The ultimate generalists, Humans are by far the most abundant race. They have no particularly unique traits except for sheer diversity, but make up for that lack in their versatility and adaptability. Humans can be found throughout the land, in all manner of terrain and climates and as part of every culture.
The people of marsh and earth.
An uncommon, short-lived race of shapeshifters caught between civilization and wilderness, partaking of both and truly fitting in with neither. Each Elyanat has a Human form and one animal form which they may instantly shift between at will.
A bestial-seeming people whose features and oft-primitive lifestyle belie striking intellect and profound cunning. Those who adopt civilization possess strong ambitions, calculating minds, and the ruthlessness to go through any obstacle blocking their way.
Dark of skin and bright of hair, the Quanaari are characterized by both physical aptitude and a contemplative mind. They are known for producing scholars and athletes alike, for being concerned with philosophy and morality, and for claiming relationship with the stars and even Time itself.
Delicate and androgynous, the winged yet flightless Suliri dwell in spacious chambers carved from the heart of a mountain, too beloved of stone to ever forsake it for the lofty air. They are adept climbers, agile, and gifted with keen vision even in the dark.
Half of anything, all of nothing.
Asar: A tall, stocky people with dark hair and skin but light eyes. Live in foothills (swamps/deltas?) which provide them with mineral rich clays, soils, sands. Known to craft the finest earthenware, glass, and paints. Lifespan twice humans (~140)
I am thinking, with the addition of the Asar to the mix, it might be best to leave off the Suari city at first. The race will still be playable, just not in their native polity. Reason being, there's three others to establish (nomads, mud people, not-Mosuo), and those three are all in closer proximity. So I'd like to focus on getting good entrenched story development there, then we can open up the Suari hometown when an addition is warranted. That also sets up for the first expansion not being a whole new node with multiple polities and all the development that goes with it.
I didn't mean to push anyone out, we can do it the other way around, or as you prefer.
Don't worry, there's no pushing as such. I think there are advantages to this. I want tighter plotting between cities, so there is benefit to not starting with one as permanently distant and relatively difficult to get to (because mountains) as the Suari are. And I like having a ready expansion.
Of course, the social and political natures of each polity still need to be fleshed out, so the math may change when that picture is illuminated. I don't expect it to, though.
I'm putting together actual plans for deriving city names and words. Here are the specific sources I'm using or thinking to use:
1. The plains nomads: Words derived from Mongolian, not surprisingly. For example, Morid is an elaboration on mor', "horse"; and Okudan is a permutation of od, "star" + unakh, "fall, drop".
2. The not-Mosuo race formerly known as Taknari: I'm thinking Burmese to inspire their words. It turns out the Mosuo language, as well as being niche, has no written form; its closest relatives are also niche/endangered languages. Go out another branch or two on the language tree, though, and you reach Burmese (among others).
Since that's not at all where I got "Taknari" from, I'm planning to change the race name. Leaning towards "Caitsur" (hcaitsarr, "soldier, warrior") for the race name and "Kothinar" (ko kyint tararr, "moral, morality") for the polity. Not wholly happy with 'Caitsur', but I'm not coming up with anything I like better, either…
3. Asar: Take it as given any words there will be of Hungarian derivation. Note that I'm completely ignoring any and all diacritics. Leaning towards "Moshaza" (mocsar, "marsh, bog, fen" + haza, "home, homeland") for the city name.
4. The cavern artisans currently known as Suari: I might go with Romanian and keep their race name as-is. I took "Suari" from soare, which is an archaic falconry term applying to juvenile/passage hawks. Soare conveniently also happens to be the Romanian word for "sun, sunshine". Potential city names: Rasturi, Rasambel, Rasubel (răsuflare, "breath, wind" plus some influence from other words).
5. The Fel (which is totally uninspired and just comes from "Fell") don't have a language of their own. I pretty much intend them to be sociopaths who do a lot better parasitizing other societies than maintaining one of their own, so I don't expect that to change. The name might if I decide it's too simplistic; on the other hand, it's nicely distinct from every other race thus far.
6. The Elyani (Finnish eläin, "animal") definitely won't have a language, and I'm fine with their race name as-is, so no changes there.
Opinions welcome.
