The following excerpts are taken from On the Nature of Humanity, and Its Various Features & Foibles, considered the authoritative introductory text regarding the sentient lifeforms of Third Earth. While there are many and varied resources that are highly valued for their deep and comprehensive considerations, they can prove just as exhausting to read as they are exhaustive in their coverage. To date, no single volume rivals On the Nature of Humanity in terms of pragmatic concision.
A Note on Half-Breeds
While each of the human races does have its own cultural particularities and notable physiology (as mentioned above), all humanity is a single interbreeding species: a human of any race may mate and produce viable offspring with one of any other race. When mates are of the same race, their racial features will be preserved. However, when the parents are of two different races, the child will be a half-breed, which typically (though not always) results in certain characteristics here noted:
Dwarphilim: Dwarves of Elphilim. A dwarf-elf half-breed will, as any other half-breed, have access to the full range of elven grace and dwarven hardiness. While most are somewhere in the middle, some exceptional dwarphilim are both as graceful and as hardy as their parents, though they will probably be less gifted in other areas. The combination of agility and toughness makes for formidable gladiators, indomitable bodyguards, and stalwart battlemenders.
Elocuen: Elves of Orocuen. An elf-orc half-breed will be both agile and powerful, and may also have both an elf’s foresight and an orc’s adaptibility. This makes elocuen feared mercenaries, creative inventors, and peerless assassins. Orc half-breeds tend to have an orc’s improvisational skills in addition to their other parent’s specialization skills, shoring up the typical orc shortcoming of being a jack of all trades, master of none.
Ormus: Orcs of Imus. Orc-dwarf half-breeds are typically both strong and tough, making them high-demand soldiers unparalleled in regimented combat, able to stick to a plan but also to adapt when needed. An ormus can be adept spellbreakers, able to survive a tremendous amount of punishment and then decisively end the fight once they’ve closed with their target. Ormus are also excellent battlemages when they choose to be.
Elborga: Elves of Valborga. The grace of an elf with the musculature of a troll is terrifying to behold - even for the Elborga themselves, who are prone to injuries when they can’t handle their own strength. Self-control is a must for any Elborga, tending to have a troll’s thick skin and raw power, but an elf’s elongated features and relatively fragile bones. This makes them gymnasts par excellence in the view of many, as they can push themselves to limits others can’t approach, and surpass them with devastating results.
Torc: Troll-Orcs. Torcs buck the naming convention of other troll half-breeds because three syllables take too long to say when one arrives on the battlefield. Swift and deadly, the most fearsome torcs have pronounced trollish features on an orc’s more compact frame, making them unpredictable powerhouses who can swiftly turn the tide of battle. A torc battlemender can dish out punishment, take it with a shrug, and undo it with a word. Fortunately for everyone else, torcs tend to have a troll’s territoriality and an orc’s need to belong: this makes them happy to serve as a group’s only torc, but wary of being “just another torc.” This has given them a reputation as being primadonnas, but the truth is that they fear another of their kind making them redundant or obsolete.
Dwarborga: Dwarves of Valborga. Imagine a proud and powerful steer gifted with a human intellect, and you are somewhere in the neighborhood of the Dwarborga. A single dwarborga is a force to be reckoned with; a regiment of them is nigh-unstoppable. Stampeding dwarborga have turned the tide of many historic battles, though they have also fallen to wily opponents who were able to get them in each other’s way. They are prized in the military for their more dwarvish appetites and more trollish effectiveness, as all armies run on their stomachs.
Half-Giants and Half-Trolls. Half-giants tend to be more like other giants than they are like their non-giant parents, perhaps a little smaller, but still large and cumbersome. A little extra agility, a little more durability, or a little more strength is all the variation you are likely to see (aside from ear and nose shape) when giants mate with dwarves, elves, and orcs - but always at the expense of size, the giant’s most notable attribute. When a giant mates with a troll, the child is usually able to blend in easily with either giants or with trolls, but not both groups. Rarely, a giant-troll half-breed will have the giant’s physiology with the troll’s features (as pictured above); otherwise, such half-breed children are only known as such in cases where their parents are both engaged and active in their lives. Most of civilized society today embraces half-breeds of all kinds, making them more likely to interbreed further (see below); but sometimes, there will be individuals who are clearly “one half troll and one half everything else.” Such a pedigree produces what we call a “half-troll”: pronounced horns, muzzle, and thick skin, perhaps with hooves and/or digitigrade legs, on an otherwise fairly average human body. Such specimens, while rare, tend to be as diverse as the rest of us - except they are a little harder to cut, a little longer of leg, and with little horns on top. In other words, well within the wide spectrum of normal human variation.
When three or more races are present in a person’s genealogy, physical features tend to homogenize according to certain dominance relationships, here noted:
Ears: The rounded ears of dwarves and giants tend to dominate over generations. Elven and trollish ears seem to be most recessive, with orcish ears in the middle.
Eyes: The sharp almond eyes of elves, the large round eyes of dwarves, and the deep-set eyes of giants, all seem to share equal hereditary dominance with each other. But these are all tied for second behind the medium round eyes of orcs. Only the large almond eyes of trolls seem to disappear altogether after generations of miscegenation.
Height: A person of somewhat mixed ancestry might be anywhere within the full range of human height, but over time such mixed pairings tend to congregate between 4’10” and 6’4”.
Horns: Only trolls and their half-breeds have horns, and these tend to shrink over generations before disappearing entirely.
Musculature: While there is of course wide variation in musculature even among thoroughly interbred humans, the thick and dense muscles of trolls and giants seem to slowly recede over generations. This is probably due to the enormous dietary needs of sustaining them, which simply is not worth the effort in a physically undemanding city environment. In rural areas, people tend to be stronger on average, but still not as strong as giants and trolls living in the ancient way.
Skeletal Structure: The giant’s skeletal structure seems to dominate over the thinner and elongated skeletons of the elves, the stout frames of the dwarves, or the broad and powerful bones of the orcs. Giants tend to be about average between them all, simply on a much larger scale, which of course also averages out as mentioned above when discussing height.
Such folks, due to the averaging qualities of miscegenation and concomitant uncertainty of genealogy, are simply referred to as “human.”
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