Trionesse Area Races

Trionesse is mostly elvish and human with other races much lower in population or visitors to the area. This section discusses the PC available races and highlights any differences from the PHB description appropriate to Mithlond.

There is no Fey Wild or other magic domains in Mithlond. Therefore, any PHB references to such connections for a race do not apply for this campaign. There are fey creatures: magical woodland creatures who intermingle with elves to form Eladrin.

Literacy

Most people in this time are not literate. In general, only elves, human nobles, or those with a class that grants the ritual feat are literate.

Humans

Humans are the dominant race in the area. Human settlements tend to be islands of cultivated land in a sea of wilderness so despite the fact they cover most of the Trionesse area except for the elvish forest, they control only a fraction of that space. Nonetheless, they are much more numerous than the elves.

The Algorand Empire co-opted non-humans but was essentially a human empire. Under its dominion, humans thrived in the tens of millions along the Tolan Shore as well as the major islands and the southern coast on the other side of the spine mountains. During the Empire, humans formed approximate 95% of the sentient species population. Since the Cataclysm, human populations have crashed much more severely than the other races leaving them perhaps 50% of world-wide sentient populations, and 75% in the Trionesse area.

Feared and resented during the Algorand Empire and now despised due to their supposed responsibility for the Cataclysm, humans are now often at odds with non-humans and sometimes the center of anti-human coalitions.

Elves

Elves are the second most numerous race in the Trionesse area although their numbers are much less than the humans. However, due to superior organization and longer lifespan, they are able to maintain fairly cohesive control over their forest domains. There is rarely outright war between humans and elves but the relationship is tense, skirmishes are frequent and occasional larger incidents occur. The elvish rulers try to play the humans off against each other rather than confront them head on where their greater numbers would tell.

Elvish forests are actively patrolled by both elves and their allied creatures. They will turn back tresspassers found in the outer limits and may attack to kill or capture those found deeper in the woods. The elves also send scouting parties beyond their forests to keep an eye on their neighbors. Furthermore, they are fond of using spies and will use bards, merchants and mercenaries as spies. This is well known and most elves beyond the forest are assumed to be spies but their services are useful enough that this is often tolerated.

The Elves of Trionesse call themselves the Trianon, taking their name and identity from their immediate forest of Trionesse. Elves do have a sense of being part of a larger people, calling all elves the Anan Tirya, the "Ever People." Knowledgeable humans call them the Ever People or Ever Folk. More commonly they are called Woodfolk, Woodelves, Tree People, Sharps (for "Sharp Ears"), Evers (short for Ever Folk) and Nevers for the obvious play on Ever Folk. The local elves speak the Trionesse elvish dialect as well as High Elvish. More on language here.

Eladrin

Unlike the PHB description, Eladrin in Mithlond are elves touched by fey blood. In general, the fey cannot or do not interbreed with sentient races other than elves. All elves have some trace of fey blood and therefore make little distinction between what outsiders may label elvish or eladrin. In game terms, those elves with a greater percentage of fey blood are eladrin and have somewhat different features, including in some cases, wings.

Elves with very strong fey features (such as the Dream Warrior in the draft) are classed for rule purposes as half-elves but are still considered by the elves to be elvish. However, these extreme manifestations are unusual and such offspring are frequently discriminated against. So, while they may remain within the elvish forest, they are more often found in its wilder reaches away from the elvish settlements.

Half Elves

During the Empire, human and elvish marriage was much more common and half-elves were as much as 5% of the Imperial population. At present, though, this is much less common with half-elves either occuring as offpsring of those who have left elvish lands willingly or otherwise, or by rape. Given the tensions between the two, half-elves are generally despised by both races and their lot is a difficult one.

The exception in the Trionesse region is Iarlakolm which has long had ties with Trionesse and whose ruling family proudly claims elvish blood. Human-elvish intermarriage in Iarlakolm is uncommon but occurs and roughly 5% of the Iarlakolm population has at least quarter elvish blood and most have noticable traces.

Goliath

Goliath hail from the high mountains of Mithlond, the ones that form the rim and spine of the world where the highest peaks can tower 200 miles above the lowlands. In these realms, there are many races of giants far larger than the Goliath. The Goliath are consider a lesser race by the great giants but of the giants are the ones who tend to live in the lower parts of the High Mountains and are therefore much more likely to be seen by non-giants.

Goliath rarely dwell for long out of their mountains, and like Tolkien's Elves pine for the sea, often long for their mountain homes. Sometimes strife within the Goliath clans may send a group to the lowlands for some time, even decades, but the goal remains a return to the High Peaks. Nonetheless, individual Goliath do travel the low lands and may on occassion remain for indefinite periods of time.

