Dolor
Dolor is a high fantasy world filled with magic and intrigue. The surface of the world is over run with a diverse range of races, that claim the planets even more varied terrain. But deep down there are hidden locations and specialized races that hide secrets below the planets surface.
Species
Dolor is covered with a wide variety of species that inhabit the surface, oceans, and even within the world itself. Each species has claimed their piece of Dolor with a variety of tactics. Some took their land by being present before other races, others by conquest, some forged alliances to hold their land, some because they were the only ones able to survive in the strange or toxic environments.
Aberious
The Aberious live beneath the great lake that divides the enormous continent of Dolor in half. The lake itself is only ten meters deep, below the water is an enormous forest that keeps the water floating above it with an immense amount of magically energy that resides within it.
The Aberious live in the lush forest named the Strange forest by those who first explored it. Within the forest their are deer that stand as tall as trees, and bears that could fit in your hand. The land itself has come to life as the flora has started to gain consciousness and defends the strange forest with their lives, these are the main creatures that make up the Aberious, their ranks are bolstered by the other strange animals that have been altered by immense magical energy.
Appearance
The Aberious are a collection of plants that have started to move, their appearances vary greatly between plant that has been magically imbued. They vary from humanoids, to animal looking creations, to abominations that look like tangled messes that are filled with chaotic magic.
Cappies
The Cappies are a simple culture that love to spend their time in nature, and interacting with the animals of the land. The Cappies have a unique ability to change their biology to adapt to environments that they live in, with changes such as webbed hands and feet, claws, nasal changes, gills, and a variety of fur and fat distributions that help with temperature control.
They have an affinity to crafting helpful potions, and the creations of recreational drugs that they sell to the others species of Dolor.
Appearance
The Cappies are a short, rotund humanoid race with short fur and a variety of genetic differences between one another, depending on the environment they grow up in.
One common action they all follow, despite the environment they grow up in, is that Cappies love to make masks. It is a way of socializing, and competing with one another on a social level.
Those who live in forests have speckled brown fur, a medium length nose, their paws have short claws, and they build their masks out of tree bark.
Those who live in deep thrush develop a more boar shaped head, they have have thick paws, and backwards turned ears to listen to those sneaking behind them. Their fur is a mottled brown with flecks of muted greens, making their backs similar to the ground cover they live among. They often build their masks out of a wiry weed.
Those who live in deserts have a stunted face, much shorter than others but with the nostrils higher on the nose it gives the air a long channel to travel to cool the air down. They have much longer claws which can be used to deal with the prickly flora in their environment. They have heavy eyelids which help keep the sand out of their eyes. They often build their masks out of the bones of the dead they find. Their fur is extremely pale, thick, but very short.
Those who live in swamps have the widest variety of alterations due to their harsh surrounding. They have dark fur that gets lighter as it gets closer to their feet. Their paws have webbing between the toes to help them maneuver between the wet lands. To deal with the vast variety of hostile creatures, they have developed a secondary set of eyes on the side of their head, and a fifth eye on the back of their skulls. They often build their masks out of fungus and petrified wood.
Co’Errans
The Co’Errans live within the extensive cave system beneath the surface of Dolor. They are a collective of a strong species that once lived on the surface of the world, well before any other current species, but descended for unknown reasons and never left. Their society also has the strange creatures that emerge from the magic rich chambers below their kingdom.
Appearance
The Co’Errans were once flesh and bone, but since living underground for so long they have become the stone that surrounds them, they grow crystals from their bodies, and plant life settles into the cracks of their bodies.
They bolster their culture with strange fungal creatures that emerge from lower in the planet.
Denirog
The Denirog are an amphibian based culture with a variety of genetic diversity to ensure their survival. The Denirog live in the humid jungles of Dolor, valuing patience and self improvement above all else.
They are highly sneaky, and employ the use of glyph magic that they can lay as traps to ensure others don’t feel comfortable coming into their territory.
Appearance
The Denirog has a wide variety of appearances within its ranks.
The primary look of the Denirog is a humanoid frog, they are thin, tall, with a variety of colors, and patterns. Different patterns and colors have different biological traits attached to them.
The other half of their kind are large, and bulbous toad like humanoids. They have much thicker, and mucus covered skin. They have less colorful appearances, favoring earthly colors, deep greens, and browns.
Diverials
The Diverials are the workers for the gods, neither good nor evil, they are beings with immense power, and the desire for more. Their only goal is to become a deity.
