Everyl
2013-10-02, 01:58 AM
Intro and Disclaimers
This setting is one that I've been using on and off for nearly 15 years now. It has endured 2e, 3e, and non-d20 homebrew rules, and has already been extensively rewritten once. I've recently had a rekindling of my interest in D&D, and I'm working on a second extensive rewrite, the products of which I will post in this thread as I can.
This is still very much a work-in-progress. Details are highly subject to change, and there are definitely gaps, most notably where I've tried to eliminate material I cribbed from other campaign settings but haven't figured out a suitable replacement yet. Also, I want a better title than "Five Worlds," because it sounds kind of generic to me now and the details of the cosmology aren't all well-known in setting.
I'm currently developing under the assumption that I will use D&D 3.5 rules. Due to lack of availability of books, I'm limiting myself to SRD material as much as I can.
I am posting more information on my Obsidian Portal (http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-five-worlds/wikis/main-page) account. Check it out for wiki-style detail!
In the beginning, there was the Creator. The Creator was a primordial, God-like entity; not even the Gods understand its origins, for it created them, and did not explain itself. The Creator made one World and fifteen Gods, and began to teach them the secrets of creation. It taught the Gods to make plants and animals, and ordered them to populate the World with them. The Creator then retired to a place beyond the Gods' knowledge, leaving the Gods to work for unknown eons before returning to inspect their work. It was pleased with the results. It then taught the Gods how to create lesser divine beings, such as angels, devils, and elementals, and once again retired, returning to find that the Gods had created legions of followers to help tend and shape the World. Once again, it was pleased.
The Creator then said that it would teach the Gods how to create animals who carry a spark of the divine with the potential for growth. After death, the souls of these creatures would pass into the care of the Gods who were responsible for them, and the divine sparks would slowly empower the Gods over time. To demonstrate, it created the first dragons. These creatures were wise and powerful, but still far less than the Gods. This act of creation tired the Creator, and it retired to rest, promising to teach the secret of creating similar creatures upon its return.
The Gods were fascinated by the dragons. At first, they carefully tended to their mortal followers, and treated them with respect. Over the ages, however, feuds began to grow among the Gods. They bickered over who had the rights to which dragons' souls, and eventually fell to outright warfare, god and dragon alike. The Gods tried to emulate the act of creation that made the dragons, but their creations were imperfect monstrous abominations, incapable of true growth, but useful in the dragon-on-dragon war that the Gods encouraged in their followers. Millions of dragons died, and the Gods greedily collected their souls and used their power to make more monsters.
Then the Creator returned. This time, it was furious.
In a fit of rage, it shattered the World, destroying most of the Gods' monstrous creations as well as its own dragons. It turned its wrath to the Gods, threatening to destroy them for their corruption of its pristine creations. The Gods begged for forgiveness, and the Creator relented when it saw that not all of the Gods had participated in the war - some few had tried to create monsters that harmonized with the creatures of the World, and still others had encouraged their dragon followers to avoid the conflict. Even in the face of the Creator's rage, these Gods were still protecting a select few dragons and peaceful monstrous creations on the larger fragments of the World.
The Creator agreed to teach the Gods how to create mortals, though it did not share the greater secrets that went into the making of dragons. To those Gods whose benevolence calmed his rage, he gave additional secrets, so they could have more freedom in creating their mortals. Then, he took the five largest pieces of the World, and reshaped each into a new world of its own. Three Gods were assigned to each World, ordered to rebuild the ecosystems, populate the Worlds with mortals, and, above all else, never interfere with any other World than the one they were assigned.
Seeming even more exhausted than it did after creating the dragons, the Creator then retired once more. It has not been seen or heard of since by mortal or God.
The Gods agreed that each would create one mortal race, with some help from the other Gods assigned to their world.
In the ages since the worlds were sundered, the Gods have violated the orders against interference and warfare many times. When the conflicts among the Gods reach a critical threshold, they spill over to the five worlds, involving mortals and often the creation of new monsters. This has happened six times, known as the Godswars, and each conflict led to the death of at least one God. However, while a God can die, the power they possess persists, and can be cannibalized by other Gods, or even by mortals. A mortal who acquires a fragment of a dead God's power can ascend to divinity themselves, establish their own afterlives for their followers, and grow in power as any other God could.
