D&D General Let us share our Elves and Orcs

[Vaalingrade]

Some setting backstory to explain this:

The gods that actually created everything aren't the gods everyone knows or even don't know in the current place in the timeline. There were Creators, who made everything by stealing from the Elemental Realms and built and designed the baseline life. The baselines sapient was something very human-like which they then modified from there. It's possible this original creature evolved naturally on Created worlds and were then transplanted to others.

Then there're the Outer Gods, near-reality warpers who are limited in world creation to essentially copy-pasting Created Worlds and then altering them. Think of them as essentially creating fan fiction of the original Created worlds; these can match or even surpass the original material, but the original template remains. The best they can directly create are smaller parasite planes known as planar moons.

There are also Planar Gods, which are like MtG Planewalkers.

So.

Elves
On a planar moon out there in the universe, an Outer God decided to test the limits of how stupid powerful he could make something off the available sapients. This resulted in the sidhe; essentially gods on that moon, with power-by-consensus over the very environment as well as inherent magic and power of their own.

There were also human-like template species on that moon as well and... well humans gonna human and intermarriage between sidhe and these humans happened. The result was a long-lived people with an inherent mana battery known as the elves, who blend both the technology-building of the non-magical humans and the spellshaping ability of the sidhe.

They're tall, broad shouldered and dark-skinned folk adapted to living in and shaping the ultra-growth forest around them with long arms, limber toes and long multi-directional ears. They live in cities grown by shaping the forest canopy into shelters and bridges and furniture.

In the intervening years, the sidhe found a way to leave the moon, leaving the elves to what they would eventually learn was a world dying because its god got bored and stopped supporting it. Lucky for them, a new Planar God arrived and transported the moon to a new Created World, giving them a means by which to move between those worlds and interact with the also-refugee peoples her allies would bring there.

The elves seeded parts of the world with ultra-growth forests and founded new cities, while others integrated into other societies. Eventually, the offspring of the elves and these new humans brought about the naevin (half-elves) who at the current date of the world the plurality population of the world.

Orcs later.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

Some setting backstory to explain this:

The gods that actually created everything aren't the gods everyone knows or even don't know in the current place in the timeline. There were Creators, who made everything by stealing from the Elemental Realms and built and designed the baseline life. The baselines sapient was something very human-like which they then modified from there. It's possible this original creature evolved naturally on Created worlds and were then transplanted to others.

Then there're the Outer Gods, near-reality warpers who are limited in world creation to essentially copy-pasting Created Worlds and then altering them. Think of them as essentially creating fan fiction of the original Created worlds; these can match or even surpass the original material, but the original template remains. The best they can directly create are smaller parasite planes known as planar moons.

There are also Planar Gods, which are like MtG Planewalkers.

So.

Elves
On a planar moon out there in the universe, an Outer God decided to test the limits of how stupid powerful he could make something off the available sapients. This resulted in the sidhe; essentially gods on that moon, with power-by-consensus over the very environment as well as inherent magic and power of their own.

There were also human-like template species on that moon as well and... well humans gonna human and intermarriage between sidhe and these humans happened. The result was a long-lived people with an inherent mana battery known as the elves, who blend both the technology-building of the non-magical humans and the spellshaping ability of the sidhe.

They're tall, broad shouldered and dark-skinned folk adapted to living in and shaping the ultra-growth forest around them with long arms, limber toes and long multi-directional ears. They live in cities grown by shaping the forest canopy into shelters and bridges and furniture.

In the intervening years, the sidhe found a way to leave the moon, leaving the elves to what they would eventually learn was a world dying because its god got bored and stopped supporting it. Lucky for them, a new Planar God arrived and transported the moon to a new Created World, giving them a means by which to move between those worlds and interact with the also-refugee peoples her allies would bring there.

The elves seeded parts of the world with ultra-growth forests and founded new cities, while others integrated into other societies. Eventually, the offspring of the elves and these new humans brought about the naevin (half-elves) who at the current date of the world the plurality population of the world.

Orcs later.

Sounds like a sidhe could make for a terrifying big bad.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sounds like a sidhe could make for a terrifying big bad.

"MoMma's HomE."

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Are some type of Jotun a common villain like in Norse myths? Or maybe trolls would be better suited for that.

Jotuns for sure, Trolls can be either friend or foe, and there are things like “Void Beasts” which are mortals who have turned monstrous by accepting the power of the ancient beings from before time.

Anyway I’ll get into mixed ancestries later

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Are some type of Jotun a common villain like in Norse myths? Or maybe trolls would be better suited for that.

Oh, also Döragr and Umbylar are alfar adjacent.

Döragr are “dwarves” but aren’t actually all that small, just like mythic dwarves, and are descended from the spirits of stone and root and the deep places of the earth.

