Evolution in Fantasy

Let's talk taxonomy!

Who was the first sapient?
Where is the missing link between Elf and Dwarf?
Does your Orc have a pedigree?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dragon_Masters
answersingenesis.org/creation-science/baraminology/homo-habilis-homo-rudolfensis-and-australopithecus-sediba/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I'll share my autism.

The first sapients were random aberrations, who were eventually conquered by the titans, who degenerated to Giants. The common link between Elves and Dwarves were called the Eldar. I hadn't statted them but Duergar and Drow are actually closer to the Eldar and not under any sort of curse in my world. Humans are relative latecomers, but are the only species to evolve sentience (the others were brought about by magic, technology, or spontaneously came into being in dark places in the world)

Dragons are the newest race, they were servants of the Humans (who were the first people to develop Divine magic and had the first multicultural empire when their clerics and dragon allies ran roughshod over everyone). Although true dragons are extinct, Draconic is the common language, humans worship dragon gods, etc.

Presumably, they would share a common ancestor. The ur-sapient would likely have a mixture of traits of the separate species in that clade. Speciation would occur by populations becoming isolated, and selective pressure encouraging different specialization.

So this means that the original would probably look most similar to modern humans, though it would not likely be identical.

It would also explain why half-elves, half-orcs, and half-dwarves might be possible, but not necessarily elves having children with dwarves.

This would make all of the fantasy races merely subclades of the general human clade. Extreme isolation and long time scales would be necessary: human populations in the New World had no gene exchange with old world populations for around 12,000 years, and speciation did not occur.

Time scales on the order of ~100,000 years or more might be necessary, and even then the over hundred thousand years of isolation did not prevent neanderthals and early modern humans from producing viable offspring.

Or you could just have magic involved somehow. Usually makes the setting building easier

a human is just a half-elf, half-dwarf.

I love Glorantha but Uz only kinda have a common ancestor with Men.
They are basically made of the Darkness and Man Runes and the common trolls become men in a few generations if their connection to Kyger Litor is severed / non-renewed. (But it's not clear what does it means about the original race and both the Mostali and Aldrayami have created lesser versions of themselves on a more specifically more human template to survive in Time so maybe the common Uz are technically humans but the Master Race probably isn't)

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Elves, dwarves and orcs are certainly subspecies of the same species as they are very similar yet a lot more than human populations are from each other.
In most fantasy settings dwarves cannot reproduce with humans, orcs or elves and they are more the anatomically distinct of the bunch so I think they could be considered a different species.
The Elves are generally the first to become civilized so they are probably the ones making taxonomy or at least the first versions, so we are a bit more likely to be Elvis Sapiens Humanis than Homo Sapiens Elvis but it could be otherwise in human cultures or the Elves could have done otherwise for cultural reasons. (Not admiting being related to other races at all for example)

From the Arcanum: of steamworks and magic obscura manual

"Roughly 900,000 before the present day, the fossil record shows us a wild outburst of magickal activity, an unprecedented surge of sorcery which affected life on Arcanum for millennia after. What caused this sudden cataclysmic storm of Supernatural Selection, we may never know for certain; all that we can say now is that the magickal agencies at work at that time were enormously strong, far more powerful than the forces which any modern-day mage can command. A great many organisms were created then which survive to this day, albeit in small numbers.

In this distant Epoch of Enchantment we find the origins of many legendary species, including the kraken, hydra and sea serpent; Wyrms, dragons and drakes were brought forth at roughly the same time. Many pre-existing species were substantially altered, as in the case of the unicorn and the firebird; others were merged into chimeric organisms like the centaur and manticore, for reasons unknown. Humans, which pre-date this Epoch by some two hundred thousand years, were not left untouched by the general pandemonium; although the majority of our forebears went on unchanged, some of them were vastly transformed by magick. When the fantastic whirlwind of Supernatural Selection died down some four thousand years later, two new species had emerged, and thereafter co-existed with ordinary humanity: these being the elves and the giants. "
There is a bit more in some descriptions of the races but basically dwarves are a lot further removed from the other humanoid races, ogres are giants who lost most of the magic making them gigantic with time.
Gnomes are an offshot of the dwarves created by natural selection while halflings are a magically altered offshot of the proto-gnomes.
Orcs are probably a magically engineered race of soldiers from a very old magical civilization altough they are probably from an human stock.