Over the six Godswars, all of the original fifteen Gods died. In their place, ascended mortals tend to the worlds and their inhabitants. Many of the secrets of the Creator have been lost to the ages, however, and even the most powerful of the modern Gods lacks the knowledge to create non-monstrous creatures.
Mortals use the Godswars to divide up the eras of history; they are convenient, as they are notable events to every people on every world. The five worlds were created roughly 10,000 years ago, and the most recent Godswar was about 850 years ago, and saw the death of the last of the original Gods.
Thalos: Home to humans, gnolls, and merfolk. Thalos has a similar climate to Earth.
Kesschat: Home to elves, hobgoblins, and sahuagin. Kesschat has much less ocean than Thalos, though there are many small seas and large lakes throughout the continents. The continents are concentrated at the equator, resulting in most of the inhabited land being rainforest.
Brinduk: Home to dwarves, orcs, and (hill) giants. Colder than the other worlds, much of the surface water is trapped in glaciers and ice caps. The remaining surface terrain is largely jagged and mountainous, with only a narrow fertile strip around the equator that has similar climate to temperate regions of Thalos. Mortals live underground, reling heavily on geothermal heat, outside of this strip.
Schadara: Home to gnomes, locathah, and lizardfolk. Schadara has few large landmasses separated by vast stretches of ocean with countless small islands scattered throughout.
Hiniyon: Home to ling*, dragons, and one more undecided race. Like Thalos, Hiniyon had a similar climate to Earth. Unlike Thalos, the most recent Godswar blighted the entire planet, killing all the plants and animals and leaving hordes of undead roaming the ruins of the mortal cities.
*Ling are a homebrewed race, detailed in sections below.
Travel between the Worlds can be quite difficult. When the Creator sundered the original World, it severed most connections between the Worlds, intentionally isolating them from one another to dissuade conflict among the Gods. There are two main ways to travel between worlds:
Astral travel. The Astral Projection spell can be used to visit other worlds temporarily, and Astral Caravan and Astral Traveler psionic powers can be used to physically travel between worlds. This method is slow, somewhat dangerous, and requires trained one or more properly-trained spellcasters or manifesters to accomplish.
Worldgates. Worldgates are magical portals that connect one location to another. The earliest Worldgates were created by the Gods to allow for orderly travel between the Worlds after the discovery of astral travel triggered a Godswar. Many of these ancient Worldgates have since been destroyed, either in Godswars or in mortal conflicts. Others lie intact but dormant, their locations or the methods of activating them lost to history. Worldgates are often far apart, though there are a few regions, mostly in Thalos, where several gates to different worlds are in relatively close proximity; these areas tend to become hubs of trade, as well as hotbeds of conflict.
All creatures in the five worlds can be categorized as animals, plants, outsiders, monsters, and mortals.
Animals and plants are natural, non-sentient flora and fauna of the sort that does (or could believably) exist in the real world.
Outsiders are immortals created by the Gods to help tend to their affairs, mostly in their home realms; outsiders cannot survive long in the World under normal circumstances.
Monsters are beings created by the Gods (or sometimes by mortals) as part of experiments or efforts to make soldiers for the Godswars. With very few exceptions, monsters tend to have no limit on their life spans, be incapable of reproduction, and the ones created by the Gods are often very difficult to permanently kill, returning months or years after being "slain" to cause trouble again.
Mortals are races created by the Gods to have souls that contain a spark of the divine and the ability to grow that spark over the course of their lifetimes. Because all mortals were created using the same fundamental technique, all are capable of interbreeding, though magical or artificial assistance may be necessary in cases of radically different morphology.
Several hybrid races have risen over the ages, developing their own cultures and traditions distinct from their parents'. Many mortals no longer remember that these races are hybrids.
This section will be filled out as information is created. For now, only a handful of races are detailed.
As a general note, no mortal races have favored alignments.
Dwarves
Giants: Full-blooded giants use the stats of Hill Giants from the Monster Manual, except that they are considered Humanoids.
Orcs
Dragons: Dragons hail from the nameless World that came before the five worlds, but after the sundering, the survivors were relocated to Hiniyon. All dragons are one race; there is no correlation between scale color, breath weapon, and/or alignment.
