The S.S. MMO System: Races

Like the top page of my additions to the 'Some Background (For Writers)' this page exists more as a directory of sub-pages than a distinct page on it's own, however, also like that page, it has an essay on my outlook and insights into the content which comes after it so that it is not wasted space, in this case, my stance on one aspect of the game and how influences 'race relations' and related issues. Please note when reading that this is purely my interpretation of what I have read in the stories and will make use of in my own threads, and some of it is not drawn from established content at all: take it as gospel at your own peril.

Sexual Relations, Species Boundaries, and Interbreeding:

Simply put, the people who program the game are pervs.

This shows in the fact that almost every creature in the game is capable of having sex in some way, and that most of them are somehow cross fertile with humans.

Some of these pairings merely result in human offspring with perhaps an added special ability, or a funny skin, eye, or hair color, but some, such as orcs, elves, dragons, nymphs, and giants produce distinct races when they mate with humans that are available as PCs, even if the parent race is not. In the vast majority of these 'half breed' races are infertile with anyone but other members of their own kind and their 'parent races', and in almost all cases the 'human' side is dominant, cross breeds with the race of their non-human parent producing more 'half-human' offspring, regardless of how many generations this back breeding goes on for, while those with humans produce slightly peculiar looking humans.

Some other races however also have a few outlets for their sexual urges which produce half breed offspring: most notably elves. The so called 'fair folk' produce several 'half-elfin' races, though the majority of these are not available as PCs, with three notable exceptions, 'Thralls', 'Half-Elves', and 'Elf Dragons'.

Half-Elves are the easiest to understand, they are born of a human or elfin mother and an elfin or human father, and blend many of the best traits of both. Like all 'impure' children the elvish parent typically shuns the babe leaving it in the hands of it's non-elvish parent, who, having been so rejected, often treats the child poorly. This is less true though with human mothers than other races the elves sometimes beget bastards with, for many humans buy into the elvish attitude that they are a superior race, and see half-elven children as a blessing instead of a curse. It also is a fact that Half-Elves only breed true with their own race, other than odd colors of hair or eyes half-elves who have children with full blooded elves, the children are in almost every respect fully elvish, and if with humans the same is true the other way: which, so it is said, is where humans with pale skin, red hair, and green eyes arose from.

The next race, the 'Elf Dragons' are not so blessed with the ability to breed back into their non humanoid parent's stock, though if they produce offspring with elves the same effect as with half-elves occurs. However, though dragons KNOW themselves to be superior to other races, the mothering instincts of female dragons are strong, and though they weed out the weak and infirm young those 'Elf Dragons' who survived the harsh mothering style of their draconic parent's first few years after their hatching will have an ally for life, and a relatively safe place to live.

This however is NOT true of those born to ELVIN women. The best that young Elf Dragons born to Elvin mothers can expect from their humanoid parent is that they are irreverent iconoclasts who don’t give a flying fuck what the rest of elven society thinks of their keeping the 'shameful disgrace' they have born or that their dragon father has enslaved their elven mother and is keeping her in some isolated mountain cave or other relatively inaccessible region where he forces her to nurse and care for the babe by means of some mystical compulsion that she cannot break. Fortunately (?) for the ongoing existence of 'Elf Dragons' for players to adopt as characters, these are the two most likely scenarios for a direct halfbreed elf dragon to be conceived and brought to term in the first place, however unfortunately (?) these favorable conditions are also inherently unstable, the mother eventually tiring of caring for the child and foisting him or her off on an orphanage, monastery, or convent, or if their mother was enslaved other elves somehow hear of it and come storming into their fathers lair and slaughter everyone within save their mother and other elven captives, and if the child is very lucky they find somewhere to hide that the rescue party does not search.