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Long ago, when the gods were just starting to figure out how the whole god thing worked, they made creatures, lots of creatures. Usually, these creatures were just toys, things created for a brief moment of entertainment and then destroyed. One of the gods took pity on these creatures, however, and shared with them the power to think and create. The other gods, furious that the creatures were now wrecking all their stuff and praising the pitier god, bestowed mortality upon the creatures and made the pitier god the lord of Death.

They wanted them to destroy the creatures, but Death instead offered a game: a battle of wits between the creatures and the gods. If the creatures won, the gods had to permit their existence, if the creatures won, Death would take back power from the creatures and give it to the other gods, effectively ending his existence in the process. The other gods, always wanting more power and eager to be rid of Death, accepted. They came to the creatures and warned them that one day a great calamity would befall them, and if they did not prepare they would be destroyed. After much arguing, the creatures that were to heed the warning split into several groups and migrated to lands near and far. As they became more adapted to the lands they settled, they slowly morphed into the races we know today.

Finally, the day of reckoning came, and the gods had chosen their calamity, a perfect mockery that would combine the best features of all races and show Death his pet project would only destroy itself in the end. They were called humans.

And so the gods' humans were set upon the world.Many of the races were destroyed, and all was going well for the gods, and they talked of how they were going to divide Death's power. Death chimed in, saying it would only be fair if power went according to who was most responsible for the destruction of the races. The gods publicly agreed, and each then secretly went down to convince the humans to fight in their honor, making the god in question the sole destroyer of the races. The humans, unable to agree on which god to follow, turned on each other. This disarray allowed the remaining races to repel the humans and, just like that, Death had won.

Now that the races weren't going anywhere, many of the gods came to accept this and became patrons to various aspects of life. Many minor gods also arose to snatch up some things the races created that the gods hadn't accounted for. Death, in gratitude to the humans who had inadvertently been the saviors of life everywhere, granted them a Redeemer to help absolve them of the sins instilled in them by their creators. It was quickly forgotten that Death had done this, as a minor god cleverly took up the mantle of Redemption and quickly rose to prominence as a result. And that is how the races as we know them came to be.

Or something like that.

Human - Humanity
Dwarf - ?
Elf - ?
Halfling/Hobbit - ?

Dwarvery
Elvenkind
Hobbithood

Been a while since I tried to do something like this, and I don't have the notes, but I remember trying to use our taxonomy tree and try to place some fantasy races within it for a setting.

IIRC I wanted halflings to just be another primate, they would be our closest tool using sapient relative.
Orcs are pigs, somewhere in the suidae family, not the tusks.
Not just because orc rhymes with pork.

I couldn't place all of them with any satisfaction in the standard tree of life.
So others would have divine origins, with gods creating them, dwarves made out of rocks, gnomes made out of gem rich rocks.
Elves were made out of a deity who looked into the future and saw a vague vision of humans, and tried to create them, so that's why humans and elves are so similar.

Maybe later on other deities made the dwarves and gnomes trying to mimick the elves, to explain why they are so similar.

>Dwarvery
nice
>Elvenkind
meh

Humans say that the High God made them in his image, and that all other sapients are abominations made to mock the Highfather's works after he was imprisoned in the sun. Other sapients take issue with this characterization.

Dwarves say that Shamazh the Sun-King sifted among the ancient peoples of the world and found the cleverest, most skilled and most sturdy creatures in his creation. The Sun-King then remade them into the priestly caste that became the leaders of an ancient empire that has long since fallen into ruin.

Orcs believe that they do not share a common ancestor with humanity, and that crossbreeding is possible purely through the virility the Blue Expanse has given them. Long ago, the steppe and the Sea of Seven Grasses were covered in forests inhabited by hateful elves and decadent humans. Their sins were so great that the Blue Expanse kindled a great fire that swept through the forest, burning all before it. When the fires cleared that night, the only thing left behind were orcs and the grass they alone could eat. Orcs believe they are the natural counterbalance and correction to decadent western civilization. One day, all there is will be orc and grass.

The catfolk believe that God made them to keep the other races on their toes. They're not far wrong.

