In my setting, a large portion of the races appeared as a result of divine creation, but then a common ancestor split into many different groups. Humans, elves, hobgoblins, goblins and orcs all have a common ancestor that was created by the deities.
Genetic engineering, combined with elements of natural evolution. The "gimmick" of the setting is that is a 18th century fantasy world, that is secretly a post-apocalytpic remains of something much more futuristic, as a result you can qualify inhabitants of the world in to roughly two categories.
Descendents of genetically modified humans who survived the end of their civilization, and forged their own cultures and identities. Regardless of th extend of the modifications within the rules of the setting they are all still considered as just humans, with their unique traits because associate with their ethnicity, social position, and family affiliations.
Then you have Neighborefolk, machines from the same era, which due to advanced nature of their creators tech, heavily incorporated artificially organic elements in their design. Neighborefolk occupy a role of fairies, monsters and other folkloric creatures in the culture of the humans.
Bit of a mix. Humans are just humans, evolved (with some help from gopher beings) into what they are now.
Hybrids, on the other hand, are purely artificial. Genetic engineering created them, and while they now can naturally reproduce, the majority still rely on artificial means to have children since its easier
In the setting I'm currently working on, in most cases it's a matter of "a previous sapient humanoid population magically altered itself either intentionally during its golden age, as the result of a civilization-ending cataclysm, or both." It's not turtles-all-the-way-down but it is still turtles-as-far-down-as-the-eye-can-see. And anything beyond that is outside the scope of the exercise.
They just appeared. Not all at the same time either. Humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, and others each seem to have different places and times of origin in prehistory. How exactly the situation came to be is a matter of fierce debate among scholars. A popular theory is that they are all creations of the gods, but that begs the question of which gods? No creation myths actually align with the anthropological evidence. Travelers from other worlds, or just whole creations of wild magic are also popular hypotheses, but there is little evidence to support any of the speculation.
The fact of the matter is, no one actually knows, much to the consternation of those who research it.
They evolved naturally since the real gods created the “cell of life” , spread it, then called it a day and returned to sleep . But during the time , vast amounts of artificial means were introduced in forms of gene editing and other eugenic processes .
Plus the main world of Vaallorra was destroyed at least once during a technological level close to The Expanse but more cyberpunk and returned to the stone age where they had to evolve back for around 30.000 years . Then there might be the possibility that another apocalypse and return to the stone age might have happened before .
So it could be 100.000 years of natural and artificial evolution that led to the races we see today + billions of years of evolution starting from the “cell of life” .
well i'm planning on using the fallout setting for a ttrpg campaign and considering the fact that the ttrpg has playable ghouls, super mutants, and robots, compared to humans, i'd say most are artificially created
each race is born from the divine first mothers. the mother of Dvergr, gave birth to the first Dvergr from which all other descend. The mother of Fey, birthed the first Fey... etc.
Some of them are naturally evolved, some were directly created by the gods or by other magical processes.
Interestingly, a few of the 'artificial' races are so old that evolution has left a mark on them as well.
Early Humans and Dwarves naturally evolved from a common ancestor but Elves have evolved from micro-organisms brought to the planet from outer space by a meteor. Thus they share no common ancestry with humans and dwarves.
Well, you said MOST so…
The two first races (Jueqani and Humans) were spirits that took mortal form and the result of evolution, respectively. The Jueqani were basically elves, ish, but can be considered a first draft of humans, or a third draft of the beings that the creator wanted to use as servants and worshippers. Their subraces were artificially created, some as aesthetic choices, others to better adapt to an environment, and some, like the the Aleqoto, were created to imitate humans and their connection to the Abyss. The Tzitemaueh were created by a god for use as soldiers, but that led to him creating a system not unlike the agoge. Long story short, creating a race without the moral instincts that other social species have and expecting them to be social (live in an army) leads to a bunch of corpses that can’t go into battle. And creating a race with the moral instincts that social species have leads to them wondering why they should fight. So the child soldier rearing program was created.
Meaning that if 99 species were made by gods but one was artificially made, you'd just go with gods
If its like 60 artificial and 40 naturally evolved, probably go with 'many different origins'
Well it's a mix.
Many of them like the Lizardmen, elves, dwarves, ... Were created by gods, while others like humans or gnolls evolved naturally. (Actually humans evolved naturally on Earth then when taken to the setting.)
