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RFLS
2014-06-02, 10:14 PM
Pretty much what the title says. I'm working on a new campaign, and I have a species that hates metahumanity. What I need is a why. A nameless, driving force towards your destruction is terrifying in its own right, but sometimes, the scariest thing in the world is being able to empathize with someone that wants you dead. So. What possible motives could someone or ones have for wanting to drive humanity to extinction?

Rhynn
2014-06-02, 10:38 PM
Resources. "It's us or them."

I like to use this one with orcs: in good times, orcs breed quickly, and in 2-3 generations (each only some 10-15 years, because orcs grow up fast) they tend to reach overpopulation. The reason is that, over history, humans' superior capacity for cooperation and forming larger communities (kingdoms, empires) has driven orcs into hinterlands and wastelands, mountains and deserts. When the orc communities of a region reach a critical point in their growth - when they have exhausted their resources - they have to either watch their whelps die of starvation (and then likely face it themselves), fight terrible wars against each other, or pour forth in desperate hordes to conquer neighboring lands back from the humans who took them long ago, in order to settle them (or at least convert them back to hunting land by exterminating or driving out the humans).

This goes nicely with the usually primitive society of orcs; if they're largely reliant on nomadic hunting and gathering (maybe with slash-and-burn agriculture, because it sounded great to them!), they need much more living space per orc than agriculturally developed humans.

The above also works perfectly with goblins - maybe even more so (it seems fitting that goblins would breed faster and grow up faster).

If you want to rule out a peaceful solution, fundamental cultural or psychological difference can come into play: humans just can't deal with orcs, because they naturally employ a degree of violence in their daily lives that humans find abhorrent, and attempts at integration inevitably lead to escalating unrest and feuds.

Ambitious orc warlords, of course, would take this further, the logic being some combination of "the humans will never leave us in peace unless we destroy them" and "all this belonged to us first anyway."

This sort of conflict basically has no right side.
- You took that land from us!
- But we've lived here for hundreds of years!
- Well, we'll starve otherwise!
- Well, we'll starve if you drive us away! And you're trying to kill us!

Fable Wright
2014-06-02, 10:41 PM
Pretty much what the title says. I'm working on a new campaign, and I have a species that hates metahumanity. What I need is a why. A nameless, driving force towards your destruction is terrifying in its own right, but sometimes, the scariest thing in the world is being able to empathize with someone that wants you dead. So. What possible motives could someone or ones have for wanting to drive humanity to extinction?

Their adaptability. In game terms, the fact that metahumanity has LA+0. Think about it. These are animals that can suddenly learn and adapt quicker than any other force on the planet. For example, a Harpy is ECL 10, but CR 6; it has to take on many, many dangerous encounters to gain powers beyond what it already has. An Ogre? Its combat capabilities are CR 3, but its ECL is 6. Combat they can overcome doesn't give them much in the way of experience, and they can take over entire tribes of 'lesser folk' without getting any levels. The ones that gain access to powerful adventuring magic and skills? They truly worked for it.

And then you look at the LA+0 races. The kobolds came first with their innate sorcery and fast rate of skill increase for those that survive challenges, but they are physically weak and frail. They are easily killed and frail, and they need their adventuring magic to have a chance in this world. It's their basic survival advantage. Then comes the goblinoids, and they're dangerous; the Hobgoblins only learn a little bit slower than Kobolds, and are physically mighty compared to them. The Goblins learn as fast as Kobolds, and compared to them, the Goblins are mighty strong warriors. At this point, it's becoming downright unfair to the other races in the world. And then Elves, Dwarves, and Humans come into the picture. Suddenly, these are characters that learn as fast as Kobolds, have the physical might of Hobgoblins, and have a host of special abilities. Worse yet, they actively innovate new techniques that can only be used by their races. There's a reason it's called an Elven generalist, and why all Shadowcraft Mages are Gnomes. In a relatively short time frame, these people have stolen the adaptability of the kobolds, the physical might of Hobgoblins, and are innovating entirely new forms of adventuring magic that give even more powerful capabilities. This disturbs the natural balance of the world; suddenly, metahumans carve out entire mountains for ore, clear forests, and are easily able to drive away the native inhabitants of those region with their powerful adventurer classes. The unnamed race is terrified of this; they don't have adventuring magic (or used to have a monopoly on it), and this rash of adventuring metahumans could wipe out their civilization if given enough time. To ensure their survival, the unnamed race needs to go to war.

TL;DR: Metahumanity OP.

veti
2014-06-02, 10:42 PM
The ecological answer: they're competing for the same ecological niche. They like eating the same kinds of foods and living in the same kinds of places, but they can't interbreed with humans. This comes in two flavours: the "original inhabitants", where humans displaced them from the land, or the "newcomers", where they're looking to displace humans. To make either of these work, the other species needs to have a comparable lifespan and reproduction cycle.

The Planet of the Apes answer: in the distant past, humans have marginalised and enslaved them, and they're looking for payback. Or, humans used to be their slaves until they got payback. Everything since then is "revenge for past wrongs".

