Kurotowa
Legend
That reminds me of a campaign world idea I came up with, mostly as a thought experiment, about five years ago.
Look at elves. They're all good looking, naturally thin, magically inclined, ridiculously long lived, and possess an array of handy benefits like sharp senses and low sleep requirements. It's amazing how close to perfect they are. Which is no surprise, given how much effort they put into it.
If you went back, all the way back, the original elves weren't really elves. They were a lot closer to, well, humans. Great civilizations rose and mastered the ways of magic. They used it to improve their cities, to improve their world, and finally to improve themselves. Minor upgrades at first, but then larger ones. Longer lives meant smaller populations. Fewer physical needs reduced the amount of infrastructure needed. Cities were abandoned in favor of enchanted forests, carefully crafted biological creations designed to provide every resource and comfort needed. After a few thousand years of this the result was the elven race as it's known today.
The one downside to all this was that they'd negated their own natural evolutionary process. Long lives, low birth rates, and artificial perfection meant that their race was now fixed in place. And they knew it. So they undertook a new grand project to generate new traits that could be incorporated into the elven race and keep the bloodlines fresh and vital. A short lived race, competitive and fractious to drive evolution quickly, but biologically compatible with elves. When exceptional individuals appeared they could be bred into elven families and their vigor spread. Throwbacks to the earliest days of the pre-elven people were created, a wild race seeded and left to grow on its own. Humans.
Look at elves. They're all good looking, naturally thin, magically inclined, ridiculously long lived, and possess an array of handy benefits like sharp senses and low sleep requirements. It's amazing how close to perfect they are. Which is no surprise, given how much effort they put into it.
If you went back, all the way back, the original elves weren't really elves. They were a lot closer to, well, humans. Great civilizations rose and mastered the ways of magic. They used it to improve their cities, to improve their world, and finally to improve themselves. Minor upgrades at first, but then larger ones. Longer lives meant smaller populations. Fewer physical needs reduced the amount of infrastructure needed. Cities were abandoned in favor of enchanted forests, carefully crafted biological creations designed to provide every resource and comfort needed. After a few thousand years of this the result was the elven race as it's known today.
The one downside to all this was that they'd negated their own natural evolutionary process. Long lives, low birth rates, and artificial perfection meant that their race was now fixed in place. And they knew it. So they undertook a new grand project to generate new traits that could be incorporated into the elven race and keep the bloodlines fresh and vital. A short lived race, competitive and fractious to drive evolution quickly, but biologically compatible with elves. When exceptional individuals appeared they could be bred into elven families and their vigor spread. Throwbacks to the earliest days of the pre-elven people were created, a wild race seeded and left to grow on its own. Humans.