Ling: The ling are a race of shapeshifters, each naturally capable of assuming the shape of a single animal. They were the first druids, and long strove to live in harmony with the creatures around them. Due to events in the most recent Godswar, the ling are believed to be extinct - no full-blooded ling survived outside of Hiniyon, and the few astral travelers who visit their dead homeworld have never reported seeing a living soul there.
Undetermined
Elves: Elves are the longest-lived of the humanoid mortals by a fair margin. The Goddess who created them foresaw that this could lead to them having difficulty adapting to changing situations, so she blessed them with inherent adaptability as a race. Four castes of elf are known to exist, and an elf's caste is determined by where his or her parents lived in the years leading up to childbirth. Fire elves are born in warm, sunny, equatorial regions; they are the most similar to PHB elves. Earth elves are born in colder areas with longer winters, or underground; they look like drow and possess darkvision, but lack most of the supernatural powers. Water elves are aquatic elves, born to parents who live in or very close to water. Air elves are born at very high altitudes; they have dark tan or brown skin, and wings with striped feathers similar to hawk feathers.
Hobgoblins
Sahuagin
Gnomes: Gnomes are renowned for being excellent sailors and navigators across the inhabited worlds, though this is a result of selection bias. In truth, many gnomes lead largely sedentary lives in their home islands, but the most active trading and exploring nations send their people far and wide seeking new sources of trade revenue. This trade is aided by the fact that Schadara has some Worldgates that ships can sail through.
Lizardfolk: Lizardfolk were outpaced in their technological and magical development by their gnomish neighbors. Some communities still prefer traditional fisher-gathering lifestyles, but many lizardfolk now live in major gnomish cities, working as laborers, artisans, and traders. In particular, they often serve as trade contacts with the locathah and other marine races.
Locathah
Gnolls: Gnolls are unusual among humanoid mortals in that they are nearly strict carnivores. In some regions, they consider all non-gnolls to be possible food sources. Just as often, however, they live as herders, raising sheep or goats. Trained hyena-hounds are famous for their loyalty and ferocity, and some gnolls become very wealthy breeding and training them for trade.
Humans
Merfolk
Bugbears: Bugbears are the product of hobgoblins interbreeding with giants. One major nation of them exists in Kesschat, as well as a number of tribes scattered around the other worlds, mostly in Brinduk.
Goblins: Goblins are the product of hobgoblins interbreeding with gnomes. They were historically mistreated by both of their parent races, and many resorted to piracy or banditry, striking back against their oppressors. In Thalos and Brinduk, however, some goblin communities have settled in peace with their neighbors.
Halflings: Halflings are the products of ling interbreeding with nearly any other humanoid race. They share their stature with their ling parents, but lack natural shapeshifting ability. Halfling appearance varies tremendously depending on which non-ling races are in their ancestry, but few halflings put much stock in appearances, so they mix freely until their non-ling ancestry is indecipherable. Most halflings live as minority populations among other races.
Kobolds: Kobolds are the product of ling interbreeding with dragons. They are the most numerous of all the hybrid races, and the most likely for their mixed ancestry to be forgotten. Kobold communities exist on every world except Hiniyon, and they vary tremendously in cultural attitudes. They are more resistant to altitude sickness than most other races, so they often eke out their livings in marginal lands high in the mountains. In Brinduk, many kobold communities are highly paranoid of being invaded by their larger neighbors, and they spend a great deal of time and energy fortifying their tunnels and setting up traps. In Kesschat, they generally have cordial trading relationships with their air elf neighbors. In Thalos, they have little competition for territory, and are often seen as reclusive or hermits. In Schadara, there are few tall mountains, but some kobold populations live among the lizardfolk.
Ogres: Ogres are the product of giants interbreeding with orcs. Ogre populations often serve as a buffer between orcs, dwarves, and giants who would otherwise be at war, serving as trade intermediaries. Some ogres instead encourage conflict, as a means of war profiteering or just to have a chance to make money as a mercenary.
Stone Giants: Stone giants are the product of giants interbreeding with dwarves. They retain the size and strength of their giant parents, along with the intelligence and skill of their dwarf parents. Stone giants are few in number, but clans of them have become ruling classes over their full-blooded giant relatives in many areas of Brinduk. So far, this has tended to lead to less warfare with their neighbors and a more orderly society, though those same neighbors usually note that the strongest armies arise from orderly societies.