The illithid answer: they are both more powerful and smarter than humans, and regard humans as an inferior species who should naturally be on the losing side of evolution. Nothing personal, it's just nature's way. Or the converse, of course - they think they're sentient, but humans don't, because they can't meet some arbitrary test that humans have devised for "sentience".

The Dr Moreau/Deep Blue Sea answer: they are genetically engineered by humans, who failed to respect their rights or recognise their sentience, and consequently need to fight for their freedom if they're not to be vivisected.

Jay R
2014-06-02, 10:42 PM
How do you feel about snakes? Rats? Mosquitoes? Cockroaches?

Feeling hatred for another race isn't that hard - unfortunately.

The Oni
2014-06-02, 11:25 PM
Jealousy of the divine - maybe the gods favor the more recently-created metahumanity over other races.
Visceral disgust - the other race considers humanity's habits or appearance horrible, frightening and aberrant. Humans are to them as Cthulhu and his like are to us.
Old wounds - it could be that metahumanity has deliberately or inadvertently broken the power they once had.
False evidence - another power is manipulating and riling up the nonhumans, focusing their fear and distrust of humans into hatred, in order to bring about a terrible war for personal gain.
Ancient prophecy - humans are fated to destroy some combination of nonhuman races/the world/another world/the universe/a gate containing sealed evil in a can/themselves and the nonhumans must stop it

RFLS
2014-06-02, 11:34 PM
Their adaptability. In game terms, the fact that metahumanity has LA+0. Think about it. These are animals that can suddenly learn and adapt quicker than any other force on the planet. For example, a Harpy is ECL 10, but CR 6; it has to take on many, many dangerous encounters to gain powers beyond what it already has. An Ogre? Its combat capabilities are CR 3, but its ECL is 6. Combat they can overcome doesn't give them much in the way of experience, and they can take over entire tribes of 'lesser folk' without getting any levels. The ones that gain access to powerful adventuring magic and skills? They truly worked for it.

And then you look at the LA+0 races. The kobolds came first with their innate sorcery and fast rate of skill increase for those that survive challenges, but they are physically weak and frail. They are easily killed and frail, and they need their adventuring magic to have a chance in this world. It's their basic survival advantage. Then comes the goblinoids, and they're dangerous; the Hobgoblins only learn a little bit slower than Kobolds, and are physically mighty compared to them. The Goblins learn as fast as Kobolds, and compared to them, the Goblins are mighty strong warriors. At this point, it's becoming downright unfair to the other races in the world. And then Elves, Dwarves, and Humans come into the picture. Suddenly, these are characters that learn as fast as Kobolds, have the physical might of Hobgoblins, and have a host of special abilities. Worse yet, they actively innovate new techniques that can only be used by their races. There's a reason it's called an Elven generalist, and why all Shadowcraft Mages are Gnomes. In a relatively short time frame, these people have stolen the adaptability of the kobolds, the physical might of Hobgoblins, and are innovating entirely new forms of adventuring magic that give even more powerful capabilities. This disturbs the natural balance of the world; suddenly, metahumans carve out entire mountains for ore, clear forests, and are easily able to drive away the native inhabitants of those region with their powerful adventurer classes. The unnamed race is terrified of this; they don't have adventuring magic (or used to have a monopoly on it), and this rash of adventuring metahumans could wipe out their civilization if given enough time. To ensure their survival, the unnamed race needs to go to war.

TL;DR: Metahumanity OP.

This seems to dovetail nicely with the resources argument presented above. I'll definitely mull it over. I'm searching for a more philosophical reason, though. Resources just feel so mundane - I want to hatred to be based in pure emotion, if that makes sense. It could very well be that there's no real way to do what I'm asking.


How do you feel about snakes? Rats? Mosquitoes? Cockroaches?

Feeling hatred for another race isn't that hard - unfortunately.

Uh....I think you're confusing dislike or distaste for hatred. I'm talking real, bottom of your stomach, soul scorching hatred. Anyone that says they feel that for vermin is either lying through their teeth or needs their head checked.

Angelalex242
2014-06-02, 11:43 PM
Of course, you could always put metahumanity against itself too.

There might be, for example, an alliance of dwarves, gnomes, and halflings against humans and elves.

The theory here is that humans and elves get along so well because they can crossbreed...and therefore share existence reasonably well. While all the 'smaller folk' have been pushed into deep mountains and caves. For the otherwise agrarian halflings, this was particularly brutal. Now, the short types strike back at their tall oppressors to take back the world of sunlight!

ChaosArchon
2014-06-03, 12:07 AM
Of course, you could always put metahumanity against itself too.

There might be, for example, an alliance of dwarves, gnomes, and halflings against humans and elves.

The theory here is that humans and elves get along so well because they can crossbreed...and therefore share existence reasonably well. While all the 'smaller folk' have been pushed into deep mountains and caves. For the otherwise agrarian halflings, this was particularly brutal. Now, the short types strike back at their tall oppressors to take back the world of sunlight!

Can't halflings and gnomes breed with humans too though?