Umbrylar are people born of shadow and darkness, and possessing traits of the elemental spirits of the true dark, like vampires, werewolves, and shades/wraiths. (Basically combined 4e Vryloka and shadarkai into a race in three parts, one that can turn into a wolf, another can turn into mist, and the third can turn into a wraith-like being and teleport)

 

[Lanefan]

The Elvish heritage is where I added my own unique twist. Elves living 700 years with no apparent worldbuilding conclusions never sat right with me, so I wanted to modify their long lifespan in a way that explains why they either (1) aren't an overpowering force comprised of perfected individuals or (2) aren't a gerontocratic nightmare. The answer was Doctor Who-like regeneration. Every hundred years or so, an Elf experiences what they call a rebirth, where their body and identity radically changes. Their physical appearance, gender, personality etc. can all change radically, and elves often look back to experiences they had before a rebirth like stories told by someone else. This radical change often causes an elf to change interests as well, an Archmage might abandon the study of the arcane and decide to take up archery as their new calling, for instance. An elf can attempt to rely upon their knowledge from earlier lives, but doing so heavily is quite traumatic and might end up dramatically shortening the elf's lifespan (e.g. if you want your level 5 fighter to rely on their time as an archmage in their backstory in the climactic fight, your elf probably won't make it out alive). Elves typically have 5-6 rebirths, which explains the 600-700 year lifespan. One difference from Doctor Who-style regeneration is that a rebirth is not triggered due to grievious injury: You get to have a rebirth only if you naturally reached the end of a lifespan.

Interesting idea. One question: does this affect only their class-based knowledge, or all memory? I ask because those long-lived Elves being founts of setting lore and history can come in very useful for narration and exposition purposes.

I quite like this change, and it allows one player's character to be running around for the next couple of centuries, but that character does not have to dominate the entire campaign setting and might wear quite different faces over time. It also makes aging spells and effects (like the sphinx's attacks) scarier for an elven PC, because they are susceptible to losing their character to aging as much as a human PC. The character might survive aging dramatically, but the PC's concept won't.

I fixed the aging issue by making it that aging effects do the same no matter what your species, relative to that species' average life expectancy. So, if a ghost would age a Human ten years it would age an Elf by 70-ish years or more and an Orc by maybe 6 years. Each species is given a Human Year Equivalent (HYE) value for just this purpose.

 

[Ondath]

Interesting idea. One question: does this affect only their class-based knowledge, or all memory? I ask because those long-lived Elves being founts of setting lore and history can come in very useful for narration and exposition purposes.

The idea is that practical skills get muddled behind the veil of a past life, but it's not like they gain amnesia when they get reborn. In fact, I was thinking of flavouring Level Up Elves' Glance the Future gift as not seeing the future, but retrieving a key moment of insight from a past life that is useful to that specific moment. It's like how the Doctor sometimes uses Venusian Aikido (a skill they learned as the Third Doctor) in the new series, but not always.

I fixed the aging issue by making it that aging effects do the same no matter what your species, relative to that species' average life expectancy. So, if a ghost would age a Human ten years it would age an Elf by 70-ish years or more and an Orc by maybe 6 years. Each species is given a Human Year Equivalent (HYE) value for just this purpose.

That's a good idea in general, I think. It's pretty annoying when the party faces a Ghost and the Dwarf character goes "hah, aged by ten years? That's nothing!" while the aarakocra in the party would need to start writing their will. My solution is bringing every heritage to around human years, and then devising a different way of handling it for the exceptional heritages (Elf, Dwarf, Gnome) that have long lifespans:

• For Elves, like I said, you actually only have a human lifetime, and your character becomes a new person once that's up. So getting aged is still significant for your character arc.
• For Dwarves, they actually also have human-like lifespans, but they can enter into a sort of "stasis" if they bond with a certain location and a community. They metaphysically form a bond with the location and the life that they have settled in, and this causes them to live unchanged for up to 350-400 years. This is why Dwarven communities are so static and have such strong bonds, because once they find a place and a group that they like, they become unmoving bulwarks of that community. All of this ties with the Dwarven theme of being hard as stone as well. Adventuring, being the opposite of settling down, causes a dwarf to age at the same rate as humans. So dwarven adventurers would still fear aging effects, as those effects hit them while their clock is ticking, so to speak.
• For Gnomes, I straight up stole the idea of the Bleaching from Pathfinder. Theoretically, a gnome could live forever, being fey-like creatures that gain more vitality the more they have novelty and excitement in their lives. As long as a Gnome keeps experiencing new things, they physically do not age (in that sense, they're almost the opposite of dwarves!). But a sane Gnome can keep up the novelty for 350-500 years at most. After that, things start getting boring and the Gnome starts aging as monotony sets in. So aging effects take you further in the bleaching process, perhaps requiring you to up the notch in novelty to not die of old age. A Gnome that wants to live forever would essentially have to become a maniac who does new and chaotic things just to feel something again. Or they might escape to the Feywild, and that's probably not too different from Option 1.

 

[Fifinjir]

For Exult: Tales of the Final Age

Elves are the guardians of Whisper, the primeval forest. Despite what image that might give, they actually aren’t shoot first and ask questions later; visitors are accepted as long as they don’t go too deep, and can even live permanently in the settlements along the outer edges. However, if a human mother carries a child through her whole pregnancy in Whisper, that child will be born an elf, and other people born in that manner will be decidedly “elfy”. It should also be known that this guardianship is for the outside world’s good as much as for Whisper, many great evils are sealed in its deepest reaches.

Elves sometimes travel away from Whisper for a time. This is seen as a valuable learning experience that allows the elf to bring their new skills back to the forest. “Half-elves” result when an elf sires an offspring outside, even with another elf.

Orcs are the vat-grown alchemical soldiers of Vanallesse. They originated as a means for the goliaths to recreate the true giants of Civilization 0, but while the experiment failed the orcs proved effective foot soldiers. They were under the goliaths’ complete control in the Yulathian Age, and ultimately allowed Vanallesse the upper hand in its war against Rahimo. In the Final Age, however, Vanallessian society is breaking down, and groups of both goliaths and orcs are striking out on their own.

