The CBB

All my current con-people are human - including the Elves. This has two reasons: First, the Elvenpath is a historical fantasy setting in which the Elves exist in a version of the real world, and we know pretty much for sure that there never were any kind of immortal, magical, pointy-eared humanoids anywhere on this planet. Second, and more importantly, the "purpose" of this subcreation is to narrate my thoughts and feelings about the world and the human condition, and this obviously requires the fictional people to be human - no more, no less.

There are two main conpeople in my conworld: the Aezin and the Elan, both of which are "human" and share the same ancestors. In my conworld, all intelligent species were not created by gods/spirits/magic, they are products of evolution and biological diversity with only one exception: the Arunae (explained below).

Anyway, the Aezin and the Elan are descendants of the Ae'n, an ancient people who is said to have lived somewhere around the center of the Elandaer, the Continent of the Elan. At some time in the distant past, the Ae'n split in three main groups that led to what are known today as the Aezin, the Elan and the Arunae, the latter having much small numbers than the others.

-The Aezin are divided in three main groups: Ark-Empire, Mu and Free people. They each have different forms of government, culture, religions and languages, but share common ancestries and customs. Aezin comes in all kinds of ethnics and races: white, black, "brown" and even mongoloid. They are the most varied people in the world, but they all share a common pride and sense of being a unique big community of people. This has not stopped them to hate and make war to each other, though.
-The Elan are also divided in three groups: Naielan, Darelan and Mirelan. They are very different from one another and are almost completely distinct ethnic groups. However, they have a strong sense of unity and community, they consider their differences to be minimal, the "Elan" identity is stronger than the individual distinctions. They have never fought each other in war, although some conflicts have arised through the centuries. Of course, nothing the Naielan could not settle with their crafty teatrises, contracts, agreements, etc.
-The Arunae are a minority and the third group that split from the Ae'n. They are very different from the Aezin and the Elan in that they were influenced and warped by the Dark Mother itself, the Great Darkness Spirit that commands over Fear, Hate, Rage and all other negative feelings. The Arunae can make use of the Dark Energy, a dangerous type of magic that can kill even its user if not used properly. They feed on the energy of others and people have called them "vampires". However, they are not inmortal nor the sun kills them. Fire, beheading and a stake to the heart kills them... but as it would kill any normal man or woman. The Arunae are special for their feeding needs and magic abilities, but this have cursed them with a very low birthrate and very few numbers.

There are other sapient species in the world:
-The Onyàryd, the dragon people. They are basically enormous dragonoids. They are strictly divided in three tribes: Hunters, Warriors and Shamans. They live in what is known as the "Forbidden Continent", a distant land of great mountain ranges, gigantic trees, big animals and of course, the Onyàryd.
-The Nyryd, the Lizard people. This is your typical, classical humanod lizards. They live in tribes and communes on the extensive sabana and the deep jungles.
-The Za'en, a fabled subaquatic sapient species. The Mirelan insist on the existance of the Za'en, but no one has being able to prove it.
-Hundreds of thousands of years ago, before any other sapient species existed, there were Dragons. They are roughly the equivalent of dinosaurs in my conworld.

I have a few conworlds and only one of them features non-human sapients at all.

The conworld that is associated with griuskant has many different species alongside humans. Amongst the animals, plants and ghosts/spirits, there are also other sentient beings such as machines, items/things and even amorphous creatures.

In fact, humans are a subset of the humanoid species, which also includes angels and demons etc, but they are probably not in the same sense as we know it.

Similar to Tolkien's Arda, my conworld goes through a stage of non-human dominance and a stage of human dominance. During the stage of human dominance, international words still largely come from the ancient lingua franca of the non-human first species. I haven't set any stories in the world and am not sure if I ever will or if this is just for fun, so I can't answer as to which is the "main conpeople." There are also other species with their own languages who could very well end up being the focus of stories.

My main con-world consists mostly of lizard folk (Salthans)(, or rather, the lizard folk are the ones I focus on mainly. There are humans too, and jungle-cat people, though I havn't really fleshed out their cultures a lot.

They have a vaguely human-like shape, I guess with green scaley skin, and a tail that reaches to the grouund. Males have a row of spikes running front to back of their head.

In terms of intelligence, they have the same range of intelligence as humans.

Mine are not human, they are birds, reptilians, amphibians, gill people, cats, dogs, other mammals, humanoid aliens, and insectoids.

They are slightly more intelligent than humans.

There are humans on an alternate history earth. English is totally different.

it depends. Some are humans while others are not.

I forgot to mention that some species of penguins on planet Teppala can fly, but are less efficient swimmers than the flightless penguins. Yet they recognize each other's shared traits and live together as allies against their cruel natural environment, just like penguins on Earth whose habitats overlap.

cybrxkhan wrote: ↑27 Jan 2013 20:54

Micamo wrote:You know, one thing that's always bothered me: Why build fantasy worlds with "elves" and "dwarves" that have zero properties in common with the prototypical elves and dwarves? Why not just give them an original name?

In my opinion it's because "elves" and "dwarves" are already established archetypical humanoids, even outside the fantasy context, so it's easier for an audience to get it rather than the "Xoijafoaijsfoisjfians" or something.