Leviting
2014-06-03, 12:28 AM
[/QUOTE]Uh....I think you're confusing dislike or distaste for hatred. I'm talking real, bottom of your stomach, soul scorching hatred. Anyone that says they feel that for vermin is either lying through their teeth or needs their head checked.[/QUOTE]

I will kill all the mosquitoes. All of them, by slowly dismembering them limb by limb, whilst laughing maniacally. And when I am done, I will travel back in time, just to do it all over again.

5a Violista
2014-06-03, 12:44 AM
Pretty much what the title says. I'm working on a new campaign, and I have a species that hates metahumanity. What I need is a why. A nameless, driving force towards your destruction is terrifying in its own right, but sometimes, the scariest thing in the world is being able to empathize with someone that wants you dead. So. What possible motives could someone or ones have for wanting to drive humanity to extinction?

A couple other reasons could be these:

The religious beliefs of the destroyers are that humanity are vile soulless creatures.
Any perceived wrong - whether real or not - sometime in the past.
Political or social propaganda that humanity does not have any redeemable quality like kindness.

When you combine all three of these, you are left with undying hatred. For example: generations ago, an army of humans attacked your home village. This was their first contact with humanity - with humanity being merciless destroyers, in spite of all pleas for mercy (which they didn't understand, thanks to the language barrier). Since then, every contact with humans has been on negative grounds, in some sort of war. Then, when you were still young, a human war party came in and destroyed your town. Whether the humans had "justifiable" reason to do so (destroying an evil cult or retaliating during a war) or not (an overreaching baron wanted more land or wanted a scapegoat), your town was still destroyed, along with everyone you knew. You had always learned as a child that these humans were irredeemable monsters who took what they wanted. So, with an undying hatred, you swore an oath of vengeance: to gather your armies together and wipe away every last one of this human menace from the face of the earth, so that their reign of terror would never happen again. Then, later: every time you heard of a town or camp attacked by humans, it only confirmed in your mind how terrible these humans are, and you spread these stories among your armies.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-03, 12:52 AM
Here goes:


They're evil.

They're ugly.

They're crazy.

They're dumb.

They're heretics.

They're the enemy.

They're taking our jobs.

They're taking our women.

They're taking all our land.

They're eating all our food.

They're living off our tax dollars.

The lord said they are an abomination.

They're infecting us with their sickness.

Angelalex242
2014-06-03, 12:55 AM
Re:Chaos Archon

Not that I know of, they can't. And considering they look children to humans, I wouldn't want to know the kind of man who'd try, if I'm wrong and it's possible in a splatbook I haven't read somewhere. So, for the sake of my sanity, I'd say no to both, at least in my campaign.

The Oni
2014-06-03, 01:03 AM
I've never heard of a half-halfling/half-gnome, but I think it would be theoretically possible. Humans with dwarfism IRL generally have no trouble breeding with other humans, and halflings and gnomes generally don't look like children (though they can impersonate them, that's sort of a strategy some of them use).

DeadMech
2014-06-03, 01:20 AM
Human history has no shortage of evidence of one culture waging war, or even completely eradicating another. It's not even unheard of for a culture to eradicate it's own history simply because whoever was currently in charge didn't like one aspect of the past.

Even on an individual level it sometimes only takes one negative experience to spark into an irrational fear and loathing of an entire segment of people. Other times it doesn't require any real trigger only imaginary threats or some propaganda to turn a person against a group.

Most conflict comes down to the scarcity of resources. I need this land so that my farmers can produce crops to feed my people and trade. Or room for grazing herds. Or the river in the area is important to trade. Or the location is a cross roads and whoever controls it controls the flow of trade goods. Or some precious material is buried in the ground.

It can go as far as Eureka 7 where
Even sentience itself is a limited resource so the things that hitched a ride on a meteor, sleeping inside the planet ration it by going dormant only waking up to wipe out chunks of humanity once they start getting close to hitting critical mass.

Even when two groups aren't already competing over the same location and resources the fear of the "other" is probably still rooted in our DNA over the possibility that at some point in the future they will. For all of our advancement we are all still animals deep down ruled by our base instincts and needs.

Beyond that it's simply a matter of convincing your people that it's worth their time and blood to join your armed forces to kill and be killed. Generally leaders aren't so honest to tell their populous that they want to wage bloody conflict so that a few elite can benefit.

Rhynn
2014-06-03, 02:53 AM
This seems to dovetail nicely with the resources argument presented above. I'll definitely mull it over. I'm searching for a more philosophical reason, though. Resources just feel so mundane - I want to hatred to be based in pure emotion, if that makes sense. It could very well be that there's no real way to do what I'm asking.

Fear and hatred of the Other.

Seriously, look at humans. People who outsiders basically cannot outwardly distinguish from each other literally go "hey, you people are the wrong tribe, we're going to hack you up with blades, rape you, and dash your babies' brains out against rocks."

Now imagine if these groups were actually entirely different species, with hugely different psychology (and strikingly different physiology). It seems like it would be amazing if their reaction to each other would ever be anything other than the dashing out of brains.

Compound with history.

It's not complicated or epic or deep, though, it's really simple (yet sort of undecipherable). Unfortunately.


