What ancestries are biologically compatible?

[Virellius]

Obviously humans and A LOT of things are, but I've always wondered why, for example, a human can breed with a SIREN but not a dwarf? A human can have offspring with a literal fiend, or in theory even a dragon, but not a halfling?

Is there any kind of in-world explanation or is it just a 'maybe there are some but there are so few they don't have stats'?

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

The human + dragon or fiend works better than human + halfling because of the nature of fiends and dragons, not humans--any humanoid people can produce offspring with those examples (and many non-humanoid ones, too).

The only viable hybrid humanoid species I'm aware of are human/elf, human/Orc, and mongrelfolk/everything. Oh I suppose hag/everything counts too since hags are actually just humanoids. Perhaps could count human/ult-kini but the latter are actually an offshoot of humans so may not qualify, and the offspring are not actually hybrids either...

That's all I got on one break

[Deadmanwalking]

Per the setting, extraplanar creatures and dragons can breed with anything (so Tielfing Elves and Half-Dragon Boggards and so on). As is reflected in extraplanar descent being a Versatile Heritage in PF2 and dragon-related stuff not being an Ancestry either. The same is probably true of the Fey.

Humans can breed with Elves, and with Orcs, and that's pretty much it aside from magical creatures capable of breeding with anyone. The only real bit of weirdness is Elves and Orcs not being able to interbreed.

[Virellius]

See that's where my question springs: what is it about those groups that make them unviable? Surely nothing prohibits ATTEMPTS at reproducing, right? I'm pretty sure canon has some halfling x human pairings and the like. I've just always wondered WHY aside from legacy connections to 3e and such. Guess that's probably just it.

Maybe that's why Lamashtu is the way she is. :I

[Deadmanwalking]

I mean, different species being able to interbreed and produce viable offspring is far from the norm. And the origins of the various species of sapient creature on Golarion are pretty disparate. It's frankly a lot weirder that humans and elves can have kids than that humans and dwarves can't.

[Virellius]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I mean, different species being able to interbreed and produce viable offspring is far from the norm. And the origins of the various species of sapient creature on Golarion are pretty disparate. It's frankly a lot weirder that humans and elves can have kids than that humans and dwarves can't.

Right, I agree. I just had a player asking why there weren't any half dwarves or the like and I just... Had no idea lol.

[PossibleCabbage]

I feel like Paizo has never had people on staff who had the same sort of prurient interest in this sort of thing (not like the respected competition), so most questions of this nature get handwaved away via "the world has magic, lots of things are possible" rather than explored.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

It's frankly a lot weirder that humans and elves can have kids than that humans and dwarves can't.

I've personally always explored this sort of thing how Dwarves are culturally disinclined towards that sort of thing (considering how inward-focused it is) and how Dwarves have a hard time having children with each other let alone other species.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

Elves and humans being compatible yet from different planets does make them a very strange pair, but also humans are shown to be native (or 'native') to at least three different planets in the universe, so similar forms of life rising up on different planets may be more likely than it seems.

[thejeff]

It's not like life in this setting pays much attention to the biological laws we know.

Handwaving it as magic/will of the gods is probably better than trying to explore it in too much detail and realize in the end it's just an incoherent mess. :)

Rule of Cool.

[Gamerskum]

The other Half section says there can be half dwarfs, half halflings and more.

[Virellius]

Gamerskum wrote:

The other Half section says there can be half dwarfs, half halflings and more.

I don't believe that's setting canon, though.

[PossibleCabbage]

Also, the standard resolution for "my parents are a half-orc and a half-elf, so what am I?" is "pick the heritage that you think best reflects the character you want to play".

So it's possible that there are no half-dwarves, or whatever because they just come out as somewhat short stocky humans or slightly taller and more svelte dwarves.

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Also, the standard resolution for "my parents are a half-orc and a half-elf, so what am I?" is "pick the heritage that you think best reflects the character you want to play".

