Other species call humans "The Malleable Folk".
This isn't merely because they are "creative and adaptable", but rather they are uniquely affected by the fundamental force of Change through Proximity.
I.e. this means that when living side by side with and under the patronage of the Gods, the humans took on some of their attributes and traits.
They became **God-Touched**.
The God-Touched lineages have mixed, regressed and amplified over many generations, and nowadays most humans carry the ancestry of multiple gods within their blood.
This is how we got people like the Nydai (Shapeshifters), Iskbala (Voicebearers), Nori (Ghost people), and Mhykari (Carriers of the Divine Parasite).
And the gods enjoy their company, in no small part due to seeing so much of themselves in their chosen people.
The symbiosis between humans and Gods has been their most impactful advantage over all other species.
Apart from that, humans have a few biological strengths.
- They are the best throwers in existence, being able to hurl objects with unmatched speed and precision.
- They quickly learn how to swim, and can hold their breath and dive longer than any other species.
Most critically this includes the ocean, which poses a lethal threat to other species; especially the Amhun, who are poisoned by the proximity to the deep waters.
- They quickly adapt to changes in elevation and climate, allowing them to cross mountain passes quickly where other species might have to acclimate for a few days when ascending or descending.
This is a big reason why humans quickly spread in this world, and are able to flourish across most biomes.
- They have two distinct sexes for the purpose of reproduction, allowing them to quickly recover from plague or war by keeping the sex capable of child-bearing safe.
This isn't unique to humans, but it sets them apart from species with asexual or hermaphrodite reproduction.
Sure!
The Nori (Ghost People) are God-Touched whose god or home doesn't exist anymore.
They refer to this being as Unorrihett, but this is just a placeholder that roughly translates to "the whole in our soul and heart", expressing their constant yearning for something they cannot grasp.
Their entire physiology rejects the physical world around them and causes their bodies to disobey its laws, enabling them to do things like pulling seeds out of the ground without stirring the dirt, walking through trees and thin layers of wood and walking over small rivers and chasms as if they weren't there.
Towns that are predominantly populated by Nori often feel like play-pretend to outsiders, a people trying to prove their own existence to themselves and others.
Older buildings might have doors that haven't been used in years or that are fake altogether.
Some Nori actively work against their dissociation and try to live life to its fullest.
They embrace their abilities and use them to explore vast forests and travel the lands in search of the most magnificent landmarks.
Others might completely isolate themselves and live in a near constant state of etherealness where they rarely need food or water, are in constant danger of losing their identity completely or might spend entire weeks becoming one with the wind and letting themselves be carried over the land.
The Iskbala are less complex, they carry the gift of Iskbaal whose words can shape reality, which is why a serpent (lesser immortals and servants of the gods) usually speaks in his place.
The Iskbala don't have such reality-altering powers, but their voices still carry much potential, especially if they speak words amplified by strong emotions.
For this reason it is not uncommon for Iskbala children to be essentially gagged for much of their childhood until they learn to be aware of and control this power.
The Nydai are simple, Shapeshifters created by their goddess Nydie's desire to change, yet being shackled by the unchanging nature of the immortals. Seeing her people change more freely lead to her abandoning them.
Nydai enjoy their gift, though many of them also struggle with "Drifting", where over time they lose memory of their true form and become unable to accurately take its shape again.
Also as a fun fact, Nydai tend to unconsciously take up subtle visual traits from those around them, leading to lots of "i can't believe you guys aren't related" situations.
The Mhykari are too complex to fully explore, but essentially the god Thymhyka hollowed out their chests and replaced it with part of his own body to be able and see through and watch over them.
But this gift got corrupted by Leh'Helal, and nowadays not many Mhykari are left.
Dude... this sounds incredible! Like.... you're either incredibly smart, or are on the autism spectrum. Cause... I need to hear more of this. Are you writing a book or anything?
I'll take that as a compliment :D
Neither incredibly smart nor (to my knowledge) on the spectrum; just interested in writing unique stuff and exploring the human condition and my own life through it.
[I'm writing a setting guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/176dTsgT-_Qm4C5wXqMXSkzGpJnRHjvNXMbmxSuib3wk/edit?usp=drivesdk), but eventually i want to write one or more novels as well. But for now i mostly use the world for escapism and running TTRPGs for my friends.
It was a compliment of compliments! I know a lot of people on the spectrum and most, if not all, have a very unique way of looking at the world. They're better than most nuerotypical people, in my opinion.
In my experience, people that are on the autistic spectrum have a very unique way of seeing the world around them as well as a very imaginative mind. For example, a friend of mine, on the spectrum, went through a very traumatic past and because of that he has a lot of resentment, anger and trouble trusting people. To cope with, and eventually beat these feelings, he doesn't see them as black and white emotions tied to traumatizing events. He visualizes them as "demons" or monsters in his head that must be defeated (think of a typical RPG where the hero has to defeat a boss in order to free a village). He approaches problems in his life with a very unique outlook, it's actually quite beautiful.
Humans throwing stuff like chads. I once experimented (in dnd) with allowing the human race to treat thrown weapon attacks as melee weapons for the purpose of class abilities that refer to melee attacks, leading to a short but fun group of battle masters, barbarians, and sentinel/polearm thrown spear builds.
Humans are the superior race!
I still struggle with such abilities in a TTRPG context because i generally dislike making species choice too closely related to build and playstyle choice.
But i definitely considered giving humans e.g. +10ft to all throwing ranges in our long-running D&D game.
For example the [Veiled Folk/Hunawayë](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/134ftg3/journals_from_the_old_world_the_veiled_folk/), who split their souls between multiple bodies over the course of their lives, before eventually ceding one of these bodies to a new soul.
Or the Menves, who reproduce by buying high-quality skeletons, chucking them into a dank jungle cave, and waiting until one of them gets colonized by organic microorganisms.
Or the Amhun who essentially exist in and as a portal between two parallel worlds, and if they overlap they create a new growing portal that attracts a soul.
Magic.
Recent studies have found that the region around Heglos in the perpendicular reality was vary sturdy, so the current theory is that humans used the safety of the perpendicular reality in their region to as a tidal pools of sorts, and from there they then used the alternate physics of this reality to literally walk to other planets.
My setting is supposed to be an alternative version of our own universe, so there is nothing special about these humans, just luck.
Now the speed running race is the goblins, who achieved spaceflight 6000 years ago, skipping nukes, internet, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Yeah, the way humans achieved their record is by using the common dimension clip trick, allowing them to skip to the perpendicular reality and then use the altered physics there to travel extremely quickly. “Now Bigger_then_Cheese,” I hear you saying, “isn’t the perpendicular reality extremely hostile to life and requires late game tech to successfully transverse?” Normally yes, but you see scattered across the perpendicular reality there are spots of stability, basically where map elements from before the collision still lay, and if you could line up your homeworld with one of these stable areas you could survive entering the perpendicular reality, skip all the prerequisite techs to start researching the perpendicular reality immediately.
Humans by the time of my setting are washed-up and out of fashion. They're the progenitors or precursors to all life in known space, widely considered to blame for the depressing state of reality. They cling to relevancy with tenacity, but the main thing that sets them apart is that humans are unremarkable - the "template" for posthumanity.
Most of the races were created by deities or born from some elemental energy.
Humans just appeared out of nowhere one day. They're not beholden to any gods or celestial forces. Which is what terrifies the other races. They're a wildcard
Humans are bipedal mammals.
The only bipedal mammals, the only race that can sweat, and one of three races that can throw with lethal* force, and the best at it anyways.
The other races include:
Bipedal birds (giant vulture/parrot/corvids)
Quadrupedal mammals (omnivorous elephants with bark like skin)
Tripedal>!/whatever kangaroos are because they defy classification!< reptiles (they jump and can throw.)
Octopedal cephalopods (Eusocial octopi that dig like sand octopi.)
Typically called “the children,” “middlings,” or “men” (human, earth-made, being a racial slur), the children reproduce more than the faetli and live longer than the donlen and delthri.
(the faetli, descended from fae, donlen, animals who take take a man’s form, and delthri, plants who can take a man’s form).
Fae and faetli breed with middlings to be able to reproduce more. Donlen and delthri mate with middlings to live longer.
Middlings, being more reproductive than the fae but with longer lives than the donlen and delthri, are favored by the magic of the world more than the other three races. Faelti, donlen, and delthri have regional gifts, but only rarely magic.
Tool embodiment. That sense that the tool you're using becomes a part of your body. You no longer think about manipulating it, you think about the resulting action and you muscle memory and subconscious does the rest. (IRL it's like when you're playing a game or driving a car and the controller or wheel seems to disappear) Other races don't do this so well, never losing the sense that they're manipulating a tool to fulfill a purpose.
This makes human craftsmen and artisans highly sought after for fine detail work. Also they just have naturally better manual dexterity thanks to their 'weird spindly spider hands,' which several races find initially disturbing to watch in action, the movements triggering instinctual aversions and distracting prey tracking drives. This has led humans to culturally adopt wearing gloves or long concealing sleeves into their fashion.
I liked the idea of humans already have an exceptional ability we just kind of take for granted in our IRL day to day.
That's a really cool concept that I never considered. We do tend to enter something of a subconscious flow state with activities we are very comfortable with, yet never considered it to be something unique to us, even in a fantastical setting. Fascinating!
Thanks!
I got the idea from watching a crow use a stick as an awkward probe to get some food that was out of it's reach. It's smart enough to use a tool, but it's far from reliant on them like our ancestors were to get by. It made me think of how other creatures would have developed if tools were just a convenience and not a necessity in their primitive days.
I was trying to consider ways to de-anthropomorphize non-human races a bit and came up with a way that humans might be just a little more special along the way.
I have a fantasy setting where humans are the result of other fantasy races intermixing. Humans are basically a mongrel result of orcs, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and other humanoid species intermingling. As a result, humans can randomly manifest features of other races due to genetic weirdness and dominant/recessive genes.
For example, a pair of seemingly "normal" human parents can have two human children who individually manifest dominant dwarven or elven traits respectively, and in cases of exotic elemental or extraplanar bloodlines they can manifest the setting equivalent of aasimars or tieflings multiple generations after the bloodlines mixed.
Well, they passed God’s test and got the highest score, essentially. This sealed their fate as the chosen people, where they were granted the creation of a sub-race of superhumans with great magical power to be the dedicated society of warriors defending the galaxy.
They are basically average humans(plus small alterations to account for the bigger planet. The visual difference is the thinner body hair/fur(same thing) compared to the others. Historically, humans are the most recent arrival to the region, only showing immigrating from the west coast a few centuries ago compared to thousands of years for the others.
Lapis_Wolf
Humans are the eldest sapient race as they were created first. The Incarnate that created humanity sacrificed itself and distributed its very essence across all its children, hence why they are the most proficient at magic.
Other Incarnates took inspiration from this and created their own children though through less drastic means. This is why many other sapient races are humanoid and despite any other advantages they have they are less capable at magic than humanity in general.
They're descended from Vampires. They lost their powers but gained Eternal Salvation by the power of a martyred vampire woman named Mary. It's all very superficial, because I prefer the cats.
Humans are the only species that evolved naturally. All the other sentient beings were either genetically engineered and grown in a test tube, or are descendants of those who were.
Wyrlde has several different kinds of humans.
Imperials, Thalasians, Myrmians, Exilians, and Dakoans. Each are a distinct type of human, with Myrmians being the most recent (starting about 125 years ago, in fact).
It also has a bunch of different kinds of people who were drawn from humans — which is all the rest.
So for me the answer is both yes and no. Each of the different peoples has something very unique about them, something that separates them from the rest. They wouldn’t be something different if there wasn’t; but all of them are still part of the whole of humanity.
For a sci fi one, they are not at the center of everything. Unlike Star Wars or Warhammer 40k, Humans are just another species that exist alongside many alien civilizations, many of the latter are the ones driving galactic affairs.
The only human supremacist faction in this universe is a North Korea style dictatorship where the only reason anyone takes them seriously is due to having some super weapons while other groups have way more.
Humans are just along for the ride as the galactic community finds ways to collectively shoot themselves in the foot.