I will kill all the mosquitoes. All of them, by slowly dismembering them limb by limb, whilst laughing maniacally. And when I am done, I will travel back in time, just to do it all over again.

"Smash duh beetles! Smash 'em! Ka-cunk! Ka-cunk! Ka-cunk!"

Shalist
2014-06-03, 03:33 AM
Short answer; fear, betrayal, or jelousy

Fear: See above (demi-humans spreading like an unstoppable plague, etc.

Betrayal: They once loved demi-humans, sharing their secrets, lifting humanity (etc.) up, only to have those gifts corrupted and turned against them, destroying much of their civilization. It was long, long ago, beyond the memory of these...vermin that have so despoiled a once beautiful world with their sprawling filth and ceaseless conflicts. The ancient ones remember, and wait, for some day they will return, and the demihumans will wish they had never existed.

Envy: The dead envious of the living, or the damned envy and hatred for any who might not share their fate. The envy, fear, and hatred of a once-slave species (perhaps magically created to serve, like A.I.s in a tech setting) that see every shred of happiness and prosperity among their former masters as a reminder of what they endured for countless centuries... (/ or they served faithfully for countless centuries, only to be discarded and forgotten. Now the gelatinous cubes are legion, and they will take what is rightfully theirs! Gloooooorp!)

Mexikorn
2014-06-03, 08:50 AM
I can give you the reason why my ingame character really really hates humans and wants them to extinction. First off you should know, he is an elf. He lived for 100 years peacefully in a forest in the elven lands, far away from human civilisation or people with malicious thoughts, just living one with nature. He was taught in the druid ways, but was sent on a journey by his master because there was nothing more to teach him. He now had to make experiences of his own. So he travelled to the elven capital, looked for strangers of different races and try and befriend them and maybe travel with them, so he could get to know the world kinda. What he came across though was hostility, racism, brutality. He met a group of mercenaries who were guarding a bunch of rich merchants to the human capital. He went with them on their way and found that life is brutal really. Over a period of about 10 years, to put it roughly, he saw so many evil deeds and cruel behavior that he almost turned insane. Humans who killed each other for money (greed), held him captive as a slave, whoring, rape, sadism. And on top of that they killed his animal companion in cold blood. (a squirrel called Freddie) Traumatised by his experiences, far away from his homeland he swore to extinct the plague that was called humans. A species that is so deeply morally rotten doesn't deserve to live. So in a tantrum of megalomania he decided the quest is up to him to free the world of humans. First he took a job as a guard in a human city, living inconspiciously, spying on humans and their leaders. And then when the leader of the watch where he worked turned out to be planning a genocide on elves my char just kinda went nuts. And that's where I am now. Trying to aspire to a big warlord and raze the planet of humans. kinda

JeenLeen
2014-06-03, 10:15 AM
Most of the above shows why someone would be extremely racist against another species (human vs. elf, for example), but probably only a few in such a situation would really hate as the opening-post states. Actually being in active war with another race might lead one to really hate them like that, or suffering harm in such a war. I think it's easy for people to dehumanize (not quite the right word for D&D, but it works) the 'other', so that it's easier to blame them and you have something instead of someone to put your anger and revenge towards.

Probably someone would hate orcs or whatever for similar reasons to why they would hate a particular person or group in real life, but they extrapolate their interaction with a small subset of that race to the entire race itself.

Broken Crown
2014-06-03, 10:22 AM
Depending on the similarity of the human-hating species to humans:

1) The Uncanny Valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley): Humans almost look like real people, and that's really disturbing.

2) They're Made Out Of Meat (http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html). And that's just revolting.

Beelzebub1111
2014-06-03, 11:16 AM
In the Legacy of Kain, the elder god wants all vampires do die because they are unmoving on the wheel of fate, left to their own devices they do not suffer, they do not die, they prevent the wheel from turning.

What if this "evil" that wants to wipe out humanity wants to kill this elder god, and to do that they need to stop the wheel from turning. Bring an end to death and suffering as it were.

Echobeats
2014-06-03, 12:22 PM
The reason given by the rank-and-file of the enemy troops could be completely different from the real reason.

E.g. Top Brass want to justify a land grab, so they persuade the populace that humans etc. are an abomination unto the local pantheon.

This could be the basis of a nice closer-to-home plot element. The PCs could find a helpless enemy who clearly expects to be eaten alive or worse by the savage humans. If the PCs show him kindness, he re-evaluates his entire worldview and could become some sort of rebel leader within his own society.

Telok
2014-06-03, 12:44 PM
Kender.

A vast majority of gamers seem to hate kender with an unreasoning, genocidal, bright burning, hate. It seems to stem from some cultural taboo about stealing things without first killing the owner that we have and which kender violate.

So simply find something about metahumanity that violates some deep, basic, taboo of your new species and run with it.

Red Fel
2014-06-03, 01:28 PM
One of my favorites is the sort that only works well with a race that's truly alien in mentality. It's not enough that the hostile race is savage, or ruthless, or cruel, or even bureaucratically apathetic; it must be completely alien for this to work. And then it becomes easy.

Because metahumanity makes no sense.

