eberron's core races

[I'm A Banana]

I can see why most changelings do not have a culture. They blend into other race's cultures. However, do the shifters have much of a culture? I don't see a lot about it if they do. I could just be looking in the wrong places.

Well, I could be wrong. It's been a while since I've read the books and they're a couple hundred miles from me atm.

But, if you're right, it's doubly the shame. I really do like what they did with the core races in most cases, though it seems their new stuff doesn't really favorably compare.

 

[el-remmen]

This is the first thread to ever actually make me interested in Eberron.

Still don't like warforged, tho. . .

 

[Merkuri]

However, do the shifters have much of a culture? I don't see a lot about it if they do. I could just be looking in the wrong places.

It's been a while since I looked at it, but I think Races of Eberron has info on the shifter culture. They're closely tied to nature and pretty much nomadic, IIRC. They're from the Eldeen Reaches, mostly. I remember one interesting thing I read was that they play a game that was basically Capture the Flag with idols instead of flags. It was a full-contact type game, and while you were allowed to be healed with magic, if you accepted such healing you were out of the game.

Races of Eberron has a lot of info on the cultures of the new races. Did you know that changelings of any gender can get pregnant, but they are stuck in a female form until they give birth? Some changelings absolutely hate not being able to change their gender when this happens. I thought that was funny when I read it for some reason.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

There are orcs in the Ironroot Mountains (the range which contains the Mror Holds) - they're the Jhorash'tar orcs. The only thing the Eberron Campaign Setting has to say about them (p. 193) is this:

With the rise of the dwarves' civilisation, the Jhorash'tar have faded back into the darkest, least hospitable parts of the mountains, but they still emerge occasionally to raid caravans or attack weak holds.

Later, in the Religion section:

For their part, the Jhorash'tar never followed the Gatekeeper druid traditions of the western orcs. Their religious beliefs vary: some worship the Mockery, others follow the path of the Dragon Below. Many are agnostic, claiming that no just deity would give the dwarves control of the Ironroot Mountains.

It is generally suggested in the Mror Holds entry that the Jhorash'tar orcs are a danger to other inhabitants of the Ironroot Mountains: they were a dangerous foe for the dwarves during their barbaric period, and they are suggested as one group that might be responsible for the destruction of Noldrunhold some four hundred years ago.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Elves come in three varieties. The mainstream elves in Khorvaire are mostly just people with pointy ears and really long lifespans. Many of them are tied to the Dragonmarked Houses. The Aerenal elves are eerie religious fanatics, worshipping their deathless ancestors and tattooing themselves with skull and bone motifs. The Valenar elves are rutheless, practicing a form of ancestor worship that encourages violent expansion - think Mongols.

One nuance that I really like about elves in Eberron is the way that ancestor worship, or at least reverence for the ancestors, is pervasive throughout their culture, though it takes different forms.

The Aereni preserve their best and wisest as deathless, and even keep the souls of worthy but lesser elves from Dolurrh by binding them to their mummified bodies as spirit idols. The Tairnadal seek to emulate their ancestors' great deeds (which is why the Tairnadal armies which carved Valenar out of Cyre during the Last War are so aggressive and expansionistic).

There's even a current of sentiment towards maintaining your ancestral traditions and beliefs running through the urban elves of Khorvaire - those elves who fled Aerenal when House Vol was brought down became the foundation for the modern-day Blood of Vol's powerbase when they settled in the heartlands of what would become Karrnath.

This appears in the half-elves of House Lyrandar, too - in Dragonmarked, there's evidence that as a house the Lyrandar revere, in equal measure, both the Sovereign Host because of their (admittedly distant) human heritage and their half-elven ancestors who founded House Lyrandar itself - just like the elves from which they're descended revere their ancestors.

I really have no time for the traditional Tolkienesque elves of other D&D settings - but all of the various elven cultures of Eberron are really very interesting.