"Reinventing Fantasy Races" by Luke Maciak

 Some years ago I stumbled upon a blog series titled "Reinventing Fantasy Races" by Luke Maciak that I found a useful source of inspiration for my own writings. Since his website is suffering database issues as of the last two years or so, I was forced to use Wayback Machine to read his articles. The archive may be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210205155615/http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/tag/reinventing-fantasy-races/

There may be some missing images, outdated comments, or other errors. Thankfully the archive has multiple copies from different times so it should be easy to find everything with a little cross-checking. Other websites aren't so lucky... 

Okay, I guess I'll give my opinion on that Extra Credits video

So Extra Credits released a video claiming that "evil races are bad game design" and got massively ratio'd.

There's a lot to unpack about the video because it conflates a lot of things that aren't actually related. So I'm just going to present a massively simplified argument:

Firstly, our elf-games are violent murder simulators that require players to mow down hordes of mooks. The game is designed that way. Most tabletop roleplaying games are designed that way. If you don't like it, then play a game that isn't a violent murder simulator.

Secondly, while you could easily play a game where you go around scalping human bandits... orcs are just cooler. The use of orcs in fantasy has nothing to do with anti-black racism. Using orcs as your mooks of choice doesn't even imply that they're "inherently evil." The "orc baby dilemma" is a really old argument dating back to UseNet.

There's no way for the players to know that there are good orcs unless the GM goes out of the way to tell them. It's extremely inconvenient to stop and tell the players the backstory of Orc Mook #294 when they're just playing for the sake of violence.

Lastly, it's entirely possible that the "pretty" races like humans, dwarves, elves, etc are just racists the whole time. The game books might be giving hugely biased accounts, I don't know?

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

• http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2010/04/bx-beastmaster.html
• http://joyfulsitting.blogspot.com/2016/03/beast-men-from-d.html
• https://screamingstoryteller.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-sankarjin-furry-race.html
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Beastmen
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Beastfolk
• http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfAnthropomorphism
• http://www.dmsguild.com/product/188081/Beastfolk-an-Original-Race-for-DD-5e
• https://gate-thus-the-jsdf-fought-there.fandom.com/wiki/Humanoid#Part-Animals
• https://overlordmaruyama.fandom.com/wiki/Beastman
• https://tensura.fandom.com/wiki/Beastman

We don’t need so many reptilian races

One of many oddities of D&D is that it has a bazillion reptilian races. As with goblinoids and orcs, I think it makes the most sense to treat all these chike/gatorfolk, kobolds, lizardfolk, serpentfolk/naga/ophiduan/inphidian, lernaeati/dorvae/manalishi, troglodytes/xulgath, dinosaurfolk, etc as members of the same monster family. For example, the reptilian races could be distinguished by categories like subrace, caste, size, tribe, degree of anthropomorphism, etc a la Warhammer Fantasy lizardmen.

Way back I briefly recapped the saurian race from Slavelords of Cydonia, which had several castes representing different reptile varieties like gators, chameleons, and turtles. I said back then that it made sense too, but this moment I wanted to add something else.

The reptilian races should be explicitly linked with dragons, dragonborn/dragonkin/dragonspawn, and so forth. In D&D-inspired media, this is already seen to a degree like the “dragonewt” race.

Furthermore, I think this family should (vaguely) include what amphibian races exist. A herptilefolk family? I alluded to this a while back when I discussed the Ogdoad of Ancient Egypt, a paired set of primordial deities in the forms of snakes and frogs. (Which are the parents of basilisks. Patterns are fun!)

In a future post I intend to explain about how I would define dragons based on comparative mythology rather than the idiosyncratic D&D norms.

Zoanthropes and weretouched

Previously I used the word "zoanthrope" to refer to humans that assume animal forms but are not lycanthropes. (Although technically it may be synonymous.) This may be the result of a racial trait as with the mhuinntir and skinwalker races, or might be the result of a class feature such as with the druid and shifter. Thus, zoanthropes are suitable as player characters.

The weretouched are individuals with any therianthrope ancestry, not necessarily lycanthropes, such as from a werewolf, jackalwere, or kitsune. This may grant them shapeshifting, ranging from the limited physical changes displayed by the wereblooded or skinwalker races all the way to the extreme therianthropy displayed by the weretouched archetype for the shifter class.