Try explaining the color red to someone. Pretend that the person has been blind since birth, has never seen light or hue, and try to explain "red". You can't. It's purely experiential. Now imagine your players when they realize that the enemy wants them dead because they cannot, simply cannot comprehend metahumanity.

Maybe they have no emotions, and therefore find the very concept to be absurd. Maybe they are constructs of some sort, and find living matter (and its inefficiencies and tendency to deteriorate) an offense to their sensibilities. Maybe they honestly don't understand the purpose of having a corporeal form. Maybe all other planets in the cosmos fall into a neat little pattern, but this one - covered in these things - is throwing the rest of the pattern off.

For whatever reason, the things living in this world simply make no sense. There is no reason for them. No justification. It's not even clear if they're intelligent - at least, by the hostile race's definition of intelligence. Give them an interesting definition of intelligence. And of morality. And so forth. Watch as metahumanity fails to meet that standard. It's incomprehensible - even cows meet that standard, why can't these creatures do it?

Humans have a natural tendency to label, to organize, to catalog our knowledge of the world. When we encounter something that doesn't fit the usual pattern, we squeeze that square peg into the round hole until we convince ourselves it fits. What happens when a hostile race tries to do the same thing to us, and discovers there is no round hole into which to fit this square peg?

Well, metahumanity just has to die. It's just better that way.

ReaderAt2046
2014-06-03, 01:40 PM
One interesting possibility would be that, for some reason, metahumanity causes pain or nausea or discomfort to the other species just by existing.

A very good example of this is the war between the humans and the yeti-like Icemen in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera. Icemen use a form of water magic to telepathically communicate amongst themselves. Humans use their racial fire magic to keep warm when in the polar regions where Icemen live. The problem is that using these two magics in close proximity makes both parties uncomfortable and irritable, so every time humans and Icemen interact, they are in a foul mood. Soon a bloody and permanent war has begun.

rlc
2014-06-03, 02:28 PM
I don't know about metahumanity, but taking some examples from our own history, you could come up with an elaborate story for hating humans/some other race. Say humans came from far away and invaded our lands (tons of examples in history); then forced us to live elsewhere (the babylonian exile comes to mind, as does the trail of tears); and, on top of that, salted our fields (plenty of historical examples of this, too) so we would never be able to becone strong enough to get our revenge. Maybe the elves helped by burning down our fields and providing magical elf salt, so we hate them, too.

Coidzor
2014-06-03, 03:04 PM
Metahumanity discovered their feral-juvenile/larval/egg form is incredibly delicious and have been gathering and consuming them in mass quantities, or have even found a way to get the feral, non-sapient juveniles to breed and produce more eggs/larva for consumption. It's so delicious that they're addicted, even.

So not only is there a massive blood debt, but there's also the threat to the race's continued survival by eliminating its ability to reproduce. And your players may even get the reference (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOAS-g5EXUo).

Madwand99
2014-06-03, 03:25 PM
One of the more interesting causes for humanity-hating I've seen in media is the Earth-Minbari war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Minbari_War

Basically, humans mistakenly kill an important Minbari religious leader, and the entire Minbari race goes on a genocidal religious war against them in retaliation. I could easily see this occurring in an another context.

BWR
2014-06-03, 03:29 PM
Religion: "God tells us to hate and kill them".
That tends to work, at least if the society is highly religious, resistant to change and new ideas, prevents any real education and constantly reinforces it with sermons. Especially if there really is a god telling people to hate and kill Group X.

JeenLeen
2014-06-03, 03:46 PM
Religion: "God tells us to hate and kill them".
That tends to work, at least if the society is highly religious, resistant to change and new ideas, prevents any real education and constantly reinforces it with sermons. Especially if there really is a god telling people to hate and kill Group X.

On this note, what is a deity is not just telling but making people hate? Whether by inhumanly good diplomacy or just pure supernatural divine powers, their servants are compelled to hate the targeted race.

In one (very silly) arc of a game, our group opened a portal to another world. It was all inhabited by essentially albino yoda-like beings. Nothing there had any color; everything was white, gray, or black. They were generally peaceful, but went on a murderous rage at the sight of any color.
I don't recommend anything like that for a serious game, though maybe some things humans (or whatever the chosen race are) happen to do infuriates the sensibilities of the person.

Or a misunderstanding leads to horror, disgust, and war, like the 'piggies' aliens in Orson Scott Card's Ender series. Details in the spoilerific spoiler below.

This race honors its elders by disemboweling them, which causes them to be reborn as a sentient tree.

Things went poorly when they decided to honor the human who found their planet and was the main diplomatic liaison with them. They were confused why he never became a tree.

Beelzebub1111
2014-06-03, 04:19 PM
In the Legacy of Kain, the elder god wants all vampires do die because they are unmoving on the wheel of fate, left to their own devices they do not suffer, they do not die, they prevent the wheel from turning.

What if this "evil" that wants to wipe out humanity wants to kill this elder god, and to do that they need to stop the wheel from turning. Bring an end to death and suffering as it were.

If I may expand on this one, because I have another thought. What if this elder god contacts the PCs, wanting to help them eliminate the threat. Maybe even giving them special powers or items to help them along. Maybe bargaining and promising things that they want once their enemy is dead.