And that works well if you consider ancestry in the PF sense as a simple Mendelian trait, such when a half-orc breeds with a half-elf one quarter of the children are human (getting human ancestry from both parents), one-quarter half-elf (human ancestry from the half-orc parent + elf ancestry from the half-elf parent)), one-quarter half-orc (human ancestry from the half-elf parent plus orc ancestry from the half-orc parent, and one quarter would get elf from the half-elf parent and orc from the half-orc parent, which is either non-viable or mongrelman.

(I'm sure I've seen "every combination of humanoid parentage not explicitly specified is either non-viable or a mongrelman" in lore somewhere but I cannot recall whether it is the case in PF or whether that was a 3.0/3.5 thing; it's certainly strongly implicit in the Savage Tide AP iirc.)

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

Virellius wrote:

I'm pretty sure canon has some halfling x human pairings and the like.

ISTR it being said that that particular pairing was specifically avoided, as it might easily look creepy in a quasi-pedophilic direction.

Nobody knowing where the heck halflings come from is traditional all the way back to Tolkien (even the Ents are baffled by that one); I remember a suggestion ages ago, I have no idea what context, that when a human pairing had twins one of them would (sometimes) be a halfling, which, while I don't like it as an actual origin for them, is something I am very fond of using as an in-setting superstition.

[thejeff]

In a world with that many sentient species, I'm not sure that any particular one needs a clear origin. Halflings are just around. Like most of the others. If there's some cool origin (elves are aliens, Orcs and Dwarves are from the depths, gnomes are fey, etc) that's cool, but if not, it's no big deal.

Most of those origins only push it back one step anyway. Where they came from, not how they came to be. Halflings originated on the surface, like Orcs originated in the Darklands.

[zimmerwald1915]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

the respected competition

That wouldn't be the Wonderfully Over the Top Competition, would it?

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

Elves and humans being compatible yet from different planets does make them a very strange pair, but also humans are shown to be native (or 'native') to at least three different planets in the universe, so similar forms of life rising up on different planets may be more likely than it seems.

Remember, Golarion humans are to some extent an engineered species, and were so engineered at a high point of elven presence on Golarion. It may be that compatibility with elves was a trait the algollthus selected.

Nobody knew about orcs at the time, though, so that's probably just a happy accident.

[ikarinokami]

it could be that when a human and dwarf mate you only get either a human or dwarf

orcs and elves should be able to create half offspring

I could also envision a god like torag making it so dwarves can't interbreed.

[Virellius]

Not sure how I feel about the implications that human and halfling are quasi-pedophillic. Seems like real world little people may have a problem with that assumption.

Also the lack of a halfling home nation or land has always seemed strange to me in a 'this could be a cool adventure hook' sort of way. Like... DID they just spontaneously appear alongside similar looking humans?
Are they Weird Gnomes? Did they originate during the height of Azlant or before? Why do they have such a connection to Norgorber?

These are the things I want to know, eventually.

[Deadmanwalking]

Virellius wrote:

Not sure how I feel about the implications that human and halfling are quasi-pedophillic. Seems like real world little people may have a problem with that assumption.

I agree that this is weird, and don't remember any statements to this effect from Paizo, though I guess I could've missed it.

There's also at least one prominent canonical human/gnome marriage, so I'm a little skeptical of this as anything resembling official policy.

[The Raven Black]

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

the respected competition

That wouldn't be the Wonderfully Over the Top Competition, would it?

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

Elves and humans being compatible yet from different planets does make them a very strange pair, but also humans are shown to be native (or 'native') to at least three different planets in the universe, so similar forms of life rising up on different planets may be more likely than it seems.

Remember, Golarion humans are to some extent an engineered species, and were so engineered at a high point of elven presence on Golarion. It may be that compatibility with elves was a trait the algollthus selected.

other
Nobody knew about orcs at the time, though, so that's probably just a happy accident.

My theory : humans have been introduced to Golarion (and other planets) and have been specifically engineered to interbreed with ancestries identified as superior such as Elves of Castrovel and Orcs of Golarion.