 

[Clint_L]

My elves and orcs are just people. There are various groups and communities, speaking various languages - there is no single "orc" or "elf" language. Some live in areas dominated by their species, others are in regions where they mix with other folks. There are warlike bands from both species, but by and large they want to do their own thing and just live their lives. There are a few tendencies that tend to be common amongst each; in particular, the relatively long lives of the elves gives them a perspective that can sometimes come off as wise and sometimes as condescending. The robust build of many orcs lends itself well to physical pursuits, so many go in that direction.

But there are sensitive orc artists and violent elf raiders, learned orc scholars and gritty elf labourers. And vice versa.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In a post-apocalyptic fantasy homebrew, I have several different homebrew races, including 3 kinds of “Elf”:

Asteraiinen, Svartolaiinen, Vertolaiinen/Sylvaiinen- these are true Fey are among the few to survive the events that reshaped their world. The Asteraiinen manipulate light- esp. starlight- and certain extraterrestrial metals. The Svartolaiinen dwell in the dark underground, similar in some ways to the Drow or Shadar-Ki, but related to neither- they manipulate Shadow. The Vertolaiinen/Sylvaiinen merged their very essence with plants- they photosynthesize and have woody bark...and are wise in the ways of nature.

The same setting has Orcs inspired in part by Nehwon Ghouls. Their flesh is translucent, and they’re cannibalistic. Different tribes have bones of different colors, which also denote certain variations in characteristics.

An entirely different setting had Elves that were crashlanded “Greys” whose high tech lets them mimic legendary elves and manipulate time and space. Their starship, long recycled into a subterranean community (Underhill), still generates extra dimensional spaces and stasis effects.

In yet another setting, aquatic elves had used magic rituals to adapt their people more fully to marine life. So they had both chromatophores (the color changing cells you see in cephalopods) and nematocysts (the stinger cells you see in jellyfish & anemones).

 

[Tonguez]

• For Gnomes, I straight up stole the idea of the Bleaching from Pathfinder. Theoretically, a gnome could live forever, being fey-like creatures that gain more vitality the more they have novelty and excitement in their lives. As long as a Gnome keeps experiencing new things, they physically do not age (in that sense, they're almost the opposite of dwarves!). But a sane Gnome can keep up the novelty for 350-500 years at most. After that, things start getting boring and the Gnome starts aging as monotony sets in. So aging effects take you further in the bleaching process, perhaps requiring you to up the notch in novelty to not die of old age. A Gnome that wants to live forever would essentially have to become a maniac who does new and chaotic things just to feel something again. Or they might escape to the Feywild, and that's probably not too different from Option 1.

OMG have yoy been following my characters life story?
Orbril the gnome was an apprentice alchemist but got kicked out because he kept blowings things up. He snuck into the luggage of a travelling diplomat who got sent as ambassador to another dimension, got kidnapped by bandits, caught a pair of giant hamsters with which he started a circus, discovered the remnants of a lamia civilisation, fought off an alien invasion using fireworks and saved the Empress from bodysnatches, he eventually retired in the Fae Realms so he could perv at nude faeries.

Now While I had no idea about bleaching my gnomes also dont age normally provided they remain with their clans. However gnomes seperated from their clans are prone to grow old and become antisocial grumps known as boggarts.
As a species Gnomes are eusocial burrowers and a burrow is occupied by a Clan-Mother, 1-4 Senior Males and up to 100 gnomelings born into broods of about 20 each season. Each member of a brood shares a common
Empathic link with their other broodmates which allows them to instinctively cooperate as a gestalt entity sharing notions, intentions and drives but not concrete ideas. The broods can thus be quite chaotic, as even though they share the same drive the broodmates dont necessarily agree on specifics.
Their emphatic link also means gnomes can share fatigue and decrepitude and age at an extremely slow rate. It is thus only at the death of a Clan-Mother or some other major environmental shift that a gnomling will mature to Senior status and one will develop female characteristics becoming a new Clan-Mother (at least once she finds a mate)

 

[Chaosmancer]

I do want to apologize to @RhaezDaevan for taking so long to post here. Things have been busy IRL, and every time I was about to get to this thread on the list of ones I was participating in... I put it off.

Now, I will note that both of these write-ups are incomplete, specifically for Orcs as I will get in to. I had a world I was building as exclusively mine, but as the years and campaigns ground on... I became dissatisfied with it. Some of the ideas were good, others were bad, and still more were just... not interesting to me anymore. So, I will note things that are currently true, things that are old lore, and things that are in transition because I'm just not certain about them anymore.

ELVES

My basic blurb for the elves is as follows:

The Elves escaped from the Fey Wild long ago, fleeing those who hunted them for sport, and aided by massive fey spiders. The time since their ancient flight has changed the long-lived elves, though they are still distrustful of strangers and protect their new homes fiercely.

Elves are mercurial in body, able to shift between genders in a way that confuses many of the other races. Even more confusing, Elves do not die in the traditional sense. After death and spending a century in service to their Gods, an elven soul is reincarnated into the mortal world. While trancing, elves can access these memories of their past lives, some times in vague detail, some times in startling clarity.

Elves honor the spider's which aided their escape, raising giant arachnids in their forest homes, and living by the woven silk they produce. Whether it is bow strings, tough armor, bridges, boats, or even homes, it is said an elf can live their entire life solely with spider silk.

Basic, but it touches on a lot.