Other: Half-elves, half-orcs, and half-giants all exist in more or less the form presented in the PHB, but none are common enough to have developed their own culture. Instead, they typically live among one of their parent races, often interbreeding further until the other parent's ancestry is too watered-down to be seen. Other infrequent hybrids exist, as well, and I will work with a player who has an interesting backstory to create appropriate racial features to match it.
Personal commentary
The way I have used this setting in the past, Thalos is the main world for adventuring, with the other worlds being distant homelands of some races. The idea basically came as an answer to the question, "If dwarves and elves are always dying races with their best years behind them, why don't they go extinct?" The answer, "Because they still have vast populations in their homeworlds, but travel has gotten harder over the years" still works for me. In the past, the other worlds got very little detail; this time around, I hope to polish them up a little more, but they still won't be the main focus in the beginning.
I'm aware of advice along the lines of "settings are verbs." For now, you'll just have to take my word for it that there is a lot more verbing to go around once I start posting information about the continents and regions of Thalos.
One theme I'm going for with the races is that, no matter how different the mortal races are, they're still fundamentally the same thing. At the same time, I want them to seem like radically different fantasy races, with somewhat alien concerns as a result. The elves are my favorite example so far - the highly flexible nature of their subraces makes racist concerns among elves look very little like racist concerns among humans. So far, only the ling (natural shapeshifters) and the elves (subraces determined by environmental factors) have had this principle applied to them.
Also, I'm trying to make every full-blooded race vast and diverse enough that cultural stereotypes cannot be accurate for the entire race. Factors like breathing water, lifespan, and the ability to see in the dark are racial and genetic, but things like being good at stonecarving and being trained in the use of longswords are not; a dwarf or elf (respectively) who was raised by members of a different race likely wouldn't have those features. I'm considering trying to reverse-adapt the Backgrounds from D&D Next to 3.5 to cover this, but that might be a discussion for the Homebrew forum.
So, uh, yeah. Thanks for reading this far. Any feedback and ideas would be appreciated!
This setting is one that I've been using on and off for nearly 15 years now. It has endured 2e, 3e, and non-d20 homebrew rules, and has already been extensively rewritten once. I've recently had a rekindling of my interest in D&D, and I'm working on a second extensive rewrite, the products of which I will post in this thread as I can.
This is still very much a work-in-progress. Details are highly subject to change, and there are definitely gaps, most notably where I've tried to eliminate material I cribbed from other campaign settings but haven't figured out a suitable replacement yet. Also, I want a better title than "Five Worlds," because it sounds kind of generic to me now and the details of the cosmology aren't all well-known in setting.
I'm currently developing under the assumption that I will use D&D 3.5 rules. Due to lack of availability of books, I'm limiting myself to SRD material as much as I can.
I am posting more information on my Obsidian Portal (http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-five-worlds/wikis/main-page) account. Check it out for wiki-style detail!
In the beginning, there was the Creator. The Creator was a primordial, God-like entity; not even the Gods understand its origins, for it created them, and did not explain itself. The Creator made one World and fifteen Gods, and began to teach them the secrets of creation. It taught the Gods to make plants and animals, and ordered them to populate the World with them. The Creator then retired to a place beyond the Gods' knowledge, leaving the Gods to work for unknown eons before returning to inspect their work. It was pleased with the results. It then taught the Gods how to create lesser divine beings, such as angels, devils, and elementals, and once again retired, returning to find that the Gods had created legions of followers to help tend and shape the World. Once again, it was pleased.
The Creator then said that it would teach the Gods how to create animals who carry a spark of the divine with the potential for growth. After death, the souls of these creatures would pass into the care of the Gods who were responsible for them, and the divine sparks would slowly empower the Gods over time. To demonstrate, it created the first dragons. These creatures were wise and powerful, but still far less than the Gods. This act of creation tired the Creator, and it retired to rest, promising to teach the secret of creating similar creatures upon its return.