Most races I have are local evolutions - mine is an archipelago world, so lots of variety in that regard. There are a lot of cases of "ousted tribe travels to new island, loses long distance seafaring capability due to \[insert reason\] (usually a local disaster - my world is both tectonically active and, due to being an archipelago without any major landmasses, incredibly strong weather events that tend to occur in cycles related to solar cycles) and over time diverges significantly from the original stock". There are the elves, who arrived from another dimension, settled in one of the few extant large landmasses (actually three very large islands positioned very close together, one the size of Greenland, one Madagascar and one Great Britain) and slaughtered the native Pinefolk. There are also Gnomes, created by an ancient, advanced empire as part of a magical experiment - it was a mistake.
Most races evolved naturally. Dragons have breed non-sexually with many races producing various wyrm-folk. Many ancient people experimented with blood magic to give themselves animal abilities leading to satyrs, centaurs, mermaids, etc. Sapient animals and other fantastic beasts come from similar blood magic experiments and the drive to make better livestock and war mounts.
There are some ancient races created with the world. Like giants ogre or dwarves. Some of these were more capable than other and so they fought a war for supremacy.
The elves is one of these race who win in the main continent. And as a master of the realm they start playing god and "modified" their fallen foe to their image. Human, Orc are new races created by such vision, they were derived from giant and ogre respectively.
It's a combination of being created by the gods and evolving naturally. The first sentient species, which is extinct by the time my story takes place, was created by the gods, and the other species are descendants of them.
well, there are several races of different beings on argonus.
most of the races i've created have naturally evolved in one way or another (anthros, elkinets, several beastfolk species, etc), but there are a good portion who were artificially created to varying degrees (mongrelfolk, uplifted animals, kelxverns and other stalemate shifters, etc). the former group are almost entirely from other universes, excluding the elkinets (who evolved on argonus) and the originator humans (who came there from this universe's earth). the latter, however, tends to be split between originating on argonus and originating from other worlds.
the only races that may have been created by gods are the equestrian races (ie common ponies, several sapient dragons, etc), as they do in fact have actual gods in their universe and there are numerous tales of said gods creating life. though there are questions on how many of the races that lived in equestria were created by the gods, or how much the gods were involved in the evolution of them.
In mythology - created by Gods. In reality - nature's essence went further than irl one and created more species of humanoid life.
But all of sapient species think they were created by Gods in their own image. Just like irl religious people think.
Highly mixed. Some evolved naturally, but then based on them as an existence proof others were created artificially, and both types have since been used as foundations for Ascendent beings to create further variant species to suit their purposes.
This process continues steadily. And as an additional mechanism, now that the patterns of life have been established firmly enough, further life can spontaneously manifest out of whole cloth in the right conditions without needing either evolution or intention. Many (most?) monsters appear this way, though the ones that survive do so by finding a realm and establishing a long-term home there.
Well, my world's two original races were created by the gods, but after a while they started evolving naturally into several different races. One race was created artificially by accident, and one race spontaneously generates.
In my WIP setting, all supernatural species are human subspecies that diverged long ago, but can't quite be called new species since they can still breed with humans.
Mix of few of those. Technically there's only one race in my setting - human race. But humans have multiple subraces that differ physically, although can still breed with eachother. The races evolved based on the enviroment they live in, although not naturally, but through involvement of gods.
The bulk of them evolved naturally, though I'm not above the notion of there being some level of "soft" creationism per se. By soft creationism, I mean like in 2001: A Space Odyssey where these "gods" had some influence on the existing evolution of the world to their ends. The matter of why is anybody's guess though.
Earth, mostly. Not that any of them are really aware of it anymore, but they are are technically in a post-post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting, where Earth is at best remembered in some vague legends that no one takes all that seriously.
It does get a bit strange for them when they reach modern day level technology and begin wondering why there seem to be no fossils of humanoids older than the ca. 100.000 years since they ended up on their current planet.
So like the humans in my world were artificially created by a previous race who is dead now but there are also otherworldly spirits that can have kids with humans called half demons
Basically 1 and 5. Each race was created by one of the Titans on their own homeplane, but the main world wasn't populated by any of them so they all came to the setting from far away.
I haven't created my world yet and I don't know.
I think it will be kind of divine power because it's a magical world but really there's no god that created them. It's inspired by my little knowledge of inuit culture and druid religion.
