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.