Tuesday, November 19, 2019

The arbitrariness of beastfolk

Fantasy gaming has many races variously known as “beastmen” or “beastfolk.” Catfolk, ratfolk, mongrelfolk, etc. I have alluded to these in past posts but didn't address them directly until now.

The basic premise of my world building attempt is that the beastfolk are worshipers of the beast lords, one of the groups of primal spirits or nature deities alongside the plant lords and elemental lords (a la Stormbringer, which D&D liberally copies). The beast lords are responsible for creating them, and each race is associated with a specific lord (or lords, as the case may be).

There are multiple ways to create beastfolk, not just heredity. This is because there are an arbitrary number of possible beastfolk and I don’t want to waste time on a bazillion entries for each race. Some may receive more attention than others, if only because fantasy gaming has focused more on them. For example, beastmen could be transformed humans, uplifted animals, or wholly original.

Here are some examples I thought of how a beastman’s animal aspect might be determined. I'm sure you can think of countless others.
  • When an animal is uplifted to a beastman, its aspect is determined by the animal it used to be.
    • This aspect may be changed through various means, such as the blessing of another patron, transmutation spells, etc.
  • Beastmen are born in an ambiguous humanoid form and gain their aspect later in life. (Alternately, their animal aspect is not fixed until later in life. Like the daemons in His Dark Materials, their animal aspects shift based on their emotions.)
    • A beastboy goes on a rite of passage to find his spirit animal or totem. After succeeding, he gains his animal aspect and is considered a man.
    • A beastboy receives magical tattoos that determine his animal aspect, a la Lunars in Exalted.
    • The animal aspect is determined by their faith or the blessing of their patron totem. Changing their faith (i.e. Beast Lord worshiped) changes their animal aspect.
    • The animal aspect is determined by hereditary bloodline. This may be general (mammalian beastfolk has mammalian children of any specific aspect) or highly specific (wolfmen are only born to wolfmen parents).
  • How quick is the transformation from one aspect to another?
    • As a beastboy matures into a beastman, his human visage steadily becomes more beastly until he is fully therianthropomorphic.
    • The transformation occurs more or less instantly upon the aspect being determined or changed.
    • A beastboy's animal aspect is present from birth. He may become more or less human as he matures or grows in power, similar to anime character power ups.
    • Beastmen appear as varying combinations of human and animal, determined by genetics, magical practices, or random chance.

Here are some examples of specific races that seem to show up fairly regularly (and not so regularly) in fantasy:
  • The reptilefolk are the descendants of the Atlantean saurian race (aka dramojh, sarruk, sli’ess, samat, etc). The saurian race selectively bred themselves into a caste system, each caste resembling different reptiles like serpents, chameleons and tortoises. This obscured the unstable nature of their bloodlines, and by modern times many display bizarre mutations. The serpentfolk engaged in crossbreeding experiments with freakish results. (Based on Slavelords of Cydonia, He-Man, Warhammer Fantasy, Robert E. Howard, etc.) They would be patronized by, depending on whether you care for real taxonomy, the Beast Lord of Dragons, Reptiles, Dinosaurs, and/or Birds.
  • The catfolk have highly varying degrees of anthropomorphism, ranging from nearly human to bipedal panthers. These are known as birth-signs since it is determined by astrology at their birth. Although they look identical at birth, close to humans in fact, as they age their appearance develops into that decided by their birth-sign. (Based on Outlaw Star, The Elder Scrolls, anime catgirls, etc.)
  • The ratfolk always look like anthropomorphic rats, although they range in size from halflings to ogres. They come in many different cultures, ranging from peaceful monastic orders, to alien biker gangs, to vicious hordes of mad cultists. (Based on Ptolus, Scarred Lands, Warhammer Fantasy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Biker Mice From Mars, etc.) They would be patronized by the Beast Lord of Rodents and/or Muroids.
  • The mongrelfolk are the chimerical beastmen. I already wrote a post about them in which I posited they are the planetouched by the planes of discord and chaos. As beastmen, they would be patronized by the Beast Lord of Chimeras; s/he may well be a naturalized aberration or other demon of chaos.

In the future I would like to give more detail to various beastmen races. Perhaps expand the beast lords into a full-fledged feudal system to account for the messiness of real taxonomy.

Miscellaneous links

Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)