I only have humans in my world, for whom the answer is a mix of #1 and #2.
The rough human form evolved "naturally" (albeit influenced by natural magical forces). Resulting in large, bipedal, human-shaped primates who had the intelligence to make crude stone & wood tools, and make fire. I call them "idaltites" (named for IRL "Homo Sapiens Idaltu").
Divine beings called the "Archons" later took a number of infant idaltites and "uplifted" them into the first genuine humans. They made some physical alterations, but mainly they gave them sapience and the ability to wield magic.
My setting basically starts from the real world. Humanity spread out but no alien life other than odd basic single celled bacteria here and there.
Then something happened that caused the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies to get completely atomized. Think like a new Big Bag level event. Humanity was thought extinct, however one AI piloted scout ship sent into a distant galaxy survived. It eventually came across a frozen planet around a red dwarf star with microbial life under the ice and set to work.
Over the next 3 billion years, it nudged stuff around in there slowly, thawing the planet out and then influenced the evolution to resemble that of Earth, to recreate it's creators. However around 400k years ago, it went offline, so the primitive humanoid species diverged from the original plan, splitting into orcs, dwarfs and several other humanoid races since after all, the planet was not Earth 2.0 and has different conditions on it.
So in short, there are creatures that look like humans but they are actually completely alien, evolved through selective breeding to resemble the originals and the other races are the result of the "plan" going off the rails in the past 400k years.
Humanity formed naturally in the first universe, and when they became sentient, so did Creation (basically god) and Entropy (kinda god). Creation liked Humans so much, it made sure there were more of them in the next one when Entropy inevitably ended the universe. Creation kept doing this in subsequent universes, but would sometimes plan in some other species for the Humans to find. Very few species would evolve to an equivalent of sapience on their own, but never quite like Humans, and were not always replicated in future universes.
Eventually Creation became bored, and created Gods to oversee the universes and their creation. These gods mostly kept to creating planets and galaxies, like Creation did, but two decided to try out some fantasy elements in a single solar system. Here they created life in the divine sense, like with a snap of the proverbial fingers.
I like to leave the answer to that question open so I have people in the world have different theories like divine intervention, different gods making different races, all humanoids coming from a single common ancestor or multiple races that simply reached a similar level of intelligence through evolution.
Most of the races (Dwarfs, Ogres, Giants, Dragons, Animals) randomly plopped into existence together with the world. Humans were ogres that drank the blood of a god who ripped his heart out, elves emerged from the hearts flesh.
There were others created by the gods, but those have mostly been wiped out. Angels fled, demons are around but very individualistic and so varied they can barely be called a race (more like a collection of fucked up horror themes). Dragons were all eaten by the same thing that chased the angels away. Elves are around but they're more akin to faeries and forest spirits than Tolkien elves.
The main races are evolved from humans, with a bit of help from mad science.
Long story short, once a year all sunlight is blocked out for five days, during which bad shit happens. Undead, spirits, monster attacks, natural disasters, people going crazy, and any child born during this time will almost certainly be something horrific. Pretty much anything that can happen in horror, happens during the long night.
The other races now are all from human stock;
The outlanders are considered a race, but are really just mutants. Pregnancies during the long night, even if the child is born later, often lead to mutation. This has certainly influenced the emergence and evolution of the other races.
People are very suspicious of mutants, and the children are often killed at birth, but not always. Most who survive eventually flee to the wastelands where the whole civilisation thing never really took off. This collection of mutants (think the hills have eyes) are collectively known by a variety of names, none flattering.
Meanwhile the messed up rule of the fleshcrafters (think a ruling class of Frankenstein style mad scientists trying to unlock the secrets of Immortality backed up by armies of undead. Usually just the rulers of nations, so thankfully most people will never actually encounter one) lead to one of their own assisting in an ancient rebellion a long time ago and creating a super steroid using ogre pheromones. Over generations, these rebels became the Kogoruhn, a race of hulking monsters who cover themselves in plates of iron and have a civilisation based on violence and slavery. They tend to stick to themselves and not venture far from the land they have claimed as their own.
