Worldbuilding Exercise - Get 5 Random Races, Build a Setting

[alientude]

1d100 ⇒ 41 Dryad
1d100 ⇒ 8 Orc
1d100 ⇒ 77 Flumph
1d100 ⇒ 37 Wayang
1d100 ⇒ 15 Ifrit

Narzhal, shattered world of shadows and fire, where the War has destroyed all but the most primitive of histories. Who started the War? How long has it waged? Nobody knows, and nobody cares; every moment is a battle for life.

After a brutal offensive that has lasted the past decade, the alliance between the Ifrits and Wayangs has recently pushed back the war front, thrusting dangerously deep into Garnak, the Orc homeland. The beleaguered defenders are scattered and fleeing, but all is not yet lost to the denizens of the fiery dark.

The Ifrits have little regard for the terrain through which they marched, harvesting lumber for their war machines and burning wide swathes of lush forests for the simple pleasure of watching it burn. Unfortunately for them, the Dryads, little more than a whisper of a fairy tale, are real, and launch an assault on the western flank of the Ifrit army, decimating their ranks.

And what of the mysterious Flumphs? Little is known of the bizarre creatures, other than they are intelligent. All attempts to communicate with them have failed. With the War waging across the world, it could be their support that would tip the scales in favor of one side. Yet still, they wait, and watch.

And so, the War continues, much as it ever does. The War is eternal.

[Aiken Frost]

15. Ifrit (humanoids with efreet ancestry)
55. Gargoyle
25. Vanara (monkey-folk)
85. Darfellan (powerful humanoids with orca-like skin)
35. Nagaji (reptilian humanoids originally created by the naga as a servant race)

Hah! Five races, all of them from a number ended in five! Obviously I'll have to include this number as important in-setting!

I just couldn't find anything about this "Darfellan" race. Going to think more about this and create a setting latter.

[Terquem]

Would anyone care to choose five races at random, for me, and then I will write up something. I'm sort of bored and very depressed today, and I have already writen and deleted so many things. I need some kind of focus and task, to help me get through this day.

[Epic Meepo]

@Terquem:

11. Drow
17. Sylph (humanoids with djinn ancestry)
28. Tengu
79. Ghoul
87. Illumian (human-like beings infused with sorcery with glowing sigils floating around their heads)

[Terquem]

Okay, be back soon

And thank you

[Terquem]

The setting is a ravaged and hostile coastline, scared by wind and water, cut deep by the movement of glaciers over several millennia. From the interior of the continent, hundreds of rivers are born in the high snow swept mountains. These rivers race down across the small flat plain coming together at times, and then diverging again through steep canyons. It is a land known as Qthria.

There are no kingdoms in Qthria, no nations or empires. It is a place where a few races struggle to maintain a presence. The growing season is short, and there are few places that are flat enough, along the rugged coast, where things could be grown even if you tried. The plain, which begins thirty miles from the sea, sits at an elevation of four thousand feet. It can be farmed, but after only a few miles from where the ground levels, the forests begin, and dark and dangerous things live in the forests.

The races that live along this coast call themselves the “Qa’Drumani” it is a word that means, “The people who speak the language of Qa’Dru” and it is the common tongue of the five races that live in these lands.

Who were the Qa’Dru? Legends say that they were the first people to inhabit this land. The Drow say that they are the direct descendents of the Qa’Dro, but the Tengu-kin claim that their legends speak of a hero, Yonekono kavi, who alone saved the first Drow people who appeared on the shore in a boat that the pieces of, the bowsprit, and sails, can still be seen in the Shrine of Evernight, in the Tengu-kin capitol of Shozhin. Still there are other stories told by the hunters and gatherers, the nomadic Sylphs who live closer to the plains than any of the other races. The sylphs tell stories of how their people once ruled a vast sprawling empire that stretched from Hole Rock Bay to the mouth of the river Dwinolac, where the small dragons hunt, and that it was one of the Emperors, whose name has been forgotten, who made it possible for the lost dark skinned and pointed eared Drow to make land fall, and that they came in nine ships, not one as the Tengu-kin claim. These races, the Tengu-kin, the Drow, and the Sylph, all will argue over who has been here the longest.

But the other races, the Illumians and the Ghouls do not argue with them. Illumians know they have not been here for very long, and the Ghouls know that they have been here for too long.

The Illumians appeared in the northern reaches of the lands some five hundred years ago, and at that time there were only a few hundred of their kind. They came, they claim, from out of a swirling dark vortex, and a place that beyond was a world where their kind were kept as pets and beast of burden by a race of giant humanoids. The Illumians will say no more than that about their past. They escaped, that is all they know. When they arrived they were seeking asylum in this new land but were surprised that they did not encounter any other intelligent people who would or could grant them this request, instead what they found was a wild and sparsely populated wilderness, and a change to begin new. They established themselves at the very edge of the plain that stretches to the east. In the five hundred years since they arrived they have grown to number in the thousands. As their population has grown, so have their intentions, and at this time it is rumored that they will propose to the other races that they have established borders to their country, but if this is true, no one can say for certain. The Illuminas proved to be better are farming and raising livestock than the Drow, who had come to occupy many of the sea caves along the coast, or the Tengu-kin, who preferred to make their villages high in the cliffs above the sea, or the Syplhs who moved in small tribal caravans from one place to another with the changing seasons.

There is a strong bond, a healthy relationship in both trade and culture, between the cave dwelling Drow, the cliff dwelling Tengu-kin, the nomadic Sylphs, and the Illumians of the western plains. And some will tell you that this is mostly due to the efoorts of the race that are called the Gha’Haloole, or more commonly the Ghouls.

The Ghouls are a parasitic symbiotic form of life that exists simultaneously on two planes, the prime material plane and the negative material plane. The exact nature of the being that is connected to the negative material plane is unknown, and some wise women believe that they are actually the departed souls of the very first race of beings that once lived in this region, and for some reason these souls have been bound to the land. A Ghoul resembles a human, and they are for all purposes human creatures, but they exist with a unique bound entity that manifest in them in a way that makes them appear cadaverous, even from birth. Among their own kind, the ghouls interact normally, but it is a common fact that the touch of a ghoul can cause other living creatures to become paralyzed, and that prolonged contact with the flesh of a ghoul can cause a living thing to lose life force, causing a sort of rapid, but not dangerous aging. It I said that the ghouls eat the dead, and this may be true, in a sort of way. With permission, a ghoul community will agree to handle the disposition of the dead of other races. The touch of a ghoul will rapidly wither and decay the flesh of a newly deceased animal or other creature, reducing the creature to a skeleton in only a few hours. This phenomena is necessary to sustain the life of a ghoul, who cannot survive through the normal consumption of living matter, plant or animal, that is raw (it should be pointed out that mostly other races eat raw, or cooked vegetables and fruits, and vary rarely eat raw animals, though the Drow do delight in raw fish and other delicacies of the sea). A Ghoul can eat cooked meat or vegetables and fruits, like any other race, but is not sustained as a well as they are by absorbing the last traces of positive energy that remain in living tissues immediately after a creature has died, and the soul has left the body. There are stories, unpleasant ones, that tell of a particularly famished or deranged Ghoul who has succumb to the desire to stay alive at all costs and has given in to eating a living creature. Even the ghouls find this behavior abhorrent, but it does happen.

