaller than the average dwarf yet taller than the average gnome. The men can grow beards yet it seems a sort of tradition in the village that they only grow goatees, which would be braided when long enough. Bushy sideburns where also common.
Like many coastal folk they let their hair grow long, most of the time tied together in a ponytail or braid. The women on the other hand could not grow beards. In fact they did not have hair anywhere else on their body except for their heads, including eyebrows and and eyelashes of course. The women's hairstyles where not much different from the men's. Though they would also let their hair hang loose or tie their hair in buns. Young girls would also wear their hair in pigtails.
Their ears are also unusual. They are pointy, yet not like elves. Which point up. No, their ears point down. Hair colour is also a matter. It seems these creatures have nothing normal about themselves. For their hair colour ranges from the darkest of red to the fairest of blue. It is the same with the colour of their irises.
Being a race of the sea Burwinians are hardy and strong. Yet they look weak. This is because they do not build up muscle. Well maybe they do, it just does not show. Perhaps this is because of their uncanny agility. Otherwise Burwinians look just like height impaired, yet proportionate, humans

The Forged

There is a kind of immortal in my world. They are created. like I said in a post about magic, my novel revolves around a tree and what happens to the seeds. The Selani (sea elves) have a pact with this tree, they sacrifice thier own blood to the tree and from that one is chosen. This chosen one gets a number of seeds. One of which is used to grow a ship of which the chosen one becomes the captain. the ship dies with the chosen one. The Gnomes on the other hand are a technollogical race and use the magic abillities of the seeds of this tree. In the time setting where my story takes place, the gnomes have claimed the tree for themselves. They use the seeds for two things. [1] To create staves that can be used as powerfull weapons (the one who gives the first blood becomes the master via imprinting) [2] This is the reason why I wrote a whole discription. from the seeds they create cores for a "race" called the forged. They are litteraly robots. But when schocked by a high voltage, like thunder, the cores will awaken an then develop their own personality. the forged are then immortal so to speak. They do not need to eat, sleep, or even breath. the cores are indestructable, so when they are awakend they will always live on even when the cores do not have a body anymore.

 

[Ophiucha]

Most of my races are the normal sorts - dwarves, elves, dragons, faeries - but I have a few that act as betweens and otherwises. The Amarant are loosely based on your typical Lovecraftian lore (both from Lovecraft himself and his numerous successors). The world, Molusk, is very much like a mollusk, in so far as that it is encompassed in a shell. It is in an ocean that acts very much as our 'outer space', and it is filled with these 'Amarant', who are unspeakable and often malevolent sea creatures with little interest in the ways of elves (the dominant creature in Molusk), but still ruling over it almost as gods. Tentacles, eyes the color of fear, all that jazz. Some allusions to Lovecraftian lore from time to time. S'all good. They are the very core of magic, and it was their lost shells that formed Molusk and the landmasses within it. Their shedded skin and scales and lost mucus became various forms of faerie.

These faerie were also malevolent, and created the descents, which were crude land-bound versions of the Amarant. They are only female, and from their wombs birthed dragons (who have three different forms: burrowers, bronzers, and bounders), dragons being only male. Descents are hideous, monstrous creatures with regard only for their young and their mates (the dragons; they need two). Descents are basically impossible to kill. You would have to kill the Amarant from which they were originally formed, and only one Amarant has ever been killed. This trait was passed onto the dragons, who can only be killed if there birth place (a rock or something) is destroyed, making them also very difficult to kill.

The only other entirely separate-from-regular-myth thing is the Charnel, which is a single person. Once an elf, he was noticed by the Amarant for his exceptional strength and was made a keeper of the dead, returning lost bits of the Amarant to them. He is basically a half-dragon, half-elf hybrid. On that, some of the miscellaneous creatures that appear throughout the story include half-human, half-snakes (with frightening frills on the side of their necks), which are loosely based on nagas and also that one spitting dinosaur as it was "portrayed" by Jurassic Park, a mermaid-troll hybrid (actually just an elf who was bound to the sea, but she's based on both mermaid and troll lore), vampires (but elves!), weredragons, and 'earworms', which are just human beings from Earth, but since (a) Earth and ear are spelled similarly, and (b) humans have shorter ears than elves, the name stuck as a derogatory term for them, as they are a significant minority (there are three).