Elves keep excellent records, even as their civilizations collapsed around them. Their oldest records -- ritualized dance, primarily -- tell of beings from beyond the stars that demanded the obeisance of the primitive Dawn Men. Through selective breeding and experimentation, the noblest of the Dawn Men were transformed from hairy near-apes into the beautiful and perfect elven race -- the race that was destined to rule the world in the name of the Star Men. Some betrayed this covenant in the name of Chaos, and condemned their brothers and sisters to the deep parts of the world. The war shattered their ten thousand year rule over the races of men, and destroyed both civilizations.

The only idea I have is that dragons went full Man After Man and wound up creating an entirely reptilian ecology.

I have no idea what to do with this that isn't just a poor explanation for dinosaurs

The problem with Fantasy taxonomy is that "A crazy god/wizard/outsider poofed this species into existence for no real reason a long time ago" is a completely valid explanation for nearly every form of life.

Here's one I mocked up for an earlier thread where it was discussed.

That one can choose to include or not. Don't really see why this is a problem. And a wizard adding individual species doesn't automatically turn off the process of evolution.

Reminds me a bit of Dark Sun.

Because of the Halflings?

I was thinking of the early mammals with them. The halflings first emerging into the world when Giants and Dragons ruled it, while they scamper about in their holes, trying to survive.

When the empires of dragons and giants fall, they start to move out into the open, diversify, and speciation happens.

I'm gonna elaborate on this because that's exactly how I see it.

First, we've got one distinguishing trait: magic users (elves, gnomes) vs non magic users (humans, dwarves, halflings, orcs).

Between the magic users, they're either tall-sized (elves) or short-sized (gnomes).

Between the non magic users, they're either tall-sized (humans, orcs) or short-sized (dwarves, halflings). Between the tall-sized ones, they're either more sapient and with less muscular mass (humans) or less sapient with more muscular mass (orcs), among other physical features. Between the short-sized ones, they're either bigger and stouter (dwarves) or shorter and nimbler (halflings).

Does this sound right?

>Modern species evolving from moden species
Nigga that's not how evolution works.

It depends on how long the original species has been around.

Mostly yes.
But it should be considered that size is one of the easiest things to change evolutionary speaking.

In my setting, most vertebrates that have 4 limbs are naturally evolved, but vertebrates with more limps, or those that appear as mixes of creatures were tampered with, but you can still generally trace when and where.

Additionally, a concept I'm using is that magic enables a form of subconscious orthogenesis in sapient beings. Basically when a group of sapient creatures subconsciously decides they want some trait (by admiring an animal or liking darkness or whatever), as a society, they tend to evolve towards that goal much more quickly than normal, on scale of hundreds of thousands of years as opposed to millions, That's how elves and dwarves and other subspecies of Homo Sapiens came about in my setting. This generally stops or slows when civilization develops, since people tend to interact with nature a bit less and are also more safe and secure in their houses, so tribal savage elves could be a lot of different shapes, but civilized elves would be a bit more uniform.

>Who was the first sapient?
Dragons, but their thought patters and different and alien, so in our terms, it would be whatever Homo is the first sapient here, Homo habilis, maybe? Not sure what's the consensus on that one.
>Where is the missing link between Elf and Dwarf?
Evolved in parallel together with modern humans from a common Homo Sapiens ancestor.
>Does your Orc have a pedigree?
No orcs yet, they're a future wizard project based on a mix of goblins and half elves.

Useful thing to note. Halflings are divided into three main species: The hairfoot/lightfoot, the tallfellow, and the stout.

While the hairfoot/lightfoot are the most common, the two subraces have much in common with elves and dwarves respectively.

Any connection between these three kinds of halflings and the three kinds of hobbits (harfoot, fallohide, and stoor) are purely spurious, and absolutely nothing to concern ourselves with. Anything else could imply halflings were some kind of knock off!

Dude, dragons are extraterrestrial. Hexapodal skeleton unlike all Earth vertebrates.

Though these charts aren't all that convincing as a TE chart, it still gave me an idea. Imagine: an antedilluvian world in which all hominin species starting with sahelanthropus as the "Adam" of this land (who would be rumored to still be among the living), and ending with a homo sp sapiens "Noah," despite there being no flood narrative. Technology is still in the plaeolithic for more primitive species, but others have ascended to mesolithic and neolithic tool use.