Keith Baker's hypothetical "pure lycanthrope" are another example of a zoanthrope.

Mongrelfolk and chaotic planetouched

The mongrelmen were introduced in early editions of D&D. Their backstory was that they were the result of extreme interspecies miscegenation. In later editions their name and backstory was changed for the sake of political correctness. They were renamed mongrelfolk (not an improvement) and their backstory changed to them being the result of fusion experiments by a mad wizard (not original). They now inherited the genetics of creatures they ate a la kroot in Warhammer 40,000.

The Tome of Horrors recycled their old miscegenation origins and this was reprinted by Pathfinder through the OGL. Aside from that, homebrew typically devise new non-miscegenation origins. The Daily Bestiary mentions that mongrelfolk could easily fit any backstory the GM desires.

For the most part, mongrelfolk look like bizarre patchworks of body parts from other humanoid species. Reptilian, insectoid, piscine, mammalian, avian, etc. In 3e they briefly changed to looking like a generic demikind race that could pass for members of the demikind races, but this was never used again. Personally, I like the idea that mongrelfolk could exist on a continuum between both extremes, maybe with some social friction between the two kinds of mongrelfolk over how other humanoid races treat them.

It doesn't make any sense to me that "mongrelfolk" is their racial name, since it is clearly a racial slur. I imagine they probably have their own name for themselves, like "the people," "the race," or "human beings."

New ideas for backstories came to me after some thought. Maybe they could be patronized by a Beast Lord of Chimeras (as in chimerical creatures, not the Greek Chimera). Maybe they could be chaotic planetouched?

Here is a list of chaotic planetouched from third party products I perused:

• Doathi, Frogfolk of Porphyra from Purple Duck Games
• Eirling, Secrets of the Planes: Planar Races from Lion's Den Press
• Ganzi, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Planar Adventures from Paizo Inc.
• Warpling, Dark Roads & Golden Hells from Kobold Press
• Xaoling, Planar Races: Chaos, The Xaolings from Purple Duck Games
• Xiokin, Children of the Planes from Tangent Games

A recurring theme of chaotic planetouched is that they have chimerical features. The eirling take the cake because they used randomized tables to determine their body parts, just like the mongrelfolk in Tome of Horrors! Being planetouched doesn't necessarily mean that you had an aboleth, chaosiic, ogdoad, protean or whatever in your family tree. Planetouched may be the result of pacts, transfusions, mutations by planar radiation or wild magic, surviving attack by a chaos beast, infection with pan-demoniac corruption, etc. For that matter, the term planetouched may just as easily apply to mortal inhabitants of the planes. The latter is the premise of the supplement Secrets of the Planes: Planar Races.

Regarding the doathi in particular, I think they could be conflated with the deep ones, gillmen, and skum presented elsewhere in Pathfinder. I could easily link the aboleth and ogdoad.

Research links

• http://dailybestiary.blogspot.com/2013/01/mongrelman.html
• http://errantd20designer.blogspot.com/2012/06/pfrpg-mongrelkin-race.html
• http://luduscarcerum.blogspot.com/2011/04/reworking-mongrelfolk.html
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Mongrelfolk
• https://dailybestiary.tumblr.com/post/40312989538/mongrelman
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongrelfolk
• https://faerunian.fandom.com/wiki/Mongrelfolk
• https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mongrelfolk
• https://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/2016/09/28/curse-of-strahd-correctly-labels-strahd-an-abuser-yet-troublingly-racist/
• https://monstersandstuff.home.blog/2018/11/23/salvaging-a-good-design/
• https://nerdarchy.com/chimes-discordia-rise-mongrelfolk-birth-race/
• https://nerdarchy.com/customized-races-mogrelfolk-dungeons-dragons-5th-edition/
• https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Mongrelman
• https://trailblazerrpg.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/lost-races-part-11-mongrelfolk-rastipede-bariaur-wemic-and-dracotaur/
• https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/monstrous-humanoids/mongrelman-tohc/
• https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/monstrous-humanoids/mongrelman/
• https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Mongrelfolk_(5e_Race)
• https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/60615-mongrelfolk
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104108
• https://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?133058-quot-Mongrelfolk-quot-what-the-!

