In a fantasy world, is it possible for entire new species to arise through a long lineage of crossbreeding? As we all know, in a lot of fantasy settings, different species can reproduce with each other (e.g., half-orcs, half-elves, etc.), but what would happen if the half-x's kept reproducing from there?
Like, what would you call the result of a human-elf hybrid boning a mixed race orc/dwarf? What would its stats be? It couldn't feasibly be called any of the species in its lineage, since it's only 1/4 orc/elf/dwarf/human. What would it even look like?
This isn't even a shitpost, I've always just been legit curious about how far you could take mutt species in a fantasy setting.
Mongrelfolk, +1 to two stats of their choice, or +2 to a single stat of their choice.
Oliver Walker
>This isn't even a shitpost And yet you chose that particular OP pic. I'll let it slide, but put some more thought into it next time. I mean, the general rule of thumb for real life is that hybrids can't breed, nevermind breed with other hybrids of a different type.
James Thomas
That was basically the population of Assholia.
The place was used as a prison colony + magical dumping site added to it not being a nice place to start with. The locals were shortish, broad at the shoulders, wiry and typically piebald grey and green in colour. Facial features were typically half orc but with more human nose. Ears were small and usually pointed. Usually had short blunt tusks. Matured at a human rate but nobody knew how long they could live as the nature of Assholia never made that an option.
Liam Rivera
>Tfw you think it's going to be a shit post but it's actually a rather interesting and intelligent topic
Logan Peterson
You guys are probably right, it wasn’t the smartest choice for an OP pic. I just don't have any fitting character art saved, and I didn't know what else to put aside from the mutt meme.
And yeah, they could be sterile like in real life, but I'm not sure it'd always apply in a fantasy setting.
Logan Cooper
>In a fantasy world, is it possible... Yes.
Joshua Morgan
>newfags who probably don't even know that mongrelmen have been a staple of D&D since first edit
Look 'em up.
Jordan Bell
Wouldn't you need the resulting crossbreed race to be seperated from both parent-species to sort of 'stabilize' the resulting species and find their own culturual identity?
Benjamin Clark
Going by what I've read Pathfinder 2nd Edition is going to try something like this, with "ancestry" instead of "race".
Nathan Butler
Came here to point this out
Blake Scott
Weren't they created by wizard fuckery rather than generations of interbreeding?
Juan Smith
It's like trait inheritance in Breeding Season, you put all features on a list then roll to see what will pop up.
Ayden Thomas
...
Oliver Martinez
>the more races that get mixed in the more Mary Sue the child becomes This explains a lot really.
Tyler Ramirez
>Weren't they created by wizard fuckery rather than generations of interbreeding? Might depend on the edition.
Connor Reed
Doesn't say anything about wizards here either.
Jason Richardson
>Enslaved by evil or chaotic groups
But isn't slavery inherently lawful?
Ayden Thomas
>But isn't slavery inherently lawful? No? You can randomly decide to kill a kid's parents and take him as a slave.
Ian Campbell
Lawful evil would just have laws and regulations regarding their slaves, how the slaves are treated or sold, who can be a slave, etc. Chaotic evil would just enslave anyone too weak for freedom
Nicholas Fisher
Depends on the setting and how interbreeding is conducted. Let's use WoW, for instance. All (Playable) races in Warcraft are capable of interbreeding, however some of them result simply in slightly 'different' members of one of the Parent races (Tauren with smaller horns. Different hair colors considered unnatural to the race. Altered teeth.) However there's also significantly deeper cross-breeds, most common of these being Half-(High)Elves due to their close geographical relations. Half-Elves remain conpletelt combatible with other races, leading to even more possibilities. Oddly enough, however, there is in fact a (sort of) canonical mongrel in Warcraft, Med'an, pic related. Med'an is a half human, quarter orc, quarter draenei spawn sired by Garona Halforcen (Orc/Draenei) and Medivh (Human). Due to the nature of those races, Med'an had access to >Shamanism >The Arcane >The Light >Implied Demonology >Possible Druidism The combination of which is un-fucking-heard of among other races. He also happens to be a blatant donut that hasn't been involved in the proper game, and hasn't been seen in the comics in years.
I believe there's also the myth that Night Elves were sired by Elune, Goddess of the Moon, and a giany godly Stag. That has been debunked, however.
Noah Rivera
Don't see why it couldn't. Have you seen some of the origins for races both in fantasy settings and real world mythology?
Oliver Morgan
They had an "Ecology of the Mongrelfolk" article in Dragon where it's explained they were the results of one wizard's artificial doppelgangers breeding with each other; all of the creatures that their parents had absorbed genes from to assume the shape off ended up being partially expressed, resulting in their mish-mash features. Their cultural trait of cannibalizing the bodies of other races opportunistically is why they stay as unstable freaks.
