Non-Standard Fantasy Races

The aliens in Embassytown who have to use two mouths simultaneously to speak and are incapable of lying or using metaphors as they describe things exactly as they see them. Also capable of creating cities and architecture and pets by moulding biological matter.

Damn. Got any more Abo folklore to share?

giv pug warrior

There are to kinds of animals: the ones who I eat and the ones that amuse me.

Could be good for an encounter, not a pc though.

I came here to post this! Awesome dude. I would so want to turn this into a pc race.

It's basically a tree-dwelling vampire gnome. That could be a pc.

Abbo folklore is literally retarded.

pic related

Nah, too memey. How do you base an entire society or race around their food habit?

Not really non-standard, but I like using plantfolk to replace elves

Kaorti. God damn, I love me the kaorti.

They're essentially some elven wizards who were like 'hey, let's go find out what's OUTSIDE the UNIVERSE!'

Then they found out.

Now they're twisted, corrupted, really fucking insane. They're crazy (and crazy-smart) Far Realm alchemists who dissolve under normal physical law on the material plane, but can protect themselves by regurgitating this 'resin' stuff that serves as a kind of lead shield- except it's keeping the reality out, instead of the radiation. Oh, and they kidnap people and forcefully convert them into more kaorti.

Their goal is to convert the stone and rocks into resin, the people into kaorti, the very physical law of the material plane into something more like the far plane....

And I have a sneaking suspicion that when the kaorti cyst-lord offers a 'deal' with my players that involves the players getting a few strike teams of kaorti spellswords and the kaorti getting a ton of humanoid prisoners... The players will accept.

The Little People of the Cherokee

As is the vast majority of folklore if you look at it that way

>humans
border collie, german shepherd, retrievers
>elves
greyhound, dalmation, poodle
>orcs
pitbull, mastiff, great dane
>dwarves
scottish terrier, beagle, pug

...

...

I'd really like to see more plant-peopple on RPGs.

>Every time you move your arms, your vision is obscured
Pretty shit race.

Jumping Spider folk. I wanna see an adorable Jumper Mage/Rouge join up with a party and surprise everyone with his prowess despite his diminutive stature.

Pretty much anything that isn't in the handbooks. I lost interest in D&D as soon as I realized the Monster Manual didn't double as a PC race list. It's abhorrently unimaginative.

Tikbalang

Hobbits and giants, to add more diversity to the races of men.

Sure I'll dump a few.

The Kinie Ger was a monster from Australian Aboriginal mythology. It was described as half human and half quoll (the quoll or native cat is a marsupial predator related to the Tasmanian devil and not a true cat). It was a ruthless killer with the head and body of a cat but the limbs of a man. It wandered around killing innocent people, birds and animals and was the terror of the bush. In the myth, the creature was stated to have been killed by the owl and the crow who ambushed him when he came to drink at a water hole.[1] Supposedly when the creature was finally defeated, it shrank down and became the first quoll, the founding father of the quoll race

Quoll for reference.

My own

>owl and crow
were the people shit or were those birds empowered ancients?

the Wati kutjara also Wati kutjarra or Wadi Gudjara; are two young lizard-men (based upon goanna) who, in the Dreaming, traveled all over the Western Desert In English, their songline is often called the Two Men Dreaming.The Wati kutjara are ubiquitous in the mythology of the Western Desert; indeed, their journey extends for thousands of kilometres, stretching from the Kimberley to South Australia.
The Wati kutjara are often likened to the wind, whose form they adopt when in danger.
As they travel, they sing of the animals, plants and geographic features that they encounter, naming them and calling them into being.Filled with magical power, these two unmarried brothers eventually traveled all over the Western Desert destroying many dangerous evil spirits. They also created many sacred objects.
The Wati kutjara feature in innumerable stories, whose details vary from region to region. In one story they are credited with castrating the Man in the Moon by throwing a magical boomerang, Kidili, because he tried to rape the first woman. In other versions, the Wati kutjara are the ones attempting to seduce the same group of women.

