You see animal races around in a lot of fiction but they never really seem to represent the animals they show. I mean, they never seem to actually act anything like the animals, they just act like some sort of mildly esoteric human group, like native americans or vikings or something.
The question is: What would these animal races actually act like? I mean, what would a race of spider people behave like? Would they even have a society or would they instead be a clan of total individualists who came together only for mating and would gladly kill and cannibalize each other? Would they sell items made from their silk? Make clothing from it? Nets? What would their relation to other similarly sized creatures be? Would they be considered intelligent monsters because they would hunt and kill anything roughly their size?
If you gave an animal human level intelligence but kept their basic animal instincts and behaviors, what would that look like?
Benjamin Taylor
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Angel Russell
I want a sentient house cat race that basically acts like a regular house cat, but could probably stab a bitch.
Bentley Green
Have you played Pyre? One of the races, The Cur, are literally talking dogs with human intelligence. It was pretty cool. There were also eel people who weren't anthropomorphic but not based on any real animals if you're interested in that.
I'll dump some animal people pics too.
Easton Harris
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Adrian Howard
Spiders = Individuals who build complex traps to catch prey Spotted hyenas = Amazonian matriarchy where the males are all devalued Rats = Skaven Dolphins = So long and thanks for all the fish
Levi Rivera
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Daniel Gonzalez
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Cameron Thompson
>If you gave an animal human level intelligence but kept their basic animal instincts and behaviors, what would that look like? Yiff in hell freak.
Leo Edwards
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Angel Mitchell
Edgy.
John Morales
I have a collection of these guys if anyone is interested.
Tyler Harris
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Isaiah Cooper
>Rats = Skaven Rethink your existence.
Austin Clark
>You see animal races around in a lot of fiction but they never really seem to represent the animals they show.
Hominids are a type of animal, bro.
Zachary Howard
When fighting the Hyenas, do you usually get a lot of male chaff covering for better armed and trained females
Andrew Adams
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Gabriel Miller
The problem with making spiders seem spider-like is that being spider-like is essentially 'not being like an intelligent person.' Spiders communicate so little that they most likely have no complex or abstract language, they don't share ideas so they are stuck on what tools they can find out on their own and they don't think of other beings as people (because they are so asocial) rather than prey/enemies of different difficulties. If you want an intelligent person seem like a spider, nobody would recognise their intelligence.
I feel like you really need to stick to social animals to make humans look at them like people. Stuff like canines, lions, crows, giganotosaurs, herrings...
Michael Roberts
The Cait Sith from Camelot Unchained seem to be a pretty good take on cat people in this regard, though possibly not to the extent you are looking for. They are literally cats with increased intelligence and bipedalism.
Camden Parker
Dunno, I could see a solitary species work if they were long lived, doing obviously intelligent things but not really socializing.
Nolan Edwards
Well, my assumption is that they are asocial enough to never develop a language, and maybe that's extreme. But still, how would you even tell they can think? Normal animals construct lairs you could call architecture and nobody thinks of them as intelligent life. What is an obviously intelligent thing? Also, how long do you need to live to invent complex tools? Because I have no idea...
Aiden Baker
Actually did spider people while considering them not being naturally social. So they were initially not much more than sentient beasts, happy to be more tricky giant spiders, and many remained that way. But at some point they developed a society, mythology involve a shady figure teaching them right from wrong like some kind of snake tricking them out of the metaphorical Eden of primitivism, scholars talk about symbiotic relations between social species of spider people and some other species that developed into a society eventually.
Though, they remained quite individualistic and either: - remain savages - grouped in "villages" that are little more than individuals gathering in walking distance to each others for reproduction and self defence - one actual empire built around social spiders, that had to enforce a strong and rigid social control to keep non social spiderpeople's instincts in check. Trying to refrain nature with culture with varying success. It's mostly an evil empire but it has its reasons to be what it is.
Like several monster races, the development of civilisations also forced them to step up their game. Some giant clans for example had to ally with little folks as they couldn't simply rely on their strength anymore against sufficiently organised armies or war-machines.