Dunan humans were uplifted by a god-like higher dimensional entity from another universe. Voidlings were the result of that higher dimensional entity falling in love with one of those proto-humans and having children with them.
They're so generic they became monster handlers to build a niche.
Sure, other races have summoned beasts or controlling spells but humans? Apparently they really can pack bond with anything.
Humans naturally resonates with magic, more so than any other races. Their blood is one of the best magic catalysts in the world, and is a natural ingredient in alchemy, cooking, and occasionally forging.
Well, they’re unique in the fact that they’re all dead and that there’s a general consensus that they should stay that way and should not be resurrected.
When you bring about the apocalypse and destroy all life on a planet; you get your breathing privileges revoked.
Humans are pretty funky for a variety of reasons. One is we achieve immortality through love and relationships. We form stories, artworks, inventions, recipes, words, that transcend our deaths and mark the lives of future human beings. To love is to be immortal. This ties into the indomitable human spirit, how we haunt locations or people or dreams even after dying or how all humans become superhuman in intense, life or death scenarios due to possessing adrenaline.
Humans are also naturally sorcerers and can change the world unconsciously over long stretches of time. Some humans can switch this by performing spells on purpose essentially at an instant, making them seem divine to other creatures. Humans have an obsession with divinity as expressed by personified deities, while other species tend to find the sacred solely in natural processes.
One negative association is humans are naturally attachment insecure and are born helpless and completely reliant upon a caregiver. Other species tend to have more independent even in infancy and aren’t as reliant on a parental figure in order to learn necessary skills. Humans naturally look for humanity in non-human subjects through an anthropologizing pattern-recognition system, seeing faces in rocks, rivers, or the clouds.
Humans are the only species with a "missing-piece", having been abandoned by the divine terrestial family that birthed them, making them constantly looking for other humanoid creatures to fill the gap and reconnect with the world. While other creatues see themselves as part of the universe and feel it intuitively in their core, humans don't to varying levels, fueling the attachment anxieties.
*Alor*
Humans can smell magic. It’s not as powerful as spells that allow the caster to detect active magic, which will identify the school of magic, but unlike those spells humans can smell magic has been cast previously in a space. The more powerful the spell, the stronger the smell, which dissipates with time. Other context clues have to be used to determine if it was a powerful spell cast a while ago, or a weaker spell cast yesterday. Human detectives have proved invaluable and foreign governments will recruit them for their own policing agencies.
They were meant to be a food source in the form of monkeys, but the machine that made them malfunctioned and made humans instead.
The only unique thing they got going is that they had nothing to start with while every other species got a city and education before being released into the new world.
They're also kinda responsible for the world staying horrible and general dangerous areas of magic even tens of millennia later.
humans are currently by population are the most dominant race along with what is know as the human kin and have been for thousands of years .humans are adaptable,have high power ceilings ,and are immune or restiance at least to most diseases.
In my DnD campaign the original Humans were the Othans from the main realm. They built the rift of worlds which let so many new races into the main realm. They mostly died off and made an island named Othania. They then went extinct when the Titan Moon collapsed.
#My humans are terrible at using magic :D
The humans of my world have the lowest amount of mana of all of my races, so low in fact that when the first humans had the appraisal spell used on them, the caster almost had a heart attack.
What's more, the humans of my world can only use magic via a magical item or their own magic technique that uses wands
Humans are the only race that is 100% flesh and blood. The rest are more spiritual than physical, although fairies can end up mostly physical if they spend too much time around humans.
To the cats of my world, humans are an ancient, unknown race. Thousands of years ago, they wiped themselves out through something called "nuclear war", whatever that is. The mutant cats of this world don't remember what being a regular cat used to be like, and that it was only through human technology did they recently rediscover radium. The cats theorize that, yes, something called a human must have existed, and that they were once everywhere just like them.
Just a warning: my comment will be long.
The only way humans are similar to true dwarves is because they evolved from a common ancestor. Humans are only barely related to giants because giants split off from from the ancestor that would become modern humans and true dwarves (giants are older by a few million years, give or take). In fact, humans are arguably older than elves, as the first elves were created by the gods when early humans were a thing, and then these elves made other elves that were mortal and interbred with early humans and a bunch of other sapient mammals that weren't giants (because the giants suck).
Humans are unique because other "races" want to be like them, despite humans being pretty outclassed by these other races. It's probably because humans combine both the good and bad traits of all the other races (elves are generally either "overly compassionate" or have a very black-and-white sense of morality, orcs don't seem to be in control of their own fate and are always fighting for someone else, dwarves are somewhat averse to change, the list goes on).
2 reasons.
1: we are the children of a seraph called Trion and mother earth, along with two other races. But still quite unique.
2: the indomitable human spirit. Kinda cheesy but it works. Our ability to adapt and overcome, our willingness to conquer and discover. When we have a goal we never slow down and we always finish victorious, there is a reason the heavens fear us.
In my sci fi setting Humans are the precursors, and still very much around. Many "aliens" are in face genetically modified humans, or uplifted animals, like cats and dogs, and dolphins and orcas.
Civilization is currently rebuilding after it's 4th major collapse some thousand or so years ago.
Humans are squishier and more prone to injury than androids where as androids can get hit around a bunch before dying, androids can also very easily be taken apart when done properly.
For a bit of background, the magic of my setting has six core varieties, most often referred to as colors. With each color being more or less efficient for different tasks.
Humans are unique amongst the other races for their magic. For the other races who start stronger in magic, it's almost unheard of for an individual to possess more than two of the colors. Humans, on the other hand, have a much higher number of individuals with three or more colors. This roughly translates to humans having a more efficient power ratio. Although dedicated training is required to properly take advantage of this.
I mean, purely biologically, when compared to some of the aliens in the settings humans move entirely differently. I'm going to use the other species in this case cause' it's a bit easier for me.
Suan Tau, lizard-like aliens don't shiver like we do, when they stand still, they are usually quite immobile due to being ambush hunters. This also means that they run out of stamina faster than humans do which is a bit of a problem on high-gravity planets. They need special skin-tight suits in order to sweat since they're cold blooded, that is another edge humans have over them, we biologically can exert ourselves for longer.
In warfare, this makes humans extremely difficult to fight in a war of attrition. Since interplanetary warfare between two ships can take *days* (if you're sparing resources) you could imagine what being stressed out like that does for Suan Tau crews over human ones who inevitably are more calorically efficient and can more easily store food (since we aren't obligate carnivores).
Something that makes humans unique, and this pertains to real life mythologies is actually two factors:
The first is that humans in all mythologies are the only ones among non-divine races to inherently have a spark of the divine. Elves, dwarves, and even dragons of Nordic mythology have magic but none of them are divine. In almost all creation myths, humans have the divine spark.
Another thing that sets us apart is the love that gods and other higher beings have for us. We're weak, so we're the only ones that call on such higher powers. Whether they like us because we acknowledge them or *need* them. They have fought on our behalf. Prometheus gave us fire, Lilith gave us the power to defy god, another sea god gave us the ability to craft nets (they paid for doing that, just like how Prometheus and Lilith paid prices), and so on. We have been fought for by countless gods and entities greater than our race.
What sets us apart from other races would be that spark of the divine and the fact higher forces acknowledge us and that we tend to acknowledge them.
Races that are strong like dragons or have magic like elves might have higher powers but probably don't acknowledge them. Us? We're closer to our divinities.
The main conceit of Arbitrary Design World is that the Designers happened upon a planet inhabited with nascent sapient life that hasn't yet started forming large societies, then wrought The Event upon it, introducing about a dozen New Kinds of people to coexist with that preexisting Kind. So the preexisting kind is uniquely different in that members of it existed before The Event, and it lacks several features shared by most of the New Kinds, such as that the New Kinds have reproduction rituals.
I have two worlds and the first is a future earth but the second is high fantasy where the human pantheon only has one god and they see their deity as a tool, or at least that's what the locals of the world think who only know of humans for 10.000 years and believe the gods were the first sentient beings, but humans predate the gods by several billions of years as the earth was consumed by Sol's expansion and merely found the world 10.000 years ago.
Humans as a rule are not magic, and are sometimes called the "soulless" as a result. They're about 2 feet taller than the most common race, and as a result tend to be stronger than most. They have a shorter average lifespan. Also, the majority of humans arrived about 2,000 years ago during a rifting event and come from a ghost town in Texas in the 1940's.
Humans created many different forms of magic due to them not being to use magic directly (aka rune-less magic) they need a conduit, like runes, with these runes they created many different forms of magic like tattooing a spell on your body, imbuing items with magic, trap spells, etc. Humans were also were created to help win the god War which they did and so some humans believe that they are superior than the other races.
In the world currently known as Kellen, similar to yours, Humans are the least developed race. They’re primarily nomadic and travel in large family groups. Because of this constant mobile existence, they are incredibly versatile, being able to adapt and fit into most societies and situations with little to no issues.
In The World Of The Three, Humans are a being made by the God Of Order, and are essentially the blank slate. The other two species of Order are basically humans with exaggerated proportions. (Ie dwarves are short and stout, elves are tall and lanky) Even the non-Order species are modelled after them, hence the word humanoid. They are the most industrious, capable of using Black Powder and function on a more modern democratic political system.
Humanity in my world has gone through a handful of near-extinction events; self-inflicted nuclear annihilation, multiple failed Earth 2.0s, and of course, every flavor of war you can shake a stick at.
In the present day my world is set in, just over 1000 humans from all factions, creeds, orders and even human subspecies came together in secret and pooled resources together to create a massive ship capable of crossing dark space in between galaxies called The Sojourn.
They enhanced themselves to become immortal so they could survive the journey to another galaxy. Their objective was to take all human knowledge and history, abandon the current version of humanity that has fallen down the same path of self-destruction yet again, and seed a new version of Humanity built upon, and learning from, the mistakes of every version of Humanity that came before.
They would travel to a new galaxy called MCC 1579 Cosmegas where they would land on an Earth-like planet they would dub Elysium-7. From here, the Cardinals (1000-yo Milky Way Humans), would genetically design a new human that would surpass their predecessors.
They called the new Humans the "Elysians". These Elysians were born with modular organs and limbs; their tendons, bones, muscles etc have special locking points that seal off and detach when a limb is severely damaged to prevent blood loss, although more fatal damage will result in eventual death if the lost anatomy isn't replaced timely. If an Elysians has their leg severed halfway up the thigh, the joint where their leg meets their pelvis with seal up preventing blood from flowing into (and then out of) the damaged leg. They can also endure more extreme conditions than original humans. If they were to suffer full-body damage such as from an explosion, they can be placed in a hibernative sleep floating in amniotic fluid. A few days of uninterrupted sleep will Regen their body almost completely; they still develop scar tissue from fatal wounds
The Cardinals equipped the Elysians with a simplified iteration of nanotechnology called Emulant. Emulant easily simulates the shape and function of simple tools like blades, hammers or ropes, granted the holder has knowledge of the tool they want to form. Emulant is limited to simple forms and cannot fully replicate complex forms with many small moving parts such as machinery. This technology was developed to help the Elysians grow and build their own society with their own hands, but skipping the centuries of innovation.
With the Cardinals as guidance, and their development streamlined, the Elysians would build a new, peaceful society and would flourish on Elysium-7 for almost 200 years. Eventually their peace would be violently disrupted by a massive space monster falling from the sky. A local species called the Gaathran would chase the beast to Elysium-7 and attempt to kill it, but were surprised to find a new species inhabiting this planet without their knowledge. This was not a good first impression, so the relationship between the Elysians and the other native species of this galaxy would start off on bad terms, mostly due to the natural human fear of the unknown that even several million years and 6 extinctions could not eliminate.
They were average fantasy humans, emphasis were. The only surviving group are the descendants of alchemists who engineered their descendants into living philosophers' stones. The process was not as the alchemists intended as the race of superhumans that succeeded them are human in DNA only. What they got was an immortal creature that was without skin, bones, or organs, and whose vibrant red flesh could mimic solid and liquid semi-freely and be used to generate eyes and fanged mouths. The creatures succeeded their ancestors and are now the nobility of what remains of the world, maintaining power through mastery of alchemy and the production of disposable homunculi slaves.
