GMs: Do you have a "Before" race for your setting?

[doctorbadwolf]

islands World- gnomes. The world isn’t really a “the past was better” setting, but the gnomes built many great things back when other folks were still in their infancy. Most of the oldest things in the world are Gnomish.

Space Fantasy- Shadar-Kai/vryloka. They were the first humanoids to go into space, and discovered the Star Lanes. They are naturally inclined to wanderlust, so they were already spread out all over when the other folk joined them among the stars.

Crossroads- Dragons. They have existed since the first word, when the Void became Creation, alongside the gods.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Indeed.

There were the ur-Adan. When the Eldritch Night fell, many different peoples found protect from the powers. Each power became the Patron to one of the different ancestries. They were all adopted by a Patron, changed by the Eldritch Night, or consumed by them.

There are the Sorn. Tall lithe, vaguely avian creatures with bluish crystalline feathers. They protected some of the ur-Adan, and through their wisdom and super-science they were able to last until the modern day. Very low population, and they remain hidden from all but the descendants of those they sheltered.

The Naga, snake-like beings with serpentine heads, humanoid torsos, and snake-like bodies and tails. Cunning in sorcery, very few still live, being mostly undead at this point. A gambit for immortality by imprisoning the demi-god that guarded the Gates of the Dead collapsed when, after long ages, some PCs discovered the prison and freed the demi-god. Many now hope to rejoin the living through reconstitution of their essential salts.

The Sorn and the Naga never got along very well.

The Elves had their civilization before they were put to sleep by their Patron. They came back once the coast was clear, rebuilt their cities, and were very confused by all of these upstart races now getting underfoot. They since ran off to Faerie and are biding their time until they can return and take back what is rightly theirs. They were ... prolific with other peoples, and now there are several Glaetyri (half-elves) that manifest every generation when certain bloodlines join.

 

[aramis erak]

In my (now abandoned, since I've decided I'm done doing D&D, and the setting is grounded in the tropes thereof), the Drsagons were the first to arrive - no species more advanced than protozoa is native. The dragons screwed up a mythal to bring their native ecosystem ... and it cyclicly grabbed from a dozen different worlds... My last campaign was set during the most recent grab - which brought in living skeletons and half-demons.

 

[dragoner]

Dragons, because every culture on Earth just happened to come up with them independently. In time their senescence left behind some other cultures that were their helpers, as well as ruins. However, even at their height they were not necessarily intelligible to people, and likely people were as strange to them, thus they studied the planet.

Next we can talk about dumplings.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've done it in a couple campaigns. One was inspired by Witch World so there was a group of Elders who predated the race the main group of characters were descended from (in part). In another one continent was previously occupied by a group that had a massive magical war that wrecked it; there were still descendants from them, both on that continent and colonists on another.