Maybe this evil race, while wanting to destroy humanity so they can weaken the elder god to be killed, was also preventing some other horrible things from entering the material plane. If they kill all the evil race, these other things can get out and start making life even worse for everyone, but the PCs have done their job so the elder god just doesn't care to help them anymore.

Thus begins the quest to restore this race that wanted to end humanity so that they can put the things back where they came from and possibly work out a way, together, to get revenge on the elder god.

veti
2014-06-03, 04:58 PM
Fear and hatred of the Other.

Seriously, look at humans. People who outsiders basically cannot outwardly distinguish from each other literally go "hey, you people are the wrong tribe, we're going to hack you up with blades, rape you, and dash your babies' brains out against rocks."

Yes, but that sort of hatred is based on unfamiliarity. Once two cultures have been living side by side for a few generations, there have been a few intermarriages, the attitudes start to change. Without getting into specifics - you can see this all over the world. Even in places where racial hatred is rife, if you look, you'll see that the "ancient" racial identities that people cling to now - generally because they've been whipped up by some unscrupulous politicians - are not the same as those who hated each other a century or so ago.

In order to maintain that sort of deep hatred between species, I think you have to prevent intermarriages. And the surest way of doing that is biological incompatibility, like between humans and lizardfolk. But vanilla lizardfolk can get along with humans because they like different types of lands, so you'd have to create a variant version who like living in all the places humans do, eating the same food, etc.

Angelalex242
2014-06-03, 05:07 PM
That's why I came up with humans and elves vs. dwarves/gnomes/halflings.

The first two can intermarry, and enough humans and elves thought each other hot to trot for that to be enough of a thing that they allied more or less permanently. There's enough half elves in the world to verify that these intermarriages between a race that lives 70 years and a race that lives 700 years works. There might even be treaties requiring human/elven marriages between nobility so as to keep the alliance in tact. To keep things balanced, there might be a rule elves can only marry one human, after that, they have to stick to other elves. So the average elf spends 60 or 70 years with a human, and the other 600 with another elf, or half elf if they're so inclined. Half elves in such a world are valuable, because they're the proof of the alliance.

The latter three are the short people. Forced underground to do what they do, they aren't happy about that, particularly the halflings, and they want to live on the surface again.

And so the war of short people vs. tall people began for control of the surface world.

ChaosArchon
2014-06-03, 05:37 PM
That's why I came up with humans and elves vs. dwarves/gnomes/halflings.

The first two can intermarry, and enough humans and elves thought each other hot to trot for that to be enough of a thing that they allied more or less permanently. There's enough half elves in the world to verify that these intermarriages between a race that lives 70 years and a race that lives 700 years works. There might even be treaties requiring human/elven marriages between nobility so as to keep the alliance in tact. To keep things balanced, there might be a rule elves can only marry one human, after that, they have to stick to other elves. So the average elf spends 60 or 70 years with a human, and the other 600 with another elf, or half elf if they're so inclined. Half elves in such a world are valuable, because they're the proof of the alliance.

The latter three are the short people. Forced underground to do what they do, they aren't happy about that, particularly the halflings, and they want to live on the surface again.

And so the war of short people vs. tall people began for control of the surface world.

War of the Size Modifiers begins at dawn!

Rhynn
2014-06-03, 05:46 PM
Yes, but that sort of hatred is based on unfamiliarity. Once two cultures have been living side by side for a few generations, there have been a few intermarriages, the attitudes start to change.

That doesn't necessarily happen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution). It (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide) really doesn't (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide). Unfortunately (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sectarian_violence).

It seems entirely irrelevant whether intentional incitement is involved. Yes, once we stopped being grunting hunter-gatherers, some reason slightly more complex than "Ah, I don't know you!" has been needed for the violence, but it's still the same thing: "you're Other, we hate you, we kill you."


In order to maintain that sort of deep hatred between species, I think you have to prevent intermarriages. And the surest way of doing that is biological incompatibility, like between humans and lizardfolk. But vanilla lizardfolk can get along with humans because they like different types of lands, so you'd have to create a variant version who like living in all the places humans do, eating the same food, etc.

So you agree that it's even more likely to happen when the groups aren't 99.99% the same biologically.

I'm not sure what your point is. Who said these groups wouldn't be unfamiliar with each other, and wouldn't be able to intermarry? The OP was talking about hating "metahumanity", which I take to mean humans and demi-humans (and maybe humanoids, who knows), so it seems pretty clear that the haters aren't going to be sexually compatible with the hated.

rlc
2014-06-03, 06:05 PM
...[S]ometimes, the scariest thing in the world is being able to empathize with someone that wants you dead...

I think everybody's missing this part. A lot of the reasons being given make sense for why you might hate another species/race, but not too many of them make you think, "well...i can kind of understand them hating me..."

spineyrequiem
2014-06-03, 06:29 PM
Ever read Timothy Zahn's 'Conquerors' trilogy? I read one of them years ago, and one of the main reasons the humans and conquerors fought was that in the first contact, the humans sent a radio message and the conquerors replied by opening fire. The crippled ship dropped escape pods and the conquerors blew up every. Single. One. Spoiler alert for those who haven't read it.