Nomadic tribes of ape-men (most of australopithecus/paranthropus) are the norm in the southern territories, as no true farms can exist in the harsh savanna. In the jungles and woodlands, the first of the Adamic species (sahel, orrorin, ardi, and anam) still roam as they did when the earth was younger.
In the northeastern territories, some of the erectines (heidelberg, ceprano, antecessor) have moved further north with the herds, some going even further north, to become the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Also of note, some have been known to openly practice cannibalism, though most likely after their kin have died (not killed).
Across all territories, the sapiens (idaltu, sapiens, and balangodensis) subsist in larger sedentary tribes due to settling within the rare fertile land which is present in only certain locations.

>While the hairfoot/lightfoot are the most common, the two subraces have much in common with elves and dwarves respectively.
This makes no sense because then they would be evolutionary closer to elves and dwarves than halflings. And halflings are a distinct species.

Maybe this means they've undergone evolutionary convergence, not that they're literally related to them.

To add, the hobbits (floresiensis) are most likely derived from the erectines, but act like a mixture of the erectines and early Adamic species.
The Naledi people most likely act more like the nomadic ape-men, though rely on a more woodland diet.
Habilis/Rudolfensis also fall within the category of ape-men, though do have striking similarities to the erectines (of which Ergaster is a part).

>Supernatural Selection
I like this.

> Orcs not from elves

A rough geogrpahical reference.

Try Elfkin instead

humankind - humankin - humanity - oh the humanity
dwarvenkind - dwarfkin - dwarvery - oh the dwarvery
hobbitkind - hobbitkin - ? - oh the
elvenkind - elfkin - ? - oh the

hobbitry kinda works, elvery seems like a stretch

Speaking of words for masses, what's a good word to call all sapient races together?

Right now, we use humankind because there's only humans, but if there were elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, intelligent spiders, whatever else, what's a good word for all of them together?

I'm thinking maybe "spoken" but it sounds too pretentious.

Beer. And other alcoholic beverages.

After gods created the world, gave themselves bodies and populated the world with accurately planned creatures they decided to have a little holiday. Though god of trickery somewhat overdid it with drinks and by the time holiday ended number of species, subspecies and races in the world jumped by at least three orders of magnitude.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dragon_Masters

Human were created by one God
Dwarf were created by another God
Orc and goblin were made by an evil God from Human and Dwarf
The Elves were always here

Humanoids are separated into 3 groups with common ancestry:

The earliest humanoids were the titans who slowly split of into different groups.

The giant kin.
-Giants, Goliaths, Firblogs.

The Human kin.
- Humans, Elves and Orcs.

The Dwarf kin.
-Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings.

The Goblin kin.
-Goblins , hobgoblins and bugbears.

Each species developed in specific enviroments which may or may not make them able to interbreed within the same group.
Giant kin can interbreed with humankin of the same environment but the offspring is usually just a taller version of the humankin parent.

General environment species are adabtable and can breed with anything in their group.

Humans, Halflings, Goliath.

Fey species developed in areas of concentrated magical powers.

Elves , Firblog.

Demonic species developed under the effects of demonic magic.

Orcs and goblinoids.

...

I call them "mortals," but that (deliberately) separates them from intelligent spiritual entities like demons and nature spirits and so on.

What if you want to include those entities?

"People," I suppose?

Sophonts?

Elfdom?

Make it poetic and just say mortals and inmortals. It's taken for granted that you're not including animals.

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All humanoids races were made of the same mold, each god using it to create its own race.
A few more exotic good races were created by other benevolent gods not wanting the use the same basic template.
After all other races were created, a trickster goddess without a chosen race thought it would be funny to give life to the mold itself.
The First Man was lonely so he asked for company and the Trickster Goddess created a copy of him in her own image, unknowingly becoming the elusive goddess of humanity and the human godess of trickery, beauty and women.
The First Man had a spark of the divine power of all the gods that used the mold and so him and his descendants were long-lived and semi-divine but the First Man forbade incest and they married with the other humanoid races and their power and longevity were reduced with each generation until Men lost the capacity to interbred with other races while remaining fully human.

I appreciate the suggestion and help

All humanoids (except elves obviously) are the results of elven genetic experiments to create slave species. And elves are actually humans, from our world that is, that found ways to eradicate disease and have eternal life through genetics.

I really liked how arcanum did it.

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Glorantha and the Ducks?

Yes

Me too.

M&M2 best orcs

more of this?