For me, when world-building a race/species, one of the things I tend to focus on is the mythological aspect of their origins. If they were created by Deities, then that has to play a major part in defining them. But, well, there was a poster from Giant in the Playground that ended up putting an idea in my head. The idea that many of the elves features (ability to function without sleep, keen senses, resistance to charm effects) made them seem like a prey species developing resistances to the Fey. So, I played with that concept. In the long ancient past of the early feywild, there was the Nightmare Court, and they kept elves to hunt for sport, shaping them over time to be more and more difficult to hunt for their own enjoyment.

Corellon of Larethian wasn't the god of the Elves, but just another elf. However, when he was released to be hunted, he hid by a river and ambushed his pursuer. He killed the Fey and stole its enchanted blade (which he still uses to this day) and spent a week singing a dirge to his people and their loss. Then he snuck back, and freed the elves in a mass exodus. I have a handful of myths I'm constantly tweaking involving him and his two lieutenants from the flight, Sehanine Moonbow and Solonor Keen-eye. One is a tale that the elven inability to sleep and dream is a mystic veil created by Sehanine to protect their people from being tracked from their pursuers who would ride the dreams of elves. Another is that Solonor's bow was made from the antlers of a Forest King, who offered them to him in exchange for a favor.

Their flight was long and perilous, but they found on the border of the deep darkness and the rest of the Feywild a village of Aranea, giant fey-spider people who took them in and offered them aid and shelter. When the elves left the village, deciding it was too dangerous to stay anywhere in the Feywild lest they be hunted forever, the Princess of the Aranea declared she would go with them, and took with her many of her servants and friends to aid the elves. This was Araushnee the Weaver, the final member of the Pantheon. And with her help, they fled to the mortal plane, sealing the passages behind them.

The elves are typically divided into three seperate groupings, though this isn't exactly like a caste system and more like a strong disposition. Those who fled focused on different things to aid in the flight, and they passed those skills down to their children and ect. The Mythal elves focused on arcane power, on the border between the Fey and the Mortal plane, and interdimensional threats. The Wood elves focused on martial skill, hunting and patrolling the borders of the mortal plane. And the Shadow elves who work as priests and healers, as well as caring for the Giant Spiders the elves keep and weaving their silk into various materials. Some elves, but predominantly shadow elves, are born with pitch-black skin, like the carapace of a spider, and are thought to be the descendants of the Aranea who came with the elves, and shifted into elves themselves.

The focus on spider's is two-fold. Well, three-fold. The obvious is that Lolth and spiders are a thing, and I wondered about inverting that. The second was that I had learned about the Inca and their weaving ability. They can literally weave boats out of ropes, and that fascinated me. I realized that a long-lived race who had so much time made perfect sense for them to take such an abundant and easily found resource and specialize in it to the point of making everything from spider-silk. The third part was learning about wolf-spiders and their maternal instincts. The fact that spiders are often very good mothers gave me some interesting angles to potentially explore.

Their trance and memories are also something I've been exploring. I refer to their trances sometimes as "the Garden of Memories" because Elves enter their own mind's, where they can observe and... push on their own memories. They can dull bad memories, or highlight good ones. They can string memories together in vast topiaries, which is why they tend to enjoy extreme long-form entertainment. For an elf, listening to a beautiful saga that takes days to perform is great, because as they trance they can string those memories together and view the complete work in perfect detail.

I think I also want to keep the martial side of elves strong. They have a mentality of "always prepared". It is important to them, especially with the traditionalists, that every elf be taught to wield weapons or magic, so that they can defend their homes from outside threats.

Another thing I toy with is that beyond the first four "gods" the Elves engage in a type of ancestor worship. Hero-Kings, Great Nobles, those who achieved high prestige in society are thought of like stars, lights in the darkness. Those who arise again and again to help guide the others through disasters, or who stay in the heavens with the gods, protecting them all from things worse than what the mortal world contains. They call upon these figures to guide them, and sometimes even summon them as angels.

I've done other things with them on and off (I had completely different lore for them in my old world) and I feel like this is still quite vague. But it is where I am at.


Orcs

Well, let's start the same way with Orcs, who I've been grinding away at for far longer. Here is my generic blurb

Orcs trace their creation to their father Gruumsh, the One-Eyed God, an unstoppable warrior and powerful leader and their mother Luthic, The Blood-Moon Witch, a wise sorceress and fierce protector. The Gods formed their children with certain gifts to help them thrive on worlds beset by monsters, specifically the burning blood that suffuses every Orc, driving them to move, to act, to fight, to dance, and to allows take one more step in the face of death.

Orcs are, on average, tall and broad. They have gray skin marked with darker patches which burn red when they get excited, ears that are small and slightly pointed, prominent lower canines that resemble small tusks, and facial ridges that give them a slightly craggy appearance.

There is less here, but that is partially because I keep changing it. I really like making Luthic more important, she is a very cool figure and in all of my versions, she descended to the world during a blood moon, and gave birth to the orcs in a cave in the mountains.

In my original conception, Gruumsh laid down the laws for the Orcs, to keep them strong so they could take the world as their home. Three of the biggest being "Women do not go to war", "do not use magic, that is for women", and "all weapons and armor you use, you must make yourself". This led to the traditional sort of split in orc society. Female priests, warriors who never use magic or healing, and crude weapons and armor. Many orcs in this version I had would wear animal hides and wield bones of beasts as their weapons, because they slew those monsters and made the weapons from their bodies. It was a very machismo version.

