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Message: <blockquote data-quote="QuietBrowser" data-source="post: 6938283" data-attributes="member: 6855057">No apologies necessary; but thank you for taking the time to go over this. Honestly, I was a little afraid I'd offended you and driven you off. It's good to have folks around willing to help me work out the kinks in this. The basic reason I went with "male" and "female" is because there technically is a biological split between those kobolds optimised for laying eggs and those optimised for fertilizing them. Any two kobolds can produce offspring together, but this particular kind of pairing produces offspring most readily, and in a tribe focused on producing more kids as quickly as possible, that is the going to be encouraged. Although, if that's not the case, you're right in that "same-sex" couples are probably more common.So, do you advocate abandoning the male/female split for a different set of terms? Any suggestions on what those might be? Sire/Carrier, Seeder/Bearer and Sower/Grower all spring to mind.Or do you think I should just abandon any semblance of feigned gender division and there's only the one "gender" of kobold - say, the "male" type of kobold (seperate phallic slit and a cloaca)?  Seriously, thank you so much for telling me the code; that was nagging the hell out of me.So, you like the idea of further "strains" of orkdom, huh? Well, I'm not sure how to incorporate canon goblins, or even hobgoblins, but sems like we agree that bugbears make sense as ork mutants bred for stealthy killing.I'm not really sure what to say, except to thank you for taking a weight off my mind. This is very reassuring advice. Rifts' entire population of non-human sentients - "D-Bees", in universe, for "Dimensional Beings" - are aliens from other worlds/planes who either migrated through the now-stable portals or descended from populations swept up in the "plane-quake", the unstable portals that rippled across the multiverse when the planet was blown apart on its doomsday, and stranded permanently on Earth.My point with the question you quoted was, essentially, "I have plenty of magical mutants, but should I have otherworldly beings stranded here too?" if that helps make things clearer.  Huh... you know, I honestly hadn't thought of that. You've actually suggested a very brilliant idea! Heck, maybe take it a step further? Maybe the reason the "Known World" map is so blurry is because one or more of the territories on it are actually on entirely separate continents - it's just that, for whatever reason (native portals, remnants of the old teleportation network, spatial "interstices", etc), travel between those two parts of the two (or more!) continents is easy enough that the fledgling nations haven't figured out just how far apart from each other they really are? Firstly, I'll be sure to post up a list of my currently planned species by region, just to clear things up for you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Secondly, the "Duties of the Palatine" fluff-piece from earlier in the thread refers to exactly one clan of rodushi from the Cradlelands; it's a look at general culture for Malebolge's ratfolk, but not covering all of their territory, if that makes sense? Very good points here. I'll have to let you know when I have an answer to your question. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Ah, sorry, it wasn't as clear as I thought; I meant that shadar-kai in Malebolge would be elves consumed by necrotic energy and mutated into living shadow-wraiths.  As I said above, "photonegative shadows of elves" is kind of what shadar-kai are in this setting. Otherwise, what you've said are definitely good things for me to contemplate. I do remember wanting to go with the assumption of drow actually being the "nice elves", but I really should give that some more thought. Well, technically, they wouldn't be alone in that field - lizardfolk and dragonborn are both planned as kobold offshoots, after all. But even so, it's something I want to keep fairly rare and this is about as far as it'd go. I don't quite follow what you mean by "stat-wise or story-wise"? The "ork-treatment" is definitely a story-wise thing; they're not an Always Chaotic Evil race, but they're not fluffy bunnies, either, if that clarifies. And looks like we agree that thematically they're good for that region. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> I'd love to talk about how to make them work and explore their culture/origins with you, in that case. Diaboli are a race from Mystara, back in 1e and 2e. Essentially, they're inhabitants of the Dreamworld/Demiplane of Dreams who have been forced to migrate enmasse to the material plane due to invasions from the Nightmare World. Their original lore is big on how they creep people out due to looking like purple devils - goat legs, barbed tail, tiny horns, forked tongues - but their predominant racial aligment is Chaotic Good, with a small minority of Chaotic Neutral and Neutral Good members. Also, they find humans as scary as humans find them. I just figured they'd be a natural fit (with some lore-tweaking) for the "D-Bees slot". Good point. Really, I'm happy to cross those off of the list. Huh... well, I certainly wouldn't mind making them some kind of failed kobold experiment turned its own success story ala the lizardfolk, personally - they could be a "rekindling magic" experiment in contrast to the lizardfolk being a "rekindling might" experiment. Or just a natural mutation/offshoot of the lizardfolk. It's something I'd love to discuss with you/anyone else who's interested. It's actually the AD&D elf word "Draga" (Hate/Malice) spelled with an "ae" to better meld the pseudo-Nordic vocabulary that Malebolge's elves have going on - Aelfar, Aelfheim, etc. But yeah, that's one of the reasons why I want to get a better racial name for them. Very good points, thank you for bringing them up.</blockquote>

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