The reason the ghouls have been so important in the stability of the region is that the entities that are bound to the human creatures somehow retain a portion of the memories of each of the hosts they have occupied, though they have significantly fewer memories of older hosts. Still this strange aspect of the ghoul allows them to be able to become skilled artisans, craftsmen, diplomats, and arbitrators of disputes, being able to call upon memories of past disputes and how those disputes were resolved has a powerful cultural significance to all of the other races, even the Illumians.

Ghouls live among the communities of the other races in small numbers, and reproduce as humans normally would, but it should be mentioned that a birth is both a joyous and somber event, as ghouls do not typically live as long as a normal human would, their bodies are under tremendous strain from their symbiosis, but that a child is always conceived when a ghoul finally passes away. The number of ghouls is fixed, or so it is believed, but no one is certain as to how many ghouls there are.

(I could go on and detail the Sylph nomadic culture, the Drow cave life, where in this setting they are not chaotic evil and do not worship Lolth, and the Tengu-kin and Illumian ways of life, but since I don’t know if anyone really cares I’ll stop here. This was fun, and remarkably easy.)

[Jackissocool]

1d100 ⇒ 77 Flumph
1d100 ⇒ 65 Derhii
1d100 ⇒ 3 Dwarf
1d100 ⇒ 50 Faun
1d100 ⇒ 11 Drow
I'm hoping for elf, human, dwarf, gnome, hobbit.

EDIT: Wow, this is just begging to be subterranean. First thoughts are giant underground fungus forests. Hmm...

[Terquem]

Good Luck Jack! I am looking forward to reading what you come up with.

[Jackissocool]

Some background and history. More modern culture to come.

In the land of Huulirno, no one has ever seen the sun, or the stars, or the moon. It has never rained or snowed. There has never been a winter or a summer, nor a spring or fall. There is no day and there is no night. To the people in the subterranean land of Huulirno, time is measured only in seconds and lifetimes; the drip of acidic water from the roof of the cave, the passing of the king. The lack of clear measurement for time means that the concept is a vague one, rarely thought of to the people there. Since there are no natural cycles, only comparisons will do. History is vague, with events more mixed up the further back one studies.

In Huulirno, they know nothing of a surface there; to them, all is endless rock, riddled with caverns and passageways. The variety in this underground world, however, is astounding. There are grand waterfalls, vast fields of spikes and spires, massive fungal forests, great open spaces filled with flying beasts, narrow passages riddled with the blind troglodytes that scramble and compete. Everywhere life attempts, successfully or not, to scratch a living from the bare rock that surrounds and oppresses those who are not fit to live there.

Long before any other races arose in this land, the flumphs were undisputed kings. How long is impossible to say; perhaps hundreds of thousands of years ago. The highest scholars have theories, some with fossil evidence, on how the flumphs came to be. One theory suggests that they are a highly evolved fungus, gaining sentience and magical talent to adapt to their world. The major competing theory is that flumphs are the result of magical experiments from a previous, now extinct race. Called the polimbs by those who believe in them, this creator race is said to have created the flumphs from simple floating colonies, much like coral in the sea. For whatever reason, the polimbs saw that these float-corals had the potential for something more, and created the flumphs. What exactly happened to the polimbs is a mystery. While there are some ruins from an ancient civilization, many believe these are simply from early flumph societies. The polimb theory is appealing to the flumphs, because they created many of the other sentient races that populate Huulirno.

The derhii were the first race created by the flumphs. In the huge fungal forests that cover the largest caverns, great pale apes swung through the mushrooms, smarter than most animals. The flumphs tamed these beasts as labor animals in their early years, and eventually began to enhance them magically, giving them great feathered wings and increased intelligence. Slowly, these flying apes grew into the derhii, gaining true sentience. The flumphs, always a benevolent race, granted the derhii their own lands in the fungal forests. To this day, however, derhii culture is mistrustful of the flumphs, and most of the flying apes prefer to remain separate from the affairs of other races.

As the derhii slowly grew into sentience, the flumphs continued to experiment. Their next creations were the fauns. Taking another race of apes, these ones with less hair and muscle, but an upright stature, the flumphs infused them with the very spirit of nature, and mixed in the blood of climbing goats, so that they could travel difficult terrain with ease, keeping up with the floating flumphs. These mystical goat-men developed into the fauns, gaining sentience just as the derhii before them. The fauns gained more of the flumphs' good spirit than the derhii; they we also far more interested in exploring the wild world around them than magical experiments and structured society. The flumphs let them be free and independent, but gave them no land. Instead, the flumph king declared that "All fauns are to be free; they will have no lands of their own, for they are bound to Hurrlino itself, and all of nature is theirs to share." To this day, fauns and flumphs harbor a friendly relationship.

The same upright apes that were adapted by the flumphs into fauns also evolved on their own, mostly unnoticed by the aberrant kingdom around them. Two species developed; the dwarves and the drow. Both were intelligent and capable. The dwarves saw the flumphs from the shadows, and they emulated the older race's society. When they attracted the flumphs' attention, they were given aid and guidance, but not magically altered. Today, dwarven society is intertwined with flumph society, focused on magic and knowledge and the promotion of good.

At the same time, the drow forged their own path. They remained hidden from the flumphs. Only the dwarves knew of their existence, and were too ashamed of their cousins to tell the flumphs. The drow were fiercely independent. They believed that they had to raise themselves up as a species, distinct from the overbearing flumphs. Over time, their separation grew into resentment and bitterness. While they struggled, they received no aid; they would have refused it if given, but needed it sorely as drow societies failed from within and faced assault from the wild beasts and dragons of Huulirno. Now, the drow are a race devoted to independence, valuing freedom above all else.

[MMCJawa]

4: Half-orc
17: Sylph
76: Shae
54: Naga
18: Oread

Once long ago, the race known as humans swarmed over the face of the Earth. The humans were vast in number, and together with their great technological progress produced great stress on the earth and its dwindling resources. This eventually led to conflict within humanity, as nations argued and fought over clean water, fertile farmland, and mineral wealth.

Over the long ages, as conflicts escalated, humanity began exploiting their sciences to create a new slave soldier race, the Orc. Orcs proved to be brutal and strong fighters, but lacked the free will possessed by humans, which made them into the perfect tools of war.

However, as humanity warred amongst itself, they remained ignorant of greater cosmic conflicts that raged around them. For thousands of millenia, the elemental planes of earth and air have waged a relentless war, one that soon spilled over into Earth. as Slyph and Oread armies clashed, there magical prowess and supernatural powers devastated the civilizations of earth, as mankind had no defense for the raw elemental magic that was at the command of the Djinn and Shaitan.

Only the toughest could survive, and from the midst of the devastation arose the Half-orcs. Possessing the toughness and might of Orcs and the adaptability and intelligence of humans, Half-orcs thrived in the barren wastelands created by the War of Air and Sky. The war sooned moved from earth, but many of the Sylph and Oreads remained behind, continuing their battles and raising themselves as the new lords of the Earth.