But then came the conflict with the dwarves, whose magic and steel devastated the orcs, and after a time skip into the future of my setting, I had Luthic betray and seal Gruumsh. His stubbornness in refusing to change his laws was leading to the orcs being slaughtered, not to their strength and ascendancy. It was during this time I made them a matriarchy, and explored some of the lore surrounding female orcs.

I ended up creating a caste of "female" orcs who fought spirits and etheral beings with blood magic, making Orcs the origins of the Blood Hunter class. And then I realized it would be neat to have male orcs who take up this role be seen as socially female. They would follow the laws of Gruumsh though, and had special staves made of twisted and carved wood, inspired by some mattocks and clubs I've seen art of, with large bulbed heads at the end.

But, when I decided to move worlds, I wasn't quite satisfied with all of this. Gruumsh is the iconic leader of the orcs, and I kept supplanting him for Ilneval and Luthic. Then I encountered two other ideas.

The first might have been on GiTP, but it was a poster who theorized about imagery of Gruumsh and Luthic making the strongest mortals possible, like throwing traits into a boiling pot of clay and shaping the orcs out of the best traits of all races and species they could get their hands on. The second idea came from Matt Colville and MCDM which was the idea of Bloodfire, and the craggy appearance of orcs. He did a pre-release of some artwork that blew me away, and this idea of Orcs and Rage has always been common, but I liked this idea that their blood can literally burn. But, I didn't want it to just be anger, I wanted it to be all heightened emotions. Orcs FEEL. An orc who is partying, laughing and singing and dancing with loved ones and friends at a wedding ceremony? His blood is burning bright, and the marks on his skin are glowing with that passion.

So, with that concept, I have a working theory. Gruumsh and Luthic are the survivors of a world which fell to massive beasts. Basically Kaiju. They fled, enraged and sorrowful, and sought a new place to live, a place where Luthic could give birth to the children growing inside of her. But every world was filled with monsters, every world was filled with conflict which could kill their children. So they conspired, and they found a place of power. Gruumsh tore out his own eye as sacrifice, and Luthic used her magic, and they infused their children with strength, resilience and an ever-burning desire to live. Mechanically, this is the origin of the Orc abilities Relentles Endurance (don't die at 0) and Blood Fire (dash as a bonus action and get temp hp) [the official name for this in the MPMM is "Adrenaline Rush"]. And when Luthic gave birth to the orcs, she gave them a single commandment to override all others. Survive.

I still want to have Ilneval be important. Perhaps as the first-born son and Gruumsh's right-hand. And I want to keep the blood hunter as being tied to orcs and this unique type of magic they developed. I also think that Orcs are adrenaline junkies, they can survive just about anything, so they love going out and testing their limits, pushing themselves, and feeling that rush of burning life within them.

Again, this is mid-transistion and it feels incomplete to me. I think that is in part because I haven't made a new world that has a geography I can pull on. I haven't placed them in physical space yet, so they don't feel like they are settled.



Additionally, I'm still grappling with Gnomes and Giantkin, who have more rough edges at the moment.

 

[Draegn]

Three kinds of elves divided by religion:
Light elves worship the stars they first saw upon awaking in the world.
Grey elves worship the nature spirits (Green Man of the Woods, Lady of the Lake) they encountered when exploring the world.
Dark elves worship whoever gives them power over everyone else.

 

[Starfox]

My ideas of fantasy races have varied over time, and are not consistent, but this is the story I am currently playing with. The races are intimately died into the story of creation, so I have to start from the beginning. I play in a version of the World of Greyhawk influenced both by the Runelords of Pathfinder and 4Es cosmology and distinction between gods/devils as astral and demons as elemental beings. I also have an inner conflict between describing the world in science-fiction terms or as a fairytale. This version is close to the science-fiction interpretation of things. It is also very condensed, each of these developments took a thousand years or more.

The early world was dominated by the primordials or titans, creatures of immense elemental power that changed the world merely by walking across it. One raised mountains and hills, another had a cloak of trees that rolled down to earth, creating forests, and so on. These primordials were not intelligent as we see it, they merely fulfilled their drives. Part of their creation was the giants, lesser creatures of similar elemental nature.

The first sapient creatures were saurians. They were not a unified culture, instead they had supra-genius alpha leaders served by omega troglodytes. The alpha saurians discovered wizardry, and competed by making more and more powerful magic. They discovered that giants were actually better at magic than themselves, but without goal or direction. So they bred giants to become more and more magical, but little progress was made. Saurians used wizardry, while the giants were sorcerer-like with innate magic, and what the saurians wanted was better wizards. So they gradually de-evolved the giants to be less and less sorcerous, at the same time becoming smaller and more mundane. This eventually created dwarfs and orcs and finally humans. Humans eagerly grasped wizardry and beat the saurians at their own game by forming a magocratic civilization. This finally ended in a world-wide cataclysm. People survived, but few in number and scattered about a largely empty world.

Orcs

Orcs dominated this early world. There is very little gender difference between orcs, both are as aggressive and physicality capable and hard for an outsider to tell apart. Gestation and suckling periods are short and easy, orcs are born very undeveloped and resemble rats in their infant stage, living their early life much like rodents living on scraps. They grow rapidly and are physically mature around age ten. This allowed orcs to increase their population rapidly in the empty world. But orcs are poor at husbanding resources, which kept their maximum population low. Humans were the opposite, breeding comparatively slowly but able to maintain a much higher population density. Early orcs enslaved humans, but in the end were outbred by them and pushed into the hinterlands - and later into fairy where they have become quite successful in that dangerous but high-resource environment.