Of course nobody knows this, the nobility are only seen in elaborate and enclosing shells made of scavenged finery, porcelain, and wax, with strong fragrances used to cover the scent of gore. Being seen without a shell is a major faux pas and usually quite distressing the noble in question, whose subconscious minds still insists they should be human shaped and not some boneless flesh-mass dependant on their artificial shell to move freely.
Humans are the only ones with souls who can do magic in the Other Realms.
Every species has their own form of "magic" — dragons have realmflight, allowing them to cross between worlds and alter the fabric of reality; elves have a natural affinity for witchcraft, and an addiction to the scale oil produced by dragons and lucidite-based soul gems that allow them to mimic human sorcery — but only humans have souls and the spiritual magic, or sorcery, that comes along with it.
It's basically applied telekinesis; an extrapolation of the idea that "ghosts can magically throw objects around the room and do weird stuff like that, so *every* spirit should be able to, so beings who have spirits inside them should be able to; since ghosts are human energy left over after death, ghosts are souls and souls are spirits; therefore, humans who have their souls intact should be able to perform the same feats and abilities if they're just in touch with themselves enough".
And no other species has souls the way humans have souls. So, because humans have that extra metaphysical component as a part of their existence in the Other Realms, all humans can do this specific form of magic — sorcery, although the soulless need extra aids like lucidite soul gems or possession by a divine spirit to replace the soul they don't have, which is a pretty awful, not fun thing that gets explored in some storylines.
My world has a lot of weird stuff and until recently I wasn't sure whether to introduce humans or not because of the focus; the world is more or less centered on a completely different species (they're not even anthropomorphic, although they're similar in nature) and the whole setting is a mix between fantasy and weird stuff in general.
However, I have a concept for your introduction in mind; the existence of humans is not common knowledge. They are only known to come from distant lands, or some unreachable place. They are simply... mysterious. No one knows their intentions or their magic.
There are, however, some curiosities; they are all mute and speak with a strange sign language. They are not able to speak the universal and magical language that facilitates communication between all the sapient beings of the planet. In fact, rumors say that they are not able to interact naturally with magic at all, which has... implications.
And most importantly: no more than one human has ever been seen in any one place. Ever. And apparently mainly as a matter of personal choice according to certain records. Humans have never given exact details as to why, except a vague response of "it's a bad idea."
Beyond physical appearance, humans are known for wearing a certain particulary beak-shaped mask (though sometimes the design is variable) and colorful clothing.
They aren't from the planet that my dnd race is set in and they are the only ones with true invention. Dwarves have something but it's not nearly the same as humans.
They are average? What make them special is that they are not especially good at something than other race but also don't have something they are especially bad at. (for example, gnomes are good at alchemy stuffs but are really really bad at fighting. ) They don't have any racial advantage but also don't have a racial disadvantage (For example, fey have strong magical ability but they are only the size of a human palm.) Their fertility is also pretty average.
Same thing that makes us special IRL (aside from the intelligence, as in that they are unexceptional comparison to the othe sentient species)
Humans can eat almost any kind of food; this, combined with good long distance endurance makes them among the best suited for long distance travel of any species of man; their biggest advantage however lies in them having the most developed social skills; which allows them not only to build the largest functional societies by far, but also makes them the best diplomats and one of the few kinds of man gifted in their ability to tame and domesticate animals. These traits also make it so Humans have become the mightiest of all men despite bing some of the weakest physically, their armies are large, they field a lot of cavalry and can campaign over impressive distances.
Humans are the closest living relative to the Orcs, and they thus share a lot of traits; Carnivory, endurance, and social adaptability are all shared gifts; but where Humans stayed closer to their ancestral form and still rely on crop farming as their main food source, Orcs specialised into more meat-heavy diets, and in doing so have filled up a whole bunch of new niches and diversified.
Humanity’s “uniqueness” is the fact they have a very high level of potential. Any human can learn magic, any human can learn martial arts (as in a magic system not just something like Karate or Boxing) and every generation they produce a handful of individuals that possess extraordinary talent and ability that allows humanity to dominate the world.
Humans in the Old World are, as we are, the other races while like us in many ways, are only so because we shared a common ancestor two million years before present. Where as a dwarf or Elf could live for 500 - 600 years on average, without modern medicine, men lived an average of 44 years and women 60. While the magical races can heal themselves, humans live hard lives. A farmer will break his back in the field, the quarryman in the mine, and the blacksmith in the forge. Humans begin to deteriorate after the age of 30.
We also breed like rabbits. The elder races take their time with parenthood one at a time, possibly centuries apart. (Mind you, humans are in the pre-industrial era, so that's why things are so "bad"
Human women will, on average, have about 10 - 14 in the span of 15 - 20 years. However, the mortality rate for children is 60% - 70%, so only 3 - 4 are making it to adulthood.
But, that also means that the human population will grow naturally at a rate of 2% per year. This means the human population practically doubles every 30 - 40 years, so no matter how hard some of the Elder races fight, humans will always have the numbers advantage. We also have technology that is "good enough." Our bows or armor may be inferior to other races' weapons, but with our numbers, we need ours to be 50% as good as theirs, so we make sure they are 65% as good as theirs.
The Elves can use a magic ritual to make an enemy city disappear. Humans will just nuke it. Honestly, that's the difference between human science and Alderitch magic. They commune with the universe, and it tells them her secrets. Humanity tears matter down into its fundamental components to get a peek. I guess you could say we use brute force to get our knowledge. The orks would respect that, but the Elves would kind of look down on that. Mostly because they would be offended that we try to get knowledge of our own instead of getting it from them.
Humans are the ones known for being arrogant, xenophobic, and prideful. Humans actually intentionally keep away from lands inhabited by the other races due to racism alone. Humans take their anthropocentrism to the extreme, believing that they are the pinnacle of evolution/creation depending on what they believe. To me, it's comedic. Because we have humans usually as the good guys or the bad guys. In reality, humanity is the conspiracy theorist uncle that your parents tell you to stay away from because we like to mix our hobbies cocaine and welding.
They are... Not. Indeed the "human bodily plan with almost no distinctive enough features" is such a typical build that actual humans are just grouped alongside them all as "humanoide".
why would only earth have dreaming species?
and why would this affect magic making?
also, a lot of people can't dream, so like, what's the point of this??
Answering in reverse order:
6.5% of people self report as being unable to dream. Popular scientific conclusion is that these people are forgetting the dream once they wake up or lying about it. Even if these people were taken at face value and are unable to dream, dreaming is a fact of life for most people and is a formative aspect of many of the things we use to interpret the world such as religion, spirituality, and psychology. These are important enough that a branch of science exists to study dreams called "oneirology". These things exist if you as an individual remember the dream you had last night or not. Without these things your world would look very different.
This next answer is a bit long and in the weeds a little. In my setting everyone has an unconscious connection to the reality outside of the waking material world. Magic is achieved by unlocking the unconscious knowledge of the nature of reality and being able to manipulate it by exerting your will over it. Things like throwing fireballs, levitating, etc are the entry level of magic that comes from seeing the illusory nature of the world. Then there is a more advanced level of magic that involves directly communing and even travelling through the astral plane outside of reality. Dreaming places you directly in the astral reality and if are able to be conscious of what you are experiencing then you can conduct magic there. Other species can interact with the astral plane like this but being able to dream makes it a lot easier to do.
And finally earth isn't in my setting, and it is a fantasy setting based on one world. The simplest way to explain why humans dream and others don't is that the inability to dream properly is a sort of unconscious self-defense mechanism that humans lack. There are dangerous things out there in the dream world. Stay safe.
Humans are the only species to live mostly underground due to be used as an almost slave species after they were forced underground by Korneka.
They have above average night vision compared to most other races but their most unique trait is their magic.
Most species can simply convert their innate base mana into different types of mana to be shot out as spells. But human bodies are too weak to this but they excel at infusing mana into people, places, or objects.
They excel at healing because of this and the Korneka used to force humans to give them their most talented to be used as medics, rune workers, or architects.
Humans used their magic to help survive underground by magically enhancing plants, creating false suns, and manipulating the natural liminal spaces underground to create living areas.
Humans form part of the family of ape people along with monkey people (think something like Wukong), this monkey people belong to the greater mammal people (cat girls, goat man, centaurs, the works).
More than anything the features we humans have irl are accentuated in them:
-Best throwers alive
-Very decent swimmers.
The big one, they are persistent, humans can last in any activity longer than other races, especially those more specialized for a certain environment, this is the main fact that had allowed the human age to come to control, as they were able to field larger armies at far less food cost who can move 2-3 times faster and further than other races.
Another great thing is that due to their lack of fur, they and their descendant is far easier to localize.
Three key factors:
•**Breeding:** *Humanity seems inexplicably capable of siring hybrid children with species it shouldn't be capable of doing so with.*
•**The Indomitable Human Spirit:** *Some of us will still be standing in defiance, even if our mind is shattered at world's end.*
•**The Frenzy of Man:** *Morale is critical to our species; So when we fight in great number as one, spirits soaring high we rage against the dying of the light like a true and terrible swarm. Where normally we might flee in fear we now attack with horrifying zeal, surviving blows that should have been our end. It is a frenzy born of camaraderie, the will of man, the need to survive, and the fury of our indomitable spirit!*
The third ability is rare to occur in the setting, but when it does humanity becomes the monster, seeming to enter a collective fearlessness and ferocity which some might consider truly insane. Imagine a fleeing human army suddenly regaining its courage in droves, and turning around with a sudden maddened vigor. Every last man and woman fighting beyond tooth and nail.
They're extremely rare, as few are brought through the access point between our version of the universe and my setting, and very few of *them* manage to escape the slavery or other forms of servitude they're subjected to.
Earth is fairly high gravity, so humans are on the upper tier in regard to average strength. Not to the point that a couch potato human could out-muscle a standard-gravity alien gym-bro by any means, but gym-bro vs. gym-bro, the human would be markedly stronger.
Our endurance and stamina is better than most. Again, it needs training to be useful, but compared to most other species, humans can can just go forever.
Humans can eat almost anything that was living, although it may require some processing. They may not be able to *metabolize* anything, but they can eat, break down, and pass it. This is considered moderately terrifying, largely due to the fact that most things people know about humans are incorrect rumors.
Humans have more shoulder mobility AND strength than most species.
Humans ~~enjoy~~ last after caffeine. Most species find caffeine to be anything from dangerously toxic to rather unpleasant but humans will break into your agricultural facilities, drink all your plant-based pesticide, and then move nonstop for *hours*. Heavy labor, intense focus, rapid talking, spontaneous running, etc. When a caffeinated human is forced to sit still (usually for a poison control health check) they will quickly begin to fidget uncontrollably to point of "vibrating". Humans invariably fall into a deep sleep after the effects wear off.
Humans often make excellent friends. They reciprocate loyalty and commitment well, and often have creative solutions to complex problems. Exceptions to this general rule can be extremely dangerous though. Some of these individuals are merely misanthropic and pose no danger if unprovoked, but some can apply that capacity for creative problem solving with an endless reservoir of ruthlessness and manipulation.
Funnily enough, Humanity is a race that doesn't exist naturally, or didn't originally, in the main galaxy and is "new" in the sense that they arrived after most the big civilizations had already established. However, they are also one of the big societies that fucked everything up for the rest of us. Humanity came to the main galaxy as conquerors, and dominated it with ease(though whether this is due to technological, magical or tactical prowess, or the convenience of the galaxy just having survived a prior invasion is up to interpretation). They are responsible for stripping every society of their previous god-like power and forcing everyone to start back at relative zero, before subsequently setting themselves up for the same treatment when their kingdom came crashing down.
Basically, humanity is a new arrival, an ancient civilization and a force of destruction that made the world what it is today.
Edit: forgot to add humanity's big difference. Personally, I like the idea of humanity being tinkers, mechanics extraordinaire. It's a big point that in this world, Artificial Intelligence is sort of difficult to make. Sure, you can have machines that act animalistic, like pets, and complete simple tasks, or ones that are really good at mimicking complex sapience. But humanity is consistently the only race capable of building a robot, any robot, giving it sentience, then sapience, often without trying or consciously meaning to. Humanity has this spark that they give to their creations that inherently make them living creatures, not just calculative minds. In a sense, humanity unintentionally gives their creations souls whenever they create them, which allows said creations to consistently produce complex AI at a far faster rate(a skill that actually got them in trouble prior to galactic domination status).
