People Overview
Boons
Boons are known as hulking and brutal jungle creatures that move in packs, known for their relentless blood frenzy. Common folk speak of them with the same dread reserved for plagues or raiding beasts, though some stories suggest they keep crude customs, drums and totems of their own.
Catlings
Catlings are known as wild jungle hunters with the ears, tails and grace of great cats. They are spoken of as beautiful, predatory and hard to civilize, moving between hunting bands, trade posts and shadowy jungle paths with a freedom most settled peoples find unnerving.
Changelings
Changelings are known as hidden monsters who murder people, steal their faces and slip into their lives to build secret power from within. They do not just imitate individuals for a time, but slowly replace neighbors, households and offices until whole communities are rotten with impostors preparing to take everyone else's place. Because of this, changelings are feared with a special kind of hatred. They are the nightmare of the familiar turned false.
Dragons
Dragons are known as ancient and terrible beings, vast in power and older in presence than ordinary mortal kingdoms. Even where knowledge is thin, people speak of them with awe, as creatures whose minds, pride and force belong to a scale beyond human politics or common survival.
Dwarves
Dwarves are known as scrawny, short limbed and physically unimpressive folk with rough voices, sagging bellies and a reputation for drink, greed, vulgarity and chronic laziness. Most people do not think of them as noble smiths or proud mountain lords, but as shameless hangers on, petty schemers and irritating drifters who somehow remain useful because, when properly pushed, they can occasionally produce work of astonishing quality.
Elves
Elves are known as beautiful, long lived and deeply strange folk who seem only half anchored in the world, moving lightly, caring little for hardship and vanishing into craft, art or obsession for years at a time. They are not usually seen as warriors in the ordinary sense, but when one turns fully toward vengeance, hunting or some other purpose, that patience can make them terrifyingly dangerous. Most outsiders think of them as graceful, brilliant and unsettling, a people whose minds run on beauty, ritual and fixations that ordinary mortals can admire but never fully understand.
Fairies
Fairies are known as beautiful and playful little spirits of wood and field, charming until they are not. They lure people into dances, bargains and dreams that can leave them sick, lost or dead, and most village lore treats them as lovely but dangerous creatures who cannot be trusted to care about mortal limits.
Fibians
Fibians are known as swamp folk built for wetland life, broad bodied, amphibious and entirely at home in marsh, mangrove and slow black water. Outsiders tend to think of them as solid, practical and dangerous on their own ground, especially where poison, ambush and difficult terrain begin to matter.
Freshwater Merfolk
Freshwater merfolk are known as quieter and more elusive kin to their sea going cousins, tied to rivers, marshes and jungle channels rather than the open ocean. Their reputation is murkier and more local, with more stories of hidden watchers in reeds and dark water than of bright songs beneath the sun.
Giants
Giants are known as enormous folk of the land, strong enough to inspire awe even when doing ordinary work. Unlike the purely destructive monsters of old tales, they are often spoken of as laboring, farming and living alongside smaller peoples, though always with the sense that their sheer size keeps one foot in legend.
Goblins
Goblins are known as wandering road folk, traders, entertainers and tricksters with no true homeland to call their own. They bring color, wit and noise wherever they go, but they are also widely mistrusted, partly because they are always passing through and partly because settled peoples rarely know what to make of anyone who belongs more to the road than to the soil.
Halflings
Halflings are known as warm, settled and practical folk of farms, fairs and domestic abundance. In a hard world they are often imagined as unusually decent and peaceable, which makes them seem wholesome to friends and vulnerable to anyone with sharper ambitions.
Humans
Humans are known as the most widespread, ambitious and power hungry folk in the world. They build empires, colonies, republics and frontier towns with equal energy, and other peoples often describe them as restless, hungry and impossible to predict, dangerous not because they are strongest in any one way but because they never stop reaching for more.
Lizardmen
The lizardmen of Ssar'et are known as a harsh desert people of scale, claw and strict honor. Rumors speak of towering riders in the dunes, stern women who guide law and vision and a society so shaped by heat, oath and hierarchy that it feels half mythical to those who know it only from caravans and frightened traders.
Merfolk
Sea merfolk are known as bright and graceful folk of the open water, more at home among reefs and currents than in any kingdom on land. Sailors tell stories of their beauty, quick moods and strange songs, and most people imagine them as free roaming children of the sea rather than builders of heavy realms or great underwater empires.
Ogres
Ogres are known first for their size, strength and unnerving physical presence. Yet common stories often mix fear with a certain pity or rough affection, because ogres are not always described as cruel so much as oversized, emotionally simple and dangerous in the way a storm or a giant dog can be dangerous.
Orcs
Orcs are known as powerful, direct and intensely physical folk, feared by many and respected by more than will admit it. Whether settled or nomadic, they are commonly associated with strength, fertility, blunt honesty and cultures where law, blood and communal obligation matter more than polish or subtlety.
Pygmys
The pygmys are known as small jungle peoples who survive through stealth, poison and uncanny mastery of dense forest country. Larger outsiders often dismiss them at first, then learn very quickly that small does not mean weak when the jungle itself seems to be fighting on their side.
Sirens
Sirens are known as sea killers who strike fast from the deep, before dragging their victims to death in a trail of bloody water. They are often confused with merfolk in sloppy tavern tales, but the important part of the warning is always the same: never trust a fish tail which breaks the surface.
Vampires
Vampires are known as pale and elegant night predators who drink human blood, enthrall the weak willed and hide behind charm, rank or false holiness until it is too late. Common stories paint them as creatures of shadow, hunger and dark worship, dwelling in crypts, ruined halls and hidden estates while surrounding themselves with bewitched servants and desperate followers who crave their touch.