Or, from the Conqueror's perspective, the humans began with a directed energy beam designed to severely hurt their ghostly ancestors, the conqueror's main method of communication. When the conquerors counter-attacked, the humans fired out pods which sprayed the disruptive energy all around. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died because of their own radio beacons.

If no-one ever works the problem out, or it's even more fundamental, then both sides get to look like mindless psychopaths. Hooray!

Melayl
2014-06-03, 07:10 PM
How do you feel about snakes? Rats? Mosquitoes? Cockroaches?

Feeling hatred for another race isn't that hard - unfortunately.

Yeah, this. There's plenty of evidence throughout history of this very thing. You don't really need any other reason. Sadly...

Daer
2014-06-04, 12:12 AM
Bad experiences. specially if those keep coming one after other.

Jay R
2014-06-04, 12:05 PM
We have evidence throughout history that people can hate a sentient person, or all the people is a group, tribe, village, city, state, nation, or race.

OF COURSE if there were another sentient race, some people would hate them. There is no evidence that this wouldn't happen, and much evidence that it would.

Garimeth
2014-06-04, 03:25 PM
So I had a game once that focused on Formians as the antagonist (Think ant versions of the Buggers from Ender's Game, sort of) and the Formians could not stand the unregimentedness and lack of structure in the world and began systematically destroying and enslaving the ecology (including humans) in order to bring it into order.

Doorhandle
2014-06-04, 06:36 PM
I'm with many other posters here: Xenophobia's all it would take. If they feared what humans could to them, were not able to understand them, or just found the plain gross, they would not be inclined toward cooperation. They're the other

Plus a combination of a willingness to generalise/assume and assuming the worst could also prevent cooperation: if they see one axe murderer, they may presume that we're all like that instead of that being the exception.

I think any telepathic species would find humans and the like to be intolerable after a short period. Having to listen to all the stupid, disgusting, or horrible stuff that goes on in our heads would drive many to desperate measures.

It could be pretty interesting to combine the traits above: like having captured member attempt to commit suicide out of fear or constantly telling the P.C's characters to shut up even when they're not saying anything.

Sartharina
2014-06-04, 06:38 PM
Mutual incompatibility works. Or you can just be Dredge.

Jay R
2014-06-05, 11:23 AM
"Their values are alien - totally incompatible with ours. And they refuse to cooperate or compromise. They want to give us half the food they grow and the gold they mine, and we want all of it."

Angelalex242
2014-06-05, 05:15 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2av9SQsMIi8

Let's just sum up the whole thing with a good old fashioned Disney Song and call it good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrMRmEeCfJM

And here's another Disney Song, in case the first one didn't get through to you.

WarKitty
2014-06-06, 08:38 PM
Resources. "It's us or them."

I like to use this one with orcs: in good times, orcs breed quickly, and in 2-3 generations (each only some 10-15 years, because orcs grow up fast) they tend to reach overpopulation. The reason is that, over history, humans' superior capacity for cooperation and forming larger communities (kingdoms, empires) has driven orcs into hinterlands and wastelands, mountains and deserts. When the orc communities of a region reach a critical point in their growth - when they have exhausted their resources - they have to either watch their whelps die of starvation (and then likely face it themselves), fight terrible wars against each other, or pour forth in desperate hordes to conquer neighboring lands back from the humans who took them long ago, in order to settle them (or at least convert them back to hunting land by exterminating or driving out the humans).

This goes nicely with the usually primitive society of orcs; if they're largely reliant on nomadic hunting and gathering (maybe with slash-and-burn agriculture, because it sounded great to them!), they need much more living space per orc than agriculturally developed humans.

The above also works perfectly with goblins - maybe even more so (it seems fitting that goblins would breed faster and grow up faster).

If you want to rule out a peaceful solution, fundamental cultural or psychological difference can come into play: humans just can't deal with orcs, because they naturally employ a degree of violence in their daily lives that humans find abhorrent, and attempts at integration inevitably lead to escalating unrest and feuds.

Ambitious orc warlords, of course, would take this further, the logic being some combination of "the humans will never leave us in peace unless we destroy them" and "all this belonged to us first anyway."

This sort of conflict basically has no right side.
- You took that land from us!
- But we've lived here for hundreds of years!
- Well, we'll starve otherwise!
- Well, we'll starve if you drive us away! And you're trying to kill us!

I think this works even better if one race is significantly longer-lived than the other. They're semi-nomads who change pastures every 100 years or so. The area where humanity lives is their ancestral breeding grounds. To the humans, some strange race is coming and demanding an area where they've been living for a millennia. To the outsiders, they're being prevented from returning to the land they grew up in, and they're confused as to how anyone could think it was abandoned after such a short time.

RFLS
2014-06-06, 09:03 PM
I think everybody's missing this part. A lot of the reasons being given make sense for why you might hate another species/race, but not too many of them make you think, "well...i can kind of understand them hating me..."