For eons, Oread and Sylph empires ruled over half-orc populaces, which were treated as second class citizens. However this balance would be soon broken. Other elemental races, for reasons unknown to this day, intervened. Hidden from all eyes, the Shae crept into the world, organizing the half orcs and the remaining orcs and humans to throw off their oppressors, leading to a bloody revolution which would soon establish the new kingdoms of half-orc

And so it continues. Half-orcs, humans, and orcs face a still uncertain future. The sylphs and oreads long to place the "lesser" races under their domination. No one is sure at all what the Shae want, but many fear the worse. And a new threat grows, as the shadow of the Nagas, and their reptilian armies, emerge from the depths of the earth, promising a new reign of terror and madness.

[Thorin2011]

Randomness I love it.
Let me sleep on this I will have something in the morning I already have Ideas.

96 -- thri-kreen
19 -- Suli
45 -- Sprite
81 -- gearmen/warforged
73 -- mongelmen

Yes I know what, I think I know who, I defiantly know why and were. Jut need a few hows and then bam realm crafted.

Edit I have not read more than the first world I did not want to teal ideas. so if My world looks like someone else sorry we think alike.

[MagiMaster]

I feel like rolling. No guarantee that I'll be able to come up with anything from the results though. :)

1d100 ⇒ 8 -> Orc
1d100 ⇒ 96 -> Thri-Kreen
1d100 ⇒ 92 -> Construct humanoid (wildcard)
1d100 ⇒ 40 -> Ogre
1d100 ⇒ 16 -> Undine

It almost fits together on its own except for the undine. Well, almost. I would have put the ogres in orcs in a master/slave relationship, but all 5 races are supposed to be playable.

Actually, let's say the ogres are the ruling class here, but since they're a bit too strong for a PC race, there's a lesser ogrekin PC race. Of course, then the ogres need to be a bit smarter to maintain control. The orcs, thri-kreen, constructs and ogrekin are all technically slaves to the true ogres. Now if I could only think of some way to fit the undine in without making everyone else pirates.

Well, I'll think on it.

[Othniel Edden]

4. Half-Orc
30. Gillmen
14. Fetchling (humanoids with shae ancestry)
56. Minotaur
79. Ghoul

This begging for a Labyrinthine caverns twisting in and out of salt water oceans. Hmmm... will be back for this one. I'll need a way to enable both undersea and overland variants of adventuring... hmm..

[Thorin2011]

Okay, I promised my world today but things got crazy with kids Try again in a few days.

[Freehold DM]

Amazing thread.

Wife method got me
human
bariaur
satyr
nereid
kobold

weird. What can I do with this..??

[Arazni]

I'm going to go a little further, and add to these races my archetypes/ character concept rolls. Should be interesting.

Race: 1d100 ⇒ 47 Nereid
Character: 1d100 ⇒ 48 who wants to 1d20 ⇒ 6
Berserker cultist who wants to gain self knowledge through ritual.

Race: 1d100 ⇒ 49 Treant
Character: 1d100 ⇒ 72 who wants to 1d20 ⇒ 5
Prophet who wants to gain self knowledge through combat.

Race: 1d100 ⇒ 57 Troll
Character: 1d100 ⇒ 55 who wants to 1d20 ⇒ 18
Fighting prodigy who wants to return home.

Race: 1d100 ⇒ 1 Human
Character: 1d100 ⇒ 83 who wants to 1d20 ⇒ 1
A Possessed human who wants to make an honest living.

Race: 1d100 ⇒ 93 Dragon-based humanoid. (Dracha from Arcana Evolved)
Character: 1d100 ⇒ 40 who wants to 1d20 ⇒ 7
A City Speaker who wants to understand the nature of reality.

[Naive Wolf Joshua]

92 - Construct based humanoid
84 - Uldra
38 - Grippli
99 - Mul
43 - Pixie

Hmm... interesting... give me a moment and let me smash my head into my desk and... oh, there are the ideas and ouch.

[littlehewy]

Cool idea. Rolling.

1d100 ⇒ 83 Shifter
1d100 ⇒ 67 Sasquatch
1d100 ⇒ 17 Sylph
1d100 ⇒ 16 Undine
1d100 ⇒ 22 Catfolk

[Arazni]

Nereid Nereids have a high population in coastal areas and there are at least four kingdoms of Nereids in the campaign setting. These are usually avoided by other races due to the savage nature of their female warriors, and the strange magics of their (usually male) sorcerers. The aquatic bloodline and water elemental school of wizardry is mastered by elite male nereids.

Treant In the forests, the Treants have created several living woods, and they work actively with the fey (including the Nereids where available) in protecting the wilderness and sacred life from encroachment from civilization and destructive industries. Most treants follow a mystical earth based religion, often becoming druids or nature oracles.

Trolls Due to their brute strength and generally low intelligence, Trolls have been mostly enslaved by the intelligent species (Nereids, Humans, and Dracha). A few live in unpopulated swamps in small tribes, attempting to free those still enslaved.

Humans Most humans are constantly seeking for greater powers to adhere themselves to, either through arcane or spiritual means. Dragons and deities are the most frequently seen as bequeathers of spiritual sensation. Human kingdoms are not heavily populated, but those that are have a mystic bent and powerful religious traditions.

Dracha The dracha are the most civilized of the races, and live in high towered cities, generally isolating themselves from the other races. Many of them have a mystic connection with their own communities.

Religions:
Instead of being divided based on alignment, the religions of the campaign setting are instead based on the conflict of wilderness (nature) vs. civilization. Two pantheons of spirit beings guide each side of the conflict.

Magic:
Organized magic is divided into 8 alternate schools of wizardry: Bright, Light, Grey, Amethyst, Amber, Jade, Celestial, Gold, but these are only taught in the most civilized of locations: Humans, Dracha, and Nereids. In most places, organized magic is divided into the four elemental schools of wizardry. This is referred to as common wizardry. All races can comprehend common wizardry. Sorcery is a common feature in the less organized of the races: Nereids in oceanic wilderness often give birth to aquatic sorcerers, Dracha that forego their cities can become draconic sorcerers. Trolls can become aberration sorcerers (often warlocks: a sorcerer archetype). Humans in the wilderness often turn to witchcraft and sorcery with the Fated bloodline being the most popular. Treants whose penchant is toward the arcane can become fey bloodline sorceress.

[Uriel393]

Here goes...
1d100 ⇒ 10 Hobgoblin

1d100 ⇒ 48Nixie

1d100 ⇒ 66
66. Girtablilu (centauroids with a scorpion-like lower half + claws)

1d100 ⇒ 11Drow

1d100 ⇒ 7Gnome

[pobbes]

Dotting for sunday... or monday whichever comes first.

[Dragonamedrake]

1d100 = 41 Dryad
1d100 = 35 Nagaji (reptilian humanoids originally created by the naga as a servant race)
1d100 = 3 Dwarf
1d100 = 87 Illumian
1d100 = 39 Kobold

I will see what I can come up with.

[pobbes]

Rolled now... posting results
48 - Nixie
30 - Gillmen
26 - Vishkanya
84 - Uldra
91 - Aberration-based humanoid (make your own)

Now, we put on low and let simmer a fewdays....