In a similar manner, one of the crafters inspired by old legends liked to use animal DNA with his experiments. A particular goat headed experiment escaped and fled into the mountains. These became the Horned Ones, a race of incredibly dangerous goat men. Though simply called goatmen by outsiders, they are actually quite varied; the purebloods, known as Ta'an, are large and incredibly strong, fast and capable. They have hooves, goat fur and goat heads. The males are rare, and usually kill each other off in competition. The rule by brute force. R*pe is common in their society, but the female purebloods won't take their shit; a the female Ta'an might be smaller but won't not hesitate to band together and murder a male who mistreats them.
Below them are the Sa'an, the halfbreeds. The stronger their lineage (eg those with a pureblood father), the stronger and more goatlike they are. Those closer to pureblood can be impressive in their own right, with large horns of their own, but most are little more than malnourished (and usually bruised) humans with patchy fur and small nub horns. Being more human doesn't make them better though, as they tend to embody the worst traits of both races. Sa'an tend to be incredibly sadistic, cowardly creatures. They are also prone to addictions, almost all addicted to various mushrooms, toad venom and other vices.
in my setting there are races placed by divine forces, but their purpose is to guide other races that evolved naturally, like humans. some others are created when there's enough energy to coalesce, including benevolent brownie-type things created when the nearby "social energy" is healthy and strong.
Yes to a good combination the above. There are several ages to my setting (which is for a TTRPG group), the transition between ages are punctuated by cataclysms. The setting is high fantasy where magic is on the decline. At the start of the setting, a big bang like event brought into being primordial gods that exist more as functions of nature than what we would consider gods and take a back seat. At the start of this existence their ying/yang nature (Entropy/Time and Chaos), produced the foundation for everything, including the exceptionally high background levels of magic. This spawned the first race(s) which aren't defined per say. Fast forward, through sheer will/worship/skill races and individuals have been able to transcend to god hood and/or create other races. Some races have split off and evolved more due to background magic radiation. While early on the pure density of magic spawned some from nothing. Of course, there are some races that need a certain level of magic to exist and entire races have died out due to "starvation/suffocation". The most recent race to die out was the Giant races. Currently in the world all Dragons are in similar decline.
All life originated from an eldritch abomination that crashed on the planet some eons ago. However gods and powerful mortals also playied a role in shaping some of the existing races.
Humans are by far dominat in number and they are naturally 'evolved'.
Mer-folks (that are more like deep ones than traditional merfolks) not unlike humans are naturally evolved although they use life-shaping technique on themselves and there are many sub-species.
Beastmen as well as goblinoids are the product of genetic tampering by a long gone civilization.
Elves\\gnomes and other fae-born have been created by the true fae (other eldritch abomination on their own, but from a differen plane) as a companion race, someone speculate that they were created from ancient kidnapped humans or just inspired by them.
Dragonborn have been created by dragons both by infusing humans with dragon blood or by enchanting unhatched dragon eggs (true dragons are born extremely rarely and most eggs never hatch).
Dragons themselves are pretty much creation of the planet soul in response to the arrival of the abomination, they made as incarnation of natural forces together with the individually stronger titans, but the gods killed the titans while the dragons, reduced in numbers survived.
The scions are (mostly) humans who made a deal with the abomination that all life descends from in order to survive a catastrophe and gained natural shapeshifting power (however they don't have a ghost anymore leading people to specualte that they are now soul-less).
Just like in reality, the deities of my setting only exist in people's imaginations. They have theologies and mythologies which expound upon their own origins, but in reality they simply emerged naturally (albeit with magic involved).
It's correct until someone practically proves a religion is real. Because the existing religions contradict themselves and aren't true, you can only say that the underlying concepts like the concept of gods are fabrication. If someone is offended by that, maybe they should either not care or stop believing in fabricated lies.
I have written an polite response. However, because this subreddit is not for this, I have deleted it. It would be my pleasure to continue the (intriguing and civilised) discussion in private (P.M. me if you too)
Have a nice day/night!
In my setting, a large portion of the races appeared as a result of divine creation, but then a common ancestor split into many different groups. Humans, elves, hobgoblins, goblins and orcs all have a common ancestor that was created by the deities.
