Races

Common Races of the Lost Frontier
This page is a work in progress; more info will be added, and some details may change.

Most of the folk you're likely to meet in the Frontier are human, or at least mostly so. That should hardly be surprising - after all, it's only since the Breach that any other option existed, or so the history books would have us believe.

When the Outsiders were unleashed, they spent most of their time torturing and killing. A few of the more powerful Outsiders took it upon themselves to collect slaves - the Demon Princes (or Princesses, perhaps) Lolth, Malacath, and Ladugar are the names spoken of most often in this regard. Each Prince left his own mark on the folk he or she dominated, and that mark has been passed down to their children. These are known as the touched races, them that were changed by the outsiders but not actually possessed or corrupted by them. The elves, orcs, and gray men belong to this group.

Over the years, people being people, some of the touched get together with some of the pure bloods, and after the smoke cleared we started seeing folk that looked a little bit like both. These are known as half elves and half orcs, belonging to two worlds but often unable to find a home in either.

The dwarves are also considered a half race by many, but they are a unique case - when the gray men locked themselves in their mountain homes to avoid contact with other races, some of their number decided it was time to go their own way. Several generations later, their palor improved to a tone that could almost be considered healthy, so between that and their generally short stature folk stopped calling them gray men and started calling them dwarves. They share many attributes with the gray men, but thankfully not their generally bad disposition.

Some few Outsiders apparently felt outright slaughter too pedestrian, instead finding it more amusing to, eh … Spread their seed, as it were. This was rarely consensual, as you might imagine, though some tales persist of demons who seduced their victims rather than overpowering them. Descendants of these unions are quite rare, but not unheard of. They are known as the nephilim, and while they are generally regarded at evil, they are just as free as any other to choose whom they will serve. Or nearly as free, anyway.

The Timmen are another case altogether - no one to blame for their existence but humanity. Men made of metal, or mostly so, and brought to life by electricity. Some whisper that sorcery is involved as well, though this is likely because electricity might as well be sorcery to many.

Racial Relations
The history books say that before the Breach, just about everybody was human. It likely seems incredible to anyone reading this today, but that didn't mean there was peace and harmony. The metal men and the touched folk weren't around yet, so people did the best they could with what they had and hated each other for things like the color of their skin or the language which came most naturally to him.

Let it never be said that humanity is not capable of overcoming obstacles.

Nowadays, the color of a man's skin means about as much to most as the size of his pecker - of mild interest to some, but without any real bearing on matters of importance. What matters, those who hold with such things will say, is the purity of your blood.

The only race that seems to not bear a general hatred for each of the others is the Timmen, though even that only tends to be true of the ones who immigrated west. While individual Timmen certainly are capable of prejudice, as a rule they are more interested in studying mortals than in hating them. Sadly, this is not often reciprocated.

At least they are not alone in being generally disliked. Hatred for the eternal other is as alive and well as it ever was. Orcs distrust the elves, and resent humans. Elves find the orcs brutish, and hold humans in a strange mix of jealousy and contempt. The gray men, bless their hearts, afford everyone who isn't one of them an equal serving of violent hatred; they at least have the decency to keep their phobia contained to their terrority, however. The same cannot be said of the pure blood humans, who by and large seem to have learned exactly nothing from history and have once again begun expansion into the frontier with hate flowing and guns blazing.

One general rule is worth noting here: folk that live out in the frontier tend to be free of real prejudice. There just ain't time to hate a fellow for the tusks or the ears he has when you need him to cover your back against a swarm of mantipedes.

Gender Roles
There is one thing all races have in common, however: There are those who are men, and there are those who opt for something a little more adventurous. Even the Timmen, who have no physical sex, adopt gender into their identities.

The history books say that lady folk used to be seen as the "gentler sex." Exactly how far this idea was taken seems to be dependent on which part of the country you were from. Regardless, it is not an idea that survived the Breach. Women are called upon to do their fair share of exerting dominion over this land the same as men.

There are important differences, of course. Those of the female persuasion do tend to be slighter of build and fairer of face than their bearded counterparts. And it is indeed somewhat less common to find them out riding the trails than men; after all, the vital role of bringing children into this slowly healing world falls on their shoulders. When a woman does answer the call of the lost frontier, however, her odds of ending up a desiccated corpse beside the road are just as high but no higher than anyone else's.