Dragonstar races for Starfinder?

I couldn’t find any official conversions of Dragonstar to Starfinder, but I did find other person's lists and some detailed homebrew. Here is a little listing of conversions and equivalents that I could find for those races listed in the Dragonstar SRD.

The centaur, drow, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human, kobold, and orc races may all be found in the d20PFSRD and/or Starjammer SRD. Some races have interchangeable equivalents: catfolk with pershala, lizardfolk with ikeshti, elem with ifrit, oread, suli, sylph, and undine. Different races may need adjustments to fit a space setting.

Conversions of the doppel, ith-kon, oruk, pevishan, sathona, soulmech and tarn idoun may be found in the Rocks Fall conversion. Conversions of the centaur, derro and eleti may be found in the "Dragonstarfinder" thread.

Half-Dragons are not suitable as a PC race in the PRDs, so I suggest trying the Dragonblood theme or Dragonkin race.

As of this writing I could not find conversions or equivalents of the quasta, siarrans, or ulb races. The quasta is reprinted (not converted) with variant for non-scifi fantasy settings in Endangered Races: Quasta by Identical Games. The closest I could find to the siarrans and ulb races were the kasatha and selamid races.

Generic beastfolk in crunch and fluff

Fantasy gaming is full of different beastfolk races. There are catfolk, ratfolk, lizardfolk, mongrelfolk, etc. They are almost always highly specific in terms of which animal they anthropomorphize, and sometimes may display subraces with more specific features like halfling-size ratfolk, squirrel-tailed ratfolk, etc. They are typically created by dark magic or a precursor race.

What is less common are generic beastfolk races who don't have a fixed animal aspect. There are a fair amount of supplements for beastfolk that let you build the race yourself rather than presenting a preset race, but there are few that do anything similar with the world building. (In contrast to the beastmen's random mutations being taken for granted.)

For example, the ferrans in Thunderscape: the World of Aden have multiple animal aspects within the same species. They are divided into three branches of mammalian, avian or reptilian. However, a ferran may only have children with a member of the same branch and their child will inherit the same animal aspect as one of their parents.

By contrast, the sankarjin span the full spectrum of avian, aquatic, amphibian, mammal, reptile, and insectoid. They do not have hereditary appearances: a wolf and a sheep may have a child who is reptilian or rabbit. (The link appears to be dead and I cannot find any copies elsewhere, so sorry about that!)

The beastfolk in Victoriana by Cubicle 7 Games are a more extreme example compared to ferrans. They are a race, but their animal aspect is random rather than hereditary. What is further interesting and bizarre is that stereotypes are associated with animal aspects: ratfolk are disliked, dogfolk are accepted, lionfolk are beloved, etc.

There are not, to my knowledge, beastfolk races where the character (as opposed to the player) may choose their animal aspect. Or change it. Or have multiple aspects like a chimera (except for the aforementioned mongrelfolk). I guess that is something to world build later.

ADDENDUM 11/19/2019: This writeup depicts beastmen as transformed animals, and "flora sapiens" as evolved plants.

OGL substitutes for changelings, shifters and warforged

The changelings, shifters and warforged are races from the Eberron campaign setting that proved quite popular. However, they are not open game content and thus 3pp cannot reference them. Not to worry, there are substitutes under the OGL out there.

It was quite easy to find substitutes for the warforged. For whatever reason, there are many construct races out there. There are too many to list here, so you’ll probably need to search on your own until you find one you like.

I could only find one substitute for the changeling: the doppel race from the Dragonstar campaign setting. Their backstory and traits are essentially identical. Doppels are the descendants  of humans and doppelganger, displaying limited shapeshifting suitable for disguise as a result.

I could only find a couple substitutes for the shifter: the wereblooded race in the Bite Me! supplements by Misfit Studios and the skinwalker race in the Blood of the Moon supplement by Paizo. Their backstory and traits are essentially identical. Skinwalkers and wereblooded are the descendants of humans and lycanthropes, displaying limited shapeshifting into partial animal features as a result.

Obvious these are written for specific rulesets, but they should serve well enough as inspiration.

Theriocephalus race concept

The theriocephalus (from therio- + -cephalus) is a human with the head of an animal. He is not anthropomorphic: his body is entirely human without fur or feathers or scales, while only his head is that of an animal.