However, even MORE fortunately for the continuing ability of players to adopt Elf Dragons as their characters, there is at this point a semi stable population of 'wild' elf dragons, who are second third or even twelfth generation half breeds born not of elven or draconic mothers or fathers but the progeny of two 'Elf Dragons' marrying and having children. The bad news about these groups is that the elves, racist xenophobes that they are, hunt for and slaughter villages of these individuals whenever they find them, forcing most smart 'Elf Dragon' families into a rootless wandering lifestyle that is not conducive to a happy childhood, not even the stability of a 'nomads' yearly cycle of following herds and water supplies to ground their psyche, living more like hunted fugitives.

Yet even for these individuals, things are better than the conditions experienced by 'Thralls'. Since Alluvia came into being many moons ago, the Elves and the Trolls have been at war, an unending enmity of hate and bitterness that neither will even TRY to put aside. Yet, once more showing their sick sense of humor and perversity, the game designers have made these two races able to interbreed, and produce offspring stable enough to breed with each other. For reasons unknown the Elves accept and raise these bastards, who are almost universally a child of ****, but only to exploit their superior strength as an underclass of slaves who perform the hard labor that elves find unsuited to their ever so superior race. Male 'Thralls' are also typically gelded upon reaching adulthood to prevent them 'polluting' the elven race with admixture of the hated troll blood, only a few dozen kept 'uncut' even in the largest elven cities to serve as 'studs' to perpetuate the population of half elf/half troll workers. It is apparently the right of any elven woman who bears a male 'Thrall' to chose if her son will be 'cut' or 'uncut' upon reaching adulthood, but they must do it in the very day and hour of his birth, a time when most of them are feeling particularly uncharitable.

Thralls born to Troll mothers almost never live to have such concerns, their heads dashed in by the other members of the tribe within seconds of their birth. The exceptions are mostly the children of troll mothers who ran away from their tribes in shame and disgrace from having been **** by an 'elven weakling', and many of these babes die from exposure or starvation, sometimes alone on a rocky hillside, sometimes in their mothers arms even as she too succumbs. Yet, it is ironically the children of Trollish mothers who form the bulk of 'PC' Thralls: for those mothers who keep the child and survive tend to become mighty indeed and raise their sons and daughters to be instruments of their vengeance against their elven parent, a narrative that many players find compelling and good fodder for their entertainment.

The other main source of PC Thralls is escaped elven slaves. Every few years there is an uprising of thralls in one of the major elven cities, and each time a handful of them actually manage to make good their escape. Like the Elf Dragons discussed above these individuals and their children should they have any are hunted fugitives, but rumors persist of entire communities of these brave men and women living in hidden and difficult to traverse areas of the world, such as Griever's Swamp and depths of 'The World Beneath'.

Rarest of all Thrall characters are those born to two Thrall parents, and alone among their race's number some of them have a happy childhood, but their adulthood’s are often fraught with peril and tragedy. Having managed to escape or perhaps avenge their mother's **** two PC thralls sometimes team up and set out together, eventually becoming so powerful and traveling to such obscure areas that they are able to settle down without fear of elven reprisal and live comfortable lives in peace. Yet this is ever and always a FALSE sense of peace and security: the elves do not forgive, the elves can not forget, and they are always still hunting the pair. Their children, even grandchildren, may be grown by the time the elvish huntsmen track them down, but always they are found, and attacked with overwhelming ****. It is then that their children must flee, and keep fleeing, for they know now that the elves are still coming, and that they can never find peace.

Let us now return to humanity, and their mental and physical peculiarity.

For reasons best known to the players and game designers, humans by and large are Xenophylic and have a peculiar inferiority complex. Though there are humans who believe theirs is the 'Master Race' with every bit of arrogance and hauteur of the elvish lords, the majority of humans, especially NPCs, consider 'half-Blank' character's to be somehow blessed and uplifted by their non-human heritage.

Perhaps this is because 'half' something characters typically gain increased longevity VS a 'pure-strain' human, which as humans are among the shorter lived races appeals to them, or perhaps it is that humans, having their appearance scores 'race locked' envy and admire the other race's capacity to grow MORE attractive as they age instead of often losing ground in that area.

