The Races of Mendala

From the desk of Franklin Stokenshire

Mendalian Races

Humans Elf Dwarf Half-Elf Half-Dwarf Zin

There are three primary races on Mendala, Human, Dwarf, and Elf. While race does not determine how long a person lives, it can determine the likelihood of being born a specific adimus rank , which does affect lifespan.
Each of the three primary races have different physical and adimus characteristics, but all races are compatible with one another physiologically. Despite this, interracial coupling is rare. Half-Elves-elves, which are born from an elf and human parent, are the most common. Half-Dwarves-dwarves, which are born from a dwarf and human parent, are almost never heard of due to dwarves isolating themselves. The offspring of a dwarf and an elf is always the mother’s race. There are also Zin, which are the result of a coupling between a half-elf and a dwarf or a half-dwarf and an elf.
Half elves and half dwarves have mostly human physical traits with some elements of elf or dwarf respectively. In contrast, their adimus traits are a combination of both races, giving them superior adimus abilities than either individual race. Zin gain the physical and adimus racial traits of all three primary races equally and tend to look physically indistinguishable from humans.

History of Racial Relations

Relationships between the three primary races has always been fraught with tension. Some of this can be traced back to the origin of the races on Mendala. It is said that humans, dwarves, and elves were all brought to the planet after its creation, and thus they were all migrants from other worlds suddenly made to live together. Each race’s telling of the world’s origin states that their race was the original race brought to the planet with the others coming sometime later.
Humans were able to reproduce faster than any other race and quickly started to dominate the planet. In addition, half-elves and half-dwarves became more prevalent since humans could easily mate with the other two races but children of dwarves and elves always ended up being the race of the mother. Because of this, humans began to see themselves as the overall superior race. This led to racial purist among elves and dwarves who objected to the intermingling of the races for fear of their race being wiped out. These purists created cities and countries that were segregated from humans so that they could continue to propagate their race.
This was known to be the status quo throughout the PT era and the beginning of the PM era. There were a few elf and dwarf settlements that were closed off to humans but there were also still plenty of dwarves and elves living among humans as well. Half-elves, half-dwarves, and zin were steadily increasing in number as well.
The advent of mentus and adimus based abilities drastically changed this delicate balance. At first, it was for the better. For the first thousand years of the PM era, mentus brought people together as they began to explore the depths of what mentus engineering could produce. It soon became clear that each of the races possessed distinct differences in how they could use mentus.
Combined, the three races were able to go beyond their individual limitations and create amazing feats of mentus engineering, including the culmination of their collaborative efforts, city cores. City cores combined the mentus diversity of humans, the channeling prowess of dwarves, and the elves’ high aptitude for the mentant realm to create massive “living” artifacts that could perform a myriad of tasks to serve and protect a city.
This brought about a golden age of harmony among the races for the first 1500 years of the PM era. War was still prevalent between the various domains, but racially motivated strife was at an all-time low. However, this started to change as it became apparent that half-elves, half-dwarves, and especially zin, had far higher mentus capabilities that combined the best traits of the races they inherited from. This caused many humans to believe that it was their duty to propagate with other races as much as possible to produce “superior” offspring.
Humans started capturing and enslaving dwarf and elf children for the purposes of breeding or making them concubines. This eventually led to wars between humans and the other races as their zeal to produce mixed offspring blossomed into a mindset of racial superiority. Many human domains spread the belief that elves and dwarves existed only to serve humans, citing the fact that humans had ] dominant numbers and were the only race that could produce half-elves and half-dwarves.
This especially infuriated dwarves who believed their unparalleled channeling ability made them the superior race. From their perspective, humans would not be able to create most of the highly sophisticated mentus and quartz-based artifacts without them. In addition, dwarves had superior physical strength, which meant that even in smaller numbers, they were able to hold their own against human armies.
Elves, while not pleased with the rise of human fascism, sought to find a peaceful way for the three races to continue to coexist, though they were hampered in this endeavor by their own faction of racial purists who wanted nothing to do with humans. Because elves and dwarves could not mate in a way that created a mixed-race child, there was really no friction between the two races. In fact, dwarves generally had a high respect for elves and even considered them enlightened due to their unique aptitude with being able to read and understand the mentant realm and the special abilities that brought.
In the end, even though only around half of the human population were actively warring against the other races, dwarves and elves began to isolate themselves. Eventually, elves were able to carve out a nation for themselves in the northern continent of Candovia and reach a tenuous peace with the surrounding human cities and countries. This became the Kingdom of Ellenon. Though only elves lived in Ellenon, the nation still maintained friendly diplomatic relations with surrounding domains. However, they created a strict policy that elves who left the kingdom to live among humans could not return. This was to prevent outside influences from impacting the policies of the nation.
It took far longer for dwarves to find a lasting peace. Despite only being at war with certain human domains, they completely mistrusted all humans and refused to cooperate on any level. Some dwarven domains hoped to use their superior strength to overthrow human dominance and even sought to combine forces with elves in order to accomplish this. However, more and more elves began to move to Ellenon, and the kingdom was trying to avoid war at all costs in order to protect their race.
This did not dissuade most dwarves and they continued to wage war with all humans for several hundred years. Eventually, the dwarf population was whittled down to less than half of what they were at their peak, and many decided to isolate themselves in a far more drastic way than the elves. A group of dwarves settled underneath the mountains northwest of Ellenon and eventually built up the underground Nation of Glorandor.
They chose an underground domain for multiple reasons. It allowed them to completely isolate themselves, making it impossible for humans to find them. It also was a deterrent to humans for other reasons. Since it was well known that monsters always originated deep underground, humans would be far less willing to venture anywhere near their domain. Dwarves, with their superior physical strength had no fear from the occasional monsters that would emerge from the depths. With their domain secure from human invasion, the dwarves of Glorandor hid themselves from the rest of the world, only having diplomatic relations with Ellenon, which by then took up nearly a third of the northern continent.
By 3000 PM, the vast majority of elves lived in Ellenon, though many elves still lived among humans and there were still a few smaller, less known elvish settlements around the world. In the same way, almost all dwarves lived in Glorandor with almost none living among humans to the point where the dwarven race started being considered a legend by many humans. Though Glorandor is considered to be the main dwarf nation, there are actually a few other well-hidden dwarven domains around the world. These settlements typically are not as hostile to humans as Glorandor but still only deal with a few trusted, nearby domains.
All-out war between the three races had completely died down. Though there were still instances of human slavers capturing elves and selling them as slaves, this was dealt with by Ellenon when the elves were their citizens. Ellenon did not retaliate against humans as a race but rather focused on any individual or domain that sought to do them harm. In this way, the elves were able to continue to have a relatively peaceful coexistence with humans.
Over the years, the Ellenon leadership spread the false narrative that mating between the races was taboo and unnatural and that the resulting children would have adimus defects or abnormalities. This propaganda prevented humans from actively seeking to breed with other races solely for the purpose of producing superior children. Though half-elves are still fairly common, they are often discriminated against, especially by elves. Half-dwarves completely disappeared from the world, and most people have no concept of the zin race.
In general, humans still carry a fundamental belief that their race is dominant due to their superior numbers and myriad of mentus advancements, but this is mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of humans have never met an elf and almost none of them have met a dwarf. This intrinsic sense of superiority, however, no longer rises to the level of starting another race war. The general segregation of the races is just seen as the default, especially since Ellenon has existed for so long and Glorandor is so well hidden that it’s almost considered a myth. Dwarven crafts do still make their way into human domains by way of Ellenon, but they are considered rare.