 

[Mdnight Falling]

I have Dragonians which were originally dragons but over time they evolved into human looking things with dragon wings...Some of them can still turn into dragons but not many

Solstyce Wolves are huge woves standing about 5 or 6 feet tall and roughly 10 feet long they can assume human forms, but the human form has wolf ears and a tail

Gy'Ru are a hybrid creation spawned when a Dragonian and a Solstyce Wolf mate. They tend to have all the attributes of both races in human form, but can only assume one other form. Most can take on the large wolf form with a set of dragon wings

 

[Fnord]

This is something I've been toying with lately. Since my "world" was actually a D&D world I made and ran games in, it had all the requisite "D&D" races, even if I didn't particularly care for them. Now that I'm going to write a story based in this setting, I feel I don't need to include anything I don't want to for a player's benefit.

One race I've always had in my games since the early 90s are called Telarians. Originally they were an offshoot subrace of elf who lived in desert and arid regions but as I fleshed them out culturally, I realized they really had nothing at all in common with elves in most fantasy settings. So I yanked the "elf" out of them and made them a separate race. They are cunning and somewhat "broken" race of beings with dark hair, dusky skin, slightly-pointed ears, and tend to be tall and well-muscled. They are stoic at best and devious at worst and have a very rigid "warrior code" about them not unlike Klingons (or at least from what little I know of Star Trek, anyway). They were originally a seafaring race that lived in a tropical archipelago but after the Elder sun god decided to punish mortals and the traitorous lesser gods, he came down and boiled away the seas, leaving nothing but sand, scorched earth, and rocky badlands with the remains of their cities atop various mesas and other elevated and barren landscapes where the islands used to be. This makes the Telarians a very broken and bitter people who live out brutish and often short lives under a punishing sun.

That's my only "unique" race thus far. I realize I have absolutely no interest in elves and so decided to get rid of them completely. I always enjoyed dwarves but I think I'm writing them out completely as a race who once existed but were "ascended" to the godly plane before the gods saw fit to bring down their punishments on mortals. This works out well since dwarves shunned magic, and the element of magic being the forbidden art that was being punished, they stayed "pure" in that regard. So their entire mountain kingdom was lifted from the earth and shuttled away. Now all that remains is a big blank rocky plain in the middle of a mountain range that was any evidence of their previous existence. At least, that's the working concept of it.

As for gnomes, halflings, and other "fey folk" I think I'm doing away with them completely unless I can think of a way to change them to make them fit the character of a brutish, ancient-dark-age-style setting. I always preferred to think of halflings in more of the "Nelwyn" sense (the smallfolk from the movie Willow) than the jolly hobbit sense anyway. I can't shake my perception of gnomes as either the ground-dweller do-gooders from "David the Gnome" or the fast-talking tinkers from the Dragonlance novels, so they're definitely hitting the trashbin.

 

[Dr.Dorkness]

This is something I've been toying with lately. Since my "world" was actually a D&D world I made and ran games in, it had all the requisite "D&D" races, even if I didn't particularly care for them. Now that I'm going to write a story based in this setting, I feel I don't need to include anything I don't want to for a player's benefit.