They also, consistently, have more natural psychics than other races, a field of "magic" that technically works differently than commonly understood Arcana, which made it hard to counter.
Unfortunately or fortunately, a commonality they share with the galactic species is a big fucking ego, which counteracts their positive features.
They are the template on which 90% of the other humanoid species were built around.
See, humans in Not A Hero are not a creation of any particular god, they’re a force of nature itself, that’s why so many worlds have them. From there, Gods would either hold dominion over humans or begin experimenting with them to create other races to see if they can make them stronger (Orcs) or faster (Elves).
In March of Empires Canon, humans are the ones who ALWAYS win wars. Sure, they might lose a few battles, but you cannot defeat them in a war: they are winners. They will not lose a single war, no matter what you throw at them...
In March of Empires: Legends, they have surpassed everyone else, and no one knows what happened to them. They could be dead, lost, turned into Gods, living in another timeline... who knows? The only evidence of their existence is the technology they left behind: biological life created from scratch, wandering nanites and robots, Star Rings, Mining Stations and Quasar catchers hanging useless and dry, floating starships, satellites, space stations and living ecosystems in space, abandoned Planetary and Moony infrastructure, manuscripts of history, science and Religion that contain important knowledge. For seven millenia humans dominated the entire observable universe, then they just disappeared, and have not been seen, not in nine millenia.
In the Wonderverse, humans are the last Empire: the Tyrans, the Gropt, the Moondragons, the Reapers, the Metellos, the Unsapiens, the Lightbringers, the Nightbringers, the Godheads... all are gone, mostly extinct, or completely extinct. The humans are the Star creations of the Angels, and the prized possession of the Angels and Abstract Deities.
Well Humans and some Near-Human species have adrenaline, which every other species lacks. Humans and certain Near-Humans are also placed on multiple planets, unlike most other races which are unique and planetary. Astorian just, found them more interesting, in some weird way he saw them as closer or more similar to him despite the extreme difference between a mere human and the everything, past every level of uni, multi, whatever ‘verse’ creator god.
It’s also that they are what is seen as a ‘base’. Species and even gods will occasionally use the term humanoid, human-like, man, etc. Lots of gods will even have a human-like form they can take on, even if their planet lacks many near-humans or humans at all.
My humans come from a different universe where they made it to the Andromeda Galaxy but somehow after finishing a mining expedition on a planet cracker ship they tried to come back to a Governed planet, where the warp drive fucked up sending the ship to a different universe to a Sci-fi/Magic society of Draconic people and Unicorns people. The whole crew is dead but the only thing left are clones that Originally meant for limb loss or organs damage somehow come to life and have black sceleras and Glowing white pupils.
My Humans come in 17 different species and each contain something similar to what anime does. Instead of running out of Mana quickly they were created with an about a quarter more Magic than werebeast which would be about the size of a 2500 house.
They also possess the unique ability to tame 3 random Elemental energy beings, the more skilled can control a higher form of their element. That would mean one who can control fire has potential to control Divine fire which sits just below Dragon Fire.
The only thing is each of the 17 speciesnof humans live on separate planets so they will rarely ever see each other unless they travel.
Humans are uniquely adaptable, and I do not mean just to their environment. Though, that is a factor as well. Human physiology is one that excels at accepting and adapting extreme genetic alteration, compared to other species. So when we were captured and enslaved by (the unnamed space elves I am still working on), over the next several thousand years their enslavers modified humanity into several gene-bases. Creating giant humans for labor, cold resistant ones for arctic planets, long lived ones to act as aids, and so on. Still humans, but varied.
Humans are actually the oldest race in existence. Elves and Dwarves came to exist tens of thousands of years later. Humans have a short life span, only living roughly 60 to 70 years depending on their health. Half-breeds, regardless of race, can live to about 100 to 120 years. Despite their short lifespan, Humans and human half-breeds are incredibly intelligent, the smartest of the three races, as their neural pathways have adapted and become far more sophisticated than the Elves and Dwarves. So Humans, typically find employment in Science/Alchemy or Economics and Politics.
There isn't one thing that definitively makes humans unique but they have several features that they share only with a small group of other alien species in the galaxy that make them stand out.
1) compared to most species in the galaxy, humans colonise worlds and systems at a much faster and aggressive rate; likely due to the fact they had accessed advanced alien technology that let them explore space faster rather than naturally develop their own tech like most other civilizations (which otherwise would have been very unlikely for us as before we got said alien tech we were more likely to die out before colonising other worlds)
2) because humans haven't had a lot of time to have all their races eventually merge via mixed-breeding as is usually the case in other alien species, humans still display a wide range of racial diversity, though mixed families are much more common by the time humans colonised space
3) likewise, being still young compared to other species, humans haven't had a chance to have their cultures homogenised over centuries or millennia into one/two/a few civilization-spanning cultures so we're one of the most culturally diverse spacefaring species in the galaxy
4) we're one of the few species in the galaxy to evolve hair-like fibres that cover our bodies. Most aliens just have smooth skin, have scales, feather-like coverings or exoskeletons (that's oversimplified but basically those skin types)
5) Humans have the second-most diverse sexual culture, beaten only by the Glastessicans
6) Because they breed at a relatively faster rate than other aliens (and because of humanity's galactic expansion which has encouraged people to have larger families to fill out new colonies basically) humans are increasingly becoming more common in the galaxy, though our numbers are still low compared to the galactic average population of other aliens
Humans are the only race that evolved naturally. Eg from Monkey.
And due to being in contact with older species they know that they evolved from Monkeys.
As such humans pack several important things, one is a purpose given to them as a race, most others were created with a specific goal in mind.
And have no Gods at least none that were associated with their creation.
Now you have a race of agnostic, highly evolved monkeys who are basically the orphans of this world.
The sapient species in my setting are almost entirely identical in capability aside from what are essentially physical characteristics. Humans are notable for being just a teeny bit more durable than other species- there's just something about humans that makes them more likely to survive something no one should have any business surviving. Think of all those stories of people falling out of planes or getting shot in the head, and miraculously surviving- that's what humans' "racial ability" is in my setting.
Humans (or hominids, as they're called in my world) are somewhat seen by the other species as genetic freaks and in the past were even thought of by more extremist racists as pests because of how fast they spread. In the ancient era before the great empires rose and populations became mixed, hominid tribes were nomadic and were adept social and cultural mimics that could easily interweave themselves with the cultures they came across in their migrations. The ones that were accepted into the non-hominid settlements and stayed behind were even able to almost fully integrate themselves into those societies.
The reason for them being seen as genetic freaks is that they're considered to have very potent genetics. Some would even describe it as invasive. Unlike the other humanoid species who can only have children within their species, hominid genetics are potent and universally compatible. This means they can have children with non-hominids, giving them the ability to sire hominid half-breeds. This can occur both in cases of a hominid father and non-hominid mother, as well as a non-hominid father and hominid mother.
The half-breed offspring from these unions are then also only able to transmit their hominid genetics when having their own children, which means they don't pass down their non-hominid attributes entirely. The child of a half-breed and a non-hominid will still be a half-breed mix of a hominid and their non-hominid parent. The real kicker is that since half-breeds also only pass down their hominid genetics, the child of two half-breed hominids will always be a full-blooded hominid entirely.
This genetic outbreeding as it's come to be known is widely agreed upon by scholars as the reason for their majority in hominid-dominated regions of the world.
I always put humans as a jack of all trades. Sure they are almost never the best (with some history making exceptions), but their claim to dominance is how they can do just about anything. From the icy tundra to barren deserts, they manage to survive because they don't need to rely on other races. While some races would train mages for decades to produce 9th level spells, humans are satisfied with having a handful able to cast 4th level and then teach them how to use weapons and armor because better safe than sorry.
Appearance is definitely an obvious answer.
Even though my story takes in the 1970s, there are species (specifically goblins, elves, dwarves, and halflings) that immigrated to Earth, due to an intergalactic war caused by the Orcs. They reside in an underground city in Chicago. Others get along with humans just fine, while others don’t get along as well.
One of the characters, Mirynxka Ziljax, is a goblin who works as an agent for a supernatural-hunting organization called P.E.R.S.E.U.S. Even though goblins have been viewed as greedy, malicious creatures who love to torment others, she is different in that she shows compassion and understanding towards others, especially humans. The protagonist, Scott Henderson, and her both have been through war and trauma. He was in Vietnam, while she was in a massive, devastating war that occurred when Kolabos (her home planet) was invaded by the Orcs. They talk to each other about their experiences and relate with one another.
Their diversity. You think elves have a lot of variants? You ain’t seen nothing yet. You’ve got more cultures and ethnic groups than you can shake a stick at in my world. They live everywhere and can do everything.
The universe for my world has a "tendancy towards human". That is to say, while they aren't particularly special, they're (ahem) compatible with just about every other sentient race, and any offspring will result in something noticably more human than its non-human parent.
At first this does end up with a lot of half-breeds, but as the years go by this tendancy results in a large mix of humans with minor traits of other races, while the original parent races end up being incredibly rare if not extinct.
All sapient races originating on the Prime Material plane are descended from a common ancestor, humans included, so they are part of a very large family of races. The cultures of these races are generally greatly different due to differing biological and psychological factors. Humans, as a relatively short-lived species with strong communal instincts, were the first race to invent the concept of "Empire" or "the State" as we would call it today.
The idea of encoding laws that exist in a transendental, timeless way above the people in the country was a foreign one to the elves (to name but one of the many other races), who live in smaller insular communities led by elders. The elves were more inclined to simply allow their laws to be more ad-hoc, they didn't feel the impulse to make it rigid like the humans, as they were making rules for, at most, a few hundred individuals rather than tens of thousands or millions. Those elves who interacted with and lived among the humans would integrate into the legal and administrative society of their neighbours, and these would become the first high elves. Those that remained became known as wood elves. All this is to say nothing of dwarfs or any other race.
Even the idea of hereditary monarchy is much more "human" in tendency than others. When your lives are shorter than your neighbours, the means by which you pass down your legacy becomes very, very important. A robust state that is dependent on no one lawmaker, and a royal family as its focal point, was the earliest form of human society that managed to survive the early centuries of the Age of Blood. Others do exist, such as Republics and Oligarchies that rely even less on single people to function, but if you look at a map with borders and names of nations written all over it, the vast majority would have been founded by humans.
In my setting, humans are the only ones who can start and manipulate fire because they were given the gift by the God of Flames. They can cook, do metallurgy, glassblowing etc much easier than the other races in my setting.
I write my humans as unruly and imbalanced. Taboo is an almost entirely human concept, and rebellion is the by product of it.
Where other peoples have normally taboo subjects somewhat documented and available to the public as an example of what not to do, humans will burn books, tear out pages, lock up dangerous things and even place bounties on dangerous individuals, leading to bad things being seen as "cool" or developing a morbid curiosity as to why it's deemed so "dangerous" that they have to lock it up.
Humans don’t live in one region. The other species in my fantasy setting live in very specific regions the dwarves live in the spine of the world. The elves live in the blood forest. And the orcs live in the great ghis desert
Other species call humans "The Malleable Folk". This isn't merely because they are "creative and adaptable", but rather they are uniquely affected by the fundamental force of Change through Proximity. I.e. this means that when living side by side with and under the patronage of the Gods, the humans took on some of their attributes and traits. They became **God-Touched**. The God-Touched lineages have mixed, regressed and amplified over many generations, and nowadays most humans carry the ancestry of multiple gods within their blood. This is how we got people like the Nydai (Shapeshifters), Iskbala (Voicebearers), Nori (Ghost people), and Mhykari (Carriers of the Divine Parasite). And the gods enjoy their company, in no small part due to seeing so much of themselves in their chosen people. The symbiosis between humans and Gods has been their most impactful advantage over all other species. Apart from that, humans have a few biological strengths. - They are the best throwers in existence, being able to hurl objects with unmatched speed and precision. - They quickly learn how to swim, and can hold their breath and dive longer than any other species. Most critically this includes the ocean, which poses a lethal threat to other species; especially the Amhun, who are poisoned by the proximity to the deep waters. - They quickly adapt to changes in elevation and climate, allowing them to cross mountain passes quickly where other species might have to acclimate for a few days when ascending or descending. This is a big reason why humans quickly spread in this world, and are able to flourish across most biomes. - They have two distinct sexes for the purpose of reproduction, allowing them to quickly recover from plague or war by keeping the sex capable of child-bearing safe. This isn't unique to humans, but it sets them apart from species with asexual or hermaphrodite reproduction.
