Proto-Humans.

[King_Cagn]

Hey everyone. So I'll just jump into it and ask you if this concept works or is likely to work I'd we look at it, okay?

So, in this world I've created there are many classes of species but the most common as always would be the Humans, Elves and Dwarves. And then there's the sub-classes, which are span from gnomes to orcs.

The MC of these short stories I'm writing is believed to be a sub-human class called Godlings, which are resurrected aborted fetuses made something not entirely human. Now a sect of sorcerers and wizards called The Brothers of the Stone are theologians, and they theorized that before the Human species, there was a "primitive" class before them which they dubbed Proto-Humans.

Theoretically they believed that these primitive people were about 8 to 10 feet, incredibly strong and agile and quite intelligent. Now I want to create a short story where the MC might go up against one but the problems is -

* The concept sounds too science fiction, like too scientific for a fantasy world even though this is a a science fiction fantasy.

So what do you guys think, is this a idea I can work with or should I just scrape it entirely and work with something more fantasy fiction?

 

[Queshire]

"Aborted fetuses" sends up a big red flag for me as too potentially controversial to use lightly, though I suppose it would depend on how you term it. I don't think it sounds too sci-fi. It's common in fantasy that the older the magic, tech, or creatures the more powerful. Why should humans be different? Since you brought up genre-appropriateness, just reading over what you've written the fact that they would theorize about the proto-human makes me think that it would come around a steam-punk era or later. The time of enlightenment, exploration clubs, and so on when people first started theorizing about the world around them instead of just relying on what they know.

 

[Jabrosky]

You might want to look up actual pre-Homo sapiens hominins like Sahelanthropus, Australopithecus, and early Homo species like habilis and erectus if you haven't already. But then I see these "Proto-Humans" you describe are a theoretical construct devised by theologians rather than a race shown to exist through concrete evidence.

I think it would be intriguing to have a world where multiple species of the genus Homo still coexist. Actually I have always assumed the cliched idea of a fantasy setting, with all its elves and orcs and dwarves, was an example of this. The less intelligent or sapiens-like races could represent hominin lineages that diverged from ours earlier than the more sapiens-like ones, rather like how the Flores "hobbits" could represent an offshoot of Southeast Asian Homo erectus.

 

[King_Cagn]

@Queshire Hahaha, what's a good story without a bit of controversy?, and the story isn't set in a steampunk era, it's set to something akin to a african medieval era but the schools of magic use science to understand magic in their world.

@Jabrosky I see where you might be going with this and I think it'd be interesting to see how the current world compares to that of its predecessors, say by creating this "proto" aspect of existence than I can make the story relatable and not so stereotypical. Now that I look at it, the Elves could have once shared a common ancestry with humans but because the "Proto-Elves" breed with the Proto-Humans than, they ended up looking the way the do, as a humanoid race.... Hmm, I might have to look into this idea now.

 

[WooHooMan]

I actually did this whole evolutionary chart for humans, elves, dwarves and so forth. I don't think it's too science-fiction.

Also, I think this main character is what you'd call a "homunculus". That's a more pleasant term than "resurrected aborted fetus".

 

[Gurkhal]

You might want to look up actual pre-Homo sapiens hominins like Sahelanthropus, Australopithecus, and early Homo species like habilis and erectus if you haven't already. But then I see these "Proto-Humans" you describe are a theoretical construct devised by theologians rather than a race shown to exist through concrete evidence.

I think it would be intriguing to have a world where multiple species of the genus Homo still coexist. Actually I have always assumed the cliched idea of a fantasy setting, with all its elves and orcs and dwarves, was an example of this. The less intelligent or sapiens-like races could represent hominin lineages that diverged from ours earlier than the more sapiens-like ones, rather like how the Flores "hobbits" could represent an offshoot of Southeast Asian Homo erectus.

Love this idea! It would certainly make the world very different from the normal races seen in fantasy works.