Races and Ethnicities

Gnomes

Gnomes of Iroe are not your typical tinkerers. They fall much more frequently into the malevolent trickster category, actively causing trouble for others for their own pleasure. They usually stay in their own isolated communities, unwilling to assist outsiders and actively making the lives of any who wander near their village awful through their tricks. Their society is typically built around slavery of other gnomes for menial labor, while the smaller middle and upper class enjoy lives of luxury. There exists another kind of gnome though; gnomes afflicted by the Wanderlust. For all the horrible traits of gnomes, the general populace's view of them is much more charitable; gnomes without the Wanderlust almost never leave their isolationist villages, most of whom are in the gnomelands, which means the typical Iroian's mental picture of a gnome is of one struck with Wanderlust.

Gnomes live an average of 100 years, with the generally accepted lifespan limit at 120. They tend toward the slightly plumper side, with heights ranging from 2.5-4 feet tall.

Gnome Wanderlust / Wandering Gnomes

The Wanderlust is a mental condition that afflicts gnomes seemingly at random. It causes an urgent need for the unknown and novel, causing them to wander the world. These gnomes, typically nomadic though sometimes grabbing jobs that let them explore or meet people from diverse cultures, create the mental picture most people have of gnomes, due to the excess isolationism normal gnome communities exhibit. Wanderlust-afflicted gnomes, known better as Wandering Gnomes, also tend to exhibit much more compassion than the typical gnome (though this isn't a hard rule, but a noticeable generalization); whether this is caused by greater exposure to other cultures and ways of thinking, or if it is a physical effect of the Wanderlust remains unknown.

Elves

Elves came from the Sky LifeBiome. They are tall and skinny beings with proud attitudes. While in the LifeBiome, they genetically modified themselves to be mostly sterile. This worked excellently in keeping population size below the maximum for the resource-limited Sky LifeBiome. When the Sky LifeBiome came down, the elves didn't keep their genetic modification equipment and now have trouble having more than 2 children. Two factions of elves arose in response to this problem: the Free Elves and the Wood Elves.

Originally, elves lived over 600 years. Nowadays, Wood Elves usually live around 250 years, with a general cap of 300 and Free Elves live around 150 years. Wood elf generations last ~150 years, due to the general infertility of purebred elves.

Wood Elves

The more 'traditional' Elves who believed that life, especially plant life, must be cultivated even at the expense of oneself. This isn't really a surprising view. Having come from the Sky LifeBiome, plant-life was difficult to grow given the constraints of a LifeBiome which had very limited resources as if it had too much weight it would be unable to remain floating.

Most wood elves live in secluded forest cities, and avoid the world at large, a stark difference from the Free Elves.

Free Elves / City Elves

The 'Free Elves' are more… lax than their Wood Elf counterparts. They, recognizing that the new world they found was not the Sky Biome, believe Elves should integrate with the other races, even to the point of intermarrying. For all their clarity of thought, they have trouble sticking with commitments: despite their long-lives, they have serious fear of lost opportunities.

Free elves are sometimes also referred to as "City Elves" due to their willingness to live in cities alongside other races.

Genetics

Free elves, practically recognizing the limitations of their genetic inability to reproduce, carefully changed their own culture to encourage marrying non-elf species, especially normal humans.

Geklian Gnomes

Geklian gnomes are considered the anomaly of gnome culture. Most people who've met a gnome have known a Wandering Gnome, which are known for their joviality and compassion. Most gnomes, who aren't struck with the Wanderlust, are as heartless as humans. These other gnomes enslaved all the Geklian gnomes.

Geklian gnomes' most distinguishing feature is their black eyes. They are also generally shorter and have sharper features.

Geklian gnomes are as susceptible to The Wanderlust, but as almost all of them are enslaved by other gnomes, few are actually able to escape and wander the world.

Ghuls

Ghuls are a race of corpse-eaters who live in the Deadlands. Most live in extensive burrows underground, coming into the daylight primarily for raids on other burrows or scavenging, but even then they do everything they can get away with at night.

The Ghuls, as a tribal species living in lands of relative scarcity, have a high respect for the warriors and hunters in the tribe. Even the Ghuls who aren't "warriors" by trade still have strong fighting instincts and frequently resort to violence as a solution. Nearly all Ghuls who travel in the outside world are warriors.

In addition to the normal tribal structure, there often exist a separate group of elite ghul warrior women, each of whom sever their loyalty to their parent's tribe and replace it with a loyalty to the ghul people as a whole. These pseudo-tribes of warrior women protect the ghul people as a whole from threats, both internal and external... especially from the many large monsters which infest the Deadlands.

Tieflings (stub)

Tieflings are a species that aren’t related to demons and they originate in the Canada analog.

Dwarves (Stub)

Other Info

 

Racism in Iroe

There are two main opposed racism groups in Iroe, beyond just species or region specific racism: Primordials and Moderns.

The Primordials have been on the surface of Iroe for much longer, and consist of many of the less traditional fantasy races, including Cerithians (catfolk), Ghuls, Fae Elves, and Goblins. These races are usually visually much more distinct from humans. The Moderns have been on the surface of Iroe for only about 2 millennia. They include the more traditional fantasy races including Elves, Dwarves, and Humans. The Modern races greatly outnumber the Primordials and have much greater power in most parts of the world.

Racist slurs for Primordials:

Racist slurs for Moderns include:

Inclusive Moderns and Exclusive Moderns

There are two races whose racial identity is highly disputed: the Halflings and Gnomes. By technical definition, they are Moderns, appearing around the same time as the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans. However, they have much less power in the world, leading to the more racist Elves, Dwarves, and Humans labeling the Halflings and Gnomes "Primitives" as well. The Moderns who want to view themselves as above Halflings and Gnomes are called "Exclusive Moderns" and those that wish to include them are called "Inclusive Moderns." The majority of the Halfling and Gnome societies consider themselves Moderns.

Prevalence of Racism in Iroe

Homogeneous nations are especially virulent with it. The majority of people in heterogeneous societies are not particularly racist, especially if the heterogeneous society includes a reasonable minority of Primordials. Even those in a homogeneous nation at the borders near heterogeneous nations usually exhibit much less racism. In every community of moderate size, there are at least a few bad apples who exhibit some form of racism, whether that's against a specific species or against Moderns or Primordials as a whole.