I am left wondering what is the common point between Golarion, Earth and Androffa. Maybe the heavy presence of Old Ones and other deities such as Rovagug for Golarion much like Cthulhu for Earth.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

I don't know about being designed for compatibility necessarily (at least not specifically for elves or orcs), but indeed it has been implied elsewhere on these boards that humans have been seeded on all three of Golarion, Earth, and Androffa. In particular, the answer behind why these three seemingly unrelated planets all have human inhabitants is said to take a note from the pages of At the Mountains of Mandness, albeit not necessarily in the same way.

At the Mountains of Madness:

For those unaware, during the plot of AtMoM, the protagonists on a research expedition to Antarctica discover an ancient seemingly abandoned alien city and learn that humans (and all other life on earth) were created by these Elder Things in earth's prehistory.

It's certainly possible the alghollthu (who have 'always ruled the seas' of the Material Plane) are responsible for this seeding, as they are known to have the ability to travel between planets, but as far as my understanding of the lore goes, they simply chose the Azlanti humans to be subjects of their human civilization project (no mention of whether non-Azlanti humans living around the world at the time of the empire had any direct alghollthu influence), possibly engineering the Azlanti to better suit their purposes.

As for the common point between the three planets aside from bearing human inhabitants, the Windsong Testament story about the end of the Age of Creation, where the other gods finally sealed Rovagug inside Golarion describes him 'approaching' all three planets as if they were some how linked. The three, though said to lie in galaxies far from one another, are described as sister planets when Calistria leads Rovagugs attention away and toward the 'least of the three' i.e. Golarion. It's possible this implies some hidden connection between different planets of far away galaxies, similar to how many planets within a system are linked by portals, or perhaps that by whatever mysterious ways gods use to get about the Material Plane, the three planets are actually cosmically near to one another, if unimaginably distance in the usual dimensional reckoning.

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

thejeff wrote:

In a world with that many sentient species, I'm not sure that any particular one needs a clear origin. Halflings are just around. Like most of the others. If there's some cool origin (elves are aliens, Orcs and Dwarves are from the depths, gnomes are fey, etc) that's cool, but if not, it's no big deal.

For me personally, as mostly a GM rather than a player, it is a verisimilitude issue. Yes there are magic and gods and so forth, but Golarion in many ways makes things fit together into an impressively solid background at appropriate scales, and unless most of them have some reasonably clear origin and fit into the world, it will break my ability to believe in it enough to run it; the same is true for many of my players. Nothing causes a game to crash for us faster than a setting element feeling pasted on rather than integral. The obscure origin of halflings gets a pass there because of the literary tradition, and because it is an exception.

Not that things like my headcanon about dragons leaning heavily on the incidental mention (in the description of the Sceptre of Ages, I have forgotten which book that is in) of them as contemporaries with the dinosaurs is necessarily all or even much going to be directly in a game I run, but it certainly informs my take on their psychology in ways that would be less grounded without that datum.

[Jokey the Unfunny Comedian]

All of them, if you're a skilled enough fleshwarper.

[David knott 242]

I do find it interesting that PF1 had a feat called "Racial Heritage" that would enable you to create a human character with (for example) dwarf or halfling ancestry even though direct offspring of humans with these ancestries were supposedly disallowed by the lore.

I never did buy the idea that the intervention of native outsiders in the family tree was the only way to get the supposedly incompatible ancestries to mix.

[TwilightKnight]

As a theoretical thought exercise, this is interesting, but if you are looking for a hard n fast rule to explain it with regards to Golarion, the answer is largely "cause Mom/Dad said so."

[Tacticslion]

As there hasn’t been a canon answer here, as another strictly non-canon/personal-thought-exercise element, I have previously suggested that both dwarves and humans came from lashunta in different ways.

The lashunta being divided into squat/hairy males and lithe/taller females looks an awful lot like the dwarf/human dichotomy writ large across a race.

An isolated population (either intentional or accidental split) could have led to transgender devices (girdles of opposite gender or elixirs of sex shifting) leading to a roughly halved genetic pool, but also allowing for the viable proliferation of a species if enough other genetic diversity also existed (it also neatly explains human tendency toward shorter lifespans and worse eyesight - we just didn’t keep those particular genetics.