One race I've always had in my games since the early 90s are called Telarians. Originally they were an offshoot subrace of elf who lived in desert and arid regions but as I fleshed them out culturally, I realized they really had nothing at all in common with elves in most fantasy settings. So I yanked the "elf" out of them and made them a separate race. They are cunning and somewhat "broken" race of beings with dark hair, dusky skin, slightly-pointed ears, and tend to be tall and well-muscled. They are stoic at best and devious at worst and have a very rigid "warrior code" about them not unlike Klingons (or at least from what little I know of Star Trek, anyway). They were originally a seafaring race that lived in a tropical archipelago but after the Elder sun god decided to punish mortals and the traitorous lesser gods, he came down and boiled away the seas, leaving nothing but sand, scorched earth, and rocky badlands with the remains of their cities atop various mesas and other elevated and barren landscapes where the islands used to be. This makes the Telarians a very broken and bitter people who live out brutish and often short lives under a punishing sun.

That's my only "unique" race thus far. I realize I have absolutely no interest in elves and so decided to get rid of them completely. I always enjoyed dwarves but I think I'm writing them out completely as a race who once existed but were "ascended" to the godly plane before the gods saw fit to bring down their punishments on mortals. This works out well since dwarves shunned magic, and the element of magic being the forbidden art that was being punished, they stayed "pure" in that regard. So their entire mountain kingdom was lifted from the earth and shuttled away. Now all that remains is a big blank rocky plain in the middle of a mountain range that was any evidence of their previous existence. At least, that's the working concept of it.

As for gnomes, halflings, and other "fey folk" I think I'm doing away with them completely unless I can think of a way to change them to make them fit the character of a brutish, ancient-dark-age-style setting. I always preferred to think of halflings in more of the "Nelwyn" sense (the smallfolk from the movie Willow) than the jolly hobbit sense anyway. I can't shake my perception of gnomes as either the ground-dweller do-gooders from "David the Gnome" or the fast-talking tinkers from the Dragonlance novels, so they're definitely hitting the trashbin.

Yay, an other D&D player. Your Telarians sound awesome. Could you perhaps give me some more detailed Info on them? I need desert folk for my own D&D campain. The story revolves around a war between the good and evil gods and the players need to stop the worlds destruction. This is only posible to build an army for themselves and get help from the Neutral gods (who have disapeared) and the Primordials (who are extreemly hard to find.) I already have one dessert race, the Red ocs, who are nomads. It would be awesome if I could use your Telarians as a race who have an conflict with the Red orcs. And interesting to see how the PC's will resolve this.

I also am a dragonlance fan, so I'm including the Gully Dwarves in my campain for a commical effect, but I've tweaked them a bit. The gnomes are in it too and like in DL they are the failed creation of moradin.

The forged I described above are actualy based on the warforged in D&D.

 

[Fnord]

I suppose I don't have any "formal" details on Telarians as they have evolved quite a bit. I took some of the imagery and social structure from some of the 2nd edition Dark Sun material (for example, they favored a "might makes right" social hierarchy, they frowned upon weakness, took great delight in gladiatorial combat, etc). Politically, they are divided into city-states (since in the past as archipelago race they were divided into semi-tribal island-states) whose power structure tends to be unique for each one (a ruler in one state could attain his position by bloodline like a monarchy, another decided by military might, still another selected because of their prowess in gladiatorial combat, or warring houses like drow society, etc). These city-states trade or war with each other (and often switch between the two) as they compete for very scarce resources.

I toyed with giving them more alien weapons (again, a lot inspired by the Dark Sun campaign or wicked-looking Klingon-type weapons). Some of the cultures also do ritual scarring of their heads and tattooing, in order to control how their hair grows. They favor braids, knots, or other unorthodox hair styles. Some of it is function (cutting hair is a chore and having lots of it all over your head rather stifling in such a hot clime) but more often it is a self-expression. The most intricate scarring of the scalp, for instance, is a way to communicate one's creativity (as close to creativity as a stoic warrior-people allow themselves to have) and sheer pain tolerance, especially if elements are added under the scalp to give the head ridges or other shapes.