The Gods were fascinated by the dragons. At first, they carefully tended to their mortal followers, and treated them with respect. Over the ages, however, feuds began to grow among the Gods. They bickered over who had the rights to which dragons' souls, and eventually fell to outright warfare, god and dragon alike. The Gods tried to emulate the act of creation that made the dragons, but their creations were imperfect monstrous abominations, incapable of true growth, but useful in the dragon-on-dragon war that the Gods encouraged in their followers. Millions of dragons died, and the Gods greedily collected their souls and used their power to make more monsters.
Then the Creator returned. This time, it was furious.
In a fit of rage, it shattered the World, destroying most of the Gods' monstrous creations as well as its own dragons. It turned its wrath to the Gods, threatening to destroy them for their corruption of its pristine creations. The Gods begged for forgiveness, and the Creator relented when it saw that not all of the Gods had participated in the war - some few had tried to create monsters that harmonized with the creatures of the World, and still others had encouraged their dragon followers to avoid the conflict. Even in the face of the Creator's rage, these Gods were still protecting a select few dragons and peaceful monstrous creations on the larger fragments of the World.
The Creator agreed to teach the Gods how to create mortals, though it did not share the greater secrets that went into the making of dragons. To those Gods whose benevolence calmed his rage, he gave additional secrets, so they could have more freedom in creating their mortals. Then, he took the five largest pieces of the World, and reshaped each into a new world of its own. Three Gods were assigned to each World, ordered to rebuild the ecosystems, populate the Worlds with mortals, and, above all else, never interfere with any other World than the one they were assigned.
Seeming even more exhausted than it did after creating the dragons, the Creator then retired once more. It has not been seen or heard of since by mortal or God.
The Gods agreed that each would create one mortal race, with some help from the other Gods assigned to their world.
In the ages since the worlds were sundered, the Gods have violated the orders against interference and warfare many times. When the conflicts among the Gods reach a critical threshold, they spill over to the five worlds, involving mortals and often the creation of new monsters. This has happened six times, known as the Godswars, and each conflict led to the death of at least one God. However, while a God can die, the power they possess persists, and can be cannibalized by other Gods, or even by mortals. A mortal who acquires a fragment of a dead God's power can ascend to divinity themselves, establish their own afterlives for their followers, and grow in power as any other God could.
Over the six Godswars, all of the original fifteen Gods died. In their place, ascended mortals tend to the worlds and their inhabitants. Many of the secrets of the Creator have been lost to the ages, however, and even the most powerful of the modern Gods lacks the knowledge to create non-monstrous creatures.
Mortals use the Godswars to divide up the eras of history; they are convenient, as they are notable events to every people on every world. The five worlds were created roughly 10,000 years ago, and the most recent Godswar was about 850 years ago, and saw the death of the last of the original Gods.
Thalos: Home to humans, gnolls, and merfolk. Thalos has a similar climate to Earth.
Kesschat: Home to elves, hobgoblins, and sahuagin. Kesschat has much less ocean than Thalos, though there are many small seas and large lakes throughout the continents. The continents are concentrated at the equator, resulting in most of the inhabited land being rainforest.
Brinduk: Home to dwarves, orcs, and (hill) giants. Colder than the other worlds, much of the surface water is trapped in glaciers and ice caps. The remaining surface terrain is largely jagged and mountainous, with only a narrow fertile strip around the equator that has similar climate to temperate regions of Thalos. Mortals live underground, reling heavily on geothermal heat, outside of this strip.
Schadara: Home to gnomes, locathah, and lizardfolk. Schadara has few large landmasses separated by vast stretches of ocean with countless small islands scattered throughout.
Hiniyon: Home to ling*, dragons, and one more undecided race. Like Thalos, Hiniyon had a similar climate to Earth. Unlike Thalos, the most recent Godswar blighted the entire planet, killing all the plants and animals and leaving hordes of undead roaming the ruins of the mortal cities.
*Ling are a homebrewed race, detailed in sections below.
Travel between the Worlds can be quite difficult. When the Creator sundered the original World, it severed most connections between the Worlds, intentionally isolating them from one another to dissuade conflict among the Gods. There are two main ways to travel between worlds:
Astral travel. The Astral Projection spell can be used to visit other worlds temporarily, and Astral Caravan and Astral Traveler psionic powers can be used to physically travel between worlds. This method is slow, somewhat dangerous, and requires trained one or more properly-trained spellcasters or manifesters to accomplish.