Heck, if transition magics weren’t available, gifts from the dwarf gods (either directly, through divine visions, or through normal spells) to their people would certainly lend itself to the idea that dwarves were “created” by their gods in a sense.

I go into an over-long aside about how Shardra backs up my silly home-brew idea:

It also helps explain why the main transgender iconic, Shardra is a dwarf (who had invested herself in ancient secrets and books) and her parents are so happy about it: very ancient lore dating far back respects that transition, even if the specifics have long been forgotten.
Note that her spirit animal is a tuatara - a creature of ancient heritage before lizards/reptiles split and one that contains a third eye (a motif often associated with psionic/psychic/mental powers).

Quote:

And Kolo taught her how to speak to spirits and borrow their favor to mend her broken bones, and of dwarven faith from long before they mingled their worship with the deities of the surface world. It taught her how to glean deeper secrets from the artifacts of the dead, and how to greet the Ladies of Crag and Ember—powerful elementals who laid claim to the hot springs and the surrounding tunnels. Most precious of all, Kolo taught her of the rivethun—dwarves who drew great power by embracing the disjunction between their bodies and souls—and she learned to brew the alchemical tinctures her past sisters used to quiet the rages of adolescence and bring their minds and bodies into harmony.

This is interesting, because it could indicate that the dwarven gods were originally spirits akin to elementals, but even earlier may have had a connection to the stars and sky. Almost like they once knew the sky... say before being sealed deep below in the earth.

As Castrovel is home to both elves and lashunta, this would lean more closely toward a reason human/elf pairing functions if they arise from a common distant ancestry (and a dwarf/elf pairing may not function simply due to whatever missing genome exists - much like ligers and tigons are fundamentally different creatures with different traits due to their parentage).

This does not exactly explain orcs, but it could imply that there is more to the orcish origin than we yet understand, which could be pretty cool.
(The fact that they were mostly bestial and appeared in the Darklands - where the dwarves were - with adjacent neighbors we know are prone to making “mindless” creatures out of handy genetic material could also lend credence to the concept that they originate from similar origins, perhaps taken from dwarven material and “pushing” it to extremes - unique orc responses to Darklands stuff indicates they were developed in the area, but the fact that it’s distinctly different suggests it is “other” to the actual Darklands stuff, but it’s compatibility suggests it was developed within it - mutually compatible with the same magical sources - like compatible technological heritages, but with magic.)

That said, with the human/anything backgroundfeat from 1e, we know human/dwarves can exist. It then becomes a question of why don’t they, and I think that’s easily answered from looking at the real world: where people of different backgrounds mingle enough, you get more people with mixed backgrounds, and where they are more insular (either culturally or physically isolated), you get them with fewer.

Anyway. Long ramble for a minor explanation.
(Also, Halfling are totally descendants of half-gnomes (or other fey species, like leprechauns or pixies or whatever)/half-humans. Fey traits mostly recessive/lost/represented by luck, smaller size than gnomes comes from retention of two size of limiters ala tigons. Or, you know, rather, they’re just another human species or whatever, along with most humanoids, gosh. It’s like you people don’t need specific origins or something. Sigh.)

EDIT:

Also, I'd forgotten to mention, that, you know, I'm literally descended from IRL dwarves, so.

(I just happened to roll a 5 on my Con. [i]That's still a 7, baby~! YEAH~!)

[the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh]

I actually read that pretty much the other way around; that lashunta gender dichotomy as originally manifest in PF1.0 was interesting to think of as "females have become super-attractive to humans, males have become super-attractive to dwarves".

RL biology is full of examples of this across species, such as flowers that mimic super-attractive insects in order that other insects will be drawn to them and carry the flower's pollen from one to another. I don't believe in there being time enough for lashunta to evolve in that direction without magical help/interference, but magical help/interference is not impossible in context.

[Razcar]

TwilightKnight wrote:

As a theoretical thought exercise, this is interesting, but if you are looking for a hard n fast rule to explain it with regards to Golarion, the answer is largely "cause Mom/Dad said so."

"cause Arneson/Gygax said so."...FTFY