Half-orcs are often the result of war and tragedy, both male and female orcs beings sexually aggressive (think hyenas). Half-orcs have existed since time immemorial, often acting as a link between orc master and human slave in the distant past. They never became a population in their own right as they are not fertile. Today, half-orcs (and to a lesser degree half-ogres and other crossbreeds) are usually the fruits of warfare and in many cases taken care of by lawful religious institutions who raise them in orphanages and turn most of them into soldiers. This gives them an accepted if limited role in human society.

Elves

I have small elves like those of AD&D, appearing much like early teen humans and with similar mindsets; open, daring, and mercurial. Elves have several conflicting origin myths. Some elves claim is that they arrived on a giant spaceship, that later became the big moon, Luna. What adventurers have revealed as another possible origin is that one magical tradition of humans escaped the cataclysm by going to or possibly creating fairy, becoming immortal by remaining eternally childlike. A third option is that they are a development of the "little people" of fairy (goblins, gnomes, halflings and the like all being variants of a single race called hobs). A fourth option is that they are humans overwhelmed by magical energies in their environment, arresting their development and becoming innately magical. Elves can live forever, but few do, as their adventurous and risk-taking natures lead to many early deaths. Older elves outgrow this to a point and are respected by other elves for their maturity, often becoming royalty. Perhaps its just the elves with "mature" personalities that survive to become elders.

The Main Elven Subspecies
Elves originally had an unified, heavily urbanized civilization. This collapsed in a civil war with what was to become the drow, driving many elves that wanted to avoid the war into the wilderness where they adapted to the various environments, creating the subtypes of elves known today. Elves are very magically adaptable, they pick up traits from their environment, creating subspecies such as high (light magic) elves, wood (plant magic) elves, sea (water magic) elves , drow (dark magic) elves and so on. The original strain of elves is called grey elves and are elven royalty, tough not nearly as well adapted to life in the world.

Elves on Oerth (the name of Greyhawk's world) have since held on to certain lands, but the continent of Flanaess (where the game plays out) has been invaded by humans. In general humans have recognized elven lands, been kept at bay by elven magic, or been unable to invade areas of wilderness elves are magically adapted to survive in. One elven nation, Celene, survives near the center of human civilization. There are about as many elves now as there were at the end of the vecna wars, but many, many more humans. Elves have held on to their core lands, but have had to give up much of what they saw as their outlying territories. Many elves, mostly high elves, have adapted to human civilization, living among humans for a human generation and then returning to elven lands to recover from the loss of their human friends to age, sometimes returning later with another identity among humans. An elf overstaying their welcome among humans, particularly if they have a leadership position, often find they have to run or face persecution from the children and grandchildren of their peers, but this is rarely an issue as few elves stick to a role once their generation of humans pass on.

Elves in Fairy
Humans do not generally envy elves their immortality. Young humans often live as if they were immortal themselves, and older humans see elves as frivolous and don't envy them their eternal folly of youth. There are exceptions, however, the most important exception being Vecna himself who became a lich and despoiled elven cities in search of immortality.

Grey Elves have a history of trying to uplift human barbarians to something like elven civilization. Uplifting humans eventually led to disaster as the uplifted human Vecna turned himself into a lich and fought his mentor the elven high king, destroying most of what remained of grey elven urban civilization and pushing many elves into fleeing into fairy. Elves in fairy have since divided into two groups, those who live in fortified towers and remain much as they were, and those who have gone native and accepted the chaos and magic of the fey. Since orcs now prosper in fairy, the elven citadels have come under frequent siege, and the fey elves are considering returning to Prime. The planes are coming closer together, facilitating such a move.

Elemental Elves - Genies
There are also elemental elves, called genies. These live in remote wilderness areas connected to the elemental planes (volcanoes, deep desserts, underwater, glaciers and the like) and on the elemental planes. More blatantly magical than other elves, those on the elemental planes often grow to Large size. Other elves recognize these as weird distant cousins if at all.

Ghost Elves
Finally, there are the ghost elves, Shadar-kai, Shadow Fey. These fled the vecna wars into the semi-astral realm of the plane of shadow, and have lost much of their vitality and elan, becoming angsty and driven to power games. They have little relation with other elves, tough they are recognized as kin. Many Shadow Fey recently returned to Oerth, driving out humans from the lands where their city once stood and inviting other elves to come join them. Few have. Unlike other elves, the Shadow Fey are intensely mystical, seeking union with their goddess Sehanine, who they call by the same name as other elves do, but which seems distinctly different.

Teuflings (my name for Tieflings)
One recent variant of elf that other elves find impossible to accept are teuflings (chaos magic elves) that seem to have spontaneously appeared as a result of demonic invasions. Though technically elves, other elves do not recognize these as elves at all, and they live among humans with lives much like the half-orcs mentioned above, tough more persecuted.

Half-Elves
I am not entirely settled on the role of half-elves, but I am leaning towards this being humans influenced either by their magical environment or heritage to become elf-like, but not fully elves. Humans living in fairy would become half-elves over time. The other option is to simply say that some elves look more human-like and some humans more elflike.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

My ideas of fantasy races have varied over time, and are not consistent, but this is the story I am currently playing with. The races are intimately died into the story of creation, so I have to start from the beginning. I play in a version of the World of Greyhawk influenced both by the Runelords of Pathfinder and 4Es cosmology and distinction between gods/devils as astral and demons as elemental beings. I also have an inner conflict between describing the world in science-fiction terms or as a fairytale. This version is close to the science-fiction interpretation of things. It is also very condensed, each of these developments took a thousand years or more.