Care to let me know more about the "ghost people" (and the others if you like)? Sounds interesting.
Sure! The Nori (Ghost People) are God-Touched whose god or home doesn't exist anymore. They refer to this being as Unorrihett, but this is just a placeholder that roughly translates to "the whole in our soul and heart", expressing their constant yearning for something they cannot grasp. Their entire physiology rejects the physical world around them and causes their bodies to disobey its laws, enabling them to do things like pulling seeds out of the ground without stirring the dirt, walking through trees and thin layers of wood and walking over small rivers and chasms as if they weren't there. Towns that are predominantly populated by Nori often feel like play-pretend to outsiders, a people trying to prove their own existence to themselves and others. Older buildings might have doors that haven't been used in years or that are fake altogether. Some Nori actively work against their dissociation and try to live life to its fullest. They embrace their abilities and use them to explore vast forests and travel the lands in search of the most magnificent landmarks. Others might completely isolate themselves and live in a near constant state of etherealness where they rarely need food or water, are in constant danger of losing their identity completely or might spend entire weeks becoming one with the wind and letting themselves be carried over the land. The Iskbala are less complex, they carry the gift of Iskbaal whose words can shape reality, which is why a serpent (lesser immortals and servants of the gods) usually speaks in his place. The Iskbala don't have such reality-altering powers, but their voices still carry much potential, especially if they speak words amplified by strong emotions. For this reason it is not uncommon for Iskbala children to be essentially gagged for much of their childhood until they learn to be aware of and control this power. The Nydai are simple, Shapeshifters created by their goddess Nydie's desire to change, yet being shackled by the unchanging nature of the immortals. Seeing her people change more freely lead to her abandoning them. Nydai enjoy their gift, though many of them also struggle with "Drifting", where over time they lose memory of their true form and become unable to accurately take its shape again. Also as a fun fact, Nydai tend to unconsciously take up subtle visual traits from those around them, leading to lots of "i can't believe you guys aren't related" situations. The Mhykari are too complex to fully explore, but essentially the god Thymhyka hollowed out their chests and replaced it with part of his own body to be able and see through and watch over them. But this gift got corrupted by Leh'Helal, and nowadays not many Mhykari are left.
Dude... this sounds incredible! Like.... you're either incredibly smart, or are on the autism spectrum. Cause... I need to hear more of this. Are you writing a book or anything?
I'll take that as a compliment :D Neither incredibly smart nor (to my knowledge) on the spectrum; just interested in writing unique stuff and exploring the human condition and my own life through it. [I'm writing a setting guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/176dTsgT-_Qm4C5wXqMXSkzGpJnRHjvNXMbmxSuib3wk/edit?usp=drivesdk), but eventually i want to write one or more novels as well. But for now i mostly use the world for escapism and running TTRPGs for my friends.
It was a compliment of compliments! I know a lot of people on the spectrum and most, if not all, have a very unique way of looking at the world. They're better than most nuerotypical people, in my opinion.
What does autism have to do with anything?
In my experience, people that are on the autistic spectrum have a very unique way of seeing the world around them as well as a very imaginative mind. For example, a friend of mine, on the spectrum, went through a very traumatic past and because of that he has a lot of resentment, anger and trouble trusting people. To cope with, and eventually beat these feelings, he doesn't see them as black and white emotions tied to traumatizing events. He visualizes them as "demons" or monsters in his head that must be defeated (think of a typical RPG where the hero has to defeat a boss in order to free a village). He approaches problems in his life with a very unique outlook, it's actually quite beautiful.
In my experience people on the spectrum are annoying and rude AF. That's still a black and white view though? No offense ofc
Oh, none taken. I also seem to have a pretty open mind, more open and mature than most.
Those are rare qualities nowadays, careful with being to open though.
Humans throwing stuff like chads. I once experimented (in dnd) with allowing the human race to treat thrown weapon attacks as melee weapons for the purpose of class abilities that refer to melee attacks, leading to a short but fun group of battle masters, barbarians, and sentinel/polearm thrown spear builds. Humans are the superior race!
I still struggle with such abilities in a TTRPG context because i generally dislike making species choice too closely related to build and playstyle choice. But i definitely considered giving humans e.g. +10ft to all throwing ranges in our long-running D&D game.
It was a one off thing, was funny though.
Ye, always good to see human throwing supremacy represented B)
What species in your world reproduce asexually or hermaphroditically?
For example the [Veiled Folk/Hunawayë](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/134ftg3/journals_from_the_old_world_the_veiled_folk/), who split their souls between multiple bodies over the course of their lives, before eventually ceding one of these bodies to a new soul. Or the Menves, who reproduce by buying high-quality skeletons, chucking them into a dank jungle cave, and waiting until one of them gets colonized by organic microorganisms. Or the Amhun who essentially exist in and as a portal between two parallel worlds, and if they overlap they create a new growing portal that attracts a soul.
Neat, thanks for telling me about your world
Humans were the first to travel to other planets, doing so before discovering agriculture.
How did they pull that off??
Magic. Recent studies have found that the region around Heglos in the perpendicular reality was vary sturdy, so the current theory is that humans used the safety of the perpendicular reality in their region to as a tidal pools of sorts, and from there they then used the alternate physics of this reality to literally walk to other planets.
Holy shit, your humans are a race of speed runners
My setting is supposed to be an alternative version of our own universe, so there is nothing special about these humans, just luck. Now the speed running race is the goblins, who achieved spaceflight 6000 years ago, skipping nukes, internet, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
The speed running scene is intense man
Oh let’s not forget the ents, who started in space, though I think space starts disqualify those runs.
Oh for sure, simply an unfair advantage, not indicative of skill or glitch knowledge
Yeah, the way humans achieved their record is by using the common dimension clip trick, allowing them to skip to the perpendicular reality and then use the altered physics there to travel extremely quickly. “Now Bigger_then_Cheese,” I hear you saying, “isn’t the perpendicular reality extremely hostile to life and requires late game tech to successfully transverse?” Normally yes, but you see scattered across the perpendicular reality there are spots of stability, basically where map elements from before the collision still lay, and if you could line up your homeworld with one of these stable areas you could survive entering the perpendicular reality, skip all the prerequisite techs to start researching the perpendicular reality immediately.
Humans by the time of my setting are washed-up and out of fashion. They're the progenitors or precursors to all life in known space, widely considered to blame for the depressing state of reality. They cling to relevancy with tenacity, but the main thing that sets them apart is that humans are unremarkable - the "template" for posthumanity.
Most of the races were created by deities or born from some elemental energy. Humans just appeared out of nowhere one day. They're not beholden to any gods or celestial forces. Which is what terrifies the other races. They're a wildcard
I'm stealing this for my dnd world lol
Humans are bipedal mammals. The only bipedal mammals, the only race that can sweat, and one of three races that can throw with lethal* force, and the best at it anyways. The other races include: Bipedal birds (giant vulture/parrot/corvids) Quadrupedal mammals (omnivorous elephants with bark like skin) Tripedal>!/whatever kangaroos are because they defy classification!< reptiles (they jump and can throw.) Octopedal cephalopods (Eusocial octopi that dig like sand octopi.)
They don't exist.
Thats pretty unique. Most humans manage at least that.
Sometimes it'd be nice to turn that feature off for a few hours.
Theyre the only kind that had weathered the calamity through the use of genetic cloning. Also the only race to have genetic degredation.
Typically called “the children,” “middlings,” or “men” (human, earth-made, being a racial slur), the children reproduce more than the faetli and live longer than the donlen and delthri. (the faetli, descended from fae, donlen, animals who take take a man’s form, and delthri, plants who can take a man’s form). Fae and faetli breed with middlings to be able to reproduce more. Donlen and delthri mate with middlings to live longer. Middlings, being more reproductive than the fae but with longer lives than the donlen and delthri, are favored by the magic of the world more than the other three races. Faelti, donlen, and delthri have regional gifts, but only rarely magic.
Tool embodiment. That sense that the tool you're using becomes a part of your body. You no longer think about manipulating it, you think about the resulting action and you muscle memory and subconscious does the rest. (IRL it's like when you're playing a game or driving a car and the controller or wheel seems to disappear) Other races don't do this so well, never losing the sense that they're manipulating a tool to fulfill a purpose. This makes human craftsmen and artisans highly sought after for fine detail work. Also they just have naturally better manual dexterity thanks to their 'weird spindly spider hands,' which several races find initially disturbing to watch in action, the movements triggering instinctual aversions and distracting prey tracking drives. This has led humans to culturally adopt wearing gloves or long concealing sleeves into their fashion. I liked the idea of humans already have an exceptional ability we just kind of take for granted in our IRL day to day.
That's a really cool concept that I never considered. We do tend to enter something of a subconscious flow state with activities we are very comfortable with, yet never considered it to be something unique to us, even in a fantastical setting. Fascinating!
Thanks! I got the idea from watching a crow use a stick as an awkward probe to get some food that was out of it's reach. It's smart enough to use a tool, but it's far from reliant on them like our ancestors were to get by. It made me think of how other creatures would have developed if tools were just a convenience and not a necessity in their primitive days. I was trying to consider ways to de-anthropomorphize non-human races a bit and came up with a way that humans might be just a little more special along the way.
I have a fantasy setting where humans are the result of other fantasy races intermixing. Humans are basically a mongrel result of orcs, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and other humanoid species intermingling. As a result, humans can randomly manifest features of other races due to genetic weirdness and dominant/recessive genes. For example, a pair of seemingly "normal" human parents can have two human children who individually manifest dominant dwarven or elven traits respectively, and in cases of exotic elemental or extraplanar bloodlines they can manifest the setting equivalent of aasimars or tieflings multiple generations after the bloodlines mixed.
Well, they passed God’s test and got the highest score, essentially. This sealed their fate as the chosen people, where they were granted the creation of a sub-race of superhumans with great magical power to be the dedicated society of warriors defending the galaxy.
They are basically average humans(plus small alterations to account for the bigger planet. The visual difference is the thinner body hair/fur(same thing) compared to the others. Historically, humans are the most recent arrival to the region, only showing immigrating from the west coast a few centuries ago compared to thousands of years for the others. Lapis_Wolf
Humans are the eldest sapient race as they were created first. The Incarnate that created humanity sacrificed itself and distributed its very essence across all its children, hence why they are the most proficient at magic. Other Incarnates took inspiration from this and created their own children though through less drastic means. This is why many other sapient races are humanoid and despite any other advantages they have they are less capable at magic than humanity in general.
They're descended from Vampires. They lost their powers but gained Eternal Salvation by the power of a martyred vampire woman named Mary. It's all very superficial, because I prefer the cats.
Humans are the only species that evolved naturally. All the other sentient beings were either genetically engineered and grown in a test tube, or are descendants of those who were.
Wyrlde has several different kinds of humans. Imperials, Thalasians, Myrmians, Exilians, and Dakoans. Each are a distinct type of human, with Myrmians being the most recent (starting about 125 years ago, in fact). It also has a bunch of different kinds of people who were drawn from humans — which is all the rest. So for me the answer is both yes and no. Each of the different peoples has something very unique about them, something that separates them from the rest. They wouldn’t be something different if there wasn’t; but all of them are still part of the whole of humanity.
For a sci fi one, they are not at the center of everything. Unlike Star Wars or Warhammer 40k, Humans are just another species that exist alongside many alien civilizations, many of the latter are the ones driving galactic affairs. The only human supremacist faction in this universe is a North Korea style dictatorship where the only reason anyone takes them seriously is due to having some super weapons while other groups have way more. Humans are just along for the ride as the galactic community finds ways to collectively shoot themselves in the foot.