For the not-Mosuo. If you take the name towards strength instead of war, (hkwanaarr, 'Strength') the race could be "(ha)Quanaar". I think to be a people of strength could be more fitting than to be a people of war. If they are activity and exploration, it may be more appropriate, if they are more militant, and you prefer to keep the original, "Caiser" "Caitarr". I do really like "Kothinar"
I'm onboard for ignoring diacritics, I don't like "Moshaza" just because. If you use ingovany 'swamp' We could have "Ingohaza", "Vanyhaza", or viz 'water' for "Vizhaza". Or we can say bugger my opinion on this one since it has no justified basis.
I like Rasambel, then Rasturi for the Suari city
"Quanaar" is good. I'll take it. I came at the name from warrior because I'd intended to mash up warrior and wise, but that didn't pan out. Strength is better all around, good suggestion.
What do you think of "Vishaza"? Soften that middle 'z'. It also makes it a little less obviously a portmanteau of foreign words.
"Rasambel," check.
"Vishaza" is great.
Will mixed blood pull features from both parents? Do only humans and non-humans produce viable genetic mixes?
You know, I hadn't really given thought to requiring mixes have one Human parent. I'd pretty much been operating from the assumption that any two races can mix. With Elyani being a special case because they're peculiar and only their Human side counts for reproduction.
My concept was that the Mixed Blood page would feature a paragraph for each parent race, describing 1) the features all mixes with such a parent must inherit, and 2) a short list of 'bonus' features from which the PC may select one. Note that for both the required and optional features, they're mostly all cosmetic or minor bonuses, and there should be a strong division between what mixes can inherit and the real defining traits of the parent race.
So, for example, you might have a Qualloni x Suari mix. They must take dark (brown/black) skin and physical aptitude from the Qualloni side, and small size and delicate bones from the Suari side. Then they take an additional feature for each, such as unusually pale hair/eyes from the Qualloni parent and enhanced night vision from the Suari parent.
Do you think mixes should be limited to Human x Other? Humans do kind of lose out because they have no special features, so a Human x Suari mix (for example) would only have the Suari mix traits. It might be appropriate to turn that around and say only Humans can interbreed with other races because they themselves have no special traits.
I was operating in the same way, that any race could mix with certain traits being dominant in the specific pairings. I like the bonus, also.
What benefit would being human have, then? There could be no racial exclusion for humans in any city, while other races may be. That may be a slippery slope to many things that exclude all but humans.
Does it matter? If you want to be human you have the option, if you don't you can mix and match nearly anything…
On the other hand, to take only human mixes as viable would mean that a mix is a loss rather than a benefit. If you are mixed blood you are Asar but limited by your humanity.
Yeah, I've kinda been coming back around to "what benefit" for Humans, too, thinking about special features, and I think it's just going to be a case of indirect benefits. Partly, Humans are an easy in for players. Also, I imagine Humans are far and away the most prevalent race; for one, everything else builds off a human base, and also Humans are probably the most adaptable.
Humans may not have any particular advantages, but they don't have any huge disadvantages either. The Asar depend on water; they should have some sort of limitation in that regard. The Suari have delicate frames without the advantage of flight, so they're fragile and more vulnerable than Humans. The Elyani and Fel are each weird in the head, as it were, and incapable of real social cohesion on their own merits, in the absence of other races.
The Qualloni are the only nonhuman race that as of yet doesn't have any particular drawbacks.
I don't want to flat exclude any race from any city, so we should just stay off that slope altogether.
There should be no race that is categorically incompatible with the others, socially. Not even the Fel. Fel are 'high functioning sociopaths', clever and ambitious and totally amoral, which can make them really good at business, politics, trade, and the like if they choose to apply themselves thus. (They can also be violent, because amoral, but it's not nearly as pervasive a trait as with, say, the Zith. Particularly not among Fel who have self-selected into city life to begin with.)
There are going to be plenty of actual monsters to fill the incompatible-with-civility beast niche.
Now, that established — on the flip side, yes, there should be a sizeable percentage of Humans in every polity, even ones where the primary population is nonhuman. Even there, Humans are likely to be the second most common race, although that may translate to e.g. 10% Humans versus 90% Asar.
