2010-09-24

Demihumans

I mentioned in the first recap how dwarves were gray-skinned with big black eyes.  If you missed that, I'm not surprised, it was a very tiny reference.  At the last session, I explained to the player who rolled up the elf Randy that his new character wasn't an Orlando Bloom look-alike, but was gray-skinned, with black eyes, and a mouthful of sharp pointy little teeth.  As you can see, I've made some cosmetic changes to these races.  The only functional change is that I expanded the notion of infravision to cover virtually the entire spectrum of light.  Elves and dwarves can see radio waves, gamma rays, ultraviolet, etc.

Here's a bit more detail on the demihuman races:

Halflings
Halflings are very short, well-proportioned humans, with gray skin.  Their eyes have pupils slightly larger than normal, but their vision is not particularly enhanced over normal human vision.  Their hair color varies from brown to black.  Halflings prefer to dwell near humans, either living in the actual human cities and towns, or forming villages near the humans.  They have no particular origin myth, and if questioned, would state that they have always lived around humans.  They live no longer than normal humans.

Dwarves
Dwarves are taller than halflings, and strangely proportioned, with wide barrel chests and dense musculature.  They also have gray skin, and their eyes are entirely black, giving them the wide-spectrum vision that they share with elvenkind.  Life halflings, their hair color varies from brown to black.  They prefer to live underground, as they find the sun's light irritating (although they suffer no penalties for being in bright sunlight).  After achieving adulthood, they do not appear to physically age.  Despite this, some aging process must be occurring, as they fall sick and die after three centuries, give or take a few decades.  They have a creation myth that involves escaping from their creator and his goblins.  They cannot abide the presence of goblins, and will almost invariably attack them.

Elves
Elves are the strangest of the demihuman races.  They are nearly man-height, average five feet tall, and well-proportioned.  They have gray skin, large black eyes as the dwarves have, with the attendant wide-spectrum vision, thin pointed ears, thin noses with narrow nostrils, and a mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth. They have either jet-black hair, or pigmentless snow-white hair.  Like dwarves, after achieving adulthood, they do not appear to physically age.  They may be immortal, as no elf can recall any that has died of old age, although their memories fade after a thousand years or so.  They do not feel a need to keep written records, experiencing most of history first-hand, but the limits on their memory mean that they have no notions of their origin.  Elves prefer to live among their own kind, in villages deep in the wilderness, away from humanity.

Religion
Demihumans do not have their own gods peculiar to them.  Halflings will tend to worship at human temples, but the gods do not see fit to grant them their godly magic.  Dwarves and elves, living apart from humans, have not adopted the worship of any gods.

1 comment:

  1. Pretty cool. The elvish loss of memory is something I haven't seen before and can account for a lot of cool plot devices...ancient prophecies, maps, texts, etc. written by elves to try to maintain knowledge over time, even as said info is fading from the memory banks.

    Very cool.

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