The early world was dominated by the primordials or titans, creatures of immense elemental power that changed the world merely by walking across it. One raised mountains and hills, another had a cloak of trees that rolled down to earth, creating forests, and so on. These primordials were not intelligent as we see it, they merely fulfilled their drives. Part of their creation was the giants, lesser creatures of similar elemental nature.

The first sapient creatures were saurians. They were not a unified culture, instead they had supra-genius alpha leaders served by omega troglodytes. The alpha saurians discovered wizardry, and competed by making more and more powerful magic. They discovered that giants were actually better at magic than themselves, but without goal or direction. So they bred giants to become more and more magical, but little progress was made. Saurians used wizardry, while the giants were sorcerer-like with innate magic, and what the saurians wanted was better wizards. So they gradually de-evolved the giants to be less and less sorcerous, at the same time becoming smaller and more mundane. This eventually created dwarfs and orcs and finally humans. Humans eagerly grasped wizardry and beat the saurians at their own game by forming a magocratic civilization. This finally ended in a world-wide cataclysm. People survived, but few in number and scattered about a largely empty world.

Orcs

Orcs dominated this early world. There is very little gender difference between orcs, both are as aggressive and physicality capable and hard for an outsider to tell apart. Gestation and suckling periods are short and easy, orcs are born very undeveloped and resemble rats in their infant stage, living their early life much like rodents living on scraps. They grow rapidly and are physically mature around age ten. This allowed orcs to increase their population rapidly in the empty world. But orcs are poor at husbanding resources, which kept their maximum population low. Humans were the opposite, breeding comparatively slowly but able to maintain a much higher population density. Early orcs enslaved humans, but in the end were outbred by them and pushed into the hinterlands - and later into fairy where they have become quite successful in that dangerous but high-resource environment.

Half-orcs are often the result of war and tragedy, both male and female orcs beings sexually aggressive (think hyenas). Half-orcs have existed since time immemorial, often acting as a link between orc master and human slave in the distant past. They never became a population in their own right as they are not fertile. Today, half-orcs (and to a lesser degree half-ogres and other crossbreeds) are usually the fruits of warfare and in many cases taken care of by lawful religious institutions who raise them in orphanages and turn most of them into soldiers. This gives them an accepted if limited role in human society.

Elves

I have small elves like those of AD&D, appearing much like early teen humans and with similar mindsets; open, daring, and mercurial. Elves have several conflicting origin myths. Some elves claim is that they arrived on a giant spaceship, that later became the big moon, Luna. What adventurers have revealed as another possible origin is that one magical tradition of humans escaped the cataclysm by going to or possibly creating fairy, becoming immortal by remaining eternally childlike. A third option is that they are a development of the "little people" of fairy (goblins, gnomes, halflings and the like all being variants of a single race called hobs). A fourth option is that they are humans overwhelmed by magical energies in their environment, arresting their development and becoming innately magical. Elves can live forever, but few do, as their adventurous and risk-taking natures lead to many early deaths. Older elves outgrow this to a point and are respected by other elves for their maturity, often becoming royalty. Perhaps its just the elves with "mature" personalities that survive to become elders.

The Main Elven Subspecies
Elves originally had an unified, heavily urbanized civilization. This collapsed in a civil war with what was to become the drow, driving many elves that wanted to avoid the war into the wilderness where they adapted to the various environments, creating the subtypes of elves known today. Elves are very magically adaptable, they pick up traits from their environment, creating subspecies such as high (light magic) elves, wood (plant magic) elves, sea (water magic) elves , drow (dark magic) elves and so on. The original strain of elves is called grey elves and are elven royalty, tough not nearly as well adapted to life in the world.

Elves on Oerth (the name of Greyhawk's world) have since held on to certain lands, but the continent of Flanaess (where the game plays out) has been invaded by humans. In general humans have recognized elven lands, been kept at bay by elven magic, or been unable to invade areas of wilderness elves are magically adapted to survive in. One elven nation, Celene, survives near the center of human civilization. There are about as many elves now as there were at the end of the vecna wars, but many, many more humans. Elves have held on to their core lands, but have had to give up much of what they saw as their outlying territories. Many elves, mostly high elves, have adapted to human civilization, living among humans for a human generation and then returning to elven lands to recover from the loss of their human friends to age, sometimes returning later with another identity among humans. An elf overstaying their welcome among humans, particularly if they have a leadership position, often find they have to run or face persecution from the children and grandchildren of their peers, but this is rarely an issue as few elves stick to a role once their generation of humans pass on.

Elves in Fairy
Humans do not generally envy elves their immortality. Young humans often live as if they were immortal themselves, and older humans see elves as frivolous and don't envy them their eternal folly of youth. There are exceptions, however, the most important exception being Vecna himself who became a lich and despoiled elven cities in search of immortality.

Grey Elves have a history of trying to uplift human barbarians to something like elven civilization. Uplifting humans eventually led to disaster as the uplifted human Vecna turned himself into a lich and fought his mentor the elven high king, destroying most of what remained of grey elven urban civilization and pushing many elves into fleeing into fairy. Elves in fairy have since divided into two groups, those who live in fortified towers and remain much as they were, and those who have gone native and accepted the chaos and magic of the fey. Since orcs now prosper in fairy, the elven citadels have come under frequent siege, and the fey elves are considering returning to Prime. The planes are coming closer together, facilitating such a move.