[Thorin2011]

Pls bare with spelling mistakes

It has been 10,000 years since the plant galord what distroid the four main parts of the planet that survid know have formed into planetiods with in the astriod belt that is the rements of Galord. The cataclysmic was brought on by a great war between the Alchemists and Maguses.

The foot solgers of this great war was inturn fought by the footmen of these great powers. The Gearmen and the mongralmen. These were smart self aware thinking solgers. They could fallow any order given in even vage terms. After the cataclism both sets of footmen found them selves with out orders just their primary directives servive and kill the enemy. So they regrouped grouped on there respective planetiods. What was leaft of their masters Gathord on one of the four planetiods as well. Leaving what is left of the frey a small but noble Race called the sprites to repopulate and regrow the forests on the last planetiod. 10,000 years latter the great war is still raging on gearmen and
mongralmen fight for contral of the planetiods they nolonger reconize the humen race which has grow to imprace the void between the planetiods. The human are now know as the suli.

Into this war torn world the thri-Keen Hive lanch an invation. They seek new worlds to grow and populate They seek to eliminate all other races.

GM notes (Run a Spell Jammer styled setting.)

[narlethdrider]

Mine:
02: Elf
34: Kobold
75: Ettercap
58: Gnoll
83: Shifter

I will post a "setting" and sketches later.

[MagiMaster]

MagiMaster wrote:

I feel like rolling. No guarantee that I'll be able to come up with anything from the results though. :)

1d100 -> Orc
1d100 -> Thri-Kreen
1d100 -> Construct humanoid (wildcard)
1d100 -> Ogre
1d100 -> Undine

It almost fits together on its own except for the undine. Well, almost. I would have put the ogres in orcs in a master/slave relationship, but all 5 races are supposed to be playable.

Actually, let's say the ogres are the ruling class here, but since they're a bit too strong for a PC race, there's a lesser ogrekin PC race. Of course, then the ogres need to be a bit smarter to maintain control. The orcs, thri-kreen, constructs and ogrekin are all technically slaves to the true ogres. Now if I could only think of some way to fit the undine in without making everyone else pirates.

Well, I'll think on it.

Long ago, the gods created the ogres. These giants were tasked with ruling the planet as servants of the gods. But the gods grew bored and set their sights elsewhere, and slowly the ogres grew disillusioned. They began delving into the arcane secrets that had created them.

In turn, the ogres created new races to serve them. These were the ogrekin, smaller, but otherwise much like their masters. Too much so in fact. The ogrekin saw themselves as equals, and waged a bloody war to prove it. During this war, the secret of the gods was stolen from the ogres and the orcs were created.

The orc were master craftsmen and tinkers and supplied the ogrekin with tools and weapons. Their greates creation was a machine that could fight on its own. These metal men marched with the orcs and the ogrekin against the ogres.

But it wasn't enough. The ogres created a second race to fight for them, the thri-kreen. These insect-like creatures were genetically programmed to obey their queen, who was easily controlled by the ogres. Through sheer numbers, the thri-kreen won the war for the ogres, but too much damage had been done to both sides for things to return to the way they were.

There were now too few ogres to reliably rule this world. Instead, they made a deal. They would remain rulers, but would rule from afar. They would be be free to tax the new kingdoms, but would otherwise leave them alone. They then retreated to the island continent where they were first created and have been there ever since.

The thri-kreen made an uneasy peace with the orcs and ogrekin, and the metal men were given their freedom in return for their service. The secret of the gods had been lost to the ravages of war. Things remained stable for hundreds of years.

But lately, the tax has begun to rise, along with discontent. No one has seen a true ogre for a century or more, and people are beginning to wonder where the tax goes. But no one has been brave enough to do anything.

Something else has changed though. The undine arrived, and no one knows where they come from. These blue-skinned people build their cities in the shallow waters around distant islands. They don't bow to the ogres and their free-spirited nature has some people wanting to join them.

Or something like that ;)

[MagiMaster]

To give myself something else to think about:
1d100 ⇒ 20 -> Dhampir
1d100 ⇒ 55 -> Gargoyle
1d100 ⇒ 37 -> Wayang
1d100 ⇒ 23 -> Lizardfolk
1d100 ⇒ 10 -> Hobgoblins

Well, that's certainly something to think about. Kind of feels like something from Vampire Hunter D.

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

5d100 ⇒ (67, 8, 68, 80, 8) = 231

sasquatch
orc
vampire
orc
tanuki

[Roac]

Terquem wrote:

The setting is a ravaged and hostile coastline, scared by wind and water, cut deep by the movement of glaciers over several millennia. From the interior of the continent, hundreds of rivers are born in the high snow swept mountains. These rivers race down across the small flat plain coming together at times, and then diverging again through steep canyons. It is a land known as Qthria.

There are no kingdoms in Qthria, no nations or empires. It is a place where a few races struggle to maintain a presence. The growing season is short, and there are few places that are flat enough, along the rugged coast, where things could be grown even if you tried. The plain, which begins thirty miles from the sea, sits at an elevation of four thousand feet. It can be farmed, but after only a few miles from where the ground levels, the forests begin, and dark and dangerous things live in the forests.

The races that live along this coast call themselves the “Qa’Drumani” it is a word that means, “The people who speak the language of Qa’Dru” and it is the common tongue of the five races that live in these lands.

Who were the Qa’Dru? Legends say that they were the first people to inhabit this land. The Drow say that they are the direct descendents of the Qa’Dro, but the Tengu-kin claim that their legends speak of a hero, Yonekono kavi, who alone saved the first Drow people who appeared on the shore in a boat that the pieces of, the bowsprit, and sails, can still be seen in the Shrine of Evernight, in the Tengu-kin capitol of Shozhin. Still there are other stories told by the hunters and gatherers, the nomadic Sylphs who live closer to the plains than any of the other races. The sylphs tell stories of how their people once ruled a vast sprawling empire that stretched from Hole Rock Bay to the mouth of the river Dwinolac, where the small dragons hunt, and that it was one of the Emperors, whose name has been forgotten, who made it possible for the lost dark skinned and pointed eared Drow to make land fall, and that they...

This is damn cool! Tell me more about the Drows, I've always been fascinated with them but hated the "evil elf" shtick they always get.

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

In old times, the ice descended on the world, creeping down from the far north like a slow cold flood to grip the land in frigid doom.

The old order died, unable to withstand the change. Only the vicious could stand in the face of the ice age.

When the millenia ticked by and the ice finally started creeping back north, the world belonged to the orcs. Cities sprung up first around the river deltas....Kur and Karkoris, Thurg and Gath,......the domesticated orcs who paid homage to the Sky Lords who took blood offerings on the high pyramids they commanded the orcs to build. The Sky Lords, who enacted the orc breeding programs, who decided which orcs were to be breeding pairs, the Sky Lords examined every orc cub got within the walls and either branded them with the mark of recognition, or swept them away to face a mysterious fate.

But the nascent city states of the Sky Lords faced pressures from the primal forces from beyond the shadow of their walls. Vast tribes of wild orcs still marauded across the plains, and the northernmost city state of Zak Hakkur fell to the badger clans.
The badgers seek even now to unite the wild tribes with the moon curse, and drive back the efforts of the Sky Lords to recreate that abomination called civilization.

