Lineages of the Humanoid Races¶
Contested
Named in the open question Origin of the Dwarrow: the Dwarrow are fae earth elementals who fought the Einar in one account and a Ventari mutation descended from them in another. The two readings are kept below until the designer rules.
The humanoid peoples of Terrun were not born once. The sources describe them being made, remade and mixed across the first Ages by the Einar, by the gods who came after, and by one another, and the accounts written in different years do not agree on who descends from whom. This page sets them side by side, newest first. Each people's own page carries the reading that governs it.
The Elder races and the children of the younger gods¶
The most recent account places the first peoples in the Age of Titans, after the War of the Primordials, when the Throne of Law bound the elementals and the Titans were made their jailkeepers. "The Elder races were born (Eldritch, Giants, Faeries, Dinosaurs, Ventari, Dwarrow and Cthul being the most prominent)." The present humanoid peoples came later, in the Age of Demons: "Many new races were formed during this age by Kalar and the other younger gods, including Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Trolls, Orcs, Draconians and others" (S208). The history written two years earlier agrees in outline. The Einar "created the Titan Races (Giants, Dinosaurs, Faeries, Ventari) and many other races which are now extinct", and the early races became "pawns in the struggles of one Einar against another", so that "many of the earliest races went extinct during this period, either through war or neglect" (S386). In this telling the Dragons are not a Titan Race; they were forged afterwards from Astral and Elemental energies to fight the demons (S386).
The compiled lists of the gods name makers for several peoples. Khardas is "Creator of Dwarves, Mountain-Giants, Moles and other earthen creatures"; Rakkan is "Creator of Draconians, Orcs, Ogres, Trolls, Lesser Giants (Hill, Stone, etc.)"; Necatus made the Dark Elves and the Goblins; Orandos the Elves; and Tarus, Lord of the Hunt, the Centaurs and the minotaurs (S429, S384). Among the Elder Gods, Morkagan is "Father of Giants, Dwarrow (precursor to dwarves)", and Izhtari is "Mother to Innus (They were precursors to humanoids, but larger, modeled after the Gods). Elves, Humans and Orcs are all derived from the Innus. Dwarves are a Innus and Dwarrow hybrid. Gnomes are a hybrid of Fae and Innus" (S498, S384).
The Dwarrow account¶
A separate account of the Dwarrow makes them "a race of super-intelligent, technologically advanced earth elementals (fae creatures)" who "sided with the elementals against the invaders (the Einar and their subjects)" in the primordial wars, then hid deep underground from the new gods. Genocidal wars with the Eldritch followed "for 1000s of years". Khardas, "a Dwarrow", became the first Dwarrow to hold a shard and so a god, and in time "Khardas and the remaining Dwarrow formed the Dwarven race (as non-fae) as the successor and inheritor of the Dwarrow legacy", a people that bred faster, resisted magic better and was tied to the material plane. The younger gods accepted the Dwarves and kept the Dwarrow as "elemental-spawn outcasts" (S529).
Faeborn¶
The study of Fae magic adds a cross-cutting category. "Dragons, Titans, Gnomes, Goblins, Trolls, Dire Wolves are all Ethereal beings with a Fae connection. This means their physical forms are tied to Fae energy, but they are NOT true Fae creatures. They have souls and they are not created from elemental intelligences." Such Faeborn "tend to flourish in their natural demesne, and struggle when outside of it", and the word was chosen "because true Fae creatures are not born, but are formed by other Fae" (S279). The later treatise keeps the idea: Gnomes and Goblins "are natural descendants of Faerie creatures", and the Draconians share the dragons' Fae lifeforce (S208).
Earlier accounts: the Humanoid Phylogeny¶
The oldest document in the archive draws a single tree from the Einar, and is the only one to describe the branches in detail (S525). Its readings are kept here because several peoples' pages still carry them as earlier accounts.
- The Ventari were "created in the image of the Einar, intended as servants and the messengers of the Gods. Natural spellcasters, immortal and very intelligent", bearing one child per couple "every 10,000 years".
- The Dwarro (the Dwarrow) were "a natural mutation of Ventari which were unable to practice magic". Euthanised at first, the survivors "began to flourish in exile" underground and "built a civilization around technology which has never since been rivalled". At least one war between the Dwarro and the Ventari and Lothim "is credited with speeding the end of the Ventari race". From them came the Dwarves ("dwarf blood is a mixture of several races (primarily Gnomes) with a predominance of Dwarro blood and an additional 100,000 years of evolution living in the underdark"), the Trolls ("descendants of genetically enhanced Dwarro warriors") and the Goblins ("the result of some Dwarro technology gone terribly wrong").
- The Lothim were "an artificial creation of the Ventari", made when the sages saw their race "headed for extinction due to their immortality and extremely low birth rates"; a Lothim couple bore a child "every 50-100 years". From the Lothim came the Moradrim (left as "??"), the Sylvim (impure elves "exiled from the great magical cities of the Lothim"), the Gnomes, and the Draconians, "the result of dragon's mating with Lothim while in humanoid form", with the Kobolds as "a natural mutation of Draconians".
- The Illithids were "born of a forbidden union between Ventari and some ancient and forgotten race" and "became the bane of all civilized creatures". Whether they are the Cthul under another name is an open question.
- The Innus were made by a Ventari sage who argued "that spellcasting ability was the limiting factor in the reproduction rates of Ventari and Lothim". Rejected as heirs, they "ended up thriving anyway". From them came the Ogres and the Orcs, both "genetically engineered", and the Humans, into whom "most Innus evolved directly", though "Innus lifespans were almost 3x longer than the average Human lifespan". The Halflings are "apparently a natural mutation of Humans".
The 2014 Compendium adds a different order of creation: the Titan Races in the Age of Titans "(Dragons, Giants, Dinosaurs, Faeries), as well as creation of Ventari", and then, in an Age of Faerie, the "creation of humans, orcs, ogres, trolls, etc." (S384, S372).
Gap
None of the accounts says where the Oesterkull, the Lizardfolk, the Centaurs (beyond a maker's name) or the Augurs sit in these lineages, and none dates the making of any people in a calendar.
Ogres¶
The ogres have no page of their own because the sources give them only a line at a time. In the phylogeny they are an Innus branch "genetically engineered for hard labor and warfare" (S525); in the lists of the gods they are made by Rakkan with the orcs and the trolls (S429, S384). The 2015 lore draft and the Compendium both open an "Ogre Ethnicities" heading and leave it empty (S387, S384).
In history they march beside orcs and goblins. Ogres served in the Draconic forces of Pravustiratel in the Dragon Wars, and at the Battle for Gor'Turra the human barbarian Krai'shek "killed the Ogre-Lord Gorthu and many of his lieutenants" (S429, S386). The orcish demoncaller Drez'okmal "unites Orcs, Goblins and Ogres of Ghanari and overthrows the Mountain Giants" (S429). The Draconians of Pherox kept ogre slaves and imported them into Rhovun, and ogres are counted among the intelligent races of Moarte (S384). In the Fifth Age ogres are one of the five peoples of the Urok'gar Confederation in the lands of former Dalmar and Naher, and live in its tiered stone city of Agor'haem (S057, S059); ogre bands of the Hand of Setarak, with an Ogre Council and a battlecaptain, troubled the far north during the Sancturi campaign (S194, S196).
Gap
No source describes ogre society, homeland, appearance or beliefs; the "Ogre Ethnicities" heading was never filled.