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Brainstorming Beautiful "Orcs" and "Goblins"

That is actually one of the questions that is completly up for discussion. I mean, I can imagine that underground and forests have already been done enough. But other than that, who knows? For what I outlined, I imagine anywhere with interesting geographic features would work, but that was just an idea. Maybe the ideal traits would be completely different.
 

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Beyond good looks, the race also has to be culturally evil. Probably not chaotic evil, because drow and orcs sort of already have that nailed down in various ways. Preferrably they should be on about the same power scale as player races, though something as strong as a gnoll might be acceptable. They ought to native to the material plane (though not necessarily the main world) and they ought to be common enough that they could raise at least small armies. Preferrably dexterity should not be their best stat, unless perhaps the race in question is small sized.

Sounds like humanity could easily fit the bill.
 

Having just read the thread that spawned this one, here's my shot at things:

Iilthian
A race of angelic-looking cannibals with an unending thirst for war.

Appearance
The Iilthian are a race of tall, slim humanoids of outward supple grace and fragility, but their slight frames hide a terrible strength and hardiness. Slightly taller than a human, an Iilthian has slightly elongated limbs and digits. Their skin tends towards a blanched or milky appearance, utterly smooth and bereft of defects such as moles, age spots, birthmarks and even tattoos. Iilthians often prefer to keep their polychromatic hair long and styled in the latest fashion. Iilthians age slowly, appearing to be in their early twenties for many decades before their features begin to soften. It is unknown how long Iilthians are truly able to live, for as their looks begin to wrinkle, many go mad and either destroy themselves or are carefully laid to rest by their kin before madness and senility consume them.

The otherwordly beauty of the Iilthian appearance is an intentional byproduct of Iilthian culture, for the Iilthian are an exceptionally vain race whose culture cannot brook imperfection in the body. Babes born with any sort of defect are ritually consumed by the community, and individuals who obtain a permanent scar or defect become pariahs, are driven out or in the most extreme cases, devoured by their own.

Iilthians, though creatures who worship beauty and go to great lengths to surround themselves with such beauty, are also a race driven by an insatiable craving of flesh and blood. Though they are loathe to wallow in displays of carrion or gore their drive pushes them to acts of war and aggression against others in search of the blood and flesh that sustains their otherworldly beauty. Luckily for those Iilthians injured in their hunts, their wounds heal without scarring, though limbs hacked away from their bodies do not regrow.

Perhaps because of their loathing of filth, an Iilthian on the hunt tends to dress in armor or other gear that is all-encompassing. Such gear is often festooned in a manner to frighten, cow and dismember their victims it also provides a level of anonymity to their attacks. When not engaged in their blood trades, the Iilthian hide these suits of fearsome armor where they cannot be seen, and those communities who have suffered from their attacks but never successfully brought down an Iilthian may well be unaware of the true nature of these horrific fiends - leaving them to haunt some communities while outwardly appearing to be inoffensive fops and dandies.

(In essence, this is a race of living vampires...)

PS, this race was inspired by this picture (an Iilthian donning his war armor...)
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Scarynecromancer.jpg

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Harpies, though ugly in D&D, were actually quite beautiful in some stories and legends. Adapt them and you have a formidable yet beautiful foe right there.

Others that were considered beautiful, yet extremely deadly would be the

Medusa

Sirens

Mermaids

All the above could be extremely deadly, and yet extremely attractive.

However, it does make one wonder if old story tellers from the Middle Ages and Renaissance had something against women

(or looking at how far back the stories go, perhaps the Greeks had some vendetta against women)?
 




A good try, but personally I am not feeling it. Cannibalism might be shocking when it is a familiar good race doing it (i.e. Dark Sun's cannibal halflings), but as bad races go, it is pretty par for the course. Also, as was pointed out to me several times, skinny and dextrous has kind of been done as well.

(Edit: Also, in regards to humanity: yes, it could describe them, but if we stopped there we would not rectify the imbalance in D&D races.)
 

Don't Drow pretty much fulfil the "beautiful but evil" slot already? I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that works with your parameters but doesn't borrow at least some of their schtick.

One option I can think of would be to take an existing race (even humans or orcs or hobgoblins) and create a culture for them that prizes physical perfection above all else. Their caste system is based upon their standards of beauty, anyone who displays physical traits they deem unworthy is ruthlessly slain and their close relatives sterilised, and even anyone who acquires disfiguring scars or injuries is executed or banished unless they can be promptly healed back to perfection. As a result, their warriors tend towards heavy armour and tend to carry around potions or items that grant fast healing or regeneration.

They're not so much evil-for-evil's-sake as overwhelmingly xenophobic/racist, in that no other species - and indeed no other cultural offshoot of their own species - matches their idea of perfection, and they consider all other races a hideous blemish upon the world, one best scrubbed away with fire and steel.

You could have a dark secret amongst some of the leading clans of the society - they've kept their bloodlines so 'pure' in their search for perfection that they're suffering heavily from inbreeding, and are relying upon heavy use of magic to disguise the fact that, in reality, these 'perfect specimens' have been falling well below their society's standards of perfection for several generations.
 

Don't Drow pretty much fulfil the "beautiful but evil" slot already? I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that works with your parameters but doesn't borrow at least some of their schtick.

Just think on some of the controversy that arises from the way in which they broadcast they are the bad guys... Ideally I would like to avoid that too.
 


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