And in the far north, the sasquatch druids have found a city of the ancients long entomed under a mile of ice, along with far too much of their ancient technology still intact.
The druid conclave debates the merits of using the old technology that probably damned the old order versus the menace that is represented by the nascent orcish citystates.

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

This is fun.

5d100 ⇒ (39, 91, 81, 67, 23) = 301

kobold
aberration based humanoid
warforged
sasquatch
lizardfolk

heh heh......sasquatch again.

That makes me want to make this the "southern continent" of my orcish Hyboria I have going on up top there.

[Terquem]

Roac wrote:

About terquem's "stuff" about a different kind of Drow, This is damn cool! Tell me more about the Drows, I've always been fascinated with them but hated the "evil elf" shtick they always get.

Okay, I'll expand a little. Thanks for noticing.

[Orthos]

I could lose so much time on this.

[Aristin76]

Wife method- 6 halfling, 14 fetchling, 22 catfolk, 24 ratfolk, 31 duergar, and 69....hmm. subtlety is my wife's middle name. Lol. I'll post later....... Silly woman.

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

Spanky the Leprechaun wrote:

This is fun.

5d100

kobold
aberration based humanoid
warforged
sasquatch
lizardfolk

heh heh......sasquatch again.

That makes me want to make this the "southern continent" of my orcish Hyboria I have going on up top there.

Far to the south, sasquatch infidels disloyal to the council of druids stole some of the ancient tech, powerful devices, capable of moving a flying fortress, left to seek out clues gained from the city of the ancients they uncovered.....clues that pointed to more such undiscovered cities on the southern continent.

They were met by the savage reptilian tribesmen that dwell there, tribesmen that are supplied with the spoils of metallurgy by their stunted underground cousins that they call the "dogling folk."

The sasquatch explorer/colonists have heard rumors from some of the less "cannibalistic" of the lizardmen......rumors of a great iron mountain with men made of steel, and of a place called "the Yellow Kingdom," where the oldfolk still live. It is said that these old folk resemble the original xenotype of the Sky Lords, but that they can walk in the light. The lizardmen shun the Yellow Kingdom of the Oldfolk though.......

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

5d100 ⇒ (42, 75, 14, 59, 80) = 270 This is prolly how Talislanta was created.

satyr
ettercap
fetchling
adlet
vampires(again)

well this is kinda a mess. I think it'll work though.

[Vulpae]

Marking this for later use!

[Vulpae]

55=Gargoyle
76=Shae
98=Rogue Modron
81=Gearman/warforged/living construct thinigmachu
24=Ratfolk

I gotta build a cityworld now

[The Red Mage]

Do you have a link to the original picture or the archived thread?

[Terquem]

Follow up to an early contribution

Where do the Drow of Qthria come from?

Perhaps the only people who know the truth are the Ghouls.

The Drow claim that they have always lived in the sea caves that are found along the carved western shoreline. Some of the Drow claim they are decedents of the Qa’Dru, the ancient people. The Tengu-Kin have a legend, and a strong piece of evidence to support this legend in the form of a part of a ship of very unusual design that resides in one of their temples, that says that many thousands of years ago the waters were much higher along this coast then they are today, and that a ship, bearing a few hundred Drow, was cast upon the rocks near Shozhin and that a brave Tengu-Kin steadied the wreckage using the nets from his fishing boat, and thus saving the lives of the Drow. The gypsy-like Sylph have still another legend, this one more closer tom the truth than the Tengu-kin legend, but still it does not explain why the Drow came, or where they came from.

The Ghouls do not like to talk about the history of the Drow, but there is a strong suspicion that the two races are connected by a fate that is gruesome and difficult to explain.

No one living in Qthria today would know this story, but I will tell it to you today because I am not living today, not really, and I am not completely dead either. My host, the human who is known as Indria, has been made docile by too much wine, and this will allow me to speak through her and tell you my tale. My name is Efri-Anath-Ynis, and I was once a Drow warrior who served a temple priestess, deep in the catacombs of Winak Kariai*.

There was, that year, a great war that began when our Queen was overthrown by her sister. The Queen’s sister had enlisted the aid of a group of Orcs who were not happy with the reigning Empress under the Black Mountain, an Orc Empress of strength and wisdom. As the battles broke out all through the caves, orcs agains Drow, there were some who sought to escape the slaughter by falling back and down beyond the realms of the Eye Tyrants and the Mind Slayers. Below the caves where the bulk of the population of Drow lived were pocket communities, outpost, and guard stations, and as the Drow fled, deeper and deeper, their number grew. These Drow, who fled the civil unrest in the mountain, were led by a priestess by the name of Loress’Themthras and they numbered nearly three hundred. Eventually they came to a vast Deep Dwarven city beside an underground sea. In the beginning the Deep Dwarves seemed pleased to make a place for these refugees, but in time their purpose became clear and the Drow were made into slaves of the Deep Dwarves, and they were stripped of their titles and ranks, and all became equal under the suppression of the Deep Dwarves. This slavery lasted for many years.

The Deep Dwarves had developed and built great semi-submersible ships from strange Dark red trees that grew deep below the surface of the world. They called these ships, submarines and they used them to travel the underworld sea as merchants, and at times as ships of war. These submarines were propelled through the waters, with only a small part of the ship above the still black waters, by powerful metal gears and spinning propellers that were powered by the Drow slaves.

One day there was a great tremor in the bowels of the world and it seemed that the roof, high above the Dwarven city, would fall and crush the city and every living thing along the shores of the great sea. As the Deep Dwarves panicked and raced to their harbors they found that the Drow slaves were prepared for the event (some say that Drow seers had forseen the collapse, other’s say that it was due to a prayer offered up by the aged priestess, Loress’Themthras to a little known Diety of the waters). Deep Dwarven crews had been murdered in their sleep, while some of the Drow moved the families of the slave workers onto a fleet of the submarines. Eleven of the submarines, of various sizes had already left the harbor before the Deep Dwarves reached the docks. The Drow, who had no experience navigating the waters, fled from the collapse as fast as they could and it is not know what became of the Deep Dwarven city.

The submarines remained close to one another and followed the course of a great river that flowed quickly out of the sea. They came to a place where a turbulent spiral of waters was formed by the confluence of several of these great fivers, and as the Drow struggled to keep the submarines afloat, two of the ships were separated and were last seen being sucked down by the vortex of the waters. The other eleven ships, putting every hand to the gears, finally broke free of the vortex and found themselves being swept mover a series of waterfalls until without warning the submarines emerged on the waters a vast sea on the surface of the world. The Drow, sensitive to the light of day, were safe within the submarines, and those among the crews who were of hardier stock would take turns going above decks to fish, as the food supplies ran low.

For seventeen months the Drow fleet wandered aimlessly across the surface world sea. Many of the Drow perished, from famine and disease.A few of the Drow, who were not afraid to risk working through the night and possibly the morning sun, tried to craft sails from the collected robes of the Drow slaves. Though the sails worked, the Drow had little understanding of sailing and the nature of winds, but they at least began to move in one direction instead of flounder aimlessly. Finally, on the eighteenth day of the eighteenth month, the fleet found land at the southern most cliffs of Qthria.