Elemental Elves - Genies
There are also elemental elves, called genies. These live in remote wilderness areas connected to the elemental planes (volcanoes, deep desserts, underwater, glaciers and the like) and on the elemental planes. More blatantly magical than other elves, those on the elemental planes often grow to Large size. Other elves recognize these as weird distant cousins if at all.

Ghost Elves
Finally, there are the ghost elves, Shadar-kai, Shadow Fey. These fled the vecna wars into the semi-astral realm of the plane of shadow, and have lost much of their vitality and elan, becoming angsty and driven to power games. They have little relation with other elves, tough they are recognized as kin. Many Shadow Fey recently returned to Oerth, driving out humans from the lands where their city once stood and inviting other elves to come join them. Few have. Unlike other elves, the Shadow Fey are intensely mystical, seeking union with their goddess Sehanine, who they call by the same name as other elves do, but which seems distinctly different.

Teuflings (my name for Tieflings)
One recent variant of elf that other elves find impossible to accept are teuflings (chaos magic elves) that seem to have spontaneously appeared as a result of demonic invasions. Though technically elves, other elves do not recognize these as elves at all, and they live among humans with lives much like the half-orcs mentioned above, tough more persecuted.

Half-Elves
I am not entirely settled on the role of half-elves, but I am leaning towards this being humans influenced either by their magical environment or heritage to become elf-like, but not fully elves. Humans living in fairy would become half-elves over time. The other option is to simply say that some elves look more human-like and some humans more elflike.

Some wild ideas, but could be fun.

 

[Starfox]

Orcs

Orcs dominated this early world. There is very little gender difference between orcs, both are as aggressive and physicality capable and hard for an outsider to tell apart. Gestation and suckling periods are short and easy, orcs are born very undeveloped and resemble rats in their infant stage, living their early life much like rodents living on scraps.

I don't know if this will ever happen, but I have a distant goal of bringing this campaign into baroque and later even steampunk. And this description of orcs is basically a Victorian racist's wet dream. All the prejudices Victorian society projected on outsiders or even their own working class fulfilled. I worry about how this will work out. But I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

 

[Starfox]

Some wild ideas, but could be fun.

Note that calling Genies and Tieflings elves doesn't really make any difference in the game. The humanoid elemental PC options do look like elves rather than how they ordinarily look, but the Tieflings and Genies remain as they are, they just have a kinship with elves in the narrative.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

I do want to apologize to @RhaezDaevan for taking so long to post here. Things have been busy IRL, and every time I was about to get to this thread on the list of ones I was participating in... I put it off.

I never put a deadline on it, so no need for an apology.

The focus on spider's is two-fold. Well, three-fold. The obvious is that Lolth and spiders are a thing, and I wondered about inverting that. The second was that I had learned about the Inca and their weaving ability. They can literally weave boats out of ropes, and that fascinated me. I realized that a long-lived race who had so much time made perfect sense for them to take such an abundant and easily found resource and specialize in it to the point of making everything from spider-silk. The third part was learning about wolf-spiders and their maternal instincts. The fact that spiders are often very good mothers gave me some interesting angles to potentially explore.

I kind of split things up in my setting, giving the dark skin as an option for high elves, but the spider-shtick was given to goblins (as they include the "dark elf" feel). Maybe I should do a post on goblins since they are elf-adjacent in that setting.

So, with that concept, I have a working theory. Gruumsh and Luthic are the survivors of a world which fell to massive beasts. Basically Kaiju.

Could dragons and other big creatures be related to those kaiju? The terrasque and purple worms come to mind as being from kaiju films.

Additionally, I'm still grappling with Gnomes and Giantkin, who have more rough edges at the moment.

We might open things up to gnomes and others soon. I thought there would be more posts on elves and orcs, since they're usually common to most settings (at least elves usually are), but so far we've only gotten a few. I am really enjoying the posts so far though. It seems most people want a mix of traditional and new ideas, but everyone has a different view on what should go and what should stay.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

Note that calling Genies and Tieflings elves doesn't really make any difference in the game. The humanoid elemental PC options do look like elves rather than how they ordinarily look, but the Tieflings and Genies remain as they are, they just have a kinship with elves in the narrative.

A lot of tiefling and genie art has them with pointed ears already, so it kind of fits. Genies are also known for long lifespans. Do your tieflings have normal elf lifespan too?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I kind of split things up in my setting, giving the dark skin as an option for high elves, but the spider-shtick was given to goblins (as they include the "dark elf" feel). Maybe I should do a post on goblins since they are elf-adjacent in that setting.

I went towards mixing the Dhakan Goblins with a few other inspirations, so the beast taming isn't as prominent with my goblins.

Could dragons and other big creatures be related to those kaiju? The terrasque and purple worms come to mind as being from kaiju films.

Dragons? No. They are something else

Tarrasque, Purple Worm, Kraken, ect? Likely. At one point I had the "Pillars of Creation" powerful artifacts tied explicitly to each of the races. The Orc Artifact was armor made from the hide of an Elder Tarrasque, rumored to have been slain by Gruumsh. No one ever found or went looking for it though.

We might open things up to gnomes and others soon. I thought there would be more posts on elves and orcs, since they're usually common to most settings (at least elves usually are), but so far we've only gotten a few. I am really enjoying the posts so far though. It seems most people want a mix of traditional and new ideas, but everyone has a different view on what should go and what should stay.

I'm always willing to talk about any of my ideas, but I can see how some people have blended things, making it difficult to talk about one without talking about the others.