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View Full Version : Where to fit the Vanara? [World-Building]



Piedmon_Sama
2007-01-04, 05:41 PM
So I've been working (more-or-less) steadily on this homebrew campaign world. It has five major continents---European, Mideastern, Indian/East Asian, African and Mesoamerican being the "real-world" basis for each, respectively.

Unfortunately what's largely happened as I'm filling out this world is that it's easy to populate the European continent--Elves, Dwarves and a lot of the stuff that already exists is easy for that. It's harder to populate the noneuropean continents.

Right now I'm working specifically on the Mesoamerican continent (which is called Cemanahuapan). I've already decided the "PC" races are humans (well duh), Lizardmen, Quinametin (from a Dragon Magazine article on Mesoamerican monsters), Needlefolk (from MMII), and Spirit-Folk (from OA).

Then there's the Vanara--also from Oriental Adventures, a monkeylike humanoid race. They would certainly fit well in the environment of this Mesoamerican continent, but I feel like if I use them here I'd be denying the opportunity to use them elsewhere. (See, I'm keeping it so that every PC race is only usable on one continent, with the exceptions of humans and lizardmen, the latter of which used to have a world-spanning empire in ancient times.) Specifically, I feel like the Vanara have a very Indian and Chinese feel, and God knows I'm going to be grasping at straws when it comes to demihuman races for my Pseudo-India....

So do you feel I have enough PC races as it is, or knowing what you know of the Vanara, would they fit better in ancient Mesoamerica or India? Thanks for any feedback in advance.

Bears With Lasers
2007-01-04, 05:47 PM
India. It would be AWESOME.

ampcptlogic
2007-01-04, 05:51 PM
I say India. If you want a anthropomorphic race for Mesoamerica and haven't used something jaguar-based, you might consider it. I can't speak to the Inca or the Toltec/Olmec/Aztec, but to the Maya, jaguars were important.

Fax Celestis
2007-01-04, 05:54 PM
Yeah. Put a different race in Mesoamerica. Some sort of feathered snake person.

ampcptlogic
2007-01-04, 06:00 PM
The jaguar, the eagle, and the feathered serpent are all used in Maya mythology as aspects of Gucumatz, known to the Aztec as Quetzalcouatl. Of course, the eagle and serpent are also important to Aztec mythology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gucumatz

Piedmon_Sama
2007-01-04, 06:36 PM
Thanks for the feedback, all. It looks like I'll probably save the Vanara for my as-yet-unnamed Indian/East Asian Continent. As for other races, I'm unsure--I don't know if I'd actually want an anthropomorphic Jaguar/Eagle/"Feathered Serpent" race, as it's a sacred symbol to the culture I'm using and it might bring up a lot of unneeded issues... I'm not really looking to homebrew stuff either but just shoehorn/adapt what I've already got (like how I've retrofitted the Spirit Folk to represent an older, Mayan-esque civilization compared with the newer Azteca civilization of humanity.)

Belteshazzar
2007-01-04, 06:52 PM
Naga could help populate your indian continent.

bosssmiley
2007-01-04, 10:04 PM
Yeah. Put a different race in Mesoamerica. Some sort of feathered snake person.

There's something along these lines in the Eberron section of the WOTC site. IIRC they were related to the Couatl of the Silver Flame in the way that the Yuan'ti are creations of Merrshaulk.

CharPixie
2007-01-05, 02:47 PM
From what I can remember, the monkey king features in the Ramayana, making the Indo-Asian area a great place to put the monkeys. Also, the Loxor, MM2, might be a good addition to the Indo-Asian land.

I'd probably seperate the pseudo-india races into monkey/vulture/elephant/tiger (rakshasa). Make each the domain of a godlike king and make the humans trespassers onto the land. But the humans have a trickster demigod, and therefore enjoy spans of prosperity mixed with misfortune as the demigod's plans both succeed and eventually backfire. Make the tiger people more demonic, however; more hateful and the like.

For the Asian flavoured area, I'd recommend Kobolds and Kenku, being inspired by chinese and japanese history respectively. the Kobolds could have a rigoriously ordered empire, and the kenku could be influenced by waring-state era japan (or the declining edo period, if you'd rather).

For the African area, I'd suggest maybe a spirit connected realm; make the paths between living and death easier to walk there; dead ancestors are a lot more involved in peoples lives. Perhaps have an egypt like quality to some part of the place. Maybe have centaurs, the birdmen from Races of the Wild, more Loxor... gnolls?

MrNexx
2007-01-05, 04:04 PM
If you really want monkey-people in Meso-America, you can always have them have been slaves of the lizard people.

