The Races of Ilvorth

When I first started playing D&D in 1981, things were quite different.  Similar to today's editions, when creating a new character you picked a class: fighter, magic-user, cleric, thief, elf, dwarf, or halfling.   "Wait?  You said class and then started listing races.  What's up with that?"   Yeah....so, that's how it was back in the day.  Those were classes, usually merging features from the others.  For example, elves were what we'd think of as a dual-classed wizard/fighter.  You knew magic from the magic-user table, fought on the fighter's table, and had a bunch of other abilities to boot.  And, that's it.  No elven clerics, no dwarven magic-users.    "Advanced" D&D fixed a lot of the problems with such a simplistic system.  You could now choose from a small number of races, and then choose a class that suited you better than "Default".  There were still limits; only humans could become paladins (because only humans are goodest), for example.  This wasn't perfect, but it was usable and had its own internal consistency.   However, things got murky when inter-species mating happened.  Apparently, the only species that could interbreed were humans with orcs or elves (but not elves with orcs).  Half-dwarves were a thing only in Dark Sun, but everyone else pretty much stuck to their own.  Gn'elves were never an option prior to Ilvorth.   And, worse, the species were all represented as a single monolithic culture, and when there was some distance between two subsets of a species (surface elves and drow, for example), the cultures of each of those subsets would be monolithic.  Drizzt Do'Urden is well-known not just for his skill, but for being a token exception to his entire race.  (Yes, I'm familiar with Eilistraee.)   A year or so ago, however, Arcanist Press released Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e and it's much closer to a better, more modern take on races/species in D&D.  Instead of defining "elves" and "elven culture" as being one and the same, these rules attempt to decouple the two.  Elves could now be described as per their genetic, inheritable traits (immunity to charm, darkvision) and cultural abilities (proficiency with bows and longswords, detecting secret doors).   The sourcebook does a good job dispelling the myths we've inherited from our past regarding race, but in my opinion did not go far enough with the mechanics.  Culture and ancestry are decoupled, but each is still monolithic.  The examples given include having, for example, a half-gnome, half-elf that's "culturally" gnomish.  Or even simply an elf raised by gnomes would choose from a single list of elven cultural traits.   On Ilvorth, the culture of a species is localized to a specific region or realm, and the cultural traits are layered on top of ancestral traits. So, while the elves of the Eastern Realms realms are generally genetically the same species, those of Crescent Moon will be very different from the Jaa Nisse of the Wastebare Tundra.   All of the races in this section are still under development.  I try to work on particular variations as they come up, so if there's a specific species you'd like to play we can make that happen together.