Worldgates. Worldgates are magical portals that connect one location to another. The earliest Worldgates were created by the Gods to allow for orderly travel between the Worlds after the discovery of astral travel triggered a Godswar. Many of these ancient Worldgates have since been destroyed, either in Godswars or in mortal conflicts. Others lie intact but dormant, their locations or the methods of activating them lost to history. Worldgates are often far apart, though there are a few regions, mostly in Thalos, where several gates to different worlds are in relatively close proximity; these areas tend to become hubs of trade, as well as hotbeds of conflict.
All creatures in the five worlds can be categorized as animals, plants, outsiders, monsters, and mortals.
Animals and plants are natural, non-sentient flora and fauna of the sort that does (or could believably) exist in the real world.
Outsiders are immortals created by the Gods to help tend to their affairs, mostly in their home realms; outsiders cannot survive long in the World under normal circumstances.
Monsters are beings created by the Gods (or sometimes by mortals) as part of experiments or efforts to make soldiers for the Godswars. With very few exceptions, monsters tend to have no limit on their life spans, be incapable of reproduction, and the ones created by the Gods are often very difficult to permanently kill, returning months or years after being "slain" to cause trouble again.
Mortals are races created by the Gods to have souls that contain a spark of the divine and the ability to grow that spark over the course of their lifetimes. Because all mortals were created using the same fundamental technique, all are capable of interbreeding, though magical or artificial assistance may be necessary in cases of radically different morphology.
Several hybrid races have risen over the ages, developing their own cultures and traditions distinct from their parents'. Many mortals no longer remember that these races are hybrids.
This section will be filled out as information is created. For now, only a handful of races are detailed.
As a general note, no mortal races have favored alignments.
Dwarves
Giants: Full-blooded giants use the stats of Hill Giants from the Monster Manual, except that they are considered Humanoids.
Orcs
Dragons: Dragons hail from the nameless World that came before the five worlds, but after the sundering, the survivors were relocated to Hiniyon. All dragons are one race; there is no correlation between scale color, breath weapon, and/or alignment.
Ling: The ling are a race of shapeshifters, each naturally capable of assuming the shape of a single animal. They were the first druids, and long strove to live in harmony with the creatures around them. Due to events in the most recent Godswar, the ling are believed to be extinct - no full-blooded ling survived outside of Hiniyon, and the few astral travelers who visit their dead homeworld have never reported seeing a living soul there.
Undetermined
Elves: Elves are the longest-lived of the humanoid mortals by a fair margin. The Goddess who created them foresaw that this could lead to them having difficulty adapting to changing situations, so she blessed them with inherent adaptability as a race. Four castes of elf are known to exist, and an elf's caste is determined by where his or her parents lived in the years leading up to childbirth. Fire elves are born in warm, sunny, equatorial regions; they are the most similar to PHB elves. Earth elves are born in colder areas with longer winters, or underground; they look like drow and possess darkvision, but lack most of the supernatural powers. Water elves are aquatic elves, born to parents who live in or very close to water. Air elves are born at very high altitudes; they have dark tan or brown skin, and wings with striped feathers similar to hawk feathers.
Hobgoblins
Sahuagin
Gnomes: Gnomes are renowned for being excellent sailors and navigators across the inhabited worlds, though this is a result of selection bias. In truth, many gnomes lead largely sedentary lives in their home islands, but the most active trading and exploring nations send their people far and wide seeking new sources of trade revenue. This trade is aided by the fact that Schadara has some Worldgates that ships can sail through.
Lizardfolk: Lizardfolk were outpaced in their technological and magical development by their gnomish neighbors. Some communities still prefer traditional fisher-gathering lifestyles, but many lizardfolk now live in major gnomish cities, working as laborers, artisans, and traders. In particular, they often serve as trade contacts with the locathah and other marine races.
Locathah
Gnolls: Gnolls are unusual among humanoid mortals in that they are nearly strict carnivores. In some regions, they consider all non-gnolls to be possible food sources. Just as often, however, they live as herders, raising sheep or goats. Trained hyena-hounds are famous for their loyalty and ferocity, and some gnolls become very wealthy breeding and training them for trade.