 Theriocephaluses come in at least three flavors: the animan, the verman and anumus.

• The animan (plural animen) is an animal-headed aasimar descended from immigrants from the upper plane ruled by the beast lords. They have the heads of terrestrial vertebrates (i.e. mammals, reptiles, avians and amphibians). An animan is a humanoid with the aasimar tag.
• The verman (plural vermen) is a vermin-headed tiefling descended from the forgotten creations of a demon lord. They have the heads of terrestrial invertebrates (e.g. arthropods and gastropods). A verman is a humanoid with the tiefling tag.
• The anumus (plural anumi) are created from beasts given a special potion made from the mystical anumi plant. They may have the heads of any terrestrial animal that is given the anumi potion. An anumus is a humanoid with the beastfolk tag.

Sources: The anumus is from Remarkable Races: The Anumus by Alluria Publishing. The animan and verman are from Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races by Fantasy Flight Games.

Reimagining dwarves?

So I've seen a number of proposals for reimagining dwarves beyond the Tolkien-derived stereotype. For example, dwarves as "maggot men of the mountains" a la Norse mythology, or dwarves carved as adult men from living stone, or dwarves as a relative of trolls due to both being earthly elemental beings. Here are a few links to different proposals:

• http://gneech.com/talk/the-my-dwarves-are-different-trap/
• http://grognardia.blogspot.com/search/label/dwarves
• http://lonelygm.blogspot.com/2013/03/changing-gamers-assumptions-about.html
• http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works#Dwarves_as_Jews
• http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2014/01/27/ravenflight-part-1-my-halflings-elves-and-dwarves-are-different/
• https://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-722953.html
• https://ogresvstrolls.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/dwarves-part-ii-maggot-men-of-the-mountains/
• https://www.farmcodegary.com/post/insectoid-dwarves/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/72m4bg/what_other_kinds_of_dwarves_are_there/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/5278kz/is_there_any_actual_difference_between_dwarves/
• https://dwarvenglory.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/maggots-of-the-earth/

The Vallorians

The Vallorians are like a cross between the Drow, Githyanki and the Daelkyr, or maybe the Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars.

Legacy of the Dragons,copyright 2004 Monte J. Cook. All rights reserved
"Playing Vallorians " ©2004 Monte J. Cook. All rights reserved.
"Vallorian Living Weapons and Armor" ©2004 Monte J. Cook. All rights reserved.
"Vallorian Society and Culture" ©2004 Monte J. Cook. All rights reserved.

The living airship ... https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/58480/The-Living-Airship

https://web.archive.org/web/20120308120040/http://www.montecook.com/arch_stuff68.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20120308125107/http://www.montecook.com/arch_stuff69.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20120308112431/http://www.montecook.com/arch_stuff70.html

Dark elves need diversity

The drow are one of those bizarre examples of fantasy's tendency for political incorrectness. Not only is their portrayal offensive to real world minorities, but within the fantasy world any racism directed at them is analogous to anti-white prejudice in reality. I do not care to discuss those issues, as other articles have done so at length. I am more concerned with the fact that drow have a huge diversity problem.

If you google "dark elves", you will get a huge diversity of skin tones in the image results. Drow skin tone should be variable like that. EverQuest Next once ran a poll to see which skin tone was popular, which I feel is a false dichotomy: there's no reason why the dark elf population cannot be variously light, medium, saturated or dark.

I don't think dark elves need to be pigeonholed into cartoonish evil. I've already written articles about how evil societies are generally nonsensical and my cosmology doesn't used alignments except for streamlined cosmic factions. You could have dark elf societies which are alien or even good!

I don't think dark elves should be limited to living in the underworld. They should be able to live anywhere they can carve out a niche. You could have dark elves living in temperate forests, jungles, the arctic, or even outer space!