Whatever the reasons humans are much more welcoming of their halfbreed kin and children than any other race, often seeming to or outright courting such assignations. In most areas of the world this is most successful with elves, though in the White Mountain’s region the 'Old Alliance' of Elves, Dwarfs, and Humans has totally broken down, which may bode ill for the situation elsewhere because the White Mountains is one of the oldest parts of the world, and where the alliance was first established.

Many elven men find human lass's willingness to sleep with them without the expectations of an elven woman attractive, while equally many elven women find the comparatively great brawn, size, and stamina of human men strangely compelling. Thus many's the 'one night stand' turns into, about elven months later, a half-blooded child. The elves, in most of the world, perhaps because of their long standing associations and their option to foist the child off on it's human parent once it grows tiresome, actually treat their half-human children fairly well, sometimes even raising them to adulthood. Human mothers of half-elven babes generally also treat them well, as in many cases their fathers are known to return periodically with purses full of gold and a rakish smile, from which occasionally arise siblings of the young boys and girls countenance, while if the children look malnourished or abused their father will beat the mother senseless and spirit the babes away to the halls of the elves. Even those women who never see the father again have heard horror stories of the reprisals for abusing half elven infants, and keep them safe and well cared for as best they can out of fear, while elves other than their fathers passing through usually make it a point to check in on such children if they know of them, and at least buy them a meal: it is a matter of racial pride that they take care of their own, and in the human half-breeds they see far more of themselves than with any other race.

'Half-Orc' children are not so lucky. Like the Elves and the Trolls the Humans and Orcs have been at war since time out of mind and beyond, and most sexual contact between them is unwilling. Unlike the elves and trolls however it is the humans that typically dash the babe's head in or leave it to the elements and the orcs that use their half-blooded children as slaves.

Yet, also unlike the elves and trolls, the feuding between humans and orcs may be coming to a close. Ever since the Orcs were made a playable race two expansions ago there has been increasing calls among both peoples to 'bury the hatchet' and bring the orcs into the fold of the 'Old Alliance'. This was part of what caused the alliance to break down in the White Mountains, since the elves and dwarves don't have the vast number of half breeds that the humans do to argue for reconciliation and both have long histories of fighting the orcs themselves, no longer willing to lay it blithely aside even though it was the humans who first dragged them into it in the dawning days of the world.

These days in some places where the humans are largely isolated from their dwarven and elvish allies but not from their now former rivals there are even 'mixed' human and orc communities, where half-orcs are arising not out of ****, but inter-marriage, and these are showing signs of becoming the 'preferred' picks for PC status. Moreover in many other places half-orcs are arising from willing unions, AMONG PCs. It often doesn't take much for a player running a female orc to decide to have sex with a comely human male in her party, and with one thing leading to another... Give it six month and they have a couple of half orc sons and/or daughters. (Almost all female orcs have at least fraternal twins with each birth, and having two pairs of identical twins is not even remarkable, it is having as single baby which causes comment.) These too are being eagerly snapped up when they reach the age of majority as PCs, and continue to shift the perception of half-orc characters away from their negative roots.

In a similar but not quite identical vein we have what are known as 'Hill Giants', 'Half-Giants', and 'Giant Blooded', the game designers using the three terms interchangeably most of the time even though they actually are the three earliest stages/options for the race evolution of this type of character. Giants, of several types and breeds, including 'mountain', 'fire', 'frost', 'jungle', 'storm', 'sea', 'swamp', and 'guardian', are a diverse class of monsters from mid to high level quests, whom, being the ultimate attraction to so called 'mountain climbers' often find themselves ****, seduced, or be-spelled into having sex with Human Male PCs, and very occasionally larger and more "experienced"* female human PCs. It is from these unions that Half-Giants arise, to use the proper term from the race selection screen.
*(In terms of something other than level...)