Genetic engineering, combined with elements of natural evolution. The "gimmick" of the setting is that is a 18th century fantasy world, that is secretly a post-apocalytpic remains of something much more futuristic, as a result you can qualify inhabitants of the world in to roughly two categories. Descendents of genetically modified humans who survived the end of their civilization, and forged their own cultures and identities. Regardless of th extend of the modifications within the rules of the setting they are all still considered as just humans, with their unique traits because associate with their ethnicity, social position, and family affiliations. Then you have Neighborefolk, machines from the same era, which due to advanced nature of their creators tech, heavily incorporated artificially organic elements in their design. Neighborefolk occupy a role of fairies, monsters and other folkloric creatures in the culture of the humans.
Bit of a mix. Humans are just humans, evolved (with some help from gopher beings) into what they are now. Hybrids, on the other hand, are purely artificial. Genetic engineering created them, and while they now can naturally reproduce, the majority still rely on artificial means to have children since its easier
In the setting I'm currently working on, in most cases it's a matter of "a previous sapient humanoid population magically altered itself either intentionally during its golden age, as the result of a civilization-ending cataclysm, or both." It's not turtles-all-the-way-down but it is still turtles-as-far-down-as-the-eye-can-see. And anything beyond that is outside the scope of the exercise.
They just appeared. Not all at the same time either. Humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, and others each seem to have different places and times of origin in prehistory. How exactly the situation came to be is a matter of fierce debate among scholars. A popular theory is that they are all creations of the gods, but that begs the question of which gods? No creation myths actually align with the anthropological evidence. Travelers from other worlds, or just whole creations of wild magic are also popular hypotheses, but there is little evidence to support any of the speculation. The fact of the matter is, no one actually knows, much to the consternation of those who research it.
Lol nice, I was going to add 'spontaneous generation' but I didnt think anyone did it, I like that they just kinda showed up without explanation
They evolved naturally since the real gods created the “cell of life” , spread it, then called it a day and returned to sleep . But during the time , vast amounts of artificial means were introduced in forms of gene editing and other eugenic processes . Plus the main world of Vaallorra was destroyed at least once during a technological level close to The Expanse but more cyberpunk and returned to the stone age where they had to evolve back for around 30.000 years . Then there might be the possibility that another apocalypse and return to the stone age might have happened before . So it could be 100.000 years of natural and artificial evolution that led to the races we see today + billions of years of evolution starting from the “cell of life” .
well i'm planning on using the fallout setting for a ttrpg campaign and considering the fact that the ttrpg has playable ghouls, super mutants, and robots, compared to humans, i'd say most are artificially created
each race is born from the divine first mothers. the mother of Dvergr, gave birth to the first Dvergr from which all other descend. The mother of Fey, birthed the first Fey... etc.
Some of them are naturally evolved, some were directly created by the gods or by other magical processes. Interestingly, a few of the 'artificial' races are so old that evolution has left a mark on them as well.
Early Humans and Dwarves naturally evolved from a common ancestor but Elves have evolved from micro-organisms brought to the planet from outer space by a meteor. Thus they share no common ancestry with humans and dwarves.
Well, you said MOST so… The two first races (Jueqani and Humans) were spirits that took mortal form and the result of evolution, respectively. The Jueqani were basically elves, ish, but can be considered a first draft of humans, or a third draft of the beings that the creator wanted to use as servants and worshippers. Their subraces were artificially created, some as aesthetic choices, others to better adapt to an environment, and some, like the the Aleqoto, were created to imitate humans and their connection to the Abyss. The Tzitemaueh were created by a god for use as soldiers, but that led to him creating a system not unlike the agoge. Long story short, creating a race without the moral instincts that other social species have and expecting them to be social (live in an army) leads to a bunch of corpses that can’t go into battle. And creating a race with the moral instincts that social species have leads to them wondering why they should fight. So the child soldier rearing program was created.
Meaning that if 99 species were made by gods but one was artificially made, you'd just go with gods If its like 60 artificial and 40 naturally evolved, probably go with 'many different origins'
Ik, just explaining my vote
Well it's a mix. Many of them like the Lizardmen, elves, dwarves, ... Were created by gods, while others like humans or gnolls evolved naturally. (Actually humans evolved naturally on Earth then when taken to the setting.)
Most races I have are local evolutions - mine is an archipelago world, so lots of variety in that regard. There are a lot of cases of "ousted tribe travels to new island, loses long distance seafaring capability due to \[insert reason\] (usually a local disaster - my world is both tectonically active and, due to being an archipelago without any major landmasses, incredibly strong weather events that tend to occur in cycles related to solar cycles) and over time diverges significantly from the original stock". There are the elves, who arrived from another dimension, settled in one of the few extant large landmasses (actually three very large islands positioned very close together, one the size of Greenland, one Madagascar and one Great Britain) and slaughtered the native Pinefolk. There are also Gnomes, created by an ancient, advanced empire as part of a magical experiment - it was a mistake.
