11. Peoples and races

Partial Variants and Races – Specification; Lore §2, §12.

11.1 The default races (data/races/default.json)

Six races, each one definition read by three modules: species (culture), prefers (where it begins), body (RPG and magic), language (body plan or a fixed preset).

Sentient monsters (data/races/monsters.json, proposals): Goblins, Fishmen, Giants, and now Dragons (no data yet). Decided 19 October: these are mobs, not peoples (section 11.2).

The arrival of the races, built for the Created mode (src/arrival.ts, data/races/waves.json; Decisions Log §22, §27): the races do not come together but in four waves, a fixed 1 000 years apart: Elves (year 0); Dwarves, with the mobs Giants, Dragons and Fishmen (1 000); Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, with the mob Goblins (2 000); Humans (3 000). Each people is founded in its year, and the history records the year of each (CultureWorld.arrivals). A people that stands in no bloc lands on free ground of its home where there is any; the Humans, of the free peoples, land in at least three bands on each continent and may also land on held ground: shared with their allies (Elves and Dwarves), which they do not conquer, or contested with the Orcs' side, landing in force (twice as many founders; Decisions Log §40, built 21 October). The present (iron, writing and the castle) is not judged until the last people has come, and the history also ends if every Human culture is gone once they have come (section 12, the present rule). The gap is the option arrival.gapYears. A variant’s own races all come with the first wave.

Several races in one world, built: each species founds peoples where it is at home, and peoples of different species compete for land but do not assimilate or blend. A state ruling another species leaves it a substrate. Daughter cultures keep their mother’s species.

Subraces, built: cultures of one species grouped by their land (highland, northern, tropical, desert, coastal, forest, steppe, riverine, lowland), with bodies shifted by Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules.

The blocs of the default, built (Decisions Log §39, §40; data/races/blocs.json, src/culture/blocs.ts, the states' step of src/culture/simulate.ts). Each race’s data names its bloc: the free peoples (Humans, Dwarves, Elves) and the other side (Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, with the Goblin clans; goblins are mobs, so the clans are named in mobs.json and do not yet act in the culture history). States of one bloc that border one another ally; an alliance has a strength that rises while both have the other bloc beside them, fades with the distance between their seats and without a common enemy, and is broken when it falls below a floor, when one takes land from the other (a falling out) or when a state falls. A state is less likely to attack an ally and likelier to attack the other bloc; allies within reach add to the defence of a region the other bloc attacks. Quarrelsomeness (a chance that the alliance does not hold a state back) is in each race’s data: low for the free peoples (Humans 0.06, Dwarves 0.10, Elves 0.05), higher on the other side (Trolls and Ogres 0.18), highest among the Orcs (0.30). The world records every alliance formed and broken (CultureWorld.alliances, with the alliance and rift events) and each state’s allies in the present (State.allies, in the present age report). Every number is a proposal (the file is marked, and a test checks it). A race with no bloc (a variant’s, a test species) is in none of this: the history is as before.

Diets, built (Decisions Log §41; data/races/diet.json, src/culture/diet.ts, the eating phase of src/culture/simulate.ts). Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, Giants, Goblins and Fishmen do not farm (mayFarm false in their data); only Orcs and Trolls may herd (a reading of perhaps: the Ogres, Giants, Goblins and Fishmen do not). Each has a diet: Trolls, Ogres and Giants prefer Humans, Dwarves and Elves and eat them whenever they are within reach (in the region, and less beside it); Goblins and Fishmen eat anything they come across; Orcs eat the others only in famine. A hungry people (more of it than its land feeds, or a land that feeds none) eats the other five and, less, its own kind; a fed one eats only what it prefers. The free peoples eat no one and are not eaten in famine, only by preference or habit. What is eaten is lost to the prey; the meal makes good part of the eater’s shortage. The record is CultureWorld.predation (who ate whom, how many, the share in famine) with predation events, and the text report lists it. Every number is a proposal. The soldiers and walls of the states that hold the ground stop part of what is eaten (below). Not built: the clans of the mobs (placed after the history) eat nothing.

Still to build Per-race hand-offs, aquatic and subterranean peoples

• The hand-off’s domesticates, dangers and disease burden are judged against the first race only (human by default; Two Defaults §1). A troll ought to keep different beasts.
• Fishmen are modelled as a land people of the shores, because there is no aquatic way of life.
• Dwarves prefer underground but have no subterranean way of life.

11.2 Monsters, beasts and beings

Mobs (decided 19 October):

Built, with proposals (src/mobs.ts, src/rpg/mobs.ts, data/races/mobs.json; Decisions Log §29, §33, §37). Every number is a proposal, marked as such in the data; a test fails on a number that is not.

• Clans for goblins and fishmen: social groupings of 8–40, outside the culture history’s peoples and states, with a territory of the regions about the lair.
• Elite placement for giants and dragons: individuals or small groups with a lair and a territory, placed by ground (giants in mountains and remote highlands, at least three regions from the peoples; dragons far from any civilisation, at least four, in mountains, volcanoes and the cold uplands, and the more the nearer the poles), a few to each hundred regions (dragons: four to a thousand). Dragons are placed whatever the magic (§37). The naturalistic route inserts no races and places no mobs.
• Lairs: noted in an area (a region) until its zone is looked into (mobsIn); then a functional subzone of kind lair in a zone of the ground the mob keeps to, taking its room from the void (lairsIn, subzonesWithLairs). The same seed and region give the same lairs.
• A mob rank in the RPG conversion (mobBlock): ordinary ×1; elite hit points ×2.5, attributes ×1.25, armour +5 and one more ability, all on the same attribute scale as the races. Goblins and Fishmen ordinary, Giants and Dragons elite (§29); wild elementals ordinary or elite by their potency (§33).
• Wild elementals: one holds a volcano, the upper air, the ocean deeps or the deep underground, with a chance that rises as the world’s aether falls; immune to physical attack unless it neutralises them (strikeOutcome). Only where there is magic (low or more).
• Dragons have a body in mobs.json (flight, teeth and claws, fire_breather, among the most balanced of living things).

Still to build Mob ranks in numbers, further ranks, fantasy traits for dragons

How much the elite rank scales is Appendix B #5: the factors above are proposals. A clan’s chief or a zone boss as further ranks are not built. The stat blocks take their hit points from the individual’s mass on the one scale, 10 × mass^⅓, times the rank (section 16). Dragons need the fantasy traits (fire_breath in fantasy.example.json is the start) in the biology module. The individuals of a mob follow the zone condition (§20; individualsOfZone, built 20 October): the mass is drawn about the kind’s mean (a deviation of 15 %), shifted a little by the land, and each member’s elemental balance is drawn (section 12).

Other beings:

• Beasts: the bestiary of the biology module (evolved worlds) or the created species (the Creation), converted to creature statistics.
• Constructs and spirits (beings.ts), built: golems, automata, guardians and illusions in great ruins and colleges of magic; bound elementals (mindless, a focal object, made by a college’s sorcerers) and the rare phylactery; ghosts at great calamities and battles; spirits of place and ancestors' shades at sacred places. Without magic they are tales only. Decided and built (Decisions Log §33): elementals are matter possessed by will, of a lower consciousness; they rule young worlds and the aftermath of cataclysms (their own civilisations and wars: elemental ages, which last as long as the world’s natural recovery), then dwindle to hold-outs in volcanoes, the upper air, the ocean deeps and the deep underground. Wild elementals are mobs (above), ordinary or elite by their strength: immune to physical attacks unless these neutralise them (water on fire), and contained by spells or by other elementals. They are no longer placed at hot spots by beings.ts.