They are strong magic users, and have the desire to claim mortal souls for their purposes of empowering themselves.
Appearance
The Diverials have no true form that is known, they can appear as anything. But often take on the shape of bizzare, and impossible constructs of flesh. They vary in size and power, depending how old they are, and how many souls they have consumed.
Dwarves
Dwarves live in wide open planes that surround mountains. Some of the plains once used to be strong forests, but have been hacked down to allow them to build their cities, and to give them resources to dig deep into the planet to mine precious materials.
Appearance
Dwarves are short and barrel chested individuals. Dwarves have olive toned skin that will darken due to the sun for those who stay above ground, and pale for those who spend more time in the mines. Brown and white is the most common hair color among them, although most other hair colors are possible.
Elves
The Elves are one of the oldest species on Dolor, their rein would have ran eternal due to their agelessness, but sadly the older the elves got, the more magic hungry they became, and the more they lost their minds.
Great civil wars tore their society apart, killing all their eldest to ensure the survival culture. They now seclude themselves on an island off the main continent, sending their eldest over when they show signs of degrading, using them as a disruptor to the societies that live on the shores.
Appearance
Elves trend the same height pattern as humans, although typically have a more slender frame. Elves do not have a variety of biological adaptations, they are very uniform with what is possible. They are pale skinned, with hair that varies from orange to red. They have skin flecking that appears, and disappears depending how much sun they receive.
Entominids
The Entominids are a collective of humanoid insectoids that have banded together under their ruler, the all queen. A gargantuan being that can birth a child of any type from her grotesque form.
The Entominids isolate themselves to to an enormous fungal forest on Dolor, making no attempt to expand their domain on the surface they often have brawls with the Co’Errans that reside within Dolor.
The level of sentience that individual Entominids have is based on what the queen thinks is needed, if any of her sentient children are returned to her she is able to pass on their memories to the inheritor of their role.
Appearance
The Entominids are a collection of insectoid creatures that have joined together under one banner, so they have a variety of looks among themselves.
The more sentient of their kind take a humanoid form, shiny carapaces, antennae, wings, claws, and a variety of other parts from insects.
They have others that take more beastial forms as mounts, and large worker insects that can haul goods, or destroy walls.
They have giants, which are insects that have been scaled up with little to no change for simple tasks.
Their ancients from their kind that has lived the longest, becoming in tuned with magic. These creatures are gargantuan, and appear as if many insects had been smashed together. These creatures are nearly immobile due to their size.
Gnomes
Gnomes are meek creatures on Dolor that offer themselves as a aids to any who ask for it. Selling their skills as laborers to help other nations build their societies. They use their time in orther cultures lands to steal information, and to learn their weaknesses as a form of safety for their own culture, playing up their weakness to appear none threatening.
They use transformation magic which is a lost art to other cultures. They tattoo themselves with increasingly complex designs, attempting to unlock the ability to transform into greater and greater creatures. From simple rabbits, bears, and deer, to elementals, and great monsters.
Appearance
Gnomes are dark skinned meek individuals. Their limbs are longer proportionally to their body than most humanoids, making them seem even weaker than what they are.
Goblins
Goblins are a cunning and make sly deals, they are believed to be decedents of slick tonged Diverials.
The Goblins are well known for being able to make deals with the monsters of the world, gaining them into their ranks, and using them for knowledge, power, and to help defend their lands.
Appearance
Goblins a small, wiry, green skinned humanoids that are balled, and have pointy ears. The active ones in their culture are very slender, while their leaders who sit around tend to be more pop bellied.
If over fed, and forced to workout a goblin can take on a much larger form known as an ogre. These are typically seven foot creatures, with large stomachs, and huge muscles.
Humans
Humans are the current rulers of Dolor, they took their time, and waited for the old order to fall apart before enacting their plans.
With their mechanical genius they were able to overthrow the stronger species of Dolor and take their place as the leaders of the planet.
Despite their great numbers, and their advance machines, more and more species are craving power, and the world is getting stranger.
Appearance
Humans are as varied on Earth as they are on Dolor. With a wide range of physical and mental capabilities. Some attributes being exaggerated by the tribes they belong to. Their skin color can range from the purest of whites, to the darkest of blacks, and everything in-between.
My’Cre
The My’cre are a nation of rat humanoids that rose from the bones of the scientist that created them, using his own life force to bring them to life.