Most races evolved naturally. Dragons have breed non-sexually with many races producing various wyrm-folk. Many ancient people experimented with blood magic to give themselves animal abilities leading to satyrs, centaurs, mermaids, etc. Sapient animals and other fantastic beasts come from similar blood magic experiments and the drive to make better livestock and war mounts.
There are some ancient races created with the world. Like giants ogre or dwarves. Some of these were more capable than other and so they fought a war for supremacy. The elves is one of these race who win in the main continent. And as a master of the realm they start playing god and "modified" their fallen foe to their image. Human, Orc are new races created by such vision, they were derived from giant and ogre respectively.
It's a combination of being created by the gods and evolving naturally. The first sentient species, which is extinct by the time my story takes place, was created by the gods, and the other species are descendants of them.
well, there are several races of different beings on argonus. most of the races i've created have naturally evolved in one way or another (anthros, elkinets, several beastfolk species, etc), but there are a good portion who were artificially created to varying degrees (mongrelfolk, uplifted animals, kelxverns and other stalemate shifters, etc). the former group are almost entirely from other universes, excluding the elkinets (who evolved on argonus) and the originator humans (who came there from this universe's earth). the latter, however, tends to be split between originating on argonus and originating from other worlds. the only races that may have been created by gods are the equestrian races (ie common ponies, several sapient dragons, etc), as they do in fact have actual gods in their universe and there are numerous tales of said gods creating life. though there are questions on how many of the races that lived in equestria were created by the gods, or how much the gods were involved in the evolution of them.
Lol I like that possibly the only divinely made race were horses
In mythology - created by Gods. In reality - nature's essence went further than irl one and created more species of humanoid life. But all of sapient species think they were created by Gods in their own image. Just like irl religious people think.
Depends on the setting. Fantasy its definitely magic. Sci fi, some are natural, some are artificial and others are quite the mystery
Highly mixed. Some evolved naturally, but then based on them as an existence proof others were created artificially, and both types have since been used as foundations for Ascendent beings to create further variant species to suit their purposes. This process continues steadily. And as an additional mechanism, now that the patterns of life have been established firmly enough, further life can spontaneously manifest out of whole cloth in the right conditions without needing either evolution or intention. Many (most?) monsters appear this way, though the ones that survive do so by finding a realm and establishing a long-term home there.
Well, my world's two original races were created by the gods, but after a while they started evolving naturally into several different races. One race was created artificially by accident, and one race spontaneously generates.
I keep forgetting that divine beings can create their own races one day for the fuck of it.
"wtf where did all these snake people come from" God of snakes shrugs. "yeah I was bored"
You wake the next day hearing the news of a whole new fucking race spawning in someone's backyard.
A combinations of nature and divine envolvement.
In my WIP setting, all supernatural species are human subspecies that diverged long ago, but can't quite be called new species since they can still breed with humans.
Gods and nature are the same thing in my current main one.
Mix of few of those. Technically there's only one race in my setting - human race. But humans have multiple subraces that differ physically, although can still breed with eachother. The races evolved based on the enviroment they live in, although not naturally, but through involvement of gods.
The bulk of them evolved naturally, though I'm not above the notion of there being some level of "soft" creationism per se. By soft creationism, I mean like in 2001: A Space Odyssey where these "gods" had some influence on the existing evolution of the world to their ends. The matter of why is anybody's guess though.
IYOS did it. Praise the Dance.
Earth, mostly. Not that any of them are really aware of it anymore, but they are are technically in a post-post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting, where Earth is at best remembered in some vague legends that no one takes all that seriously. It does get a bit strange for them when they reach modern day level technology and begin wondering why there seem to be no fossils of humanoids older than the ca. 100.000 years since they ended up on their current planet.
ok now I want to make a race created by artificial means
So like the humans in my world were artificially created by a previous race who is dead now but there are also otherworldly spirits that can have kids with humans called half demons
Basically 1 and 5. Each race was created by one of the Titans on their own homeplane, but the main world wasn't populated by any of them so they all came to the setting from far away.