Beleriphon
2007-01-05, 05:27 PM
For the African area, I'd suggest maybe a spirit connected realm; make the paths between living and death easier to walk there; dead ancestors are a lot more involved in peoples lives. Perhaps have an egypt like quality to some part of the place. Maybe have centaurs, the birdmen from Races of the Wild, more Loxor... gnolls?

I'd actually suggest borrowing heavily from African story telling, in particular Bushmen stories about Grandfather Mantis, and the Australian aboriginie concept of the Dream Time.

TheThan
2007-01-05, 05:48 PM
I say Raptorian, Catfolk (from races of the wild) and full orc for your Meso-American place. Maybe even shifters (from Ebberon). I always imagined such a place as being very wild and rugged, and I think the races I listed reflect that fairly well.

For an Asian setting, I’d go with Vanara, and Nezumi (also from OA) possibly Loxo, and the yak folk (both from MMII),

For African, I’d go with centaurs (natural for a Serengeti like environment.) and also the Marrashi (again from MMII).

Without more info, that’s about all I got.

endoperez
2007-01-05, 06:27 PM
Dominions 3 (a surn-based fantasy strategy game) has an Indian-based nation with not only Vanaras, but a whole caste system of monkeys. Markata (Tiny or Small barely intelligent monkeys that wouldn't be player races), Vanara (both uncivilized forest folk and civilized city-building types; same race, but the latter call themselves Vanara) and the warrior Bandar (gorillas, maybe something like Orcs). Caste-colors would be black for the vanara, red for the bandar, white for the priests (born with white coats as a mark of a good deeds of a previous incarnation), etc. Wise Brahmin in temples of the cities and and Gurus (Diviners) studying and meditating on mountain-tops, etc.

Nagas of course works well. Snake-folk leading and eating monkey-folk would fit with various works of literature. Patla, a huge bejeweled city built underground, wise monkey seers, etc.


Some kind of giants could live in the cold north (Niefelheim, home of the ice giants of Scandinavian myths, is also the name of a glacier in Sweden), and groups of minotaurs/centaurs/satyrs could live somewhere around Greece. Dominions has them in the same nation called Pangaea, with Dryad priestesses.


Dominions had lizardfolk populating Egypt. Works well for the deserts, and the heroes' have very interesting descriptions. Priests of a god of Death and Fertility or something like that.

Anything Spider-themed works well for Africa. In this respect, drows would work...


Can't really help with the meso-american thing. Everything I know about mythos of that continent comes from Dominions, which has just humans in there (Aztecs sacrificing Blood for demons).

mabriss lethe
2007-01-06, 12:44 AM
Vanara would be better placed in the india setting, but that doesn't mean you can't break your rule and have an offshoot of them living in another part of the world. You can break the letter of a rule as long as you stick to the spirit of the rule. Making a good and plausible exception to it would actually add a little more flavor. It would be more realistic to have at least a little migration of species over the course of time. You might only have a few viable enclaves of the vanara in the mesoamerican setting, but it shouldn't fatally compromise things. Heck there could be an adventure hook dealing with how and why the vanara wound up there.

Tor the Fallen
2007-01-06, 12:58 AM
Too many races raises the question– how do they all exist together?

Competition for resources would be pretty intense between not just one sentient race, but three. I imagine a continent wouldn't be large enough for 3 races. Two continents didn't save neanderthals from us.

Bouldering Jove
2007-01-06, 01:19 AM
Too many races raises the question– how do they all exist together?

Competition for resources would be pretty intense between not just one sentient race, but three. I imagine a continent wouldn't be large enough for 3 races. Two continents didn't save neanderthals from us.
Probably different ideas of a supporting and hospitable environment, and political alliances of practicality, such as the classic "Dwarves and elves hate each other, but both hate orcs more."

Really, races on the whole aren't likely to think as a single xenophobic block. Especially if race A is in a position of dominance, it's likely to fracture with internal power jockeying and create a situation which race B can exploit (or at least live within while the factions of race A keep each other in check).

Rimx
2007-01-06, 02:29 AM
What about the Phanaton (http://pandius.com/phanatn2.html)? They were updated to 3.5 in Dragon 339, I think.

Tor the Fallen
2007-01-06, 03:07 AM
Probably different ideas of a supporting and hospitable environment, and political alliances of practicality, such as the classic "Dwarves and elves hate each other, but both hate orcs more."