Humans
Merfolk
Bugbears: Bugbears are the product of hobgoblins interbreeding with giants. One major nation of them exists in Kesschat, as well as a number of tribes scattered around the other worlds, mostly in Brinduk.
Goblins: Goblins are the product of hobgoblins interbreeding with gnomes. They were historically mistreated by both of their parent races, and many resorted to piracy or banditry, striking back against their oppressors. In Thalos and Brinduk, however, some goblin communities have settled in peace with their neighbors.
Halflings: Halflings are the products of ling interbreeding with nearly any other humanoid race. They share their stature with their ling parents, but lack natural shapeshifting ability. Halfling appearance varies tremendously depending on which non-ling races are in their ancestry, but few halflings put much stock in appearances, so they mix freely until their non-ling ancestry is indecipherable. Most halflings live as minority populations among other races.
Kobolds: Kobolds are the product of ling interbreeding with dragons. They are the most numerous of all the hybrid races, and the most likely for their mixed ancestry to be forgotten. Kobold communities exist on every world except Hiniyon, and they vary tremendously in cultural attitudes. They are more resistant to altitude sickness than most other races, so they often eke out their livings in marginal lands high in the mountains. In Brinduk, many kobold communities are highly paranoid of being invaded by their larger neighbors, and they spend a great deal of time and energy fortifying their tunnels and setting up traps. In Kesschat, they generally have cordial trading relationships with their air elf neighbors. In Thalos, they have little competition for territory, and are often seen as reclusive or hermits. In Schadara, there are few tall mountains, but some kobold populations live among the lizardfolk.
Ogres: Ogres are the product of giants interbreeding with orcs. Ogre populations often serve as a buffer between orcs, dwarves, and giants who would otherwise be at war, serving as trade intermediaries. Some ogres instead encourage conflict, as a means of war profiteering or just to have a chance to make money as a mercenary.
Stone Giants: Stone giants are the product of giants interbreeding with dwarves. They retain the size and strength of their giant parents, along with the intelligence and skill of their dwarf parents. Stone giants are few in number, but clans of them have become ruling classes over their full-blooded giant relatives in many areas of Brinduk. So far, this has tended to lead to less warfare with their neighbors and a more orderly society, though those same neighbors usually note that the strongest armies arise from orderly societies.
Other: Half-elves, half-orcs, and half-giants all exist in more or less the form presented in the PHB, but none are common enough to have developed their own culture. Instead, they typically live among one of their parent races, often interbreeding further until the other parent's ancestry is too watered-down to be seen. Other infrequent hybrids exist, as well, and I will work with a player who has an interesting backstory to create appropriate racial features to match it.
Personal commentary
The way I have used this setting in the past, Thalos is the main world for adventuring, with the other worlds being distant homelands of some races. The idea basically came as an answer to the question, "If dwarves and elves are always dying races with their best years behind them, why don't they go extinct?" The answer, "Because they still have vast populations in their homeworlds, but travel has gotten harder over the years" still works for me. In the past, the other worlds got very little detail; this time around, I hope to polish them up a little more, but they still won't be the main focus in the beginning.
I'm aware of advice along the lines of "settings are verbs." For now, you'll just have to take my word for it that there is a lot more verbing to go around once I start posting information about the continents and regions of Thalos.
One theme I'm going for with the races is that, no matter how different the mortal races are, they're still fundamentally the same thing. At the same time, I want them to seem like radically different fantasy races, with somewhat alien concerns as a result. The elves are my favorite example so far - the highly flexible nature of their subraces makes racist concerns among elves look very little like racist concerns among humans. So far, only the ling (natural shapeshifters) and the elves (subraces determined by environmental factors) have had this principle applied to them.
Also, I'm trying to make every full-blooded race vast and diverse enough that cultural stereotypes cannot be accurate for the entire race. Factors like breathing water, lifespan, and the ability to see in the dark are racial and genetic, but things like being good at stonecarving and being trained in the use of longswords are not; a dwarf or elf (respectively) who was raised by members of a different race likely wouldn't have those features. I'm considering trying to reverse-adapt the Backgrounds from D&D Next to 3.5 to cover this, but that might be a discussion for the Homebrew forum.
So, uh, yeah. Thanks for reading this far. Any feedback and ideas would be appreciated!