Many in the lowlands have never seen a Goliath before but they are known from tales as stout warriors and are generally respected, if nothing else for their physical presence.

Shifters

During the Empire, Shifters lived at the margins of society, often feared and despised and with no legal protections. Elves often gave them shelter in their forests in return for serving as guardians. In present times, though still rare, Shifters are still often looked down on and still tend to live more in the wilds and elvish domains but their martial prowess has earned them a home as warriors among the human nobles.

Some shifters live in a nomadic group called the Tribe that travels far beyond the Trionesse region but often spends time in this locale.

There is a small village of shifters near Mithuile in the elvish forest. Individuals and a family or two can be found throughout the region. It is rare for a shifter to interbreed with a non-shifter.

Tiefling

Tiefling are very rare in the Trionesse region or anywhere on the Tolan Shore, for that matter. They represent traces of taint of the Deceiver who felled the Dwaro Empire. In the campaign area, this taint is a trace that nearly everyone has a bit of but occasionally for reasons not understood, one offspring may manifest the tiefling features, even having claws and wings. Many parents will expose or abandon such a newborn and most thus perish but some few are raised by either their natural parents or by someone else seeking a slave or simply a kind soul who recognizes the unique strengths of such children. Others do not manifest visible tiefling features until later in life or at all while still developing some of the tiefling powers. Tieflings can occur among any race.

Tiefling births are rare and it is nearly always the case that all other siblings of the tiefling are "normal." Tiefling offspring are somewhat more likely to be tiefling but the vast majority also do not have tiefling traits.

Fear and discrimination of tielflings is not quite as high in current times as it was in Imperial times, probably because knowledge of the Deciever and his taint has faded in these unlearned times but they still have a rough time in the Trionesse Area.

Most Dwerro consider tieflings the same as any creature tainted by the great deceiver and will have nothing to do with them, even killing them if possible.

Deva

A Deva is very rare in Mithlond, perhaps one in a hundred thousand or fewer are Deva. They are beings who have somehow over the ages learned to retain their sense of self between lives. Until the Age of Walking Dead, most souls simply remained in the underworld, never living again. Since that Age, souls eventually join a living essence from which new souls form but specific souls do not in general experience rebirth. There are occasional exceptions where a soul survives intact for rebirth but this is generally a single occurence: the soul returns to the world once and may have some memories of the former life but at its next death joins the living essence and is no longer distinct.

Some rare souls develop the ability to retain their cohesiveness across multiple lives. A few have done so since the Age of Walking Dead but most Deva actually developed this ability in the uncounted millenia before year one and have lived for hundreds or thousands of life spans; these are the Deva of Mithlond.

Note that their span of lives stretches far, far back in time. They understand that the 5800 years since the fall of the Titan (at year 1) is a small fraction of the total span of Mithlond's existence. This sense of history and their ties to their previous lives give them a detached, other worldy air that most find disturbing.

A Deva may have unique skin-color and or glowing eyes such as in the PHB description but much more often, they appear as a normal human or elf, aside from their perculiar demeanour. Those that do have the PHB-type destinctive features have trouble blending in. They are more likely to be honored and respected than most of the other uncommon races but also feared and kept apart from others.

In Mithlond, Deva are not necessarily good, pure beings and may therefore be any alignment. Unlike the PHB2 description, they were not once servants of divine beings.

Dragonborn

Long ago, before the fall of the Titan, dragons bred with humanoids and fathered the dragonborn. Considered strange and more dragon than humanoid by most races, they rarely get a warm welcome and tend to live among their own kind, usually on the fringes of the High Mountains. Of all the other races, they are most likely to get along with the Goliath. In their homelands, the two are more likely to be enemies than allies but in the lowlands, they find their shared experiences an irrisitable draw and tend to associate.

In the Trionesse area, there are a handful of Dragonborn living among the humans and elves. There is also a sizable settlement of Dragonborn at Tanabra. Tanabra allows few non-Dragonborn to remain for long but serves as a place where dragonborn can find temporary shelter and goods suitable for them.

Dwaro

In Ages past, the Dwaro dwelt in their millions in deep caverns of the world. These caverns required magic to maintain and to provide light, power and food. With the sundering at the Cataclysm, nearly all Dwaro underground died- some as their halls collapsed but most by starvation. It was a grim time that few of the remaining Dwaro forgive humans for.

There are almost no Dwaro in Trionesse aside from a few who have lost all connection to their skilled, underground dwelling ancestors. These few live as second class citizens in some human settlements.

Halfling

None in the Trionesse region.

Gnome

None in the Trionesse region.

Half-orc

None in Mithlond. Orcs cannot interbred with non-orcs and no one has created a crossbred through other methods.
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