And this is where the story is difficult for me to tell. There were no Sylphs in those lands, no Tengu-kin, and only a few villages of humans living in the deep fjords. The humans, who lived at the mouths of the rivers spilling into the sea, paid little attention to the few hundred Drow who began to live in the sea caves further out. The Drow, my people, were proud, and would not approach the humans for help in any way. The caves we chose to try and live in were harsh, and in the beginning things seemed as if we were not going to survive. But in time our numbers increased, but as they increased, some of our kind watched the humans too closely and learned some of their ways. Then there was, as there always is among our people, a division. Some of the Drow had come to embrace ideas of good, helping each other to survive, instead of plotting the demise of the weakest, and these Drow wanted to approach the humans for more help. But the other Drow, the ones who held onto the old ways would hear none of this, and a struggle broke out. Many of the good Drow were slaughtered, but a few escaped, and fled to the humans for sanctuary.

Now what I tell you here is the worst atrocity every committed by my people. The evil Drow who survived the struggle took to cannibalism to survive. It began with them eating the good Drow that they had killed, but soon it turned into a pattern of survival of the fittest, and it was awful. As the evil Drow numbers dwindled, the good Drow seemed to prosper, living among the humans.

Four years after the Drow found Qthria, a few starving, and desperate evil Drow staggered into one of the good Drow cave villages and begged for mercy. What they found they were not prepared for, for what had begun as prosperity, had been slowly turning into tragedy. Diseases of the Drow and Humans were mixed, and caused new plagues to arise. The Human population had been reduced to only a few dozen, and despite every effort of the best Drow healers it was clear that the last of the human population would not survive another year.

Our priestess, Loress’Themthras still lived, though she was by now an ancient woman, and she called out to the same water good that she had prayed to when asking for her people to be delivered. She asked for forgiveness for her Drow brothers and sisters who had not learned to see the value in good, and who had gone mad with the sin of cannibalism. She begged this deity to show the souls of her brothers and sisters the nobility of the human souls, and asked forgiveness for herself, and her kind for bringing the plague to the humans.

What happened next we can only theorize, for this deity never sent one of its avatars, nor ever spoke to our people, the souls of evil Drow still living, were taken from their bodies and bound to the dying humans, other souls, of past Drow among the ones who had escaped from the Deep Dwarven city, were released from the evil planes and also bound to the humans who still lived. With care, and teaching, the good Drow were able to show the new race, the Gha’Hoolee, which is Drow for “Those who are forsaken and forgiven”, how to survive without succumbing to their evil tendencies. As the human host recovered from the plague, and multiplied, more of the lost souls of the Drow were released from the neither planes, and bound to the human newborn.

In all, and this is not a great secreat, only it is something few other races are interested in knowing, there are only one thousand, eighty-eight, Gha’Hoolee living in Qthria, but, there are rumors that this number is inaccurate, and that as more humans are born, more souls of departed Drow are needed, and that it is possible that the souls of Drow who are not accepted into Lolth’s realm, and are released into the neiter realms with nothing to be anchored to, that these souls are found by the water deity, and bound to new human infants, and in this way, the Gha’Hoolee race will grow, and there are some Gha’Hoolee who have memories of other lands, and other lives, who remain quiet about their memories for fear of being called different.

The Good Drow and the Gha’Hoollee eventually outgrew the caves they shared, and the Gha’Hoollee, the Ghouls, found they were not affected by the light of day as much as the Drow were, and under peaceful terms the Ghouls moved away from the Drow villages, to form villages of their own higher up the fjords.

(next, How the Drow of Qtheria learned to tolerate, somewhat, the daylight, and the fall of the Sylph empire.)

*some say this means "Black Mountain" in Ancient Drow, but this is not certain, all that is known is that this is the name of the place where the Drow came from, and often it is spoken of as a mythical sort of "Holy Land".

[narlethdrider]

Terquem that is awesome! Hmmm, I'm 45... I can't believe I just used the word "awesome".

[Terquem]

narlethdrider2 wrote:

Terquem that is awesome! Hmmm, I'm 45... I can't believe I just used the word "awesome".

Thank you, you young people, love you

[Terquem]

I have had two comments about this setting, and they were both positive, and that means a lot to me, so thank you very much, to the original poster of this thread, to the individual who agreed to select a random assortment of races for me, and to those who found something about it that was interesting.

If it helps anyone, who might be interested in this setting, I was imagining the southwest coast of Norway, for the physical description of Qthria

[Oceanshieldwolf]

1d100 ⇒ 3 = Dwarf
1d100 ⇒ 85 = Darfellan
1d100 ⇒ 81 = Gearman/Warforged
1d100 ⇒ 91 = Aberration-based Wildcard
1d100 ⇒ 45 = Sprite

Looks like fun!

Ok. Talk about a challenge! I *hate* dwarves and sprites seem too small to take seriously... I'll think for a minute and get back to it...

[Oceanshieldwolf]

Okay. Here goes:

So with these races I'm thinking fey/aquatic/clockpunk setting. 

The fantastic world of Turne. Generally held to be the creation of the gods, Turne is an ancient amalgam of gigantic clockwork and gears wrapped in the natural elements of air, earth, water, metal and fire. Sadly, the Maintainers, a hallowed creator sect of demigods have succumbed to the Winding, a palsying sickness that leaves them lethargic and addled. Without their ministration, Turne's many layered lands (each land a giant disc/wheel lying adjacent to or above/below its neighbours) lurch and canter out of sequence or grind to a stop completely. A few Maintainers have fallen into a deeper madness, these Dark Tinkers spread malice through arcane, divine and mechanical means.

 The False Revolution, a heresy born out of decay spreads through the wheels, preaching a combination of apocalyptic prophecy and debased "natural" science. Their leaders, known as the Multiple Branch, venerate Dark Tinkers or other daemonic powers, sowing discord and revelling in the decay of Turne's "order".

Seas churn, mountains tumble and reform, forests fall and the skies ache with fracture. Ancient cities have fallen into ruin, abominations rise to the commands of the False Revolution, the undead are disrupted and dislodged by the chaos in the wheels. The Dark Tinkers hope to rebuild a mechanical world of grey and rust.

Most populous of the people of Turne are the Dwarves curious and energetic creators of both magic and technology. Strong and sturdy, they excel as Fighters, Rangers and Clerics - often as scouts, priests, navigators and pilots. The Dwarves are said to be the beloved of the Creators, and are said to be the only folk able to perform the Wheelrites and heal the Maintainers.

Darfellans hold thenselves somewhat aloof from the terrestrial races, but are nevertheless kind and communally minded. Wondrous Sorcerors, healers, and Psions, the Darfellans chafe at the "prison" they feel Turne has become. Angry at being bereft of order by the Winding and the rise of the Dark Tinkers, a not insignificant number have fallen sway to the desins of the False Revolution - known as the Thousand Wave these dark folk undermine their brethren and the efforts of any who seek to heal the Maintainers.