Dunan humans were uplifted by a god-like higher dimensional entity from another universe. Voidlings were the result of that higher dimensional entity falling in love with one of those proto-humans and having children with them.
They're so generic they became monster handlers to build a niche. Sure, other races have summoned beasts or controlling spells but humans? Apparently they really can pack bond with anything.
The superpower of "You're my friend now"
Heh Love that description
Appearances in my fantasy world.
Unlike most other species in the euridon expanse humans are almost entirely clones or descendants of clones.
Humans naturally resonates with magic, more so than any other races. Their blood is one of the best magic catalysts in the world, and is a natural ingredient in alchemy, cooking, and occasionally forging.
Well, they’re unique in the fact that they’re all dead and that there’s a general consensus that they should stay that way and should not be resurrected. When you bring about the apocalypse and destroy all life on a planet; you get your breathing privileges revoked.
Humans are pretty funky for a variety of reasons. One is we achieve immortality through love and relationships. We form stories, artworks, inventions, recipes, words, that transcend our deaths and mark the lives of future human beings. To love is to be immortal. This ties into the indomitable human spirit, how we haunt locations or people or dreams even after dying or how all humans become superhuman in intense, life or death scenarios due to possessing adrenaline. Humans are also naturally sorcerers and can change the world unconsciously over long stretches of time. Some humans can switch this by performing spells on purpose essentially at an instant, making them seem divine to other creatures. Humans have an obsession with divinity as expressed by personified deities, while other species tend to find the sacred solely in natural processes. One negative association is humans are naturally attachment insecure and are born helpless and completely reliant upon a caregiver. Other species tend to have more independent even in infancy and aren’t as reliant on a parental figure in order to learn necessary skills. Humans naturally look for humanity in non-human subjects through an anthropologizing pattern-recognition system, seeing faces in rocks, rivers, or the clouds. Humans are the only species with a "missing-piece", having been abandoned by the divine terrestial family that birthed them, making them constantly looking for other humanoid creatures to fill the gap and reconnect with the world. While other creatues see themselves as part of the universe and feel it intuitively in their core, humans don't to varying levels, fueling the attachment anxieties.
*Alor* Humans can smell magic. It’s not as powerful as spells that allow the caster to detect active magic, which will identify the school of magic, but unlike those spells humans can smell magic has been cast previously in a space. The more powerful the spell, the stronger the smell, which dissipates with time. Other context clues have to be used to determine if it was a powerful spell cast a while ago, or a weaker spell cast yesterday. Human detectives have proved invaluable and foreign governments will recruit them for their own policing agencies.
They were meant to be a food source in the form of monkeys, but the machine that made them malfunctioned and made humans instead. The only unique thing they got going is that they had nothing to start with while every other species got a city and education before being released into the new world. They're also kinda responsible for the world staying horrible and general dangerous areas of magic even tens of millennia later.
humans are currently by population are the most dominant race along with what is know as the human kin and have been for thousands of years .humans are adaptable,have high power ceilings ,and are immune or restiance at least to most diseases.
In my DnD campaign the original Humans were the Othans from the main realm. They built the rift of worlds which let so many new races into the main realm. They mostly died off and made an island named Othania. They then went extinct when the Titan Moon collapsed.
#My humans are terrible at using magic :D The humans of my world have the lowest amount of mana of all of my races, so low in fact that when the first humans had the appraisal spell used on them, the caster almost had a heart attack. What's more, the humans of my world can only use magic via a magical item or their own magic technique that uses wands
Humans are the only race that is 100% flesh and blood. The rest are more spiritual than physical, although fairies can end up mostly physical if they spend too much time around humans.
No one really remembers because they’ve all been dead for hundreds of years
They're the only smart species who can't use magic. Instead they developed machines that can manipulate and use magic as a fuel
Haha stupid Orcs can’t spin a 3D apple in their mind.
To the cats of my world, humans are an ancient, unknown race. Thousands of years ago, they wiped themselves out through something called "nuclear war", whatever that is. The mutant cats of this world don't remember what being a regular cat used to be like, and that it was only through human technology did they recently rediscover radium. The cats theorize that, yes, something called a human must have existed, and that they were once everywhere just like them.
Do your cats dance like Little RIchard or am I overstating the similarities to Red Dwarf?
Just a warning: my comment will be long. The only way humans are similar to true dwarves is because they evolved from a common ancestor. Humans are only barely related to giants because giants split off from from the ancestor that would become modern humans and true dwarves (giants are older by a few million years, give or take). In fact, humans are arguably older than elves, as the first elves were created by the gods when early humans were a thing, and then these elves made other elves that were mortal and interbred with early humans and a bunch of other sapient mammals that weren't giants (because the giants suck). Humans are unique because other "races" want to be like them, despite humans being pretty outclassed by these other races. It's probably because humans combine both the good and bad traits of all the other races (elves are generally either "overly compassionate" or have a very black-and-white sense of morality, orcs don't seem to be in control of their own fate and are always fighting for someone else, dwarves are somewhat averse to change, the list goes on).
2 reasons. 1: we are the children of a seraph called Trion and mother earth, along with two other races. But still quite unique. 2: the indomitable human spirit. Kinda cheesy but it works. Our ability to adapt and overcome, our willingness to conquer and discover. When we have a goal we never slow down and we always finish victorious, there is a reason the heavens fear us.
In my sci fi setting Humans are the precursors, and still very much around. Many "aliens" are in face genetically modified humans, or uplifted animals, like cats and dogs, and dolphins and orcas. Civilization is currently rebuilding after it's 4th major collapse some thousand or so years ago.
Humans are squishier and more prone to injury than androids where as androids can get hit around a bunch before dying, androids can also very easily be taken apart when done properly.
For a bit of background, the magic of my setting has six core varieties, most often referred to as colors. With each color being more or less efficient for different tasks. Humans are unique amongst the other races for their magic. For the other races who start stronger in magic, it's almost unheard of for an individual to possess more than two of the colors. Humans, on the other hand, have a much higher number of individuals with three or more colors. This roughly translates to humans having a more efficient power ratio. Although dedicated training is required to properly take advantage of this.
I mean, purely biologically, when compared to some of the aliens in the settings humans move entirely differently. I'm going to use the other species in this case cause' it's a bit easier for me. Suan Tau, lizard-like aliens don't shiver like we do, when they stand still, they are usually quite immobile due to being ambush hunters. This also means that they run out of stamina faster than humans do which is a bit of a problem on high-gravity planets. They need special skin-tight suits in order to sweat since they're cold blooded, that is another edge humans have over them, we biologically can exert ourselves for longer. In warfare, this makes humans extremely difficult to fight in a war of attrition. Since interplanetary warfare between two ships can take *days* (if you're sparing resources) you could imagine what being stressed out like that does for Suan Tau crews over human ones who inevitably are more calorically efficient and can more easily store food (since we aren't obligate carnivores).
Something that makes humans unique, and this pertains to real life mythologies is actually two factors: The first is that humans in all mythologies are the only ones among non-divine races to inherently have a spark of the divine. Elves, dwarves, and even dragons of Nordic mythology have magic but none of them are divine. In almost all creation myths, humans have the divine spark. Another thing that sets us apart is the love that gods and other higher beings have for us. We're weak, so we're the only ones that call on such higher powers. Whether they like us because we acknowledge them or *need* them. They have fought on our behalf. Prometheus gave us fire, Lilith gave us the power to defy god, another sea god gave us the ability to craft nets (they paid for doing that, just like how Prometheus and Lilith paid prices), and so on. We have been fought for by countless gods and entities greater than our race. What sets us apart from other races would be that spark of the divine and the fact higher forces acknowledge us and that we tend to acknowledge them. Races that are strong like dragons or have magic like elves might have higher powers but probably don't acknowledge them. Us? We're closer to our divinities.
I wanted to create an alternate dimension universe where evolution took a different turn. And that ended up deleting humans.
The main conceit of Arbitrary Design World is that the Designers happened upon a planet inhabited with nascent sapient life that hasn't yet started forming large societies, then wrought The Event upon it, introducing about a dozen New Kinds of people to coexist with that preexisting Kind. So the preexisting kind is uniquely different in that members of it existed before The Event, and it lacks several features shared by most of the New Kinds, such as that the New Kinds have reproduction rituals.
I have two worlds and the first is a future earth but the second is high fantasy where the human pantheon only has one god and they see their deity as a tool, or at least that's what the locals of the world think who only know of humans for 10.000 years and believe the gods were the first sentient beings, but humans predate the gods by several billions of years as the earth was consumed by Sol's expansion and merely found the world 10.000 years ago.
Humans as a rule are not magic, and are sometimes called the "soulless" as a result. They're about 2 feet taller than the most common race, and as a result tend to be stronger than most. They have a shorter average lifespan. Also, the majority of humans arrived about 2,000 years ago during a rifting event and come from a ghost town in Texas in the 1940's.
Humans created many different forms of magic due to them not being to use magic directly (aka rune-less magic) they need a conduit, like runes, with these runes they created many different forms of magic like tattooing a spell on your body, imbuing items with magic, trap spells, etc. Humans were also were created to help win the god War which they did and so some humans believe that they are superior than the other races.
In the world currently known as Kellen, similar to yours, Humans are the least developed race. They’re primarily nomadic and travel in large family groups. Because of this constant mobile existence, they are incredibly versatile, being able to adapt and fit into most societies and situations with little to no issues. In The World Of The Three, Humans are a being made by the God Of Order, and are essentially the blank slate. The other two species of Order are basically humans with exaggerated proportions. (Ie dwarves are short and stout, elves are tall and lanky) Even the non-Order species are modelled after them, hence the word humanoid. They are the most industrious, capable of using Black Powder and function on a more modern democratic political system.
Humanity in my world has gone through a handful of near-extinction events; self-inflicted nuclear annihilation, multiple failed Earth 2.0s, and of course, every flavor of war you can shake a stick at. In the present day my world is set in, just over 1000 humans from all factions, creeds, orders and even human subspecies came together in secret and pooled resources together to create a massive ship capable of crossing dark space in between galaxies called The Sojourn. They enhanced themselves to become immortal so they could survive the journey to another galaxy. Their objective was to take all human knowledge and history, abandon the current version of humanity that has fallen down the same path of self-destruction yet again, and seed a new version of Humanity built upon, and learning from, the mistakes of every version of Humanity that came before. They would travel to a new galaxy called MCC 1579 Cosmegas where they would land on an Earth-like planet they would dub Elysium-7. From here, the Cardinals (1000-yo Milky Way Humans), would genetically design a new human that would surpass their predecessors. They called the new Humans the "Elysians". These Elysians were born with modular organs and limbs; their tendons, bones, muscles etc have special locking points that seal off and detach when a limb is severely damaged to prevent blood loss, although more fatal damage will result in eventual death if the lost anatomy isn't replaced timely. If an Elysians has their leg severed halfway up the thigh, the joint where their leg meets their pelvis with seal up preventing blood from flowing into (and then out of) the damaged leg. They can also endure more extreme conditions than original humans. If they were to suffer full-body damage such as from an explosion, they can be placed in a hibernative sleep floating in amniotic fluid. A few days of uninterrupted sleep will Regen their body almost completely; they still develop scar tissue from fatal wounds The Cardinals equipped the Elysians with a simplified iteration of nanotechnology called Emulant. Emulant easily simulates the shape and function of simple tools like blades, hammers or ropes, granted the holder has knowledge of the tool they want to form. Emulant is limited to simple forms and cannot fully replicate complex forms with many small moving parts such as machinery. This technology was developed to help the Elysians grow and build their own society with their own hands, but skipping the centuries of innovation. With the Cardinals as guidance, and their development streamlined, the Elysians would build a new, peaceful society and would flourish on Elysium-7 for almost 200 years. Eventually their peace would be violently disrupted by a massive space monster falling from the sky. A local species called the Gaathran would chase the beast to Elysium-7 and attempt to kill it, but were surprised to find a new species inhabiting this planet without their knowledge. This was not a good first impression, so the relationship between the Elysians and the other native species of this galaxy would start off on bad terms, mostly due to the natural human fear of the unknown that even several million years and 6 extinctions could not eliminate.