Relevant links

• https://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-733484.html
• http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/10/my-elves-are-different-or-erlkoenig-and-appendix-n/
• http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2012/06/11/reinventing-fantasy-races-my-elves-are-different/
• https://zaewen.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/tropebusting-matriarchies-in-gaming-and-sci-fifantasy/
• http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2010/03/drow-should-be-lawful-evil-among-other.html
• http://knighterrantjr.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-problem-with-drow.html
• https://www.geeknative.com/19332/drow-a-non-racist-alternative/
• http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2014/01/27/ravenflight-part-1-my-halflings-elves-and-dwarves-are-different/
• https://www.ragingheroes.com/blogs/news/tgg2-update-70-dark-elves-and-void-elves-stories-and-a-video
• http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/race/drow.html
• https://warriorsofmyth.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Elf_Gallery
• http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2016/02/drizzt-dourden-and-failure-of-fantasy.html
• https://everquestnext.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Elf
• https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eqnlandmark/index.php?threads/which-skin-tone-do-you-find-most-appealing-for-the-dark-elves-images-in-blog.41631/
• https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eqnlandmark/index.php?threads/which-skin-tone-do-you-find-most-appealing-for-the-dark-elves-images-in-blog.41631/page-3#post-437359
• https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eqnlandmark/index.php?threads/which-skin-tone-do-you-find-most-appealing-for-the-dark-elves-images-in-blog.41631/page-4#post-437514

undead race options

Some undead race options I stumbled across while googling.

Living dead:

https://daemonsanddeathrays.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/the-living-dead-an-undead-race-for-dd-5th-edition/
Soulbound: http://www.tribality.com/2015/02/23/richs-gameroom-soulbound-bonus-archetypes-college-of-the-banshee-pale-knight/
Awakened undead (1): https://dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/134526127807/awakened-undead-race-by-thesingularanyone
Awakened undead (2): http://walrock-homebrew.blogspot.com/2015/12/race-awakened-undead-third-draft.html
Eleti: http://dragonstarsrd.freehostia.com/races/eleti.htm
Darakhul http://www.dashjperiod.com/tag/undead/
Risen https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/119501/Liber-Vampyr
Restless Soul https://paizo.com/products/btpy8da9/discuss?Restless-Souls
Dødelig https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/player/underworld-races-dodelig/?doing_wp_cron=1562490716.5211520195007324218750
Obitu https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/alluria-publishing/obitu/
Promethean, raijin and uzamati: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/128350

Truskin

Of all the planes, the one that is at once the most familiar and the most inscrutable is the Material plane. Home to the natural world, and to the human race, the Material plane is host to a great many secrets, perhaps the most wondrous of which is the fact that it is not one plane, but simply one of many. Known to the majority of its inhabitants as a single localized place, the Material plane stretches vast across innumerable multitudes of worlds, each largely ignorant of the others’ existences. These worlds often share many similarities, from the overall climate and weather patterns to the many varieties of flora and fauna. But there’s something else that’s common to all these material worlds.

Fiend-touched

Not all mortal races hail from the various Material planes. Deep in the bowels of the Hells and the Abyss, deities of evil have created their own forms of sentience, races who are born into a life of predetermined damnation. Most labor for entire lifetimes, suffering at the whim of demons and devils, but a select few escape to other worlds, or obtain sufficient power and skill to make themselves a force to be reckoned with even amidst such primal evil. Some sages believe that these beings have true souls, as much as any human or halfling born on the Material plane. Others maintain that no soul can journey to the Lower Planes (or any of the Outer Planes, for that matter) until death, and that these beings have no more of a true soul than any outsider. That they are as alive as any human or elf on any other world, however, cannot be in doubt. They are the fiend-touched, and they are perhaps the most racially unlucky people in all creation.

Leonork

Unlike many of the other planetouched races, the Leonork tribes are not originally from the Material Plane. They first came into existence eons ago when a rogue Orc deity, whose name has been lost to the mists of history and time, was outcast from the Orc pantheon for being “too softhearted”. She was created from the calls of fallen Orc warriors, who wished for a quick, merciful death on the battlefield but the head of the Orc pantheon banished her shortly after her creation. Upon leaving, she wandered into the celestial realms of the Leonals and was welcomed by the celestials and given a realm to call her own. There, with the blessing of the Leonals, she created a race in the image of the Orc but with the spirit of a Leonal and named them “Leonorks”. The Leonorks came to live much like their Orcish relatives but with benevolence and celestial ideals. Eons have passed since their creation and the tribes of the Leonorks have found their way to many planes. Here, in the Material Plane, they have joined together with the goodly races in a war upon the Orc and Goblinoid races, an endless crusade to destroy all evil from the world.