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They were all made at once by god. None of them can interbreed.

There's even weirder possibities with that.

What is that image supposed to tell us?

Some weird-ass creationist pseudoscience. Basically, it's grouping sediba in with humans, and chimpanzees with Lucy's kin, while there's one of its own kind, and there are the robusts.
This is when fundies try their hand at paleoanthropology.

And it basically boils down to whether it looks like an ape or a human. No genetics, no actual study of the fine features of the skull, nada. Just whether it looks like a modern chimp or not.

Fuck them, but their pseudoscience is good for stealing weird ideas from.

>Humans are relative latecomers, but are the only species to evolve sentience
Hey, mine's kind of similar to that. In my setting, natural selection works through a nature goddess who causes defiations from the norm and causes heritability. There's no end goal to her guidance, or even method to the "mutations", she's more the embodiment of the blind watchmaker concept. The other sentient races were deviated from the proto-human stock to serve various purposes, their development guided with an end goal in mind, but humans, like the beasts, were only guided by the nature goddess to survive.

Nah, thr guy who did it actually used a very large sample size, and tried to look at the tiniest cranial details to determine it. How else do you think this got in thr human line?
answersingenesis.org/creation-science/baraminology/homo-habilis-homo-rudolfensis-and-australopithecus-sediba/

You can see them attempting to do serious science, and they sort of replicate real science but get it all screwed up with their a priori conclusions of baramins (otherwise known as kinds, or how creationists attempt to cover the vast number of species by reducing them to specific groups and fiatly decrying them as not having common ancestors).

He's also addressed that on his blog. If I'm not mistaken, he only thinks the earrh is young because the Bible (or one interpretation of it) says so, but he acknowledges that evolution is one of the single most important concepts in biology. Trust me, this guy's gotten a lot of flak for including Sediba, to the point of others claiming he fudged the calculations.

There a hardcore Tolkien person around who can explain the point of the three kinds of Hobbitses? Never did get that myself.

Now I'm not a ToIkien nut, but I think it is simply consistency in applying ethnicities. He has the same separation of groups among men and elves. Logically there would be tribes of Hobbits who would share some traits to identify them by as a group. Especially when they have been living in separate groups in different territories, like those from the other side of the misty mountains for example.
He had chosen his resolution, so to speak, and was sticking to it. And of course it would serve to characterize the provincial hobbits. They knew eachother in their community and of course could track who was from what familly and larger group by extension. An intimate friendly gossipy thing. Talking about large extended families, keeping up with eachother etc.

The job of M&M has always been to kinda ape what everyone else in fantasy gaming is doing, but (sometimes, when they're good) put their own spin on it.
Applies to aesthetics as much as anything else.

I believe it was Ken Hite who said that bad science makes for great gaming.
Pseudoscience, crank theories, 'Hidden History'...all fun stuff.
(If you really want some fun, crack open Velikovsky...it's like he was trying to be bad at as many scientific fields as possible!)

He just avoided race being culture.
The Hobbits are the descendants of three different cultures and technically they are all Men but the Men and Elves had both a ton of cultures and ethnicities.

My current favorite for explaining polymorph spells, lycanthropy, and half dragons is Rupert Sheldrake's Morphogenic Field Theory.

Humans are descended from apes. Our actual evolution applies here. Each other race is an example of convergent evolution, all branching off of a different ancestor.
Orcs and other goblinoids are descended from pigs.
Elves are descended from deer.
Dwarves are descended from moles.
Lizardfolk and Avids are pretty self explanatory, but closer to one another than most would think.
And Halflings are descended from badgers of course.

What about Gnomes?
Does this mean all Gnomes can inherently communicate with Halflings, despite any language barrier?

So...
Time is circular in that world. Consider it as an experiment put in place by outer beings.
What is, was, and will be. The world's history is a loop between a period of highly magical fantasy wars, and a post-apocalyptic fallout period, caused by these wars. Most civilized races live underground during this period.

So the species do not really evolve in the common sense. They're always there. But they're not always the same depending on where you're sampling the timeline.

Three groups :
-Humans (which also includes elves and orcs)
-Dwarves
-Gnomes (which also includes goblins)

Orcs are the result of humanity's exposure to magically-irradiated wastelands over the course of a few centuries. They're stronger and breed faster, but pretty primitive, and die off as soon as the other races get good enough at magic.