TLDR; Two Goanna lizardmen bards who travel the desert, fighting evil spirits and castrating celestial figures with boomerangs.

Most of the animals in the dreamtime are empowered ancients.

Hinduism has some of the sweetest looks, but really shit games

Quoll-men seem to occur a fair bit.
Here's another.
Ngariman is another quoll-man who killed the Bagadjimbiri, two dingo gods and sons of Dilga, an earth goddess. In revenge, she drowned Ngariman with her milk by flooding the underground cavern where she killed her son.

Does Australia have any native hallucinogenics? Aborigine folklore is really spaced out

It does tend to get a little Greek at times.
The great copper python of the Murngin in northern Australia. Yulungur was roused from his great sleep by the odor of the menstrual blood of one of the women who took refuge in his cave, the Wawalag sisters. The great snake rose and drowned the land, and devoured the two women. However, later at a conference of snakes, Yulungur, accused of eating his kin, admitted that he had, and was told to regurgitate the two women. In the initiation rites, this theme of 'disgorging' symbolizes the passage from boy to man. He is the center of the fertility cult.
Yulungur, called 'Great Father', his voice is thunder.

This is now a "wyrd" thread

>she drowned Ngariman with her milk
Tell me more

>dwarves
>not bulldog
For shame.

Dilga-
Dingo Earth Goddess of Fertility with extremely proactive life-giving milk

She is the mother of the BAGADJIMBIRI Brothers, who performed amazing miracles of sexual reproduction for the benefit of humanity. As she’s a Fertility Goddess we can only imagine the skills they learnt at their mother’s knee. Sadly after all their hard work the lads ended up dead after a wild catfight.

Proud mum DILGA did not take this lying down and avenged their deaths with interest. Then she managed to bring her beloved boys back to life with her own very potent brand of milk.

Bagadjimbiri
-----------

The two brother gods to whom the Karadjeri of northwestern Australia attribute the creation of the world. Prior to the rising of the two brothers as dingos from the ground, there was nothing. The Bagadjimbiri made waterholes; from a toadstool and a fungus they formed genital organs for the first sexless people, and they instituted the ritual of circumcision. After the two brothers had assumed the shape of two giant men reaching up to the sky, they got into a quarrel with a Quoll-man called Ngariman, whom they had annoyed with their laughter. Ngariman and his relatives killed the two brothers with spears, but the enraged Dilga, their mother, and the earth goddess, caused her milk to flow underground to the place of the murder, where it revived the victims and drowned the killers. Bagadjimbiri were reborn, but after some time decided to pass away, their bodies turning into water snakes and their spirits rising into the sky as great clouds

Pic semi-related - it's Yhi one of the other fertility goddesses.

>Dingoes
Why did abos made them the good guys in their mythos? Cosidering dingoes eat their babies?

To compliment the Lizardmen, you've got a giant albino Were-Crocodile man in the form of I'wai.
He founded a bunch of rituals, ceremonies and taught the locals about the oceans and rivers, made masks out of devils and sawfish and fought a race of python people. He rode on a giant stingray at one point, not to mention turning some girls to stone who woke him up one time.

"The dreaming" is a kind of heroic age, but not quite like any European ideas, since it is not exactly in "the past" as we envision it. Its really quite interesting.

Rather than post a long ass link, I'll just tell you to google "WEH Stanner the dreaming" and read the very well respected essay yourself, since its the first result for me.

Those wishing to play some terrible Australian themed games can turn to:
Rage across Australia - the Werewolf: The Apocalypse expansion

Or Mutants Down Under - The Splatbook for the 1980's TMNT RPG

The elder must've really hated how the girls in the village kept waking him up huh?

A goddamn Thriddle.

Curupiras

Not a race or species per say, but some more aboriginal mythology I could see certain types of DMs putting this in a campaign for his female PC's.

Erathipa

A huge boulder in the shape of a pregnant woman bears this name. It is said that the souls of dead children reside within it, and that if a woman of child-bearing age walks by a soul slips from the boulder and into her womb to be reborn.