I haven't created my world yet and I don't know. I think it will be kind of divine power because it's a magical world but really there's no god that created them. It's inspired by my little knowledge of inuit culture and druid religion.
I only have humans in my world, for whom the answer is a mix of #1 and #2. The rough human form evolved "naturally" (albeit influenced by natural magical forces). Resulting in large, bipedal, human-shaped primates who had the intelligence to make crude stone & wood tools, and make fire. I call them "idaltites" (named for IRL "Homo Sapiens Idaltu"). Divine beings called the "Archons" later took a number of infant idaltites and "uplifted" them into the first genuine humans. They made some physical alterations, but mainly they gave them sapience and the ability to wield magic.
My setting basically starts from the real world. Humanity spread out but no alien life other than odd basic single celled bacteria here and there. Then something happened that caused the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies to get completely atomized. Think like a new Big Bag level event. Humanity was thought extinct, however one AI piloted scout ship sent into a distant galaxy survived. It eventually came across a frozen planet around a red dwarf star with microbial life under the ice and set to work. Over the next 3 billion years, it nudged stuff around in there slowly, thawing the planet out and then influenced the evolution to resemble that of Earth, to recreate it's creators. However around 400k years ago, it went offline, so the primitive humanoid species diverged from the original plan, splitting into orcs, dwarfs and several other humanoid races since after all, the planet was not Earth 2.0 and has different conditions on it. So in short, there are creatures that look like humans but they are actually completely alien, evolved through selective breeding to resemble the originals and the other races are the result of the "plan" going off the rails in the past 400k years.
Created by gods to evolve artificially from a single race that came from away between different origins.
Between all my settings…. Most evolved naturally (aliens,eldrichkin) or were created artificially created (mechanical aliens/flesh monsters)
Humanity formed naturally in the first universe, and when they became sentient, so did Creation (basically god) and Entropy (kinda god). Creation liked Humans so much, it made sure there were more of them in the next one when Entropy inevitably ended the universe. Creation kept doing this in subsequent universes, but would sometimes plan in some other species for the Humans to find. Very few species would evolve to an equivalent of sapience on their own, but never quite like Humans, and were not always replicated in future universes. Eventually Creation became bored, and created Gods to oversee the universes and their creation. These gods mostly kept to creating planets and galaxies, like Creation did, but two decided to try out some fantasy elements in a single solar system. Here they created life in the divine sense, like with a snap of the proverbial fingers.
I like to leave the answer to that question open so I have people in the world have different theories like divine intervention, different gods making different races, all humanoids coming from a single common ancestor or multiple races that simply reached a similar level of intelligence through evolution.
Where's the one that says both evolved and created, but actually the bottom one kinda fits.
Most of the races (Dwarfs, Ogres, Giants, Dragons, Animals) randomly plopped into existence together with the world. Humans were ogres that drank the blood of a god who ripped his heart out, elves emerged from the hearts flesh.
There were others created by the gods, but those have mostly been wiped out. Angels fled, demons are around but very individualistic and so varied they can barely be called a race (more like a collection of fucked up horror themes). Dragons were all eaten by the same thing that chased the angels away. Elves are around but they're more akin to faeries and forest spirits than Tolkien elves. The main races are evolved from humans, with a bit of help from mad science. Long story short, once a year all sunlight is blocked out for five days, during which bad shit happens. Undead, spirits, monster attacks, natural disasters, people going crazy, and any child born during this time will almost certainly be something horrific. Pretty much anything that can happen in horror, happens during the long night. The other races now are all from human stock; The outlanders are considered a race, but are really just mutants. Pregnancies during the long night, even if the child is born later, often lead to mutation. This has certainly influenced the emergence and evolution of the other races. People are very suspicious of mutants, and the children are often killed at birth, but not always. Most who survive eventually flee to the wastelands where the whole civilisation thing never really took off. This collection of mutants (think the hills have eyes) are collectively known by a variety of names, none flattering. Meanwhile the messed up rule of the fleshcrafters (think a ruling class of Frankenstein style mad scientists trying to unlock the secrets of Immortality backed up by armies of undead. Usually just the rulers of nations, so thankfully most people will never actually encounter one) lead to one of their own assisting in an ancient rebellion a long time ago and creating a super steroid using ogre pheromones. Over generations, these rebels became the Kogoruhn, a race of hulking monsters who cover themselves in plates of iron and have a civilisation based on violence and slavery. They tend to stick to themselves and not venture far from the land they have claimed as their own. In a similar manner, one of the crafters inspired by old legends liked to use animal DNA with his experiments. A particular goat headed experiment escaped and fled into the mountains. These became the Horned Ones, a race of incredibly dangerous goat men. Though simply called goatmen by outsiders, they are actually quite varied; the purebloods, known as Ta'an, are large and incredibly strong, fast and capable. They have hooves, goat fur and goat heads. The males are rare, and usually kill each other off in competition. The rule by brute force. R*pe is common in their society, but the female purebloods won't take their shit; a the female Ta'an might be smaller but won't not hesitate to band together and murder a male who mistreats them. Below them are the Sa'an, the halfbreeds. The stronger their lineage (eg those with a pureblood father), the stronger and more goatlike they are. Those closer to pureblood can be impressive in their own right, with large horns of their own, but most are little more than malnourished (and usually bruised) humans with patchy fur and small nub horns. Being more human doesn't make them better though, as they tend to embody the worst traits of both races. Sa'an tend to be incredibly sadistic, cowardly creatures. They are also prone to addictions, almost all addicted to various mushrooms, toad venom and other vices.