Xavier Powell
I'll have to look at this, thanks
Camden Johnson
The Ecology of the Mongrelmen/Mongrelfolk showed up in Dragon Magazine #242, which also had stats for the Mongrelman, Infiltrator, the original creature from which they descend.
Evan Evans
So, really, what are the possibilities for new races to evolve from interbreeding?
In D&D itself, Stout and Tallfellow halflings have long been insinuated to be the result of halfling/dwarf and halfling/elf pairings.
The fantasy series Lankhmar is home to a race of ratfolk born from the union of humans and sapient giant rats, for example.
So, what can we do?
Wyatt Taylor
Actual crossbreeding like this would take hundreds of thousands of years if it happened naturally. It'd possible to artifically increase the speed at which it happens similar to how we domesticated dogs and then bred them in peculiar ways. What you'd need is a population that is forced to inbreed regularly so that their society becomes entirely inbred and then co ti ues that way until it is so different it could mo longer mate with other species.
In fact, looking at it scientifically the fact that Humans can interbreed with Elves and Orcs but Elves and Orcs can't breed together points more towards Elves and Orcs already being sub-species of Humans, as they have yet to go through speciation. Dwarves and Gnomes may have developed separately, or have been so inbred to have already speciated.
Lucas Gray
Isn't this what Bretons are, in the Elder Scrolls series? A new race made by a distinctively mixed elven and human heritage?
Easton Wood
Yep.
Basically, in TES, mixed race children usually aren't a thing - they tend to just turn out the mother's race. But the Bretons originated from the Direnni using human sex slaves for so many generations that a new species of human arose.
They're still humans, but they do have a touch of elven blood.
Thanks user, I actually read this when the issue first came out but I had completely forgotten about it.
Carson Howard
DELETE THIS RIGHT NOW
Aiden Morgan
the centaurs in WoW were also fathered by a keeper of the grove (essentially a male dryad) fucking an earth elemental
David Phillips
this is the patrician answer
Wyatt Price
Now I'm just imagining a bunch of fantasy races on fantasy Veeky Forums posting amerimutt memes with things like "I'm 1/64th Elvish!"
Justin Gonzalez
What? Why would it be?
Caleb James
Much like irl goblinos, they become addicted to sugar
Austin Lewis
>In fact, looking at it scientifically the fact that Humans can interbreed with Elves and Orcs but Elves and Orcs can't breed together points more towards Elves and Orcs already being sub-species of Humans, as they have yet to go through speciation. Dwarves and Gnomes may have developed separately, or have been so inbred to have already speciated.
This was my first thought as well. If they can breed they must have a common ancestor somewhere. They're more like different ethnicities than different species and it's easy enough to explain the more noticeable differences (pointy ears, racial bonuses/traits, etc.) away through magic's influence.
I was just thinking I'd never seen a half-Elf in TES and wondered what the deal was with that. I've been playing the series since Daggerfall and had no idea the Bretons were actually part-elf.
Jack Gutierrez
> what would you call...a mixed race orc/dwarf?
Obviously that's a dorc.
Jayden Mitchell
Or a orcarf
Jacob Brooks
WHITER THAN YOU MUHHAMED
Asher Ortiz
New species? I don't think different species would be able to breed with each other generally, except in occasional circumstances like horse-donkey mules (Which are sterile) or horse-zebra (Which also might be sterile). I would venture to guess that if two different species can produce offspring capable of reproduction, there'd probably only be a small window of time in the entirety of history that you wouldn't wind up with the majority of the species mixed together.
If you mean different ethnicities within a species (From what you're implying with your picture), you can have something like ethnogenesis, which I suppose would be something like how latin Americans arose within the last few centuries. Because there's no way to test for specific genes, nor are ethnic groups specifically defined by having or not having specific genes but instead by general features visible to the eye, you really just need a set of ethnic groups to inhabit an area in semi-isolation for a few centuries before you get a mix of traits and genes throughout the population, and if you take that to its logical conclusion, you eventually get a group of people that share common traits throughout the majority of the population. You could also apply selective breeding as in the case of livestock and other domesticated animals to prefer certain traits over others, if you were attempting to crossbreed populations to arrive at desired traits (This could also be done naturally, such as encouraging a group of people with a certain ear, nose, or eye shape, color of eye/hair, or anything else that's carried on genetically to have more children than those that don't, without getting too deep into factors like recessive genes.).
Elijah Butler
I just assume any crossbreed in a fantasy setting is sterile, it keeps the amount of different races down, excuses why there's not large populations of mixed populations throughout the world, and helps remove the headache that is deciding the physiology of each creature. Even if a player wants to play a character with parents from different races, it's easier just to build something on the spot for them rather than think about how things apply to an entire subrace.
Mason Perry
Fucking kill yourself.
Christopher Evans
The legend of Assholia continues.
Keep in mind that in the original thread a lot of their appearance was also dictated by things like magical radiation exposure, long terms chemical exposure and starvation/cannibalism.