The circumstances of a Half-Giant's childhood and upbringing vary wildly, largely depending on those of his or her conception. Those born of coercive encounters with a giantess mother sometimes do not live past infancy, smothered or beaten to ****, like Trollish born Thralls and human mothered half-orcs, and in any case can, like Trollish born Thralls, expect at best to be trained as a weapon of vengeance: but those who were the result of seduction often have fairly happy youths, especially if their mother is a micro-boss monster in an obscure area of an otherwise well traveled zone to which her seducer returns frequently for repeated 'encounters'. If that is the case, as it is about half the time, they youth will grow up amidst a family of five or ten other 'Half-Giant' brothers and sisters, and other than the occasional raid by less social characters they usually have a good time. The ones born from be-spelling of their mother can go either way, depending largely on a simple 'on/off' switch in the games code, if they have an orgasm during the sexual encounter they will remember it as a seduction, if not as a ****.

The ones born to female humans have a much easier time of it survival wise, but often are abandoned with a chest full of gold and a note in the outer courtyard of a monastery or convent, and never know their mothers, who while they were willing to bear the enormous babe were not willing to lug him/her around. As a result of this many of them grow up to have abandonment issues which most players don't want to deal with in a character, though there are exceptions.

Thus the majority of Half-Giant PCs are those who grew up with large boisterous happy families in obscure back allies of well trafficked dungeons or other zones, who are typically snapped up regardless of class by SOME player within hours of turning 21 and being 'adults', and leave their home and family for adventure and fortune. It is worth noting that such PCs are also the SOURCE of the majority of such potential Half-Giant characters, finding other giantesses like their mothers and courting/seducing them the same way their fathers did, and in many cases their grandfathers before them.

'Half-Dragon' characters share most of the traits of 'Elf Dragons' mentioned above with the exception of the primarily coercive nature of the sexual encounters that create them and their humanoid parents reaction to their existence. Many human men and women, even NPCs, will mate with dragons quite willingly, and find their hypnotic serpentine beauty intensely attractive and arousing in spite of the fact that they are not even really physiologically compatible except due to the perverse twisting of the laws of nature by the game designers.

The genus 'Draco' are warm blooded, scaled, serpentine, egg laying, monsters with six limbs and innate magical powers, including some kind of breath weapon or gaze attack. Of these only the 'True Dragons' are normally intelligent, which have two arms, two legs, and two wings attached to lizard like bodies, their 'serpentine' nature reflected in their long necks and tails. Other members of the genus are not intelligent, though they may posses a bestial cunning, such as the Basilisk, Amphire, Mirror Beast, and Chimera, and only True Dragons produce Half-Dragon offspring.

Due to the power of their inhuman parent and the pride of place they take up in myth and folklore outside the game as well as the lack of prejudice and even admiration from their humanoid parent's race, half-dragons are highly sought as PCs to the point that the right to adopt one is raffled off for cash in the 'real' world whenever a clutch of them become available. They thus are considered a 'prestige' race, and only the most wealthy or experienced players will have one as a character, which in turn leads to them normally becoming very powerful. Many's the bloodline of 'Kings', 'Princes', and 'Dukes' in human lands has a half-dragon as it's founder and/or more recent admixture, and as such it is common to see royalty and high nobility with the 'sorcerer/sorceress' class. In some areas of larger empires the King/Queen even MUST be and marry a Half-Dragon, which has led to both great and mighty lineages of half-dragon characters and story's of both tragedy and triumphant joy when the heir of the crown fell in love with someone other than the half-dragon they were 'supposed' to.

Half-Dragon characters that breed with humans produce human offspring with a handful of minor cosmetic differences and an additional special ability or two, who also almost always become sorcerers/sorceresses, having a natural affinity for magic. These so called 'Dragon Blooded' humans are very common in some places, and are often snapped up by players without the patience or cash to get a full on Half-Dragon when they become available at 18.