Magic use is fairly rare and tends to combined with the warrior aspects; being complementary to physical combat or an underhanded element (such as charm or scrying spells) rather than being a stand-alone thing (essentially multi-classed characters in game terms) and is generally still not well-accepted in their culture overall (and outright not tolerated in gladiatorial combat). Pure mages are scorned and secretly feared and pure mages are almost always necromancers or destructive magic types.

They have nearly no religion or priests as their patron god punished them so severely by taking away a central facet of their culture (the seas). Outright thievery is also frowned upon and punished. One does not sneak behind the backs of others to take things, they simply take what they want through strength. Thievery is for cowards.

Their architecture tends toward elaborately carved, and wicked-looking buildings. Since most of their cities tend be atop mesas, in ancient calderas, or atop mountains, space is limited and thus they tend to build upward rather than outward. Wealthy homes will not be palatial manors but rather tall towers close together. These will be decorated with many levels of sharp obsidian protrusions and carvings, both for aesthetic and functional purposes, so as to prevent unwanted intruders climbing up or hopping between towers. The poorer classes are left clinging to whatever space remains, usually on the edges of the mesas (which are sometimes prone to crumbling, sending entire neighborhoods of squalid dwellings plunging to the parched, sandy ground below) or carved into the sides of the mountains, sometimes being rather elaborate (think the Manitou Cliff Dwellings in Colorado) or being scarcely more than alcoves hand-dug into the soft earth. The social constant tends to be the closer to the center of the "island" you are, the wealthier and more powerful you are. Farming is generally terraced (like in the Inca cultures) and tends to not be very productive. Cave complexes give access to bitter water, edible fungi, and the raising of whatever strange herding animals they can control. Areas near volcanoes tend to have more productive farming, but with the added risk of possibly hostile terrain.

 

[Neunzehn]

Hmmm... well as far as "races" go I've written about island people who, after being separated from other humans for so long have some interesting traits. Their dark (like Polynesian people), have red hair (why not?) and warm reddish/yellowish eyes. They're still human though. Haven't named them yet.

Far to the south is another island chain, this one is covered in mist and is often rainy. The people who live there are very pale and their hair/eye color vary depending on which area they live in.

Also I suspect that I will include dwarfs and some other typical species but they will be the result of genetic tampering on the part of powerful, rebellious creatures.

 

[kolchak]

I like working with unicorns myself. Our culture has turned them into such a soft and feminine image that people have seemed to forget it's 2 tons of quivering muscle with a huge magic spike on its head.

 

[Imperialis]

I do a lot of dragons, not because they're important to my fantasy world (Aethria) but because they are a facet of my world's culture, they gave us magic, no one knows from where, they invented Centaurs, they've been ridden by our greatest leaders, but they aren't important anymore. There are three basic types of dragon, Chromatic, Ethereal, and Theogenic. Chromatic all breath fire, and are split into Red Dragons, the largest and 3rd rarest, Blue Dragons, smaller, less rare, and a lot more docile than Reds (the best mounts for leaders), Black Dragons, not evil, just live in a part of the world ruled by evil people who use them, Green Dragons, the most common, live in forests, are flightless and quite small (used by Dragoons, bad pun I know), Gold Dragons, used by Bright Elves (High Elves in essentia), small, very fast fliers, ideal for aerial combat, 2nd rarest (only living in a small region near the Elven capitol), Silver Dragons, used by Dark Elves (both of which were cursed in both the most impressive and most wasted use of magical power ever perpetrated by non-Dragons, turning once normal Golds and Bright Elves into Silver Dragons and inky skinned Dark Elves), the rarest, only a tiny population in a small region around the Dark Elven capitol, and Browns, the smallest, live in giant sand dune-warrens where their over-developed legs burrow great passages, sealed into thick glass by fire, also flightless but in fact have no wings, unlike Greens. Then Ethereals are split into Eldrich and Auran. Eldritches are the ones who did all that stuff, thought to have been Reds who evolved in coming into contact with magic, the most intelligent dragons (most dragons are of about three year old comprehension, though with a very adult sense of discipline and responsibility, they are purple with great ram's horns, and carve magic sigils into their flesh from which elven script is developed, they just decided to create centaurs, taking men and horses and just playing with them. Aurans are not necessarily real, they appear as translucent apparitions of cyan color, however they only appear around the World Peak, where dragons come to die, bringing some to believe they're just ghosts. Theogenic dragons are just gods or avatars of gods or messengers of gods in dragon form, only they are of good or evil intrinsic temperament, based on the god.