Unfairly targeted by the False Revolution as servants of the damned, the Gearmen of Turne struggle valiantly against the perils of the Dark Tinkers. Former servitors of the Maintainers, the Gearmen now exist in a state of boundless freedom, a strange new social landscape for these scions of order. Able Paladins, Samurai and noted Alchemists, Gearmen espouse the tenets of ancient order and lore. Interestingly, Gearmen come in all shapes and sizes, from small and snakelike to medium humanoid to large multi-limbed vehicular models - all the shapes and sizes once needed to perform the tasks of the Maintainers. Although gifted with mechanics, Gearmen fall prey to apathy and motes of Winding sickness. A small few also disdain order and become wild Barbarians or stealthy Ninjas.

The strange Pekesque arrived on Turne many thousands of years ago, yet remain as much of a mystery to the other races now as when they appeared. Taller than dwarves, but shorter than Darfellan, the Pekesque look like chitinous organic versions of the Gearmen - as if a mad Nature-god grew tired of organic anatomy and biotecture and instead took to biological interoperability and interchangeable physiognomy. Though not hive-minded, the Pekesque are very communal and share a facility for knowledge and war. Ferocious Fighters, Barbarians and Magi, the Pekesque also dabble in Abberant Druidry and organic Witchcraft. Hardshelled and biologically variegated the Pekesque are the everymen of Turne, feared, respected, but respecting all who earn merit.

Smallest of the common races, Sprites strive to protect the natural pockets of the Wheels. Though known as Rogues and Wizards, it is their connection to the Duskrealm of the fey that makes them famous as Dusk-Summoners and dreamweavers. Able to cloak themselves in duskstuff and step into the duskrealm, Sprites are known as tricksters and manipulators. Surprisingly, Sprites are honourable - their pacts with the Dusk make them respect words of honour and treatys.

[Knight Magenta]

35 - Nagaji
10 - Hobgoblin
86 - Asherati
87 - Illumian
36 - Samsaran

I've altered some of the lore (especially the Illumians since I don't think they are OGL and I could not find much about them.)

Daegos - The Grinding Wheel

Cosmology

Dagos is a massive clockwork built by a long vanished civilization. It takes the form of an enormous gear-ring that orbits the local red sun at an incline such that day occurs on the inner side of the gear that is farthest from the sun. There are other gears that connect to the central one, and the whole contraption serves some unknown and perhaps unknowable purpose.

Religion

Daegos is hostile to the Deities of the Great Beyond. Clerics that come to Daegos find the voices of their gods muted. Those who can still draw divine power find that any natives they meet, even peaceful people, bear them an irrational, unnatural, hatred. Daegos is also hostile to intelligent undead.

The people of Daegos worship certain aspects of the clockwork that sustains them. Each of these aspects has a name and personality. And the clockwork does grant spells and poses some intelligence and will.

Sometimes a strange ethereal rain will fall from the Eye. Some of the rain will coalesces into pools of blueish liquid called Essence. This material is used in may forms of magic and industry. Aside from use in magic, Essence may be consumed by living creatures. When Essence is eaten, it will heal even mortal wounds, quench thirst and hunger and restore a person's youth. Some scholars believe this is the remains of those souls that are not reincarnated.

People who have been resurrected report seeing a boundless light and feeling only cold.

Life cycle

The true power of the Daegos clockwork rests in a faintly glowing blue orb, called the Eye, that rests in the centre of the central gear-ring. The orb is about the size of our moon and gives off about as much light. Planeswalkers that come to Daegos have discovered that souls do not pass from here to the great beyond. Instead they are drawn into the Eye. Some time later, a new Samsaran will come into being on Daegos. Not all souls return, and what happens to the others is unknown. Incidentally, while it is possible to enter Daegos from the astral plane, it is impossible to leave. Thus, trips to Daegos are by definition one way. Samsarans make up about 30% of the humanoid population of Daegos.

Samsarans on Daegos give birth to either Asherati or hobgoblins. Unlike on Golarion, Samsarans on Daegos never want their cycles of reincarnation to end as many suspect all that awaits them is oblivion.

The Keepers

Daegos is a clockwork, and like any clockwork it must be maintained. The race of creatures that do this are called by the locals either Illumians or simply The Keepers. These pale creatures superficially resemble bald Samsarans. They do not have a spoken language communicate with each other by quickly altering the glowing runes that float about their heads. The Illumians maintain the mighty clockwork of Daegos, and it in turn grants them access to some measure of its power. Illumians are periodically infused with knowledge that they must repair or tune some facet of the great clockwork, but even they do not understand it. More than any other race, they wish to know what Daegos does. Illumians Live for a long time, but those that deny the call to maintain the clockwork quickly sicken and die. Illumians are not born, they come into being spontaneously.

Natives

Vast regions of Daegos are covered in desert. The asherati are a nomadic race of humanoids that travel the vast deserts in search of food, water and Essense. Asherati revere the builders of Daegos as gods and seek to understand the purpose of the world. Each nomadic clan is lead by a priest chosen via revelation by the previous priest.

The hobgoblins are another native species of humanoid. They build mighty fortress-cities in the fertile areas of Daegos. Unlike the asherati, hobgoblins breed quickly. Normally, the hobgoblin's population growth would quickly overwhelm the ability of whatever valley they live in to support them and would lead to their death. Hobgoblins, however, have learned to survive. Each year, a fortress-city that has not suffered a loss of population due to war organizes a huge Culling. The Culling is a ceremony where "extra" population in a city is killed.

The Naga

A long time ago, in a time lost to history, travellers crossed the void and came to Daegos. For whatever reason the world itself was hostile to these travellers and they were destroyed. However, the slave-race the travalers created, the nagaji remain. Scholars theorize that since the slave race was created on Daegos, the world sees them as part of itself. The Nagaji do not have a civilization of their own. Small bands of Nagaji join hobgoblin or asherati populations. They usually serve as a military force or make lives as mercenaries.

Sub-gears

The smaller gear-rings that are driven by the central ring are mostly uninhabited. Being far from the Eye seems to make them less hospitable to life. Though these rings contain ruins both of the builders and the Naga travellers. Those who know how to reach these places and who manage to brave the dangers that await them there may gain great wealth and power.

--------------------

This is pretty fun :)

[Freehold DM]

Freehold DM wrote:

Amazing thread.

Wife method got me
human
bariaur
satyr
nereid
kobold

weird. What can I do with this..??

Finally found this thread after days of searching.

You find this text sticking out of an odd box, written in a strangely regimented and uniform hand

From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]

Is this thing on? Hello? Oh yes, it's working. Sorry. The Talk2Type stuff always struck me as a bit ahead of it's time.

Ahead of it's time. Ironic.

If you are reading this, and I hope you are, I truly, truly do, then you know it's too late. Too late for any of us. To be honest, I have no idea why I'm writing this. Which makes no sense, because I'm actually talking it. Not that any of this makes sense. If you are reading this, then you also know how hard we tried to avert all of this. All of it. We had diverted assets and major in-house talent towards reconstruction, even while they paid us to keep the war machine going. While we all hoped that we would win, I mean we were fighting terrorists and the like, right? I don't think anyone knew what victory would look like. The world we once knew is gone, but you already knew that. What you probably are only beginning to suspect is that we aren't going to be able to survive in the world that's just emerging from its shell now. At least not as we are now. Most of us just aren't hardy enough to survive in such an environment, I mean my G-D, days are going to be so freaking long now that we'd need a nictating membrane just to block out the light even with our eyes closed..or is that the membrane for seeing through the nightsilt? I can't remember. Sorry ma, 7 years of grad school and I can't even remember the basics...