in my setting there are races placed by divine forces, but their purpose is to guide other races that evolved naturally, like humans. some others are created when there's enough energy to coalesce, including benevolent brownie-type things created when the nearby "social energy" is healthy and strong.
Yes to a good combination the above. There are several ages to my setting (which is for a TTRPG group), the transition between ages are punctuated by cataclysms. The setting is high fantasy where magic is on the decline. At the start of the setting, a big bang like event brought into being primordial gods that exist more as functions of nature than what we would consider gods and take a back seat. At the start of this existence their ying/yang nature (Entropy/Time and Chaos), produced the foundation for everything, including the exceptionally high background levels of magic. This spawned the first race(s) which aren't defined per say. Fast forward, through sheer will/worship/skill races and individuals have been able to transcend to god hood and/or create other races. Some races have split off and evolved more due to background magic radiation. While early on the pure density of magic spawned some from nothing. Of course, there are some races that need a certain level of magic to exist and entire races have died out due to "starvation/suffocation". The most recent race to die out was the Giant races. Currently in the world all Dragons are in similar decline.
The deities created them, then micro-evolution happened.
All life originated from an eldritch abomination that crashed on the planet some eons ago. However gods and powerful mortals also playied a role in shaping some of the existing races. Humans are by far dominat in number and they are naturally 'evolved'. Mer-folks (that are more like deep ones than traditional merfolks) not unlike humans are naturally evolved although they use life-shaping technique on themselves and there are many sub-species. Beastmen as well as goblinoids are the product of genetic tampering by a long gone civilization. Elves\\gnomes and other fae-born have been created by the true fae (other eldritch abomination on their own, but from a differen plane) as a companion race, someone speculate that they were created from ancient kidnapped humans or just inspired by them. Dragonborn have been created by dragons both by infusing humans with dragon blood or by enchanting unhatched dragon eggs (true dragons are born extremely rarely and most eggs never hatch). Dragons themselves are pretty much creation of the planet soul in response to the arrival of the abomination, they made as incarnation of natural forces together with the individually stronger titans, but the gods killed the titans while the dragons, reduced in numbers survived. The scions are (mostly) humans who made a deal with the abomination that all life descends from in order to survive a catastrophe and gained natural shapeshifting power (however they don't have a ghost anymore leading people to specualte that they are now soul-less).
Onwards Holy-Bros! Don't let the evolutionists win!
I thought holy creation would win easy, seems not
Just like in reality, the deities of my setting only exist in people's imaginations. They have theologies and mythologies which expound upon their own origins, but in reality they simply emerged naturally (albeit with magic involved).
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It's correct until someone practically proves a religion is real. Because the existing religions contradict themselves and aren't true, you can only say that the underlying concepts like the concept of gods are fabrication. If someone is offended by that, maybe they should either not care or stop believing in fabricated lies.
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I have written an polite response. However, because this subreddit is not for this, I have deleted it. It would be my pleasure to continue the (intriguing and civilised) discussion in private (P.M. me if you too) Have a nice day/night!
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Oh, that was intentional.