Races of the Slaughtervale

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The players and I are still working out who and what they wish to be.  Most of my work at this point consists of providing a platform with boundaries to shape the world.  Part of this providing the characters with a list of eligible races for the game.  Knowing that you can play a goblin or a genasi can change what you want to do with your character considerably.  So here is the “palette” of races for the Slaughtervale.

• Dragonborn – two tribes in the vale.  The southern tribes are nomadic marauders,  causing death and destruction in the name of tiamat.  The Northern tribe worships Bahamut and is  at war with the dwarves over the possession of a shared holy site.
• Drow – Underneath the surface during the Great Storm, the drow avoided the worst of the sluaghter that occurred.  They emerged to find a world ripe for the picking.  Most drow settlements are still underground, but in central Slaughtervale there is a large drow city, Ghisjae.
• Dwarves – The majority of the dwarves didn’t leave the vale due to sheer stubborness.  Fortunately for them, the mountains were largely untouuched by the disasters of the Great Storm.  The dwarves have become even more insular in the centuries since that disaster, and now they are rarely seen but by the dragonborn they war with.  Some dwarves did retreat to the shadowfell.  These dwarves went deep deep underground, and eventually became so twisted that they became duergar.
• Eladrin – the rulers of the feywild.  Appalled at the willingness of humans and other races to destroy nature simply to build homes and implements of war, the Eladrin set about the newcomers to their realm to sweep them from it.  They had not anticipated the desperate fury with which the refugees fought, and the conflict soon drew to a close.  The eladrin knew that they would eventually triumph, but did not wish to may the cost in eladrin lives in order to attain victory.  They made a treaty with the non-fey races that gave those races a small, small kingdom, reckoning that the non-fey would soon consume all their resources and be forced to expand, which would enable the eladrin to exterminate the trespassers for the breach of the treaty.
• Elves – elves also chose not to leave their ancestral homes in the Vale, and they suffered the worst for it.  By all counts a dying race, the elves roam the vale, grifting, thieving and fighting for whatever they need to survive.  They are haunted by their former glory and the lost beauty of their land.
• Genasi - the genasi were created during the Great Storm.  The souls of those who died in the Storm’s fury combined with the Elemental Chaos to cause the birth of this race.  Genasi communities can be found throughout the Slaughtervale.
• Githzerai - The Great Storm also cause some astral sites to spill over into the prime material plane.  The githzerai community of Mindholme is one of these sites.  At first distraught with their translocation, the githzerai have reasoned that the vale is very much like the elemental chaos.  Githzerai send out many adventurers to learn more of this world and to tame the chaos.
• Gnomes – children of the feywild, gnomes are actually sympathetic to the plight of the refugees.  They have good relations with them, even if the newcomers bristle at the worst of their illusionist pranks.
• Goblins - goblins can survive anything, mostly because they can breed rapidly.  Prior to the storm, the goblin population had gotten quite out of hand and threatened to overwhelm the feywild.  The eladrin couldn’t slay goblins faster than goblins could be born, so many of the houses captured goblin tribes and raised them to serve the houses.  of course, there are goblins everywhere in the Slaughtervale in all three realms.  The goblins are the most numerous race in the Slaughtervale by far.
• Half-Elves – half-elfs attempt to find their way like many of the other races.  There are few in the fey realms, but much more in the material and shadow realms.
• Halflings – the little folk were all to eager to flee the armageddon that was the Great Storm.  They seemed to split into communities of almost even size in both the fey or shadow
• Humans – despite the tragedies besetting them, humans have still found ways to prevail and flourish.  The second most numerous race, humans can be found across all three realms in strong numbers.  The variance in human communities is staggering as well.
• Tiefling – the first tiefling actually appeared long before the Great Storm.  products of infernal births and sorcerous contracts, the tieflings appeared but were quite rare.  With the appearance of some abyssal sites in the Slaughtervale, the number of tiefling has grown exponentially in the centuries since.  There are a few small tiefling communities, and some slaver towns are run by teiflings appointed by demonic masters.

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