Anyway, back to what I was talktyping about before...the formas. We're going to have to use them. And by "use" I mean "inject". It's the only way. The ground is too hot for our feet as they are, even with those super awesome triple mylar reinforced steel toe hybrid Nike/Timberland whatchamacalits R&DGuyGreg was going on about. He tried to run the other day. Don't know how he got past security, but he didn't make it three steps before he was screaming in agony, hopping about like those beatbox guys did on cardboard boxes or in the subway- remember those?!- before he did a faceplant and kinda just melted into the..pavement? I don't know what to call it. It's too rocky and mountainous, so I'm thinking Formas DXO11-A and, yes, DVL066-6 are going to be the best choices for most of us living inland. Please don't take offense at DVL066-6. It was made by someone with a wicked sense of humor to be sure, but look, it's g-d alone knows whatever century, I'm jewish and don't believe in the devil anyway, and just like the previous tauric-like forma, its super-keratin hoof-like extremities will be able to handle just about anything the ground will change into, when or if it cools, without pain. YES, I know the strange hypnotic effect of their voices messed with the heads of a lot of research assistants, but that was because the individuals who volunteered were being dicks. Besides, it's not like the minitauric forma is completely helpless, they're faster(being quadrapeds), stronger(and cost a hell of a lot more than 6 million dollars), and the test subjects were all hardheaded, so maybe they won't fall for the pull-my-finger/show-me-your-t&&& bs of the DVL forma guys. Any spare keratin will be redistributed along the brows of BOTH formas anyway. Both formas eyes should be able to handle the unnaturally long nights and days without a problem, and I've made sure they will be able to breathe whatever passes for air. I'm thinking short-centaur ones will do better at higher elevations than the faun-like one, so caveat emperor, or whatever.

For those of us who were living on the coast, well, you're probably already dead, but for those who may have held their breath for a very, very long time, I'm including the plans for forma UND31-9. Yes, the "mermaid" one. This forma will be able to breathe in all aquatic enviornments(yes, even the weird humid soup/gaquid that now exists above our seas and lakes and marshes), even **underwater** to an unknown depth(caveat emptor!), and will continuously generate moisture to preserve their bodies or whatever from bad juju when in more arid enviorments. Note: Please keep the skin that sloughs off within 48 hours of formamorphesis safe. Not that I will need to tell you this, but test subjects became unusually attached to it, and refused to let researchers anywhere NEAR it, pleading with the security guys who eventually wrested them from it for it back, often getting violent or...ah...is submissive the right word? To anyone who held it for overlong. It should be noted that this forma works best with women, but men can use it too. No, it doesn't turn you into a woman, but you will probably lose body hair and look all...I dunno, emo or something. You'll retain your sexuality, so don't give me any phobic bs. Not that it matters, because I'm not going to be here much longer anyways.

No. I'm not killing myself. I have too much...I dunno. Arrogance? Piety? For something so stupid. The last forma I'm including is a classic- ISV11-R. Why? Because they're what I've injected myself with. Hell, it's what I've injected most of the willing staff here with. It's why I'm using talk to type, because I can't quite reach the keyboard at my old workstation, so I grabbed a palmtop and a headset. ISV11-R is..well..special. Yes, it's perhaps the most hideous of the formas, but it is small, quick, can survive in just about any enviornment(It's how I was able to give R&DGuyGreg a legit funeral) AND as arrogant as this sounds, it's made me...smarter. I can perceive things differently now, I understand formulae I couldn't understand before, and I do what I can to write them down before I forget them. That's the only downside to this forma(aside from it's...lacking aesthetic attributes), is that I forget what I uncover almost as fast as I figure it out. I try to write things down, but my hands aren't really scaled to much other than the palmtop and maybe a few of the things we use to create 3d representations of chemical formations. I always feel like I'm on the cusp of something. Then again, so does almost everyone in what's left of my workgroup. Sometimes it feels like we're working at cross purposes- hell sometimes we fight and bicker worse than we ever did when we walked fully upright, but when we put our heads together, we really do come up with something great. I'm hoping we can come up with more formas. Maybe something that can help people survive this madness as they used to be without having to become something else. I don't know how long it's going to take, but as soon as I find something, you'll be the first to know. If there is even anyone left to send this to. I pray to g-d there is.

Anyway, I'm hitting send now. All necessary files are attached. Carpe Noctem, as ever.

[Bearded Ben]

1d100 ⇒ 9 Goblin
1d100 ⇒ 30 Gillmen
1d100 ⇒ 74 Serpentfolk
1d100 ⇒ 38 Grippli
1d100 ⇒ 68 Tanuki

[Freehold DM]

1d100 ⇒ 31- Duergar
1d100 ⇒ 58- Gnoll
1d100 ⇒ 87-Illumian (human-like beings infused with sorcery with glowing sigils floating around their heads)
1d100 ⇒ 89- Goliath (tall, strong humanoids with stony appearances and tough hides)
1d100 ⇒ 4- Half-Orc

Hmm...

[Bluescale]

22 Catfolk
41 Dryad
56 Minotaur
59 Adlet
76 Shae

Okay, let's see what I can come up with.

Mharis

Spoiler:

Mharis, the largest moon of the giant terrestrial planet Hralo, is a world of short summers and long winters. Because of its orbit around a planet, the world spends 2/3rds to the year in darkness. It was this darkness that first led the ancestors of the Shae to colonize the both Mharis and the dark side of Hralo (Hralo having a rotation period equal to the length of its year). Over the millenia, the colonists experience several major disasters, resulting in the loss of most of the technology and the isolation of the Hralo colony.

As the Shae colonies fell to barbarism, the native sapients began to flourish. The industrious minotaurs looked upon the ruins of the Shae civilization and tried to surpass it, creating giant labyrinthine cities of stone. Once driven from the cities, the curious catfolk began returning from the outskirts of civilization, quickly becoming the most common race found in civilized lands. Though more standoffish, the adlets of the southern polar regions have begun to expand their territory as well. Finally, dryads are migrating from their ancient forest reservations, seeking to spread their forests across the former Shae lands.

What none but a few mad prophets on Mharis know is that the colony on Hralo still survives. In the harsher conditions, the colonist have diverged from the original stock, become much more powerful, and are looking for a new land to conquer. And these beings, calling themselves the Nihiloi, are looking up in their sky at Mharis...

The races of Mharis adventure many reasons. The catfolk tend to do it simply for the adventure. Shae often do it to loot the cities of their ancestors to improve their own stature back at home. Dryads seek to spread the plants of their native land (thus increasing the size of their own territory; this sometimes leads to wars between native dryads and invasive dryads). Minotaurs seek to learn the secrets of the ancient architects to one day prove their superiority by building a city that surpasses anything in the old world. And as for the adlets, they adventure at the behest of their mysterious, frozen gods, for reasons they will never tell to an outsider.