Actually, I'm going to disagree with you here. Mixes are always a loss with respect to any parent race except Human.
Regardless of whether an Asar mix's other parent is Human or Qualloni or Fel or whatever, they will never have more than a couple Asar-like traits, and most of those are going to be cosmetic. For example, you might say that all Asar mixes are large-framed. They might optionally have half-webbed hands, gem-toned eyes, or be hairless. (I always include one trait in the list that suggests something didn't blend well in the cross.) Which basically makes the mix a glorified human, as it is… no matter what, they are not Asar.
Neither do the special traits propagate, for mixes. Within two generations, they're gone.
The only time any mix is a "benefit" is in comparison to a Human base, where they 'gain' features that Humans cannot normally have. Even a mix between two nonhuman races, such as Asar and Qualloni, will never have enough of either's adaptations to equate to a pureblood, never mind improve upon them.
One thing we could do is allow Human mixes to take two optional traits from the nonhuman parent instead of just one. So an Asar-Qualloni mix might get half-webbed hands, but an Asar-Human mix could take both half-webbed hands and gem-toned eyes, since they gain nothing special from their Human parent.
I like this. There is a genetic modifier that has to exist for the mix, such as large framed among Asar mixes, but then options that we delineate in the mix blood page. I also like the adoption of two choices for human mixes, because you can take the really intriguing adaptation from one race, pair it with a neat cosmetic option, and then play as a little more than a human. Say you are a Human-Asar mix, could you take two non-cosmetic options? For this example, say you wanted your human to have half-webbed digits, and gills is that an option, or are you limited to one?
Additionally, it seems reasonable to limit the use of the adaptations from the other race as well. Say you wanted an Asar-Suari mix and you chose both gills and night vision. If that was an option at all, should it be limited on one or even both ends? Say that an Asar mix with gills only gains a few extra minutes of dive time, or a Suari mix with night vision can't see in complete darkness.
You can take two traits from the option list, whatever those options are finalized to be. Gills may not be one of them; water breathing is the defining trait of an aquatic species. Everything else is window dressing — it's the gills that really open up underwater environments for a character. (Well, that or holding breath for a very long time.) If Asar mixes had gills, they would be aquatics even if their capacity was nominally reduced, and lack the dependence on water that pureblood Asar have. So that doesn't balance.
When it comes down to it, there are relatively few fundamental distinctions between our nonhuman races and humans. They're still mammalian, primate-based bipeds. Asar are large, but not really outside the range of human phenotypes; they have dark skin (not outside human range), colorful eyes (pure cosmetics), and jump high (whatever "high" means; human record is 5+ feet from a standing start). So if an Asar-Human mix inherits gills, what's really the difference between them and a pureblood, anyway?
Plus, once you start specifying limits, you have to justify and enforce them. If Asar have water breathing of indefinite duration and mixes only get twenty minutes, why? What's the biological reason for that? Plus you wind up in the position of having to enforce a time limit on anyone who chooses to disregard it, and I don't think that's a potential conflict we need to set ourselves up for. It's one thing to say gills don't transmit to children at all, another to say they do but only work for so long "because we said so".
I'd rather spend admin energy on herding people into playing IC cultures correctly. There's going to be enough details on that front for players to keep track of.
Also, don't forget we've hardly even scratched the surface concerning magic. There are a lot of other mechanisms for people to get water breathing besides having gills. Invocation, Evocation, Charmcrafting, and abilities from a water-centric Way could potentially all confer facility in aquatic environments upon anybody in one way or another, irrespective of their race.
I would say that Asar mixes can have partial webbing and treat that as some advantage in the water (greater mobility/speed) without getting the full and easy access that Asar have. Another option could be a nictating membrane that protects their eyes. So mixes can potentially move through and view underwater environments significantly more easily than plain humans, without competing on the same level as pureblood Asar.
For one, night vision isn't about seeing in complete darkness. But yes, sensory adaptations will be defined and constrained. As I was getting at above, they'll be fairly broad — for example, Suari might have color night vision and see clearly by starlight, roughly as if it were a full moon night. Suari mixes might then have non-color night vision and see by the quarter-moon. Details will be finalized eventually. The other races aren't really my priorities right now; I have Okudan and magic and