Day 3: People and Races
Aoat has a number of sentient species on it; it’s difficult to create a precise compendium of all who share the world because there are many who exist only in isolated pockets in remote locations, and others who do their best not to be found or at the very least recognized as a species of their own. That said, here’s a (non-exhaustive) listing of some of the kinds of people you might find around the rim of the Kymnutari Ocean:
Ksui are muscular feline folk averaging around twelve feet tall. They are obligate carnivores and come with most of the expected cat accoutrements: triangular ears that can rotate independently of each other for improved directional hearing, a proud twitching tail that provides balance and lends expressiveness to one’s demeanor. They have five fingers and one opposable thumb per hand. While by far most thickly found in the Firsthomes - their first home, and only secondarily home of any other species harbored there - they can be found in any place on Aoat with any significant population. Even Hambry, thought to be the human nation if any such thing existed, has a sizeable slice of ksui in its demographic makeup. Their coats come in a number of colours and patterns.
Humans are small (typically around six feet tall), weak creatures built to the ksui bipedal body plan, typically mostly hairless save for impressive shocks of hair on their scalps and, depending on culture and personal preference, beards in a variety of styles. Omnivores, though religion, culture or health may dictate a vegetarian or nearly entirely meat diet. You know what these beings are, probably.
Orcs are creatures from beneath the earth, eight to ten feet when full grown, herbivores who are acutely aware that most other species in the world have no physiological barriers to eating meat, and just as acutely aware that they are themselves composed chiefly of meat. Their skin colour ranges from navy blue, through indigo and violet, through to a sort of magenta, and, in certain cases, shades of green. They have large, floppy ears not unlike those of rabbits, and may be possessed of horns in a variety of styles (rounded nubs, straight spikes, curled ram horns or the ridged curves of the ibex). The deep orcs are subterranean masters of technology, and have carved out a mighty empire for themselves in the chthonic Underworld. The surfacer orcs are what the deep orcs have left behind as a safeguard against carnivore intrusion into the heart of their lands, and they face condescending paternalism from their deep kin while quaking in their boots with us as neighbors. They (often) reside in the discarded reeking swamps, bogs, fens and marshes that others do not deign to call their own, and make a humble living farming fine vegetables and selling deep goods such as naphthalene (essentially, magic gasoline) powered portable lamps and burnished bronze automata in the shape of bulls and other beasts of burden. Orcs have a reputation for being adept at chemistry, draughting medicines, liquors, liquid fertilizers. Due to their herbivore metabolism, they grow weary more quickly and more often than a human would, despite (almost always) being physically stronger, and thus have a number of small meals throughout the day - like a hobbit, say, in the media franchise that hangs over every fantasy writer’s head like the Sword of Damocles.
Mtok are persons who are also birds. Corvids, in fact, of a large size. They were given a power to generate and manipulate electricity long ago, when the world was being made. They can fly under their own power, aided by huge wings and hollow, brittle bones, and indeed have a number of flying cities - huge mobile arrangements of woven reeds and strings and all manner of things that individual mtok have found and surrendered to the good of the city. At any given time these cities have a significant portion of their population given over to the arduous task of keeping it aloft, with rested and fed mtok taking over for the ones who are too fatigued to carry on. A few times a year these cities make landing outside of other, larger cities built on the ground - sometimes landing in said cities if they have fashioned an appropriate cradle in which the city may rest. Then, a brisk trade starts up of goods and services - many mtok turn to the arts of wizardry, given the meditative nature of their flightpower-lending labor corvée, but they also have among them their share of smiths, of weavers, of lapidaries and scribes and lensgrinders and cooks and chandlers.
Kobolds are reptilian folk who are perhaps of a height with ksui, though often so hunched over or otherwise postured that estimating their height is difficult. They were deliberately made by the dragons, in an ancient war, from the dragons’ own essence, cast to be soldiers and fight against the forces of order in the world. Now, the dragons are nowhere to be seen, and the kobold feel no particular obligation to their memory. They can swim for hours underwater without drawing breath, and spit lances of strange energies in times of dire peril. While they lay eggs, like mtok and goblinfolk do, a kobold egg can be left unattended for decades and then returned to and, with the appropriate attention, still hatch a viable kobold. Kobold lineages are thus difficult to trace, and many times great kobold houses will exchange eggs as a show of goodwill and allegiance to each other. They are better suited to warm climates than cold ones, and wet climates than dry ones.
Goblins are really three species that share a common ancestor, though when people who have any awareness of goblins at all hear the word, it’s typically the red goblin they think of. These nomads journey along the deep roads under mountains, bridging the Underworld and the surface. They have a long, narrow beak for fishing and for snatching insects from tiny gaps; huge, reflective eyes; clawed hands and feet; and a loose covering of feathers and needle-like quills. They love spicy foods and at each stop along their great roads they plant gardens of chilies. They stand as tall as a human, roughly, about six feet. Next most common (or at least, most prominent in the eyes of non-goblins) are the black goblins or white goblins, depending on who you’re talking to and at what period in history (’white goblin’ was for a long time the preferred term, but has been being phased out over the last few hundred years). These muscular beings have blunted, almost square beaks and scaly armor over much of their head, shoulders and chest. They stand thirteen to fifteen feet tall. They hail from the snowy wastes of the far south of Drokkstang, on the borders of Hambry and Belkharoz, and mostly eat penguins, seals and the meat of the ironwood tree nut (they use the shards of the shell in their arrow- and spearheads and as flanges for their maces). The green goblins/water goblins/kappa are amphibious in nature (in that they thrive both in and out of water, not in that they bear a close resemblance to amphibians) and are most commonly found in the open waters of the Kymnutari Ocean. They bear a deep resentment for ships that are passing through waters they apparently consider to be theirs, and have been known to form parties to climb up the sides of vessels and attack the crew (or at the very least, steal supplies and cause a ruckus). While mute, they have a language (probably many languages) of hand gestures and other bodily motions - history tells of sailors who learned to communicate with them in kind and enjoyed passage unharried (or probably only less harried - kappa are no more a monolithic entity than any other sentient species of Aoat and favor with one does not necessarily mean favor with a whole or any other individual within that whole) but the language seems immensely complex and linguists often would rather study languages with less hostile speakers. They glow a gentle green and stand about five feet tall. Diggings in western Vuatlieo have uncovered skeletal remains of what appear to be a fourth goblin race, the blue goblins, so named for the sky-blue cups and beads that were buried alongside them. They had a curious hollow fluted bone emanating from their skull.
The trolls are towering (eighteen to twenty-four feet tall) herdsmen composed of living stone, migrating from mountaintop to mountaintop with their equally-stony herd animals, who have asbestos wooly coats and udders that drip petroleum. Trolls eat stone, sleep little, and are mostly solitary except for semi-annual gatherings of perhaps twenty at a time.