I agree, I've done this as well. My planet's dwarves are mythological .... i.e. fictional within the fiction of my writing ... And therefore have traits that violate the laws of nature, such as being mostly males yet finding no difficulty in reproduction. I don't have a race I call elves, but I do have fairies and mermaids, whose sex ratio is ~80-90% female and are often believed to be immortal. Here again I am using popular culture terms for familiarity's sake .... the fairies don't have wings, and the mermaids don't have tails. However the fairies, being mythological, have magical powers, and can fly from place to place despite their large body size, and without needing wings. Mermaids are usually depicted as very large female humans with no special powers but some cultures believe they are a subset of the fairies and can control the tide and ocean weather.

I also use the term "angels" for a category of being that includes the fairies , but also includes many other beings that are very different from the fairies. This may not correspond to any single word in my conlangs however, as their shared characteristics are few. Even the non-fairies tend to be primarily female, however.

Perhaps dwarves and fairies are the same species, with an extreme sexual dimorphism - the dwarves are the males and the fairies the females. (I think this idea is not new. I can't give a reference, but I am pretty sure that I have seen it in some book about European folklore.)

I have at least two...one human one non-human...recently I do the human one more...

In one, the main ones are human, but there are also “space centipedes” and AIs.

—————

In another, the main one (from the story’s point of view) are dwarves. But there are also elves; and both dwarves and elves are minorities. The majority is humans.
Dwarves dominate mountainous, cavernous, and rocky or stony environs.
Elves dominate fully or densely forested or wooded areas.
Humans dominate river deltas; and, to a lesser extent, river valleys, coasts (both saltwater and freshwater), plains, and grasslands.
(Humans’ favourite places will be forest-edges, until civilisation starts. )
Arid places are technically up for grabs, but effectively human-dominated; they may be only passing through, but the dwarves and elves don’t want even that much to do with the deserts —— until petroleum becomes valuable and reserves of it are discovered under deserts. Then it’ll turn out dwarves are best at drilling for it.

Non-human conpeople will come into play when I'll get to develop the Trellis, a space opera universe that will be set several centuries after the Global Spring, which I am already collecting ideas for. The Trellis will feature various non-humanoid alien intelligent life forms.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑06 Sep 2018 22:58 Perhaps dwarves and fairies are the same species, with an extreme sexual dimorphism - the dwarves are the males and the fairies the females. (I think this idea is not new. I can't give a reference, but I am pretty sure that I have seen it in some book about European folklore.)

Thanks for the idea. There's different layers of reality here ... those who believe in the two groups might certainly think they could interbreed as well, with the children retaining the sex-specific phenotypes of their parents ... but there will be many who believe in only the dwarves, since they are based on a fantastic exaggeration of a real people, the Andanese ... and the Andanese who recognize these stories admit that the myths are about them rather than believing in dwarves of their own. Whereas by contrast the fairies are part of folklore and equidistant to all humans.

fairies are far, far, larger t han all the dwarves ... unlike the fairies of earth mythology. a dwarf/fairy couple would be quite a sight as the male would be less than the hip height of the female.

i know i posted one before, but my newest conworld has humans in it (this is the darkest time like indeed). more specifically, humans who can ride on dragons. the twist here is that they don't have those special bonds you see in other dragon rider media. really, the dragon is more like a smart horse then some bond creature.

Essu Beti is a mix of roughly 30% human and 70% elven. Naturally, I’ve followed my usual trend of making unusual variants of said classic fantasy species by making Betian elves marsupial hypercarnivores with prehensile tails. But they can still be called elves because they’re humanoids with pointy ears.

Firebird766 wrote: ↑20 Dec 2018 07:19 Essu Beti is a mix of roughly 30% human and 70% elven. Naturally, I’ve followed my usual trend of making unusual variants of said classic fantasy species by making Betian elves marsupial hypercarnivores with prehensile tails. But they can still be called elves because they’re humanoids with pointy ears.

Elven hypercarnivores!


How are you defining “hypercarnivore” in this use?

Modern-day H. sapiens sapiens tend toward about 15% meat and 85% other stuff.
But H. sapiens neandertalensis supposedly ate about 85% meat and 15% other stuff!
Would that make R.L. Neanderthals hypercarnivorous?

Their diet needs to be 70% or more meat. They’re prone to taurine deficiency otherwise. They also, incidentally, have a rather broad variety of sensitivities and restrictions. Onions, garlic, chocolate, and grapes among other things are straight-up toxic, and they’re much more sensitive to alcohol and caffeine than humans are.

They also can’t get scurvy, because they can synthesize their own vitamin c. Which is one of their very few benefits, diet-wise. Seafaring nations quickly found that elves tend to make excellent sailors for this reason.

My conpeople (Kisians) are essentially humanoid catfolk in terms of species. They've got prehensile tails, their fur color and thickness changes depending on season; they're also rather tall, with a range of heights from about 7'2" to 8'5".

Random8k wrote: ↑24 Dec 2018 16:57 My conpeople (Kisians) are essentially humanoid catfolk in terms of species. They've got prehensile tails, their fur color and thickness changes depending on season; they're also rather tall, with a range of heights from about 7'2" to 8'5".

Wow! Big Cats indeed!