Human racial types revisited

[Joerg]

Right now, we have two discussions of human racial types, the discussion of the "Malkioni hobbits" and over on the RQ forum the one about the Doraddi, from which this quote comes:

On 10/3/2018 at 9:42 AM, Jeff said:

Absolutely. The Agimori of Prax are the Men-and-a-Half and not Doraddi or any other human race. They are called Agimori because that is what they call themselves. The Doraddi and other Pamaltelans get called Agimori by Genertelan scholars because that's what Genertelan scholars call them.

The Doraddi actually are descendants of the original Agimori, and the people of Banamba and the black portion of the rest of Fonrit apparently are, too. Likely including the Exigers and other somewhat strange mixed cultures between Fonrit and Jolar/Tarien.

Their creation story is that of the Men-and-a-Half, with the first drinkers and the first lineage plants, but somehow some of them managed to retain more of the Agitorani inheritance by rejecting the element of Water and clinging to the Fire rune. It probably takes some kind of spiritual purity in addition to a flawless descent to retain the extra abilities, but a watered-down residue might be there. That potential small advantage in the Fire rune may very well be part of their cultural package rather than the racial one, which probably still needs to be written.

The other dark-skinned folk of Pamaltela look similar to the Agimori - the Hsunchen because they adopt the dominant body type of the regional humans, and the Thinobutans possibly because their creator used the same method, although he used four different shades of clay in making the first eight ancestors, who then proceded to procreate happily with all available colors of the other gender, creating the range of skin tones available to the surviving Thinubutan-descended folk of Maslo, Kimos, Thinokos (in Fonrit) and Kumanku. (The related population of Loral disappeared during the Closing, similar to Brithos. The population of Teleos may be of Thinobutan or Doraddi origin - you certainly cannot tell by their skin color, but apparently facial features and hair features point to some Pamaltelan origin.)

 

In western Genertela, only the direct descendants of Malkion really are Warerans in the narrow sense of the word, and that includes the direct descendants of Waertag and (at least according to the Zzabur history of Danmalastan) the Vadeli. (They have an alternate origin myth in the Brithos history of the Malkioni which has them as descendants of a goddess of the land, possibly a daughter of Britha, and some unmentioned heroic ancestor.

All the other "Wareran" racial types share the same general facial features, but Wareran race doesn't say much about skin color - everything from very pale to rich dark brown with an almost full assortment of the rainbow is known. Helerings are blue-skinned, Brithini and Vadeli come in color-coded castes, and elemental origin appears to influence hair- and skin-coloration in the theist lands.

Godtime doesn't work that way, but it looks like there was one original population of humans in each of the three corners of the world which was re-created by subsequent creators or even demigod descent.

Beast ancestry appears to be more a factor in size than in skin- or hair-color, at least for the Hsunchen. (The various Pelorian beast-descendants from deities like Durbaddath the Lion, Kenstrata the Fox, Arakang the Bear or Sakkar the Sabretooth may have some other characteristics, and the Beast Rider influence on the Praxians are fairly drastic, too, as variations to body size and coloration go.)

 

There appears to be a flavor to the man rune which is tied to their area of origin - the one adopted by the Hsunchen/Fiwan/Hykimi which imprints on (almost) all the mortals in the region. (The pygmies appear to have some weird variant of that, whether among the Beast Riders - both Storm Bull descended (impalas) and adopted by Eiritha (bolo lizards, ostrich riders) - or among the Hsunchen.) It isn't clear whether it applies to pygmy populations - all of those which have mentioned appearance talk about dark skin, except for the Pamaltelan albino mole people.