The Searcher and the Mortal Kins
(Devlog n.5)
Hello hello,
this time around I have two things to present, a seventh "class" and through it what kind of people inhabit this world.
So, let's start with why I'm adding another class to the rather well rounded starting roster. As I've explained, each of them have a historical link to peoples and places in the settings, and after looking back on that list I realised they represented pretty well every important stuff around the Sea of Entemar except the recently arrived Gnobs, who are just as important !
Hence, the Searcher comes along, a traditional role within Gnob society tasked with exploring the many facets of the world and sharing their discoveries with the rest of their community. As they rose from the Under-world and melded with the cultures living here, some "toplanders" have taken a liking to the searchers' philosophies and have joined this path of curiosity, forming with gnob friends new scholarly orders and archives dedicated to topics too numerous to list.
This addition in itself is also necessary in my opinion to give players the tools to inhabit the archetype of the studious seeker of knowledge, exploring the world not for riches but for lore.
The Tomb Seeker could potentially fit that role too but only with old, ancient, forgotten knowledge, where I intend the Searcher to be geared towards making their own discoveries and exchanging with the living rather than the dead.
Anyways, who are these Gnobs and why is experience or knowledge so important to them that they've given thinkers a core role in their societies ? To put it simply they are this setting's goblins, gnomes, dextrous deep dwellers.
Small (1 meter on average) humanoids of ape-like appearance with facial traits resembling fruit bats, they also are quite short-lived, rarely aging beyond 30/40 years (Which is why acquiring knowledge and transmitting it holds more importance amongst them). For a long time they were thought by the people of the mortal lands to be just myth (probably some searchers lost their way up tunnels here and there across the ages), but recent conflicts and natural(?) disasters have forced many of their cities to evacuate their ancestral caverns, some of this displaced population eventually following their own legends to finally arrive in a world with no ceiling and a horizon that goes beyond one's perception.
There, they met other people: the Humans, Hures, Orghus and Alfs
Human and Hure (might change the name a bit down the line) make up most of the population across the known world being evolutionary cousins and what was thought to be the only two natural sapient species until the Gnob Migration 40 years ago. While the differences between Humans and Hures are minute, if you ask most of them they will point to humans being taller and lithier, and having an easier time handling anything dextrous, with hures being broader and considered to be gifted with better health and endurance. In truth a lot of the two species have lived along for so long that they've become more and more akin.
As for the Orghu, they are an umbrella term that designs any human or hure that through magic has mutated, been altered. thus, it is hard to apply any common characteristic to them beyond the fact that most orghu inherit animalistic traits through the chaotic energies that changed them. These can be transmitted to their offsprings too and some communities sharing common family traits have developped, such as the Okar clans and their boar tusks or hides.
Alfs technically are Orghu, but their long and bloody history have set them apart from others in the mind of Entemar's inhabitants and even those beyond the Inner Sea.
Originally, a cabal of "enlightened" sorcerers gathered with their families and founded a village deep in the northern forests of the region that would become the Principalities. There, they cast a spell upon themselves and their relatives that made them "superior", acquiring better senses, longer lives, sharper aesthetical features and other modifications to their forms. Thus were born the Fei.
As they lived hidden far from the rest of the world eventually conflict rose amongst them and a bellicose half of their people broke off and traveled East, but not before laying waste to their once friends and dubbing themselves Altfei.
Eventually, the Altfei would found the Black City of Altfein on a lost island beyond the then known frontiers of the ocean. From that place of power they then launched conquests upon conquests on the coasts of the world, claiming all the lands as theirs.
The end of the Altfein Empire came a century and a half ago, after events shrouded in rumours and myths that only left handfuls of refugees seeking asylum in the lands their country once oppressed. Nowadays very few altfei truly remain in Entemar, but their descendants the alfs (a reclaiming of the derogatory "Halves" they were once labelled as) still have to reckon with the scars their ancestors left on the world.
And there it is, the various physical differences between the people inhabiting my cities and lands. System-wise, I don't want them to be more than a cosmetic and narrative choice given any of them can be part of any culture (well, maybe I'll make a few racist ones as possible origins later on but for now I don't feel like it) as that's where I think most of the bonuses a specie gives in other systems should be moved (I doubt dwarves biologically know how to use a battleaxe), and thus your culture will have more of an impact on your character than how they look like.
See ya next time, I'll probably talk a bit about the comology of the setting.
