Races and Sex in Thenard

These resource pages are to be considered Work-in-Progress. Expect to see more detail added to them as I progress plots and add more details to the developing setting.

Races

There are seven original intelligent races in Thenard: giants, fae, dwarves, humans, elves, arachnae, and orcs. These seven races are the most numerous and dominant thinking species in the known world. On the continent of Ruhn, giants and arachnae are virtually unheard of and fae are a rare sighting, but the other original races are present in significant numbers.

Profane Races are races that weren't part of the gods' creation act. Rather, they were part of the earliest necromancers’ desecration of the gods’ world. Many of these races were little more than experiments, **** fodder, or simple exercises in vanity. A few were designed to be harem species, and even fewer were intended to be outright improvements on the gods’ original races. Of these profane races, drow, catfolk, and gnomes have prospered despite the ignominy of their origins, and they rule some of the ancient kingdoms of Ruhn now.

Sex

All of the races of Thenard, except the arachnae and their profane races, have sex in a more or less traditional manner, making size the biggest indicator of whether sex is physically possible amongst them. Giants, for instance, can only really have sex amongst their own kind and half-giants. Orc males are big and feature barbed phalluses that ensure that reproduction outside their species and profane races is rarely consensual. Orc females, likewise, are usually too rough for willing pairings. Merfolk have the unique ability to shape-change into their true sexual organs specifically for the act of sex, being asexual otherwise.

Pregnancy

The original races are not, however, able to reproduce with each other. Each original race can breed with all of its profane races--such a mating will produce offspring of the original race. Half-races, though, are also compatible with all of the other races--matings with them will produce more of the profane race, unless the other race is a profane race of the same original race. So, a Half-Dwarf mating with a Dwarf creates a Dwarf, but a Human or an Elf mating with a Half-Dwarf creates a Half-Dwarf. Even so, the offspring of such mixed pairings might inherit more subtle traits from the minority parent. Also: all of the elven profane races are essentially half-elves when it comes to reproduction, and half-orcs will always create offspring of the same race as the mother, unless the father is an orc and the mother is half-orc, in which case an orc is created. Vampires cannot reproduce sexually, and both amazons and catfolk are effectively half-human in terms of reproduction.

Arachnae and driders have sex in a manner somewhat similar to spiders. The male spreads his seed on some webbing and uses his dextrous forelimbs to apply it to the appropriate female. This act is selectively arousing to the male and female only when in the presence of fertility hormones--they do not do this recreationally, and view other races as especially disgusting for doing so. The pregnant arachnae or drider will become pregnant and produce one to three eggs in four months, which will create a drider unless both parents are arachnae. Fetch, being much more human than arachnae or driders, can have sex in the traditional manner of either arachnae or the other races. All matings involving fetch produce fetch after a fairly normal pregnancy cycle.