Xylmade Species in Gates of Eternity [2.0] | World Anvil

Xylmade

The 'Xylmade' (also Xylborn) is a general term for a family of species created during the times of the Xylian Dominion to serve as the Dominion's servant caste. They are technically derived from humans, as that's whom the Xylians chose as the baseline template for the project - each time Xylians wanted to make a new attempt, they simply kidnapped a few dozen thousand humans from beyond the Dominion's eastern border and then tinkered with them in their laboratories.   In the end, this is a category more than a species. While in case of Humans there is a baseline species to consider (alongside of its numerous subspecies and races), there is simply no such thing as 'xylmade' as a species. It has a handful of subspecies, however each of them simply too divergent from their roots to be considered a human subspecies.   The only common denominator of all xylmade are the pointy ears, even if every subspecies has them pointy in a slightly different ways. The reason for that is unknown. Many speculate that the Xylians were so inhuman that they had issues noticing the differences between some subspecies (and perhaps the unaltered humans) at a glance, leading to them developing the pointy ears as a strictly visible signal of the subspecies.   Some remaining data suggest that the 'xylmade' as a species did exist, however briefly, with the Xylians firstly purifying the human captives genomes (in a way not very dissimilar to the High Humans) before continuing on to changes. However this would indicate that said short-lived Xylmade species was actually a subspecies of Mankind, which would greatly complicate already complicated issue of taxonomy.

Basic Information

Biological Traits

The known subspecies of Xylmade are as follows.   Dwarves are a result of the first genetic project of the Dominion. They were supposed to be a hard-working and physically strong race, however a major defect - leading to their less than expected height - was discovered at a bit too late step. Still, it is unknown why the Dominion refused to fix the issue yet actually spared the resulting 'failures' rather than wipe it out to the last.   The two resulting subspecies of the dwarves were settled in two different regions of the Dominion (the White Mountains and the eastern island of Aeriu), where they remain to this day, with a rather complicated relationship with the Grand Empire of Karadia. The third inhabits deeper layers of the Labyrinth and is best left unmentioned.   Elves represent the eventual success of the Xylian servant caste creation project. Internally divergent - with 40 subspecies created initially, although only about half of them have survived the fall of the Dominion and the subsequent period of wars.   The reason for many of those extinctions was the occasionally crippling overspecialization of those subspecies, created by the Xylians to act as cogs in the Dominion's machine (and much less suited to living in the time when the Dominion was only a fleeting memory). Today they remain the second most populous species in Karadia, after humans.   Giants are an off-shoot of the second Dominion's project, one that was created to be a species of elite shocktroopers for the Dominion. They are often described as ogres (described beneath) but more - a simpleminded brutes ready to bash anyone's head for a piece of meat.   In practise, however, their hereditary mentalsculpt failed even more than the one of the ogres, resulting in giants developing their mental faculties back to the human level. Today there is no difference between them and baseline humans, although the stereotype persists (greatly fuelled by majority of the members of this species serving the Nine Hordes.   Ogres are the second of the Dominion's failures. While physically strong and resilient, their failure came from the broken hereditary mentalsculpt. They were supposed to be simple and loyal, but turned out to be only simple, and even that only to a degree.   Ogres are of human-level intelect, however their mentalsculpt severely limits their interests to those rather 'simple' - they are made to dislike 'fancy' food and drinks and enjoy simple life, much less of a strain to the Dominion's logistics during the wartime. They were also supposed to be loyal - but instead most of them quickly deserted the Dominion and went to serve whoever offered them more food and less work.   Today most of them serve the Nine Hordes or the Wild Courts.


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