Elves are the result of a particularly isolationist and technically advanced human culture trying to recreate the "perfect" human from the "past", by way of eugenism and genetic modifications. They rise as the strongest magical race, only to be completely wiped out by magical overcharges during the apocalypse.

"Regular" humans are always present, but during the post-apocalyptic part they are mostly underground gypsies.

Dwarves do not really evolve biologically, since they live underground during the whole course of the loop. Even other dwarf cultures are pretty isolated, and any biological change is very minor.

Gnomes are something like a middle child, always living in the shadow of the other races, but always managing to be useful in their societies. Just like orcs, surface gnomes evolve into goblins due to magic exposure, only to be wiped out during the wars.

Hmm...I like it. Kinda like the Shannara explanation, but without the 'Elves are totally always special!' bit.

I have an idea for how vampires evolved. From the original that I have dubbed "Cain". Hundreds of different strains have evolved to plague the world.

To be honest I haven't thought too much about gnomes. Perhaps an offshoot of either the elves or the halflings. They wouldn't likely be able to innately communicate.
I like this because it lets me use Orc as a derivative insult stemming from Pork, and pig orcs have always been enjoyable to me. Elves with antlers is another little thing I enjoy. And dwarves with whiskery beards and bad eyesight is also fun for a fantasy setting.

In my world mankind & dragons are the oldest races chronologically. Elves & dwarves & such are all specialty humans shaped by the gods, basically a bunch of humans would worship say the sun God, & over time the humans generation after generation would slowly change, gaining traits that the god favors. So primordial humans that worshiped the Sun God eventually became the Sun elves.

I was bored and decided to make this.

bump

Do not bump shit threads

Humans evolved from Chimpanzees (they are ugly)
Orcs evolved from Boars (they are savages)
Elves evolved from Deers. (they are majestic)
Dwarves evolved from Mushrooms. (They are resilient)

Done.

There's the sci-fi term "sophont".

people, sapients, humankind because fuck elves fuck dwarves fuck you

There's a fantasy term as well.
In the 90s I wrote a book(never published) where the word for the masses of sapients for Blarschwuarbs.

>Dwarves evolved from Mushrooms. (They are resilient)

"Humans and their kin"

oh hey it's this pic

...Not bad.

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bimp

The oldest known race is simply known as the Old Ones, and nothing is really known of they went extinct long before any living race arose. Elder dragons probably know, but good luck finding one and asking questions from it. It is unlikely that they are in any wya related to existing sapient races. The oldest still living race are the serpent-men, also known as yuan-ti, who predate humanity by several millenia.
Humans, elves, and orcs all split from a common proto-human ancestor relatively recently (in geological terms, so still several hundreds of thousands of years ago), and are closely related enough that humans can interbreed with the other two (elves and orcs theoretically could as well, but the differences in physiology make it practically impossible). Dwarves and gnomes are closely related to each other, but more distantly related to humans, having split off from the last common ancestor earlier then humans did from elves and orcs. As an aide, merfolk are highly divergent elves (elves have a magical connection to nature which allows them to rapidly adapt to their environment. Merfolk are the most extreme example of this, representing elves completely adapted to aquatic life).

So in terms of relations to hoomuns, Orcs are the most closely related? Followed by Elves, then Dwarves, then [Lizardfolk and Avids]? Is there still a racial hatred between Orcs and Elves / Dwarves and Elves? Why?

>Who was the first sapient?
Presumably an extinct primordial ancestor of all modern sentient species.
>Where is the missing link between Elf and Dwarf?
I would say dwarves, humans, and elves had a common ancestor over 100k years ago, but it split into two lines, one would evolve into dwarves and the other would later split into humans and Dwarves.
>Does your Orc have a pedigree?
I doubt Orcs would be concerned about pedigree. However with their caste system I could easily imagine goblins caring about their pedigree. A hobgoblin of high standing would be humiliated if it was discovered that his great great grandmother was a regular goblin or his great uncle was a bugbear.

Essentially if I was to make a sort of sentient family tree I would work from the top down. First look at who can interbeed and produce fertile offspring, throw them into the same genus most likely, consider sub-races and if they might just be minor deviations or entirely different subspecies. After that compare traits to decide how species should relate into sub-families and finally families. Dwarves may not look much like elves but they look more like elves and humans than goblins do.

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