Really, races on the whole aren't likely to think as a single xenophobic block. Especially if race A is in a position of dominance, it's likely to fracture with internal power jockeying and create a situation which race B can exploit (or at least live within while the factions of race A keep each other in check).

If two organisms occupy the same niche, one is doomed to extinction.
This seems to hold true for cultures, too.

Bouldering Jove
2007-01-06, 05:02 AM
If two organisms occupy the same niche, one is doomed to extinction.
This seems to hold true for cultures, too.
I don't mean to sound snotty, but I think this is a deeply flawed comparison.

Yes, if two species of organisms occupy the same niche, one is going to eventually outcompete the other (if the two don't deplete their mutual resources and extinguish both in the process). This is the case because two species occupying the same niche depend on the same resources, in the same ways, for the same purposes, in the same environment, and neither can adapt. An animal has only a specific given toolset; if that toolset is inadequate, the animal will die, and only the organisms in the species with effective toolsets will survive. Evolution in action.

Cultures are not organisms. Cultures command not only toolsets but potential toolsets which they can actively pursue and create in less than a generation. That alone completely destroys the analogy, because a culture can and will change its niche (examples: the Roman Empire from the Republic, Nazi Germany, postcolonial Britain, modern China, the entire history of the United States). But what's a niche for an entire culture? Every nation exists on its own territorial limits, so environmental competition doesn't happen until one nation has a reason to make war on another, and the resulting conflicts are nothing like the resource struggles of similar species. Every culture has thousands of different attributes, many of which we probably don't even properly understand the existence of. Cultures can destroy themselves from the inside without any kind of outside pressure. How can you possibly compare two cultures like two species and see how they share a niche when there are countless differences between any? When raw military force can fail or succeed to accomplish lasting change in a region? When a "culture" is almost impossible to define in the first place, and seems to split in cases of rebellion and uprising?

I'm not well-read in history by any stretch, but in all the cases I can think of where cultures overcame others, it was because of fundamental differences in the way they handled their resources, not similarities: homo sapiens exterminating neanderthals, the Roman Empire, Islam's caliphate, France under Napoleon, European colonialism, the Vietnam war. This is not to mention the vast majority of history which happens not to be particularly interesting to read about, where various cultures lived in proximity to each other and may have had various conflicts and tensions over the generations, but yet still persisted as a culture for significant stretches of time.

What examples do you think your comparison seems to be the case for? That would help me understand where your statement is coming from.

Maglor_Grubb
2007-01-06, 05:25 AM
Hold back that horse, your trying to point the differences between cultural and etnical competicion and use the extinction of neanderthalers as a cultural happening? You are right in that cultures compete by the differences in how they do things, but so do species. And the one who's method is most effective wins. As with cultures. They only compete if they are trying to get the same (limitted) thing with their different methods, be that food, land, or anything else. It's the goal. (have an empire in Persia, eat plankton).

Hell, the reason they compete is because they do things differently. If they did it the same way, they would both get half of the resources. If they do it differently, the one doing it more efficient gets more and more and grows more and more.

But here's were it goes off in fantasy, many sentient creatures act exactly the same! Dwarves, elves and humans? They could be the same species. And that's why they can all exist in the same area. Well, at least until one of them develops a realy different way than the others.

Bouldering Jove
2007-01-06, 05:56 AM
Hold back that horse, your trying to point the differences between cultural and etnical competicion and use the extinction of neanderthalers as a cultural happening? You are right in that cultures compete by the differences in how they do things, but so do species. And the one who's method is most effective wins. As with cultures. They only compete if they are trying to get the same (limitted) thing with their different methods, be that food, land, or anything else. It's the goal. (have an empire in Persia, eat plankton).
I think it's functional as a "cultural" example because the species are close. The fatal difference was presumably related to organization rather than minute physical factors. Yes, it's ultimately a product of the genetics producing the brain, but for the purposes of this discussion it's not significantly different from two groups of modern humans with different practices.


Hell, the reason they compete is because they do things differently. If they did it the same way, they would both get half of the resources. If they do it differently, the one doing it more efficient gets more and more and grows more and more.
If their method of acquiring a resource is different, or the amount that they need it in, or both species have different alternative resources, or even the time of day they go out to get it is different, the outcome can be complicated and does not necessarily require one species to perish. If that was the case, we would never see species with multiple predators. If they pursue the resource without some difference allowing a sustainable outcome, there will inevitably be a resolution for one species of extinction or adaptation into another niche.


