Chapter Two:
Evolutionary Biology
“IN this age of high magic and rising science, in this world where acts of God are witnessed regularly, it is a great wonder indeed that there is so much dissent regarding the topic of our origin. No one yet remains alive on Færith who was there to see the Creation. No, not even I, and I am old indeed! The wise men known as magicians cannot look back as far as the beginning, for those times are cloaked in mystery and will always remain so. Even the elves cannot remember so far back. The best hope, perhaps, lies in the so-called ‘fossil record’ and its proponents, among them the schools of archaeology, anthropology, and paleontology.
“Of course we all know the old stories well: the priests of many churches spread across this planet, ministering to all the Thinking Races, tell of how it was on the sixth day of the Creation, not more than six-thousand years ago, that God made the goodly races and blessed them with His own divine image: ‘male and female He made them,’ so the scriptures say, and they go on to tell how all the races, one by one, fell from grace; all but the elves, who remain to this day free from the plagues of disease and death.
“The tales also tell of tricky old Lucifer, and how he tried, in his pride, to copy the elves, dwarves, gnomes, pechs, and men. It was not within his power to create anything resembling the children of God, though. He could only destroy, and corrupt. Thus, the giants & the goblins are only mockeries, twisted descendants of men and fairies who lack any conscience to turn their hearts from evil deeds. The devil could not give them life, but he was able to steal their souls and those of their descendants as the new races of orcs and trolls and kobolds continued to multiply.
“As we near a new century, however, the old stories are coming into more and more doubt. Scientific skepticism has rocked the scholarly world, and set the churches at Connaia, Ruloskiva, and even Pensula on their collective ears. They are unwilling to accept the ‘Evolutionary Theory’ proposed by the scientists, that men, dwarves, and yes, even the noble elves all descended from lower life-forms, ‘primates’ and ‘hominids.’ Though scientists and wizards alike confidently search for that missing link that should connect us to what they believe to be our direct ancestors, it has yet to be found. It is no longer a question of ‘if,’ but one of ‘when.’”
—Sir Callahan of Rûne
Loremaster of Rûnehenge
January 19, 1792 A.D.
The Races of Færith
The races are many, but they are grouped into a few main categories. The biologists at various colleges, pioneered by the University of Arts, Magics, and Sciences at Pensula, recently took it upon themselves to group the Thinking Races into species for the purpose of biological classification. Similarities between all intelligent races proved conclusively (though the theory was met with much distaste in some circles) that humans, fairies, goblins, and giants are all necessarily placed within the genus Homo, though controversy still rages as to whether the humanoid races are separate species, or subspecies of H. sapiens.
That there are certain subtle anatomical similarities between pairs of otherwise extremely dissimilar races has caused biologists to reexamine the rejected theories of evolution. Lacking a mechanism for the natural transmutation of species, the idea that creatures could slowly change form over time to adapt to their environment was laughed away by every serious naturalist in Lethandria – until the experiments of a little-known Arettian clergyman were discovered by the scientific community. These experiments showed how physical traits were inherited in pairs of dominant and recessive “factors,” and scientists were finally able to put together models for the descent of the races.
Naturalists are now debating the exact progression of what has been dubbed the “evolution of species,” but on some key points they are agreed: at one point in the past, all humanoid races shared one common ancestor, probably more similar to humans than any other kind, and from this ancestor species, various reactions to the environment, some natural and some supernatural, caused the rise of the amazing diversity of races we see now, including humans, elves, dwarves, pechs, gnomes, orcs, kobolds, brownies, trolls, and ogres. The religious idea that some races are “dark” versions of other races has not been totally rejected, because the anatomical similarities between, say, dwarves and trows or between elves and orcs, has shown that these races are very closely related on an evolutionary scale.
It is precisely because of these anatomical pairings that modern biology rejects the old-fashioned grouping of the nonhuman races into good “fairies” and evil “goblins,” considering such a distinction even more artificial than a genus and species. Yet, this is how the majority of the sentient inhabitants of Færith have seen themselves for millennia (and some among them who have actually lived that long aren’t likely to change their opinions anytime soon).
The Aging of the Races
It's a well-known fact that the common races of Færith
have wildly different lifespans, with humans typically leading shorter
lives than the various examples of fairykind. Elves are the most
extreme example of this, because they are effectively ageless---they're
so in tune with the magic of the natural world that at any point in
their lives, elves are able to suppress or resume (but not reverse) the
biological process of aging. Some elves take centuries childhood, while
most prefer to slow their aging in the prime of their young adulthood. Still,
many elves will allow themselves to age naturally out of romantic love
for a mortal---for some reason, elves who marry humans and other
shorter-lived races find it impossible to do anything but grow old
alongside their significant other.
*Nobody knows just how long mechanical men take to wear out, since they haven't been around all that long. |
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Humans
(This page under construction)
• Human
Fairies
Fairykind are those humanoid races which came
about by mortal humans intermingling with immortal feys, producing new races
that were somewhere "in between" the mundane and the magical. They fall
into two broad groups. First are the demihumans, which are very close to
humans in overall form and seem to be native to the northern regions of
Lethandria: elves, dwarves, gnomes, and pechs. Second, there are the
so-called "chimerical" fairies, which appear generally human in the torso, arms,
and head, but have animal shapes below the waist (and generally come from the
southern half of Lethandria): centaurs, fauns, undines, and sirens. All of the fairy races are descended from the commingled blood of
humans with such spirit-folk as nymphs, sprites, satyrs, and eldarin. They
are mortal enemies of the goblins, which were once fairies themselves until they
were twisted and corrupted by black magic. To this day, the war between
fairykind and goblinkind continues in Færith, part of the lasting battle between
good and evil that spans all the planes of existence.
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• Elf • Faun |
• Gnome • Undine • Pech • Siren |
Changelings
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• Half-Elf |
• Half-Orc |
Living Constructs
Other Races
Some of the races recently introduced into the D&D game could be placed on Færith, either in out-of-the-way areas of Lethandria, or distant lands-unknown. Illumians and most of the races from the Psionics Handbook don't exist in Færith, and many of the Oriental Adventures races are missing as well (spirit folk and korobokuru are represented by normal elves and dwarves, and hengiyokai are rare if they exist at all); but raptorians, goliaths, nezumi, vanara, and naga fit in with the overall feeling of the setting quite well.