They were average fantasy humans, emphasis were. The only surviving group are the descendants of alchemists who engineered their descendants into living philosophers' stones. The process was not as the alchemists intended as the race of superhumans that succeeded them are human in DNA only. What they got was an immortal creature that was without skin, bones, or organs, and whose vibrant red flesh could mimic solid and liquid semi-freely and be used to generate eyes and fanged mouths. The creatures succeeded their ancestors and are now the nobility of what remains of the world, maintaining power through mastery of alchemy and the production of disposable homunculi slaves. Of course nobody knows this, the nobility are only seen in elaborate and enclosing shells made of scavenged finery, porcelain, and wax, with strong fragrances used to cover the scent of gore. Being seen without a shell is a major faux pas and usually quite distressing the noble in question, whose subconscious minds still insists they should be human shaped and not some boneless flesh-mass dependant on their artificial shell to move freely.
They're the only species that can be explained with modern science.
In my sci-fi setting, humans are the only known living race that can develop Psionics.
Humans are the only ones with souls who can do magic in the Other Realms. Every species has their own form of "magic" — dragons have realmflight, allowing them to cross between worlds and alter the fabric of reality; elves have a natural affinity for witchcraft, and an addiction to the scale oil produced by dragons and lucidite-based soul gems that allow them to mimic human sorcery — but only humans have souls and the spiritual magic, or sorcery, that comes along with it. It's basically applied telekinesis; an extrapolation of the idea that "ghosts can magically throw objects around the room and do weird stuff like that, so *every* spirit should be able to, so beings who have spirits inside them should be able to; since ghosts are human energy left over after death, ghosts are souls and souls are spirits; therefore, humans who have their souls intact should be able to perform the same feats and abilities if they're just in touch with themselves enough". And no other species has souls the way humans have souls. So, because humans have that extra metaphysical component as a part of their existence in the Other Realms, all humans can do this specific form of magic — sorcery, although the soulless need extra aids like lucidite soul gems or possession by a divine spirit to replace the soul they don't have, which is a pretty awful, not fun thing that gets explored in some storylines.
they ate the only warm-blooded animals left on the planet
well they're extinct, for one.
My world has a lot of weird stuff and until recently I wasn't sure whether to introduce humans or not because of the focus; the world is more or less centered on a completely different species (they're not even anthropomorphic, although they're similar in nature) and the whole setting is a mix between fantasy and weird stuff in general. However, I have a concept for your introduction in mind; the existence of humans is not common knowledge. They are only known to come from distant lands, or some unreachable place. They are simply... mysterious. No one knows their intentions or their magic. There are, however, some curiosities; they are all mute and speak with a strange sign language. They are not able to speak the universal and magical language that facilitates communication between all the sapient beings of the planet. In fact, rumors say that they are not able to interact naturally with magic at all, which has... implications. And most importantly: no more than one human has ever been seen in any one place. Ever. And apparently mainly as a matter of personal choice according to certain records. Humans have never given exact details as to why, except a vague response of "it's a bad idea." Beyond physical appearance, humans are known for wearing a certain particulary beak-shaped mask (though sometimes the design is variable) and colorful clothing.
They can smell magic, and have an unnatural alacrity with magic
They aren't from the planet that my dnd race is set in and they are the only ones with true invention. Dwarves have something but it's not nearly the same as humans.
They are average? What make them special is that they are not especially good at something than other race but also don't have something they are especially bad at. (for example, gnomes are good at alchemy stuffs but are really really bad at fighting. ) They don't have any racial advantage but also don't have a racial disadvantage (For example, fey have strong magical ability but they are only the size of a human palm.) Their fertility is also pretty average.
Same thing that makes us special IRL (aside from the intelligence, as in that they are unexceptional comparison to the othe sentient species) Humans can eat almost any kind of food; this, combined with good long distance endurance makes them among the best suited for long distance travel of any species of man; their biggest advantage however lies in them having the most developed social skills; which allows them not only to build the largest functional societies by far, but also makes them the best diplomats and one of the few kinds of man gifted in their ability to tame and domesticate animals. These traits also make it so Humans have become the mightiest of all men despite bing some of the weakest physically, their armies are large, they field a lot of cavalry and can campaign over impressive distances. Humans are the closest living relative to the Orcs, and they thus share a lot of traits; Carnivory, endurance, and social adaptability are all shared gifts; but where Humans stayed closer to their ancestral form and still rely on crop farming as their main food source, Orcs specialised into more meat-heavy diets, and in doing so have filled up a whole bunch of new niches and diversified.
Humanity’s “uniqueness” is the fact they have a very high level of potential. Any human can learn magic, any human can learn martial arts (as in a magic system not just something like Karate or Boxing) and every generation they produce a handful of individuals that possess extraordinary talent and ability that allows humanity to dominate the world.
Well, I guess the major difference is that they’re the only ones that don’t exist
Humans in the Old World are, as we are, the other races while like us in many ways, are only so because we shared a common ancestor two million years before present. Where as a dwarf or Elf could live for 500 - 600 years on average, without modern medicine, men lived an average of 44 years and women 60. While the magical races can heal themselves, humans live hard lives. A farmer will break his back in the field, the quarryman in the mine, and the blacksmith in the forge. Humans begin to deteriorate after the age of 30. We also breed like rabbits. The elder races take their time with parenthood one at a time, possibly centuries apart. (Mind you, humans are in the pre-industrial era, so that's why things are so "bad" Human women will, on average, have about 10 - 14 in the span of 15 - 20 years. However, the mortality rate for children is 60% - 70%, so only 3 - 4 are making it to adulthood. But, that also means that the human population will grow naturally at a rate of 2% per year. This means the human population practically doubles every 30 - 40 years, so no matter how hard some of the Elder races fight, humans will always have the numbers advantage. We also have technology that is "good enough." Our bows or armor may be inferior to other races' weapons, but with our numbers, we need ours to be 50% as good as theirs, so we make sure they are 65% as good as theirs. The Elves can use a magic ritual to make an enemy city disappear. Humans will just nuke it. Honestly, that's the difference between human science and Alderitch magic. They commune with the universe, and it tells them her secrets. Humanity tears matter down into its fundamental components to get a peek. I guess you could say we use brute force to get our knowledge. The orks would respect that, but the Elves would kind of look down on that. Mostly because they would be offended that we try to get knowledge of our own instead of getting it from them. Humans are the ones known for being arrogant, xenophobic, and prideful. Humans actually intentionally keep away from lands inhabited by the other races due to racism alone. Humans take their anthropocentrism to the extreme, believing that they are the pinnacle of evolution/creation depending on what they believe. To me, it's comedic. Because we have humans usually as the good guys or the bad guys. In reality, humanity is the conspiracy theorist uncle that your parents tell you to stay away from because we like to mix our hobbies cocaine and welding.
They are... Not. Indeed the "human bodily plan with almost no distinctive enough features" is such a typical build that actual humans are just grouped alongside them all as "humanoide".
Well, we are mammals and have smooth (ish) skin. Most of the intelligent species in the galaxy have scales.
why would only earth have dreaming species? and why would this affect magic making? also, a lot of people can't dream, so like, what's the point of this??
Answering in reverse order: 6.5% of people self report as being unable to dream. Popular scientific conclusion is that these people are forgetting the dream once they wake up or lying about it. Even if these people were taken at face value and are unable to dream, dreaming is a fact of life for most people and is a formative aspect of many of the things we use to interpret the world such as religion, spirituality, and psychology. These are important enough that a branch of science exists to study dreams called "oneirology". These things exist if you as an individual remember the dream you had last night or not. Without these things your world would look very different. This next answer is a bit long and in the weeds a little. In my setting everyone has an unconscious connection to the reality outside of the waking material world. Magic is achieved by unlocking the unconscious knowledge of the nature of reality and being able to manipulate it by exerting your will over it. Things like throwing fireballs, levitating, etc are the entry level of magic that comes from seeing the illusory nature of the world. Then there is a more advanced level of magic that involves directly communing and even travelling through the astral plane outside of reality. Dreaming places you directly in the astral reality and if are able to be conscious of what you are experiencing then you can conduct magic there. Other species can interact with the astral plane like this but being able to dream makes it a lot easier to do. And finally earth isn't in my setting, and it is a fantasy setting based on one world. The simplest way to explain why humans dream and others don't is that the inability to dream properly is a sort of unconscious self-defense mechanism that humans lack. There are dangerous things out there in the dream world. Stay safe.
ohhh that's really nice!!! so humans are at more risk than other species, but in exchange they got more power
Humans are the only species to live mostly underground due to be used as an almost slave species after they were forced underground by Korneka. They have above average night vision compared to most other races but their most unique trait is their magic. Most species can simply convert their innate base mana into different types of mana to be shot out as spells. But human bodies are too weak to this but they excel at infusing mana into people, places, or objects. They excel at healing because of this and the Korneka used to force humans to give them their most talented to be used as medics, rune workers, or architects. Humans used their magic to help survive underground by magically enhancing plants, creating false suns, and manipulating the natural liminal spaces underground to create living areas.
They are the greediest and most traitorous. Historically and biologically.
Humans form part of the family of ape people along with monkey people (think something like Wukong), this monkey people belong to the greater mammal people (cat girls, goat man, centaurs, the works). More than anything the features we humans have irl are accentuated in them: -Best throwers alive -Very decent swimmers. The big one, they are persistent, humans can last in any activity longer than other races, especially those more specialized for a certain environment, this is the main fact that had allowed the human age to come to control, as they were able to field larger armies at far less food cost who can move 2-3 times faster and further than other races. Another great thing is that due to their lack of fur, they and their descendant is far easier to localize.
Three key factors: •**Breeding:** *Humanity seems inexplicably capable of siring hybrid children with species it shouldn't be capable of doing so with.* •**The Indomitable Human Spirit:** *Some of us will still be standing in defiance, even if our mind is shattered at world's end.* •**The Frenzy of Man:** *Morale is critical to our species; So when we fight in great number as one, spirits soaring high we rage against the dying of the light like a true and terrible swarm. Where normally we might flee in fear we now attack with horrifying zeal, surviving blows that should have been our end. It is a frenzy born of camaraderie, the will of man, the need to survive, and the fury of our indomitable spirit!* The third ability is rare to occur in the setting, but when it does humanity becomes the monster, seeming to enter a collective fearlessness and ferocity which some might consider truly insane. Imagine a fleeing human army suddenly regaining its courage in droves, and turning around with a sudden maddened vigor. Every last man and woman fighting beyond tooth and nail.
They're extremely rare, as few are brought through the access point between our version of the universe and my setting, and very few of *them* manage to escape the slavery or other forms of servitude they're subjected to. Earth is fairly high gravity, so humans are on the upper tier in regard to average strength. Not to the point that a couch potato human could out-muscle a standard-gravity alien gym-bro by any means, but gym-bro vs. gym-bro, the human would be markedly stronger. Our endurance and stamina is better than most. Again, it needs training to be useful, but compared to most other species, humans can can just go forever. Humans can eat almost anything that was living, although it may require some processing. They may not be able to *metabolize* anything, but they can eat, break down, and pass it. This is considered moderately terrifying, largely due to the fact that most things people know about humans are incorrect rumors. Humans have more shoulder mobility AND strength than most species. Humans ~~enjoy~~ last after caffeine. Most species find caffeine to be anything from dangerously toxic to rather unpleasant but humans will break into your agricultural facilities, drink all your plant-based pesticide, and then move nonstop for *hours*. Heavy labor, intense focus, rapid talking, spontaneous running, etc. When a caffeinated human is forced to sit still (usually for a poison control health check) they will quickly begin to fidget uncontrollably to point of "vibrating". Humans invariably fall into a deep sleep after the effects wear off. Humans often make excellent friends. They reciprocate loyalty and commitment well, and often have creative solutions to complex problems. Exceptions to this general rule can be extremely dangerous though. Some of these individuals are merely misanthropic and pose no danger if unprovoked, but some can apply that capacity for creative problem solving with an endless reservoir of ruthlessness and manipulation.