They now worship his bones, and the bones of the original seven that started their small, but mighty empire. Once seen as monsters, they are now welcome around the world as an official species, able to barter and trade like any other.
Though their founders have died, and so has the scientist that created them, their bodies still hold immense magic.
The scientists body does not rot, and the skeletons of the original seven do not falter.
Their magic stems from death and life, using their own people as power to fuel their strong magic.
Appearance
The My’Cre are enormous rat humanoids, ranging from three feet tall, to seven feet. Their fur is short, and often well maintained. Their hair is light brown, white, or black. Although some mutations have seen the hair come out golden.
The larger the My’Cre gets, the slower their cognitive functions become. Making them act as mounts for those of their other race.
Nat’Ceans
The Nat’Ceans are a unified people that inhabit the vast ocean of Dolor. There are a collection of not only sentient creatures, but also the wise, and ageless primordial creatures that have existed since the planets existence.
Appearance
The Nat’Ceans are a collective of humanoid aquatic life, and enlarged sentient aquatic life. They have formed the greatest alliance across Dolor, covering all water domains, fighting against no other sentient race for domain. Some are humanoid, appearing like sirens, others are more human in shape, with fish limbs. Then there are those that are enlarged forms of their original selves, just with a greater sentience.
Orks
Orks are a strong tribal group who consult their ancestors for wisdom of the future. Using the foresight of their wisest shamans they can alter fate, predict it, sometimes even reverse past events.
Since their last attempt at taking control of the continent they have had no desire for power similar again. They agreed as a people that they did not want the burden of leadership, and to simply be left to acknowledge those gone, and those yet to come.
Appearance
The Orks a huge humanoids, typically very muscular, with either black or green skin. Their ears are pointed and they have very small claws on each of their four fingers. They are often decorated with bones, and simple tribal clothes.
Tuatran
The Tuatran are a tribal race with the desire for war but not conquest. They have no drive to accept other nations into their fold, any and all who they cross die, weeding out the weaker species to make way for their god to return to Dolor once more.
Tuatrans cannot cast magic, other than spells to counter other magic. Their god cursed them never to use magic, unless it was being used to destroy it.
Tuatran are formidable warriors, if it wasn’t for their slow breeding, they would have conquered Dolor years ago.
Appearance
The Tuatran are huge reptilian humanoids, with a variety of scale colors. Green, bronze, silver, black, white, red, orange, and blue. They stand at over seven feet tall on average, and have a wide stature.
They also have a more amphibian friendly sub species that has large shells on their backs, and look similar to turtles.
Ungulates
The Ungulates are a collective of hooved humanoids that have grouped together to form a strong alliance. They are fast, and have strong herd tactics that they can use to maintain their territories.
They wish to dismantle the cities of other races and return Dolor to nature, to the way it was meant to look like before structures were built upon it.
Appearance
The Ungulate title is a collective name for the hooved animal people that roam the open plains on Dolor. They have a variety of humanoid shapes based from cloven animals. Bulls, goats, horses, deer, and many others all form the ranks of the Ungulates.
Void
The void are the oldest of races on Dolor, an impossible force of pure magical energy. They live in the center of the world, born from the raging chaos that keeps the planet held together. When they appear to other species, there is nothing but death and destruction. Nothing has ever killed one, and most have lost the will to even try, simply praying and accepting death when one is spotted.
Among them are weaker, simpler creations of magical energy. Still capable of destruction, but incapable of thought. These other creatures fall silent when the Void disappear, used by others species to drain their magic and slowly reduce them to nothing.
Appearance
The Void are thin framed giants, towering at ten feet tall. Their skin varies from black to a dark grey always with a marbling of white. Their eyes look like galaxies nesting in their skull. Their limbs are exaggerated in length compared to their torso. Their heads are slender, long, and with a double connected jaw to allow their mouth to open almost 180 degrees.
Magic
Magic is gained through rigorous study of language. When one understands what a word means, and how it applies to the culture that made it, you can use it to cast spells.
Because of this, multiple languages can have the same spell, but have the effects of the spell be different, depending on the cultures involved.
Two cultures may be able to cast a simple fire-bolt, but the outcome of the spell may vary. Color, intensity, size, speed, mana spent, lingering damage, are just some variables that can change from species to species. It is important to know and understand the enemies you are fighting, otherwise you may get hit with a spell you thought you knew, but in reality it does things you d not expect.