Magipunk:Species
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It has been a tradition in fantasy RPG's, probably dating back to D&D, to refer to elves, dwarves, etc. as "races." In Magipunk, with its increasingly modern perspective, that tradition has been overturned. The people of Magipunk understand, on a fairly scientific level, the differences between two humans of different skin colors, and a human and an elf.
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Humans[edit]
The most common, dominant, and most populous of the intelligent species in the Magipunk setting are humans. Humans are a tough, intelligent species, but their greatest strength has always been their willingness to exploit every resource for their greatest benefit. Humans are the masters of the world in the Magipunk settings, and the other species exist mainly by their leave.
Elves[edit]
Elves are slighter than humans, and average a couple of inches shorter. They have no body hair, thick, lustrous head-hair, and large liquid eyes. Their ears taper to a delicate point. Most humans find most elves moderately to extremely attractive.
Before the modern age, Elves were the most advanced species on the planet. They could not produce raw magic in the quantities necessary to sustain a modern lifestyle, but they had instead turned to a program of magically altering plants, animals, and themselves – these altered plants could be grown with a relatively small mana investment, and their fruits improved the lives of Elves in quantity. Elves are not naturally immortal, but when they regularly supplement their diets with particular tailored products, their aging process is totally stopped. Similarly, consumption of the proper products makes them resistant to disease, improves their senses, and, perhaps most impressively, gives them an almost supernatural empathic sense, making elves finely tuned to each other's emotional states.
One hundred years ago, then, the Elves were widely known to be powerful, advanced, long-lived, and reclusive – for the groves that produced the fruits necessary for their extended lives could only be grown deep in forests layered with enchantments and far from the pollutants of city life. This has all changed. Modern magical techniques have allowed the Elves to force-grow their pharmeceutical groves in the midst of a human city, and the economic incentives offered by the Alliances eager for Elvish prowess in creating Passion and other drugs have made the opportunity to live in cities irresistable to, at least, a certain element of Elvish culture. But these city Elves seem a little off.
Some say that it's just the empathic abilities of the Elves reacting to the chaos of modern urban life. Others claim that the drugs necessary for Elvish lives are altered by the magics necessary to make them grow in cities – outwardly, they appear healthy, but their fruits poison the minds of the Elves. Still others say that Elves were always like this, and it was just masked by their remoteness. But whatever the reason, city Elves celebrate inclusiveness with an enthusiasm that borders on the criminal.
You can tell when you're in the Elvish part of town because the buildings are alive. They aren't stately tree-houses, but a literal urban jungle, filled with thorn bushes, vines, and creepers, and neighors of elves will find their houses assimilated into that jungle if they aren't constantly vigilant about cutting back the plants that they live next to. Elves themselves are cheery, fashionable, and vaguely creepy. They tend to be friendly to the point of seeming cultish, and wildly hedonistic.
Elves and humans are apparently biologically closely related, for they can produce young (Half-Elves, as they're sometimes called, or, less kindly, Goblins). However, 90% of the time, such young are horribly deformed, often simple-minded, and destined for short lives. Goblins are also invariably sterile. Generally speaking, no human in their right mind would want to bear a Goblin – doing so begs heartache and a child who dies before either parent. But Elves – particularly male elves – seem to have no such reluctance. The propensity for Elves to sweep human women off their feet, impregnate them, and then move on is notorious, and, some would say, suspicious.
There are those who claim that the Elves are trying, with their undoubted prowess in biological magic, to create a viable hybrid species between Elves and Humans – perhaps a species able to use Passion in the human manner, while retaining the Elvish race-loyalty engendered by their empathic abilities. Some claim that human women who bear more viable Goblins tend to disappear, either openly moving into Elvish ghettos with curiously cheerful demeanors, or simply vanishing in the middle of the night. The truth of such allegations has never been proven.
Pseudo-game rules: Elves should get some kind of significant bonus to any trait which governs physical attractiveness. They are graceful (a bonus to dexterity or the like), and relatively hardy and strong for their builds (no bonus or penalty to their strength or stamina-style stats, but they tend to look more fragile than they are). They are extremely sensitive to other Elves (and some Goblins), able to communicate volumes with just a gesture or single word. They should receive a huge penalty to resisting mind control or persuasion from another Elf. If the game supports some kind of status or reputation mechanic, Elves generally are regarded as creepy aliens by humans (though some humans are sufficiently taken by their good looks to ignore this).
Goblins (Half-Elves)[edit]
Goblins are the offspring of Humans and Elves. They are usually misshapen and ill-favored, and generally hunched and small. Most Goblins are afflicted with a variety of health problems, and few live past adolesence. Most are also prone to dementia or other mental problems.
A small minority of Goblins are more capable, actually appearing something like a Human/Elf hybrid, and behaving much the same. There are persistant rumors of Goblins able to ingest Passion with much the same result as Humans, but there is as-of-yet no proof that such a being exists. Goblins are usually able to benefit to a certain extent from Elvish drugs, though sometimes they have strange reactions to them.