 

[Hans]

My world was destroyed in a long magic war. Due to the nature of the magic there chimaerology (sp?) is used a lot. Because of that I have a lot of different creatures.

From what can be called "intelligent species", apart from Humans the best described ones are the Fentin. For thowe who can read German I have written a little bit about them here: Die Welt Swyrtr :..: Fentin
To sum it up: Fentin were created as a guardian race. They are good at that. So good that nobody knows what happened to their creators, because nobody can pass Fentin territory.
They are composed of a lot different animals and human. Fentin are not bright. In the Weltenbastler forum there are some small (again German) stories about a Fentin called Sihijad which is about the smartest Fentin you would ever meet. But they are by far stronger and faster than humans.
The most prominent thing about them is their gender: All young Fentin are female, up to a age of about twenty years then they become male.
They live in small groups ruled by the older females. The male ones quickly become faster, stronger, more agressive and more stupid.

 

[drumsinthedeep]

Perhaps my favorite race i ever created was an offshoot of the elves. Its like, if an angel had a kid with a demon and the combination was driven mad by its own improbability. They lived beneath the mountains for a time until they found the surface dwellers and found an insatiable hunger. For flesh. xD

 

[SeverinR]

I started with a D&D world, but then I decided if I was going to create a world, I might as well make it mine.
So I modified the D&D creatures into creatures that concentrated on workable rather then a power balanced "fair" game world.

Also I didn't want to use the traditional dragon names. So I created variants like our world has. Desert Fire dragons-Red dragon, desert lightning dragon-blue dragon, all terrain Gray dragon's are hybreds, bred for special service(speed(messingers), power(haulers), combat(fighters), inteligence(mages)) they lose their breath weapon, but gain their primary ability.

Unicorns have variants too, but have common traits. Unicorns are immune to poison, but if they heal a person not pure they will be sick for a short time, if they heal(for some reason) an evil person, they will be stricken with illness proportionate to the healing. Again for some reason they would heal pure evil(devil, demon) it would kill them.
Unicorns do not tolerate being close to a non-pure individual, they feel sick if within 15 feet.
Evil mages, devils and demons desire a unicorn horn for its magic.

Just some examples of how I changed D&D into my world beings.

 

[Draconian]

In my world i have common things like werewolves, vampires, goblins, humans. I do have a race I made of beings called the great ones. They are beings MADE of magic. They have abilities such as shapeshifting controlling the weather and other magical things, they also do not age. What they normally look like is humanoid clouds of different color magic, some are red, blue, green, rainbow, etc.

 

[Ice Queen]

^ That's cool. I also have created creatures which are essentially pure magic; they are ageless and genderless- and terrifying in many ways. Whenever they eat, (when they feel like it basically) they completely strip all particles of flesh and leave a perfect skeleton, so white it has a slight glow almost like moonlight... Oh wait that doesn't sound creepy...

 

[CicadaGrrl]

For me, it isn't so much a worry of making up races. I like doing that. But at the same time in my high fantasy and urban fantasy, I constantly worry about racism. Not as far as my characters, but concerning me. I'm a white girl today. If I choose a slave owning society, I feel like I'm stepping on toes. Worse, in urban fantasy, especially more recently, I try to add other races because I feel uncomfortable going with the lily white fantasy cliché, but at the same time--I'm not Black or Chinese or Korean, so am I stepping on toes there?

