Daily Archives: November 14, 2019

Half-Elves (But really Elves)

My earlier treatment of Orcs in Cobrin’Seil was intended, at first, to be a comprehensive examination of the half races. Elves and orcs and humans, the big three that show up in most of the editions of D&D’s player handbooks and most of the settings for them. As I did this though I realised that for all they may work just fine as different versions of the same thing for your setting, I don’t like them feeling so similar and especially not when I laid out my idea that Orcs are made of meat.

One of the questions this examination needs to answer is why are there half elves and half orcs? Perhaps a permutation would be why them and not half-other things? Some settings even answer that with things like the Mul, or half-centaurs or half-catfolk or so on. In that case, the halfness comes from a fundamental trait of humanity. I can buy that? Some people like it when humans’ ultimate flexibility includes with whom they can breed. It certainly fits the human cultural tendency to fuck things.

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