But here's were it goes off in fantasy, many sentient creatures act exactly the same! Dwarves, elves and humans? They could be the same species. And that's why they can all exist in the same area. Well, at least until one of them develops a realy different way than the others.
As species they have some pretty significant differences: human adaptability, dwarven toughness, elven senses, and different favored habitats. They can exist in the same area because they're all intelligent and can cooperate, which is a succesful evolutionary strategy (though complete societal intermixing is a totally different kettle of evolutionary fish).

It took me to the end of this post to realize I'm not really disagreeing with you about anything so much as describing it differently.

Maglor_Grubb
2007-01-06, 06:31 AM
I think you're right in that we're roughly describing the same thing. I still say there's not enough difference between a human and a dwarf for it to operate as different species rather than races. A human could be more 'dwarf-ish' than a dwarf.

Premier
2007-01-06, 10:07 AM
Aaracokra could be used as a relatively "primitive" civilisation, especially in places with lots of mountains and/or big open spaces - the pseudo-African contintent would be just fine. Halflings, on account of being so very much like humans, could be used anywhere with a bit of adaptation.

But another, rather important question you should settle before you go too far with anything else is how do all these races interlock? In very practical terms, how much contact and mingling is there between civilisations?

If contact is sparse at best (Earth before and during the early age of exploration), then these civilisations will stand almost entirely aloof - especially the ones on different continents. However, this means that your players will be restricted to the PC races of the game's starting continent - and realistically, they would never actually get to see most of the other continents at all.

If there's regular contract - at least regular enough to make a racially diverse PC party believable - then it doesn't really make sense to keep the cultures and races all that separate. If the PCs have the means to travel from continent to continent and meet up with each other, then so does everyone else.

Piedmon_Sama
2007-01-06, 12:35 PM
Originally Posted by Rimx: What about the Phanaton (http://pandius.com/phanatn2.html)? They were updated to 3.5 in Dragon 339, I think.[/b]

[Peter Griffin]That is awesome. *Points* That is awesome.[/Peter Griffin] Thanks for this, I am totally using these guys either on my Mesoamerican or African settings. ^_^

[quote]Originally Posted by Tor the Fallen:Too many races raises the question– how do they all exist together?

Competition for resources would be pretty intense between not just one sentient race, but three. I imagine a continent wouldn't be large enough for 3 races. Two continents didn't save neanderthals from us.

*Shrugs* Ask yourself how humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, orcs and others all manage to exist in the same country, much less the same continent. And as an aside, the frozen north of my setting does have Neanderthals (using the stats from Frostburn, but changing the fluff to be more, eh, "anthropologically accurate.")



Aaracokra could be used as a relatively "primitive" civilisation, especially in places with lots of mountains and/or big open spaces - the pseudo-African contintent would be just fine. Halflings, on account of being so very much like humans, could be used anywhere with a bit of adaptation.

Sorry, Aara-what? (Sounds interesting, actually, care to describe in more detail?) And yeah, the going theory on my world is that Halflings are humans specially adapted to living in huge metropoli.)


But another, rather important question you should settle before you go too far with anything else is how do all these races interlock? In very practical terms, how much contact and mingling is there between civilisations?

I've actually given this plenty of thought already. If you're curious: Ikaris (the most "traditional" of the settings), Cemanahuapan and my Africanesque setting exist in perfect isolation. (Indeed, establishing "first contact" between any of these continents would be a good adventure in of itself.) The near-eastern and far-eastern continents have established regular trading routes and influenced each other economically and culturally.


If contact is sparse at best (Earth before and during the early age of exploration), then these civilisations will stand almost entirely aloof - especially the ones on different continents. However, this means that your players will be restricted to the PC races of the game's starting continent - and realistically, they would never actually get to see most of the other continents at all.

Yep. My setting is really almost four different settings. Although if you have a group and one guy "just really needs to be a Samurai" you can always say a Wizard did it....


If there's regular contract - at least regular enough to make a racially diverse PC party believable - then it doesn't really make sense to keep the cultures and races all that separate. If the PCs have the means to travel from continent to continent and meet up with each other, then so does everyone else.

Actually as far as my setting's history is concerned, the Lizardmen and Grey Elves (of whom all other Elves are either an offshoot or the direct result of genetic manipulation) still maintain intercontinental contact between all their settlements. Hundreds of thousands (if not a million) years back their two nations ruled the whole of the planet, and the old communication paths exist even if their numbers have dwindled. (The Lizardmen were almost destroyed in a war with the Aberrations a million years ago. The Grey Elves' Empire survived a little longer, but eventually they became riddled with a paranoid fear of Drow infiltrators, so much so they almost wiped themselves out.)