 

[TheYoungWriter]

I love this, thank you. Props for your profile picture. Looking-for-a-group was a funny comic book!

 

[Saigonnus]

I don't really use the stock fantasy races in my work in progress, but I have a short story I am working on with Kobolds, Ogres, Elves and Goblins. My chief work in progress has Humans and Dark ones; basically humans from the various cultures that have been taken as slaves and magically transformed into something more intimidating.

 

[Shockley]

Just a few:

The Abenarians: A race of humans who can claim direct descent from a god, and thus some supernatural authority over 'lesser' humans. The Abenarians are not particularly unique, but centuries of inbreeding to keep the line pure have messed them up to the point of no return.

The Fornogrosians: Pretty simple. White-haired, red-skinned humans.

The Garwul: A race of cynocephalitics.

The Children of Gangibar: Essentially a cross between Dwarves and Gnomes, with rather extensive sub-classes including Zwerte, Tro, etc.

 

[shangrila]

Senomaal; Mechanists. They've long since died out, but their ruins are still inhabited by both humans and the Ogu. They're also the creators of the runic magic system and the Senu language is used roughly like latin is in the modern world, to give scientific names to things and the like. Their fortresses and labs were all built underground, but they still had several large cities above it.

Ogu; A race created by the Senomaal to maintain their machines. They survived the Senu's destruction and continue with their duty, stuck at the same level of civilisation because they were created to be imitative, not innovative. They have a third eye on their forehead and elongated, pale bodies. The most well known group of them is the Ogu Hamwe, mainly because they're one of the few that still interact with humans. Most stay in the Senu fortresses, deep underground.

Bruzol; An ancient race, created to filter the energy from the void into usable magic for the rest of the races. But they abandoned that duty when they saw the destructive uses the other races had for it. Now they search only for more knowledge, of magic, of other realms, whatever. They're humanoids, though they have an extra pair of arms and are always seen wearing their armour. Rumours say they live in multiple dimensions at once, but it's never been confirmed. There aren't that many of them anymore, as they only get together to reproduce every few thousand years. Oh, and they're practically immortal.

Midokin; Basically, Minotaurs. Were once a proud and noble race, they were decimated during the Senu's destruction and forced to turn to inbreeding to continue their race, causing a slow decline in intellect until they're little more than beasts, used as pack animals by men. However, every so often one is born that isn't simple minded and they dream of setting their brethren free of this slavery.

Shrike; Grey skinned humanoids. Formerly nomads roaming from the far north all the way south past the Vald empire, the arrival of humans has forced them to settle down. They're like gypsies now in the modern world, with their own culture, mistrustful and openly hateful of those that aren't Shrike. They live in the slums of human cities and are generally looked at with disgust by men. Their magic comes from the land, though it's been weakened by human development.

Fair Folk; Or, the Duarden. Tanned humanoids that live in various woods. A distant cousin of the Shrike, their magic is still strong since it comes from the woods. They're tricksters, leading men astray and sometimes outright killing them if they stray into their woods. It's said that any gift they give comes with an equal, if not worse, curse.

"Giants"; Early ancestors of man. Not truly giants, though the 5 foot tall Senu saw them as such. Few records survive of them as they were utterly destroyed alongside the Senu. They inhabited what is now Arca.

The Audin; Or, the Sea Folk. Distant cousins of both the Shrike and Duarden, they live in vast domes under the seas. Most of their technology is biological; armour is grown, etc. Since they are so close to their source of magic, the ocean, they're easily the most powerful of the three, though they have little contact with humans. Occasionally they come up to trade, but that's rare.

There's a few more; Wraiths of the Okaba desert are spirits that bind themselves into a humanoid form. There's a race of headhunters from the jungles to the far south that are thick, purple skinned, squat creatures. Far to the east it's said there's four legged creatures that talk like people. And there's rumours, strongly denied by the Ogu, that they themselves created a race of large, black skinned creatures to help with the strenous work. But, and this is still only a rumour, these creatures rebelled and now the Ogu fight a desperate battle to keep their homes from their own creations.