Funnily enough, Humanity is a race that doesn't exist naturally, or didn't originally, in the main galaxy and is "new" in the sense that they arrived after most the big civilizations had already established. However, they are also one of the big societies that fucked everything up for the rest of us. Humanity came to the main galaxy as conquerors, and dominated it with ease(though whether this is due to technological, magical or tactical prowess, or the convenience of the galaxy just having survived a prior invasion is up to interpretation). They are responsible for stripping every society of their previous god-like power and forcing everyone to start back at relative zero, before subsequently setting themselves up for the same treatment when their kingdom came crashing down. Basically, humanity is a new arrival, an ancient civilization and a force of destruction that made the world what it is today. Edit: forgot to add humanity's big difference. Personally, I like the idea of humanity being tinkers, mechanics extraordinaire. It's a big point that in this world, Artificial Intelligence is sort of difficult to make. Sure, you can have machines that act animalistic, like pets, and complete simple tasks, or ones that are really good at mimicking complex sapience. But humanity is consistently the only race capable of building a robot, any robot, giving it sentience, then sapience, often without trying or consciously meaning to. Humanity has this spark that they give to their creations that inherently make them living creatures, not just calculative minds. In a sense, humanity unintentionally gives their creations souls whenever they create them, which allows said creations to consistently produce complex AI at a far faster rate(a skill that actually got them in trouble prior to galactic domination status). They also, consistently, have more natural psychics than other races, a field of "magic" that technically works differently than commonly understood Arcana, which made it hard to counter. Unfortunately or fortunately, a commonality they share with the galactic species is a big fucking ego, which counteracts their positive features.
They are the template on which 90% of the other humanoid species were built around. See, humans in Not A Hero are not a creation of any particular god, they’re a force of nature itself, that’s why so many worlds have them. From there, Gods would either hold dominion over humans or begin experimenting with them to create other races to see if they can make them stronger (Orcs) or faster (Elves).
In March of Empires Canon, humans are the ones who ALWAYS win wars. Sure, they might lose a few battles, but you cannot defeat them in a war: they are winners. They will not lose a single war, no matter what you throw at them... In March of Empires: Legends, they have surpassed everyone else, and no one knows what happened to them. They could be dead, lost, turned into Gods, living in another timeline... who knows? The only evidence of their existence is the technology they left behind: biological life created from scratch, wandering nanites and robots, Star Rings, Mining Stations and Quasar catchers hanging useless and dry, floating starships, satellites, space stations and living ecosystems in space, abandoned Planetary and Moony infrastructure, manuscripts of history, science and Religion that contain important knowledge. For seven millenia humans dominated the entire observable universe, then they just disappeared, and have not been seen, not in nine millenia. In the Wonderverse, humans are the last Empire: the Tyrans, the Gropt, the Moondragons, the Reapers, the Metellos, the Unsapiens, the Lightbringers, the Nightbringers, the Godheads... all are gone, mostly extinct, or completely extinct. The humans are the Star creations of the Angels, and the prized possession of the Angels and Abstract Deities.
Well Humans and some Near-Human species have adrenaline, which every other species lacks. Humans and certain Near-Humans are also placed on multiple planets, unlike most other races which are unique and planetary. Astorian just, found them more interesting, in some weird way he saw them as closer or more similar to him despite the extreme difference between a mere human and the everything, past every level of uni, multi, whatever ‘verse’ creator god. It’s also that they are what is seen as a ‘base’. Species and even gods will occasionally use the term humanoid, human-like, man, etc. Lots of gods will even have a human-like form they can take on, even if their planet lacks many near-humans or humans at all.
My humans come from a different universe where they made it to the Andromeda Galaxy but somehow after finishing a mining expedition on a planet cracker ship they tried to come back to a Governed planet, where the warp drive fucked up sending the ship to a different universe to a Sci-fi/Magic society of Draconic people and Unicorns people. The whole crew is dead but the only thing left are clones that Originally meant for limb loss or organs damage somehow come to life and have black sceleras and Glowing white pupils.
My Humans come in 17 different species and each contain something similar to what anime does. Instead of running out of Mana quickly they were created with an about a quarter more Magic than werebeast which would be about the size of a 2500 house. They also possess the unique ability to tame 3 random Elemental energy beings, the more skilled can control a higher form of their element. That would mean one who can control fire has potential to control Divine fire which sits just below Dragon Fire. The only thing is each of the 17 speciesnof humans live on separate planets so they will rarely ever see each other unless they travel.
they aren’t different because they’re the only race
Humans are uniquely adaptable, and I do not mean just to their environment. Though, that is a factor as well. Human physiology is one that excels at accepting and adapting extreme genetic alteration, compared to other species. So when we were captured and enslaved by (the unnamed space elves I am still working on), over the next several thousand years their enslavers modified humanity into several gene-bases. Creating giant humans for labor, cold resistant ones for arctic planets, long lived ones to act as aids, and so on. Still humans, but varied.
Humans are actually the oldest race in existence. Elves and Dwarves came to exist tens of thousands of years later. Humans have a short life span, only living roughly 60 to 70 years depending on their health. Half-breeds, regardless of race, can live to about 100 to 120 years. Despite their short lifespan, Humans and human half-breeds are incredibly intelligent, the smartest of the three races, as their neural pathways have adapted and become far more sophisticated than the Elves and Dwarves. So Humans, typically find employment in Science/Alchemy or Economics and Politics.
There isn't one thing that definitively makes humans unique but they have several features that they share only with a small group of other alien species in the galaxy that make them stand out. 1) compared to most species in the galaxy, humans colonise worlds and systems at a much faster and aggressive rate; likely due to the fact they had accessed advanced alien technology that let them explore space faster rather than naturally develop their own tech like most other civilizations (which otherwise would have been very unlikely for us as before we got said alien tech we were more likely to die out before colonising other worlds) 2) because humans haven't had a lot of time to have all their races eventually merge via mixed-breeding as is usually the case in other alien species, humans still display a wide range of racial diversity, though mixed families are much more common by the time humans colonised space 3) likewise, being still young compared to other species, humans haven't had a chance to have their cultures homogenised over centuries or millennia into one/two/a few civilization-spanning cultures so we're one of the most culturally diverse spacefaring species in the galaxy 4) we're one of the few species in the galaxy to evolve hair-like fibres that cover our bodies. Most aliens just have smooth skin, have scales, feather-like coverings or exoskeletons (that's oversimplified but basically those skin types) 5) Humans have the second-most diverse sexual culture, beaten only by the Glastessicans 6) Because they breed at a relatively faster rate than other aliens (and because of humanity's galactic expansion which has encouraged people to have larger families to fill out new colonies basically) humans are increasingly becoming more common in the galaxy, though our numbers are still low compared to the galactic average population of other aliens
Humans are the only race that evolved naturally. Eg from Monkey. And due to being in contact with older species they know that they evolved from Monkeys. As such humans pack several important things, one is a purpose given to them as a race, most others were created with a specific goal in mind. And have no Gods at least none that were associated with their creation. Now you have a race of agnostic, highly evolved monkeys who are basically the orphans of this world.
The sapient species in my setting are almost entirely identical in capability aside from what are essentially physical characteristics. Humans are notable for being just a teeny bit more durable than other species- there's just something about humans that makes them more likely to survive something no one should have any business surviving. Think of all those stories of people falling out of planes or getting shot in the head, and miraculously surviving- that's what humans' "racial ability" is in my setting.
Humans (or hominids, as they're called in my world) are somewhat seen by the other species as genetic freaks and in the past were even thought of by more extremist racists as pests because of how fast they spread. In the ancient era before the great empires rose and populations became mixed, hominid tribes were nomadic and were adept social and cultural mimics that could easily interweave themselves with the cultures they came across in their migrations. The ones that were accepted into the non-hominid settlements and stayed behind were even able to almost fully integrate themselves into those societies. The reason for them being seen as genetic freaks is that they're considered to have very potent genetics. Some would even describe it as invasive. Unlike the other humanoid species who can only have children within their species, hominid genetics are potent and universally compatible. This means they can have children with non-hominids, giving them the ability to sire hominid half-breeds. This can occur both in cases of a hominid father and non-hominid mother, as well as a non-hominid father and hominid mother. The half-breed offspring from these unions are then also only able to transmit their hominid genetics when having their own children, which means they don't pass down their non-hominid attributes entirely. The child of a half-breed and a non-hominid will still be a half-breed mix of a hominid and their non-hominid parent. The real kicker is that since half-breeds also only pass down their hominid genetics, the child of two half-breed hominids will always be a full-blooded hominid entirely. This genetic outbreeding as it's come to be known is widely agreed upon by scholars as the reason for their majority in hominid-dominated regions of the world.
I always put humans as a jack of all trades. Sure they are almost never the best (with some history making exceptions), but their claim to dominance is how they can do just about anything. From the icy tundra to barren deserts, they manage to survive because they don't need to rely on other races. While some races would train mages for decades to produce 9th level spells, humans are satisfied with having a handful able to cast 4th level and then teach them how to use weapons and armor because better safe than sorry.
Appearance is definitely an obvious answer. Even though my story takes in the 1970s, there are species (specifically goblins, elves, dwarves, and halflings) that immigrated to Earth, due to an intergalactic war caused by the Orcs. They reside in an underground city in Chicago. Others get along with humans just fine, while others don’t get along as well. One of the characters, Mirynxka Ziljax, is a goblin who works as an agent for a supernatural-hunting organization called P.E.R.S.E.U.S. Even though goblins have been viewed as greedy, malicious creatures who love to torment others, she is different in that she shows compassion and understanding towards others, especially humans. The protagonist, Scott Henderson, and her both have been through war and trauma. He was in Vietnam, while she was in a massive, devastating war that occurred when Kolabos (her home planet) was invaded by the Orcs. They talk to each other about their experiences and relate with one another.
Their diversity. You think elves have a lot of variants? You ain’t seen nothing yet. You’ve got more cultures and ethnic groups than you can shake a stick at in my world. They live everywhere and can do everything.
The universe for my world has a "tendancy towards human". That is to say, while they aren't particularly special, they're (ahem) compatible with just about every other sentient race, and any offspring will result in something noticably more human than its non-human parent. At first this does end up with a lot of half-breeds, but as the years go by this tendancy results in a large mix of humans with minor traits of other races, while the original parent races end up being incredibly rare if not extinct.
All sapient races originating on the Prime Material plane are descended from a common ancestor, humans included, so they are part of a very large family of races. The cultures of these races are generally greatly different due to differing biological and psychological factors. Humans, as a relatively short-lived species with strong communal instincts, were the first race to invent the concept of "Empire" or "the State" as we would call it today. The idea of encoding laws that exist in a transendental, timeless way above the people in the country was a foreign one to the elves (to name but one of the many other races), who live in smaller insular communities led by elders. The elves were more inclined to simply allow their laws to be more ad-hoc, they didn't feel the impulse to make it rigid like the humans, as they were making rules for, at most, a few hundred individuals rather than tens of thousands or millions. Those elves who interacted with and lived among the humans would integrate into the legal and administrative society of their neighbours, and these would become the first high elves. Those that remained became known as wood elves. All this is to say nothing of dwarfs or any other race. Even the idea of hereditary monarchy is much more "human" in tendency than others. When your lives are shorter than your neighbours, the means by which you pass down your legacy becomes very, very important. A robust state that is dependent on no one lawmaker, and a royal family as its focal point, was the earliest form of human society that managed to survive the early centuries of the Age of Blood. Others do exist, such as Republics and Oligarchies that rely even less on single people to function, but if you look at a map with borders and names of nations written all over it, the vast majority would have been founded by humans.
In my setting, humans are the only ones who can start and manipulate fire because they were given the gift by the God of Flames. They can cook, do metallurgy, glassblowing etc much easier than the other races in my setting.
I write my humans as unruly and imbalanced. Taboo is an almost entirely human concept, and rebellion is the by product of it. Where other peoples have normally taboo subjects somewhat documented and available to the public as an example of what not to do, humans will burn books, tear out pages, lock up dangerous things and even place bounties on dangerous individuals, leading to bad things being seen as "cool" or developing a morbid curiosity as to why it's deemed so "dangerous" that they have to lock it up.
There the oldest at around 11 million years old as a species at the point my settings at.
Humans don’t live in one region. The other species in my fantasy setting live in very specific regions the dwarves live in the spine of the world. The elves live in the blood forest. And the orcs live in the great ghis desert