Sorry, probably that isn't particularly interesting to anyone but me, but I have to get it out somewhere. >_>

Premier
2007-01-06, 03:08 PM
Sorry, Aara-what? (Sounds interesting, actually, care to describe in more detail?) And yeah, the going theory on my world is that Halflings are humans specially adapted to living in huge metropoli.)

Heh, guess they took them out of d20 for no particular reason. Anyway, Aaracokra are a monster species from 2E which have been made a PC race in the Complete Book of Humanoids. Basically, they're fragile bird-men who live in small villages in tropical and temperate mountains, hunt, fight with javelins and flight lances and have claustrophobia. The (2E) Monstrous Manual entry is here (http://www.planetadnd.com/interactive_books/mm00006.php), and if you're interested, I can give you a brief rundown of the Complete Book stuff. Of course, you'll have to convert it.

Matthew
2007-01-06, 05:41 PM
Are they not also part of the Forgotten Realms creation mythology?

MrNexx
2007-01-06, 05:58 PM
And in Races of Faerun. I believe they're also in Monsters of Faerun, but might not have made it into a 3.5 MM update.

X15lm204
2007-01-06, 08:23 PM
^^The Aaracokra of FR are the modern descendants of one of the great Creator races of Toril, so yes, in a sense, they are.

Tor the Fallen
2007-01-06, 10:07 PM
*Shrugs* Ask yourself how humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, orcs and others all manage to exist in the same country, much less the same continent. And as an aside, the frozen north of my setting does have Neanderthals (using the stats from Frostburn, but changing the fluff to be more, eh, "anthropologically accurate.")

Each occupy different places and exploit different resources. Each exercises a militant culture and has adapted to its environment, defending it from usurpers.

Dwarves and orcs and other underground/mountainous races are, canonically, enemies.

Elves, as tree hugging hippies, find themselves at odds with humans, who often take Profession: Lumberjack, and dwarves who use the trees to fuel their furnaces.

So I would examine the environment before stuffing races in, and then decide races from that. Centaur, as RAW, could fill the plains indian niche. Or, you could make them lawful neutral, and have them be Zulu-like. Formians would make great egyptians. Industrious creatures, toiling in the desert. Of course, the mummies would look a little different.

For mesoamerica, you could have the monkey-people an offshoot of their Indian progenitors.

IRL, some of middle east and eastern europe ancestry, culture and language can be traced back to nomadic horsemen moving west. There have been multiple invasions of mounted nomads invading and then settling in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. IRC, the Dorians invaded Greece, Turks invaded the ME, Arabs invaded North Africa, Persians invaded Africa and Greece, and Scythians invaded Eastern Europe. So to have races overlapping between continents would not be unlikely, especially at a cultural and economic crossroads like the Middle East.



The conquest of America was probably the largest genocide in history. Westerners annihlated countless peoples and cultures. Granted, the cultural differences between most natives and westernerss were radically different, but all needed the same general resource- land. (An interesting exception are the Spaniards and Aztecs. Both were extremely religious, militaristic societies.) The reasons for wanting the land was radically different, but as one culture was infinitely better adapted to taking land, well, the rest is history.
Dwarves and elves can coexist on the same continent becuase dwarves are subterranean mountain folk, while elves dwell in the forests. Orcs are enemies of both, because orcs are expanionary and materialistic. They want, and they take.


[edit] Some random stuff:
Where are you putting goblinoids? Hobgoblins could be adapted to make pretty good Aztecs. Rename them something that sounds like you're clearing your throat, and you're golden. Bugbears could be an enslaved race, like what happened to the neighbors of the Aztecs, or they could be barbarians in south america or north american forests. Will the americas have access to metal weapons and armor? Are you putting giants in the north? They could fill in the role of eskimo.
How would you feel about societies of intelligent animals, or were-animals? I could see west coast indians being a tribe of humanoid bears. Perhaps use the werebear template on humans and call them bearpeople.
How abour tribes of worgs that roam the boreal forests of the north american continent?
I'm assuming fey are in europe.

Piedmon_Sama
2007-01-06, 10:30 PM
I'm really not interested, TBH, in "plugging in" various demi-human races as substitutes for foreign ethnicities. I mean, I'm not trying to impugne on anyone else's ideas, but to me "dwarf samurai" or whatever always just felt cheesy to me. I'd rather emphasize the inhumanity of demihumans than just reduce them to a charicature.

Orcs, Elves, Hobgoblins, Centaurs and all the "basic" stuff are mostly being left on the "European" continent of Ikaris. I figure there's enough unusual/noncore stuff for me to use for the more "exotic" locales.