The rock known as Erathipa, which has an feminine opening in one side from which the souls of the children imprisoned in it watch for a woman to pass by so that they may be reborn in her. When women who do not want children go near the rock, they pretend to be old, and walk as if leaning on a stick, crying; "Don't come to me, I am an old woman!"

É foda encontrar boa arte de Curupira quando a maioria parece algo que estaria pregado na parede de um jardim de infância no dia do Saci

It does seem like a common theme, despite the two myths being from tribes thousands of kilometers apart.
Don't wake up your elders. Or else you'll be eaten or turned to stone.

Back to races I'd like to actually see implemented.

The Mimi
Mimis are fairy-like beings of Arnhem Land in the folklore of the Indigenous Australians of northern Australia. They are described as having extremely thin and elongated bodies, so thin as to be in danger of their necks snapping or body breaking in high winds. To avoid this, they usually spend most of their time living in rock crevices. They are said to have taught the Aborigines of Australia how to hunt and prepare kangaroo meat and how to paint.

Sometimes, the spirits are reputed to eat men but yams are their staple food.

So basically a species of really tall, thin and spindly fairies that live in crevasses and cracks, ever afraid of the wind.

Its probably a more general thing about respect for elders, like the thing with Moses and his sons.

Nargun
A fierce half-human half-stone creature that lived in the Den of Nargun, a cave under a rock overhang behind a small waterfall. Aboriginal legend describes the Nargun as a beast entirely made of stone except for its hands, arms and breast. The fierce creature would drag unwary travellers into its den. Any weapon directed against it would be turned back on its owner.

There was actually a thread about making spiders into a fantasy race (or multiple races) months ago.

I can't really remember much of it, but on the peaceful side of things most folks figured that they'd be really into making things out of silk for trade with other races/nations, and often dressed in the height of fashion.

And of course, the Wandjina. Awesome Cloud spirit beings that appear prominantly in cave paintings across Australia.

Primal beings of the Aboriginals. They are cloud and rain spirits who in the Dreamtime descended to caves where they painted their images on the cave walls. These images are shaped as humans, with eyes and noses, but without any mouths. Their ghosts remained in nearby waterpools. One of them, Walaganda, rose to the sky and formed the Milky Way.

Dreamtime stories say the Wandjina created the landscape and its inhabitants, and continue to have influence over both. When the spirits found the place they would die, they painted their images on cave walls and entered a nearby waterhole.
The Wandjina can punish those who break the law with floods, lightning and cyclones and are responsible for the annual rainfall.

Common composition is with large upper bodies and heads that show eyes and nose, but typically no mouth. Two explanations have been given for this: they are so powerful they do not require speech and if they had mouths, the rain would never cease. Around the heads of Wandjina are lines or blocks of color, depicting lighting coming out of transparent helmets
Some of the artwork dates back approximately 4000 years ago.

These guys are awesome so I'm going to dump a few pictures of adaptations of them.

...

Well, Rome's founder suckled a she-wolf, and wolves aren't any better.

...

Wandjina watching over a battle.

Wrong caption, my bad,
Battle ones here.

Wandjina based of different petroglyphs.

...

>Four armed xenomorph in the back
wait what

Quivering Thrid-nodes!

Too much time in the sun will cause hallucenations. Also bites from neurotoxic venom using species. Aus has plenty of both.

Those dudes show up in paintings sometimes.

An interesting take on the "Man-eater" part of the Mimi

...

Exaterrestarals.

How do you know all this user? Is this all on the internet or are you an Aussie with an interest in native folklore. Or are you an abo? All of this just makes me remember all the awesome folklore and mythology we all miss out on because we either don't speak the language, there aren't resources on it available in English, or it's just plain lost because some of these people don't write shit down.

...

Aussie who grew up in the bush. Copy pasting stuff from the internet too. Typically you'll be exposed to some aboriginal culture depending upon where you live here, though I've done some research and looked up stuff growing up because it's more interesting than most of our other history.

check em

Bunyips have a bunch of different lore, but are present across the majority of Australia and is the most widely known cryptid we have aside from the Yowie.