There is one more note on the subject which is worth mentioning, Half-Dragon and 'Elf Dragon' characters, can breed together freely, much like Humans and Elves, but their children are not a separate race, the human blood being dominant and resulting in another 'Half-Dragon' with only cosmetic differences showing their elven heritage, and the same is true of Half-Elf characters who have children with Dragons.

Next on our agenda to mention is a group of races which while they can breed with humans do not even get the satisfaction of producing a “half” race with them, much to the annoyance of their players: Dwarves.

There are about 7 'Dwarven' races in the game including 'Deep Dwarves' 'Mountain Dwarves' 'Hill Dwarves' (AKA 'Gully Dwarves', derogatively) and 'Dwarf Lords' (which can arise spontaneously from any of the others), all of which can breed with humans but none of which produce a 'Half-Dwarven' race with humans, the results of such cross breeds being humans with the special quality of 'dwarfism' which can arise spontaneously among humans without Dwarven admixture. Those humans with dwarfism who are the result of Human/Dwarven unions also get a special ability which makes them immune to the negative effects of **** consumption, a weaker version of their dwarfish parent's racial ability that allows **** to actually reduce 'THIRST' and requires it to fully reduce that track to 0%, but that's all the benefit they get from their odd parentage.

Though Dwarves are one of the 'founding' PC races of the game and there has been a general clamor among both some human and many dwarven players for a 'half-dwarven' race to be added to the game the Game Designers have thus far, over a dozen expansions and a hundred 'patches' later, still not done so.

One theory advanced for the reason behind this is that if they WERE to create such a race all existing “Half-Dwarven” character's races would have to be updated to the new race, or 'grandfathered' to stay as they are, and either way the players of a significant percentage of those character's would be: A: annoyed that the traits of their race which are key to their class's performance changed, or B: that they did not get the benefits of the new race which would have improved their class's abilities, while new players DID. Perhaps this is the reason, in-spite of repeated petitions and referendums in favor of there being a 'half-dwarven' race added to the game, that the designers have not done so, and it seems the most likely one advanced so far.

In spite of protestations that the Dwarves are being 'neglected' by the designers on these and other minor grounds the dwarves have almost as many outlets for their sexuality in terms of half-breed races as humans and elves, Being also able to breed with dragons, as well as gnomes, halflings, and ogres, each producing a unique and playable 'half-blank' race.

I will be more brief with their half-breed races, since they mostly follow the same general forms as those of elves and/or humans, and though I have been convinced to continue this monologue I still feel I am going slightly off the deep end in terms of length and have a few more areas with humans that I wish to cover before wrapping it up.

Dwarven Half-Breeds with Ogres and Dragons follow the same general tendencies as those of Elves with Trolls and Dragons, an 'Oroug' or 'Dwarf Dragon' can be expected to be hunted and hounded their entire life, for dwarves have long standing racial enmities with these monsters, save that neither race will normally be kept as slaves, rather killed at birth by both sides under normal circumstances.

Those with Gnomes and Halflings follow the same general guidelines as half-elves, and the new type of Half-Orcs their dwarven parent will come back by to check on them with money and a kind word, and in many places the so called 'Stunties' (derogatory) have blended communities with the other 'smaller' PC races. As such 'Ciberflyn' and 'Hard-Feet' have relatively banal childhoods for the most part, and thought neither is popular as a PC race, they often live simple unremarkable lives as NPCs, lives filled with the minor events common to those living in dwarven, gnomish, or halfling cities and towns.

Returning again to humans and their diverse PC-Available crossbreed races, I wish at this juncture to mention Half-Nymphs.

Nymphs are one of the more diverse classes of 'monster' included in the game, and also one of the oldest. Made part of the game in the first expansion along with the 'Half-Nymph' race option, they have remained a popular source of sexual encounters for human characters and the resulting races members, while not having near the population and appeal to the player base of individuals such as, say, half elves and halflings, never the less are picked up often enough that they pass without comment in most human regions of the world.