Pseudo-game rules: Goblins are extremely variable in nature. The vast majority take penalties to all stats, often severe ones. The more fortunate can use human-level stats, elf-like ones, or some meld between the two. In general, goblins should never get more of a bonus to any stat than the higher of a human's or elf's bonus to those stats, and can always justify any penalty to any stat. Most, but not quite all, goblins will have some measure of the elvish vulnerability to mind control or persuasion originating from another elf.
All known goblins are sterile, and get at most the same benefit from Passion that elves do, not humans. Any goblin that did not show these traits would be of significant interest to a lot of elves (even moreso if it shows the vulnerability to persuasion)
Dwarves[edit]
Dwarves average about 4'6" to 5' tall, and are very thick-bodied, usually weighing between 150 and 200 lbs. Their fingers are incongruously long and thin, and quite dextrous. All of the joints in their hands and fingers are "ball joints," capable of turning in any direction, and all of their fingers can mutually oppose. Dwarf hands look extremely creepy to many humans. Dwarves tend to have curly, thick hair, and their beards are generally heavy (though some Dwarves, of course, shave). Many Dwarves have patterns inscribed on their skin in thick, raised scar tissue. These patterns do not appear to have magical potency, and there is divided opinion as to whether they are aspects of the Dwarves' punishment, personal decoration, both, or neither.
For the last forty years, the normal Dwarves of the world have retreated deep into their mountains, locked away from the rest of the world. The only Dwarves who still exist in the human worlds are those Dwarves who have been exiled from Dwarfish communities – a punishment the Dwarves reserve for their worst criminals. Every Dwarf in a human city is a criminal on the order of a murderer, rapist, kidnapper, or the like.
Dwarves can generally find profitable employment in skilled trades: their smithing skills (of all sorts) and similar physical tradesmanship are legendary.
Pseudo-game rules: Dwarves should suffer a relatively severe penalty to their appearance stat. They are generally strong (bonus to strength), and have excellent manual dexterity but unremarkable agility, if the game system supports that kind of detail. Almost all Dwarves will have a number of craft skills at a high degree of proficiency. Dwarves suffer a poor reputation among humans for being criminals (which they are). Many, but not all, Dwarves are insane -- they either went insane and committed their crimes, or were driven insane by being too long from other company.
Orcs[edit]
Orcs are tall (generally a bit taller than humans), lean, bulkily-muscled humanoids. Their skin tends to be pale, and they usually have an underbite with a powerful lower jaw. Their canines approach the status of fangs, and they are undiscriminating omnivores. Orcs tend to have sparse, coarse black hair.
For countless centuries, Orcs had been a thorn in the side of the other species. Never organized enough to band together and conquer, the warlike Orcs none-the-less preyed on settlements of Humans, Dwarves, and Elves stealing what they could, burning the rest, and viciously killing any non-Orcs they found.
Naturally, when Humans discovered the plentiful mana they could obtain through the use of Passion, an angry and vengeful eye fell on the Orcs.
About 60 years ago, a series of campaigns which lasted a generation began. Human armies, backed up by sorcerors wielding huge quantities of mana, launched genocidal attacks on the badlands where Orcs tended to dwell. Entire settlements were destroyed in raging infernos of magefire, and human warriors enhanced to see perfectly in the dark, wearing armor that repelled Orcish weapons infallibly, stalked through scrub-forests and boulder-fields, killing what refugees they found. Today, despite the fact that anti-Orc campaigns are much less frequent than they were a few decades ago, Orcish population is less than 5% what it was before the discovery of Passion.
Those Orcs who have remained are changed. Living in magic-scarred landscapes, without the support of a tribal structure large enough to herd animals or tend fields, and never more than a few months from the next time a young noble with something to prove gathers up a few hundred troops and sorcerors to bring back a few more Orc heads, Orcs have become masters of stealth and survival.
Most Orcs are now subsistance hunter-gatherers, totally nocturnal, and highly secretive. They live in small tribes, generally not more than a dozen individuals, and have a deeply ingrained dichotomous worldview. Orcs tend to be generous, faithful, and respectful, if not exactly loving, towards who they consider to be their "tribe," but horribly amoral towards everyone else. An Orc will thoughtlessly kill an innocent on the street, and betray an oath sworn on every divinity he's believed in, but would not let down a tribemember in even the most mundane detail.
Most Orcs know a significant amount of illusion magic, and spend their lives living low to the ground and outside of notice. Despite generations of persecution, they've never developed a racial identity per se – a typical Orc will as happily rob and murder another Orc (from another tribe) as he will an invading human soldier.
Recently, certain powerful forces within Human society have realized that Orcs are, in many ways, ideal assassins. Though Orcs are generally duplicitous towards non-tribe-members, they are not stupid, and can understand mutually profitable relationships. Accordingly, a very small number of Orcish tribes (generally very small ones) live in the city, generally as permenant retainers of an Alliance that wants some terrifying "muscle." Such Orcs are very rarely seen, but often spoken of.
Pseudo-game rules: Orcs should get mild to fair bonuses to all the common RPG physical stats. They are generally poorly educated, and are usually seen by humans as mildly ugly. They have a horribly bad reputation among humans. It would be extremely uncommon for an Orc not to have excellent stealth skills. Most Orcs should have some kind of compulsion to behave strictly honorably and truthfully towards members of their tribe, whatever that may be.