The Bunyip is said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes.
The word bunyip is usually translated by some Aboriginal Australians today as "devil" or "evil spirit".
An outline of a bunyip supposedly traced by Aboriginals measured about 11 paces long and 4 paces in extreme breadth.
Characteristic of the bunyip vary from telling to telling, but common However, common features in many 19th-century newspaper accounts include a dog-like face, a crocodile like head, dark fur, a horse-like tail, flippers, and walrus-like tusks or horns or a duck-like bill.

what Australian Robin Hood by way of Iron Man not interesting?

What about the great emu war?

In all fairness Ned Kelly is like the only other australian bit of history I know, by way of movie.

Said Yowie is pretty much our bigfoot.

The yowie is usually described as a hairy and ape-like creature standing upright at between 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in) and 3.6 m (12 ft). The yowie's feet are described as much larger than a human's, but alleged yowie tracks are inconsistent in shape and toe number, and the descriptions of yowie foot and footprints provided by yowie witnesses are even more varied than those of bigfoot. The yowie's nose is described as wide and flat. The arms as extraordinarily long, furnished at the extremities with great talons. Altogether, they describe it as a hideous monster of an unearthy character and ape-like appearance.

Behaviourally, some report the yowie as timid or shy. Others describe the yowie as sometimes violent or aggressive.[

Oh no, don't get me wrong Ned Kelly and other Bushrangers are interesting too.
Great Emu war is a meme, pretty much just a cull.
We've got a few other interesting tidbits like the Eureka stockade and such, but a lot of what is taught is surrounding the founding of the different colonies, gold rush, and how the effects of other global events (depression, wars overseas) played out here.

>the great emu war
Unfortunately just a meme. The vast majority of Australians are not aware of a not particularly effective emu cull in WA in the 30s. We shoot a lot of wildlife, the fact that one cull was jokingly termed a "war" by the media doesn't make it stand out in the national myth, at least not here, maybe people in WA joke about it or something.

Much better to joke about the fact that WA voted to secede from the rest of Australia and become a new country called "The Dominion of Westralia".
They went to London after the referendum was successful but the Queen said No and sent them home. Then nothing else happened about it.

>beagles
>not high elves
For shame

WA have always been a bunch of sneaky bastards, if you ask me.

Yowies are also delicious chocolate beings which contain a toy inside of them.

>human
probably some sort of retriever, like a labrador
>elves
probably separate into wood and high elves, were wood elves would be more like shepherds, and high elves would be more whippet, like greyhounds
>orcs
mastiffs, wolfhounds, any large hunting and war dogs
>dwarves
bulldogs, bull terriers, pit bulls, various "hound" breeds like basset hounds and daschunds
>halflings
any toy breed, where it's more suited to living a life of comfort, like yorkies and sharpeis.

Shar Pei's are fighting dogs. The thick folds of skin that we find so cute about them were bred into the breed so that their skin could stretch, and thus even when the opponent's jaw is locked onto them, they can still move their head around to deliver a bite of their own.

...

Non-tinker nature Elvish-Gnomes/ Tree-Elves

Same race but rarely used.

I really wanna refluff halflings as an otter race, but people don't seem up for it

Garden Gnomes vs Christmas Elves?

Klingons in a fantasy world work well.

anything but fucking beast races.

no your lizards, dogs, owls or whatever the fuck else isnt original and it isnt cool. you could take aspects of their appearance instead of making an entire race out of the animal.

personally i like races with some lear backstory. like sentient crystals that were made to gather knowledge, and you can choose if your char wants to embrace that heritage or rebel against it

They absolutely do, but a little too cheesy desu

>Asura
This pic is actually a race in a Weeaboo game I ran. I pretty much slapped all the different east-asian mythological shit together and made a lot of custom races that reflected that. Asuras (and Devas) were basically Aasimar and Tieflings, but heavily modified away from being Good vs Evil. More like, Warrior vs Rogue.

Big hit with my players too.

You bring dishonor to your house user.

The Klingons are cool, but to bring something like that in a homebrew will get some cringes. It's like putting lightsabers in DnD, get my drift?