Half-Nymph characters are popular due to having one of the highest base/max appearance scores of any race in the game, never having an appearance lower than 50 and that only if the player reduces the the 'starting' score of 60, to get points to spend elsewhere. Most half nymphs who get adopted as PCs end up with appearance scores of 100, and some have players so obsessed with physical beauty that they wind up at their race cap of 140.

Half-Nymphs have peculiar childhoods almost always being raised by their Nymph mothers these girls live in sylvan glades and pools where they survive on raw wild berries, roots, leafy vegetables, and nuts as well as the occasional incautious Critter. Their mother's idea of educating the babe as she grows tends to be in things such as art, lore, music, and magic leading to women who commonly become Bards. If you are wondering why I keep using female pronouns there is a good reason for that: it is a peculiarity of Half-Nymphs and a few other races that they all are one gender, in this case, as you probably had guessed, female.

In a similar vein we have Half-Satyrs. Added at the same time as half-nymphs these hairy, brawny, men, have CON scores just as high as a half=nymph's appearance, and also favor that attribute as well slightly. Yet even so, they remain a fairly rare race in terms of PCs due to the unruly behavior of many of the first members of this race having given them a negative reputation in many areas which persists to this day, as well as the small horns on their heads and cloven hoofed feet making many NOOBS assume them to be related to demon kind.

Half-Satyrs childhoods are not nearly as bucolic and unencumbered as half-nymphs, most often occurring at an orphanage, monastery, or the home of a human relative who cares for them out of duty or because they are paid to, not with love, rarely being raised by their adventurer mothers. It is the few who ARE that traditionally become PCs and have adventures of their own, and even so they often are 'retired' after only a few levels as the players tire of the prejudice and judgment they experience with the character.

It is another peculiarity of Half-Nymphs and Half-Satyrs that if they have children with each other there is a 25% chance that the child will be a full blooded Nymph or Satyr, and grow over 5-9 years to adulthood’s and leave to find it's own kind. It is also not wholly unknown for human children of either of these races to encounter half siblings among the ranks of such 'monsters' in woodland areas decades later, and end up committing unknowing ****, with all the negative results of the same.

Lastly, at least for now, and any further such commentary will go on a separate sub page, there is the matter of 'Hero Born' monsters.

Sometimes a 'Hero' will be captured by some types of monster which can implant them with eggs or larva or other progeny. The resulting members of the parent monster's race are endowed with increased intellect and other stats, and the ability to move between zones as heroes do even when not 'tamed'. The most notorious type of monster for doing this is the 'Common Black Web Weaver Giant Spider', which have at various times become a major menace to the world of Alluvia in this way, requiring the unified effort of the member races of the 'Old Alliance' to put down the incursions. Other monsters are known for this too however, especially 'Baneworms' who though individually weak use mass numbers to attack and subdue heroines and heroes and implant their larva in the victims bodies, which then travel to other servers, even ones that have bans on Bane Worm Spawns, and start the cycle again.

The good news for the players is that the status of 'Hero Born' monster is not heritable, except by implanting the next generation in a hero/heroine as well. Monsters born from 'hero born' monsters in the normal way are always common monsters of their type. The other good news is that until such a monsters comes to a 'hero spawn platform' in a town or other area and attunes to it, it is like they are playing on 'hardcore' mode no matter what server they are on, if they die they die 'for keeps'.

In no case can such monsters be taken on as PCs, and they also are in some cases ruthlessly exterminated by the Mods and Admin, especially Baneworm infestations on servers which are not supposed to have any.

And it suddenly occurs to me that I have veered excessively verbose, so unless people want me to keep writing about this stuff, and say so in the comments, that's all out of me.

EDIT: Which they DID, and thus I have continued.

EDIT 2: And just another friendly reminder: the essay above is STRICTLY my own 'Head Canon' and personal spin on things mentioned in some of the threads of this 'game', those of you who wish to use it as basis for your own threads and content, be my guest, I would be honored: those of you who DON'T: absolutely do not have to!