 

[Mindfire]

In my WiP right now I don't really have any races outside of all the different human nations and cultures, with the exception of the Hywolves. The Hywolves are descended from the original pack of wolves, who were the first to greet mankind when they came to earth. That's what kicked off the whole "man's best friend" thing. As a reward for their friendliness, they and their descendants were given sapience. The Hywolf line eventually split into two branches: the White Wolves of the north, also called snowfoxes (a slight misnomer), and the Dark Wolves of the south, also called direwolves. Each branch of the Hywolf line has unique magical abilities.

However, there's a much larger world out there than I let on. Vard and Haldor, the continents featured in my WiP are only two small parts of a much larger universe. Out there across the sea are other continents with their own sentient races.

The continent of Heddas is home to the dryads, a race of sentient trees. They aren't flesh-and-blood, rather their humanoid forms are just “images”, projections linked to their true selves- their trees. When a dryad’s image is damaged, their true self remains unharmed. War among dryads is quite regular. Since dryads cannot be killed in battle, war is trivial to them, little more than a game. Dryads also feel no pain. When their images are damaged in battle, they take no notice, or even laugh. If their images are dispelled entirely, they will regenerate with time. Even if their tree itself is wounded, they will not feel it as pain. Just before their tree is severed entirely, they may be aware of a feeling of dizziness, “floating”, having “loose roots”, or being disconnected from the world. When the tree is severed, they will vanish entirely into oblivion, simply ceasing to be. If a dryad’s tree is forcibly ripped from the ground, they will continue to live while there is life in the tree, with their image steadily fading until they are no more. If the tree is revived, however, they will be too. The only thing that can make dryads genuinely experience pain is fire. Dryads can shift their roots, but they don't do it often and do it less and less as they advance in age. Dryad society highly values age, as well as the wisdom, knowledge, and experience that comes with it. Whether a dryad is steady and patient or flighty and whimsical varies greatly by person, but common to all dryads is a sense of “rootedness”, even when they may seem capricious. As dryad trees age, they continue to grow larger, so the oldest dryads are also the strongest. Because of these things, dryads have little regard for shorter-lived creatures, even humans. They bear them no ill will, and may even think think them fun or amusing, but ultimately they consider them foolish and trivial.

The continent of Tuman is dominated by the Thervan Empire, a race of sapient reptiles that vary from roughly human size to three times that. The Thervan Empire is a militaristic culture, bordering on a police state. Military service is mandatory for all citizens. There are no families. All children are raised as wards of the state, which in reality means they spend most of their time in brutal military training and spend the rest of it fending for themselves. Thervan society primarily values strength and power. They consider intellect necessary and useful, but not particularly remarkable. They do however, favor deception and treachery. The Empire’s ruling elite are the Dragon Lords, addressed with the title “Rex” and usually the largest among the Thervans. The dragons originated from Thervans who used arcane arts to increase their power. Thervan Dragon Lords use wyverns as minions, pets, and bodyguards. Female Thervans are larger and stronger than males, who tend to have more colorful scales. Because Thervan society values strength and power, their supreme leader, the Rex Maximus, is a female more often than not.

And on a continent I am tentatively calling Girma live the gormants. The gormants are a race of sapient insects organized into colonies or hives which are either loyal to a queen, also called a Gormant Mother, or who simply share a hive mind and are loyal only to the colony in general. Gormants are utterly devoted to the ideal of selfless service. Each gormant is ready, willing, and even eager to sacrifice its life for the greater good of the Gormant Host or the Gormant Mother. However, mild corruption by dark forces has made some gormants obsessively self-deprecating bordering on masochistic, overly submissive, and/or irrationally fearful of outsiders. The level and kind of corruption varies between gormant hives.