David J Prokopetz posted this neat Dungeons & Dragons idea about reproduction where humans are the only sapient species that reproduces organically. Here’s how some of the other races including dwarves, elves, goblins, and halflings reproduce:
Source: David J Prokopetz
(via: r/dndmemes)
Doesn’t really work for the Dwarves, Halflings and Elves, because it doesn’t address where the first came from. Unlike Goblins, who were created by a member of a different race and Humans who, presumably as in the real world, evolved naturally.
the first dwarves were first carved by the dwarven gods, the first elves were animals who spent time listening to the elven gods talk and sing and were eventually taught into existence, the halflings were initially the halfling gods bragging about the great race they created that no one else had met yet, and then one day they were real, a huge feast was promptly thrown and a party held by all.
And the Gods simply willed themselves into existence.
Like all Gods do of course.
I like to imagine the halfling gods are very proud of their creations, despite not (in a more literal sense) having put any actual effort into creating them.
If only there was some fictional way to account for the creation of the first people…
The Bible talks of God speaking the universe and its creatures into existence — man is the only creature God formed by hand, and breathed His breath into.
Whether you believe the Bible or not, a god speaking Elves and Halflings into existence is a neat idea.
Orcs are literally slaughter-born. When a force of violence wipes out a settlement of the helpless, the final prayers of the innocent for the might to protect themselves are sometimes shaped by gods (typically gods of death, battle, or honor) into physical manifestations of that power. The resulting Orc clan manifests out of the ground where the innocent fell over the span of a lunar cycle, a few at a time, rising full-formed and furious, knowing only that their purpose is to FIGHT, and that the fight must be fair and worthy. Sometimes, especially when the community whose fall birthed them is remote or isolated, the manifested orc clan is blamed by others for having wiped out the community that manifested them.
If an orc clan actually succeeds in claiming justice for the community that manifested them, by vanquishing the force that destroyed it, or by turning their power to protect another community, they find their original purpose fulfilled, and manifest new purpose from the memories and skills of the community that manifested them. Such ‘blooded’ orcs recount this as a feeling of transcendent peace that completes them as people, and allows them to integrate with non-orcish societies. Once they’ve attained this blooded state, they can reproduce as humans do, and can even crossbreed with them.
Conversely, there are many orc clans that (for one reason or another) never cross this threshold, and exist only to fight. Occasionally, one of them might have the bright idea to try and grow their martial power by raiding helpless villages and towns to bring new clans into being that they will then try to subordinate to their growing horde by force. Sometimes this chain-reacts as intended, and becomes a large problem that needs to be confronted by armies and heroes. Other times this ends up short-circuiting, leaving one or more blooded Orc clans where the hordemaster’s attempt at conquest once stood.
Also like the idea that elves begin as tree spirits and are sort of bonsai’d into elfhood by other elves
Someone please do half elves and half dwarves
Half elf is when an elf thinks it can uplift a human. Turns out poorly every time
I think Halflings should appear like Dawn in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – with everyone acting as if they existed all along, having heard so many stories about them.
Orcs are not a species. They are a consequence. When a person is wronged, and cannot take vengeance, they are helpless. When a community is wronged, and cannot take vengeance — that is when an orc horde will arise, torn from their bodies by their own rage, seeking out their oppressors and ending them.
The fact that most orc hordes are birthed from humans, and that most orc hordes seek vengeance on humans, is taken as a curiosity by most races. #SkepticalEyebrow
Coming along four months later to do a less-detailed riff on an idea someone else already posted? Brave of you.
Many people think that gnomes are a clever kind of goblins, due to their stature. Others think that gnomes are derivative of dwarves, due to superficial similarities in their methods of reproduction — as dwarves carve their descendants, so do gnomes assemble theirs.
In fact, though, gnomic and dwarven origins are completely unrelated, as should be plain from the fact that dwarves have been attested since the Third War of the Gods, prior to all but the dragons, whose names we do not speak; while no record of gnomes exists prior to the recent Age of Engineering among the humans. This is not, it should be noted, a coincidence.
Other races, such as dwarves and trolls, have a proud tradition of mechanical engineering going back at least several millennia. Humans, unfortunately, lack both the attention to detail of the dwarves and the hunger of the trolls. Imagine a trollish fleshcrafter at work in her abattoir, but somehow unmotivated to consume the residue and lick the floor clean when she was done. Imagine the insects, the rot, the fetor, that would arise from her slovenly disregard for engineering practices!
And so it was with the humans. Reeking of oil and grease, surrounded by fragments of rusting metal and mine tailings, shards of razor-sharp glass kicked idly aside — their workshops rapidly drew the attention of small hungers, which seeded themselves in that fertile soil, and brought forth the menace of the gremlin. What grumbling of dwarves has not wept with horror upon coming into their birthing chamber to put the final filigree upon a long-awaited and already-beloved decendant — only to see that all of their chisels have rusted half-away, and their sacred work scratched and tarnished by the sharp and malicious claws of those vile beasts? What trollish chirurgeon has not raged across the hills in fury, after seeing yet another carefully crafted abomination reduced to a writhing pile of arthritic flesh under their tiny yet vicious teeth? No! It could not be borne!
[Your humble author begs your indulgence for that pun. She could not resist.]
In the face of such a common enemy, dwarves and trolls laid down their pickaxes and their cleavers in war, and picked them up again in peace, as the tools of a great creation. Dwarven engineering met trollish breeding pits — and thus was born something wondrous, the clever and nimble crafters now known as gnomes. Small enough to follow gremlins into their crevices and cracks, fierce enough to wield scissors and awls against their foes’ teeth and claws, and clever enough to increase their numbers with gear and spring, with tendon and nerve, a perfect fusion of the sciences and arts that brought them forth — it is a great mercy that they took their spirits from the temporary peace between the dwarves and the trolls, not from their traditional enmity!
This came the gnomes, and thus they remain to this day, the preeminent craftspeople among the races, and ever our defense against the plague of gremlins that the careless and wasteful humans unleashed.
And though many find their fusion of metal and flesh to be disturbing, know that this is mere base prejudice. Although they take their origin from the skills of dwarven and trollish engineers, in the centuries since then, they have become far more than weapons in that war. They have thoroughly earned their place among the races and the nations, and they are worthy of our greatest respect, and of our gratitude.
Hobgoblins and Bugbears are variations on the Goblin brew, or they could be different parts of the life cycle.
Gnomes are made by other Gnomes, like Dwarves are made by Dwarves, except Gnomes are mechanical constructs given life, and Dwarves are stone. Autognomes are Budget Gnomes/Walmart Gnomes.
That or Gnomes come from unfinished projects…
Halflings should have food babies.