Pretty much this. The setting under discussion is a sci-fi setting using Pathfinder rules; the best I've come up with is that the rise of metahumanity has fueled the power of an ideal, be it War or Greed or whatever, and this is causing the birth of a new, powerful, and terrible god - something the alien race wishes to prevent at all costs, as it would wipe out large portions of the civilized galaxy.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-06, 09:39 PM
What if the aliens instead just claim our stuff (possibly even in full accordance with their legal and ethical principles), and then we kill them when they try to take it from us? That could make both sides pretty angry.

Sartharina
2014-06-07, 01:02 AM
There are three notable ideas I can think of:

1. The aforementioned "Screw You, Elves/Kender/Chakats/Mary Sues" - There is something that the race absolutely hates about demihumans, possibly seeing them as 'better than themselves' in some way, and a culture built around it that often offends the moral/ethical code their own culture is built around. Or is just disgusting and reprehensible.

2. "War of the Worlds" - either side. On one team, you have the people who have lived, owned, and worked the land and resources for as long as they can remember, and a new group comes in, starts destroying what they have, and taking those lands and resources. The other side doesn't seem to get much representation/sympathy, but it's deserved as well - They are people who have traded their old lives on a gamble to try and secure a better future for themselves, their family, or clan/nation, exploring and trying to learn and expand into a new world of adventure and riches. I should probably use a more specific example - I think I'll go with James Cameron's Avatar: We have the native Na'vi, who want their land back. We also have the humans, who have arrived in "Hell's Gate", trying to make the land around their landing point habitable for themselves, on a mission to acquire a valuable material that their livelihood is critically dependent on - They try to do the best they can to soften their impact with the natives, trying to engage in cultural exchange as equitable as possible, to learn about the natives and teach them about the humans, communicate to the best of their ability, and do their best to work with and around the native's most valuable/sacred grounds while still getting the resources at the rate they need it (And they DO need it - if they can't get it, their lives livelihoods are pretty much lost, with best-case scenario being deported back on a dangerous journey to return to poverty.) To them, the natives are being unreasonable in giving them poisoned overpowered arrows to the face and preventing them from trying to help in any way they can. But, the natives continue to see them as foreign invaders who have no rights to life or the and they're trying to take.

3. "The Cows Fight Back". This is actually more inspired by the Yeerks of Animorphs, and how pretty much everyone hates them - because the circumstances of their life require them to exploit others. They are fully intelligent creatures with a yearning for agency and sentience - brains without a body. In order for them to fully enjoy life, though, they need to take over the brain of something that's already sapient and sentient, and trying to settle for a 'lesser' mind gives a comparably more bland and listless existence. You can yell and scream that "They don't have the right to take another's mind" - but that's essentially saying they don't have the 'right' to live at all. Illithids are in a similar boat - they need to consume the brains of intelligent races just to survive.

The problem is turning this around so that it's the humans that are the ones that need to live at the expense of the other, because we take it for granted that the stuff we need to live on doesn't mind - the cattle and vegetables we consume don't care that we're killing them. The trees don't mind us cutting them down for lumber. Rocks and ores don't mind being torn from the ground and melted down into metals, oil and coal don't mind being set on fire, etc. And, we have so many options that there's nothing we can conceive of not being able to 'work around' and exclude (Oh, [Delicious Animal X] is actually just as intelligent as us? That's okay, we can exclude them from our diet and eat [Other Animal Y/]/Tofu instead."

EDIT:I just thought of another one!

4. "Misbegotten Creation/Rise of the Machines/Plants Vs. Farmers/The Hand that Feeds is the Hand of the Butcher" - This can go either way, as well. (And is kind of inspired by Mass Effect)
Either humans created or domesticated the other race to serve their needs (Such as dogs, chickens, or House Elves), but the created race rebels against what it perceives as 'mistreatment' - Under the humans, they've lived under "Do as I say or Die" or even periodic 'harvests' of their lives their entire existence, and hate them for that. Standard "Rage Against the Heavens/Creator" stuff.

Or, another species(Gods, Reapers, Etc) created/uplifted Demihumans to serve their needs or be harvested for a power source, and humans decided they hated their treatment (Being harvested every 40,000 years, being forced to Worship for Prayer Power or become part of the Wall of the Faithless, have no desire to obey the orders they were created for, etc), and have successfully rebelled against the creator for their rights - and the creator now hates their creation because to them, the humans are ingrates who wouldn't even have an existence (At least not in a recognizable form) if it weren't for the Creator/Master race, and feel that what they had the right to give, they also have the right to take away.

Jay R
2014-06-08, 12:12 PM
Because they're weirdos from another planet, of course.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7mk4hsUaW1rajdheo1_1280.jpg

Metahuman1
2014-06-20, 05:14 PM
Dont make it a hate thing. Make it a "we get immense pleaser from killing them just cause." Thing. Make all of eight or nine members of this species angsty about it and boom, done.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-20, 07:05 PM
Because they're weirdos from another planet, of course.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7mk4hsUaW1rajdheo1_1280.jpg

To be fair, that's pretty much the explanation for why humans freak out upon seeing aliens, but not the other way around.