Humans
"Don't mess with them," the elder warned in a deeper voice than normal. His eyes glared out from under excessively-bushy brows. "But we can take them!" the younger dwarf argued, his brothers raising their voices in agreement. "They've no right to mine these hills!" "Listen, and hear me well!" the elder snapped. "Where there are five humans, there's a city full of them! There are other rich veins we can mine; attacking a human will bring a whole mess of human troubles, and they'll last for generations! Place a claim in their common tongue on a new mine somewhere so they can know you're working it, and let it be."
Additional Information
Social Structure
Humans are extremely social overall, always eager to know specifically who should be listened to or obeyed. True hermits are far and few between, and any group of two or more humans usually has at least vague rules established very quickly between themselves regarding who should be in charge of various activities( or of each other).
Civilization and Culture
Beauty Ideals
While specific ideas of beauty vary wildly from culture to culture (amount of facial/body hair, styles of the same, what a pattern of walking suggests about the person, etc), and even from person to person, most humans' opinions align on basic levels of visible physical fitness and hygiene being necessary to earn a second look from passer-by.
Average Technological Level
While the dead empire of Talia Carte was overseen by a long-running family of humans, the race cannot truly claim that nation's achievements as purely their own, as just over half of the population consisted of a mixture of other races. In the modern age, humans can be found eking out a small living on a farm with little more than manual labor or riding an airship of advanced magical and technological design. As with so much else about the race, their technological capabilities are strongly dependant on the previous successes of the culture they are raised within.
Major Language Groups and Dialects
Common, as it is now called, is the main trade language, which all humans teach their children. Spread across the known world by Talia Carte, it has been kept up since the disappearance of the Eternal Empire, more out of convenience than anything else.
History
No one knows precisely when humans first evolved, nor from what. Fossils suggest they existed already (albeit with a slightly different bone structure) when the dinosaurs walked Tempax. The gods merely respond that humans have been around as long as they've wanted to be, and will not extrapolate further. The history of humans, then, is left to individuals to parse out and record as best they can. The Museum of Natural Histories in Echelion's capital city attempts to assemble a theorized history of the race, as it does others, but can only validate so much. When willing to collaborate, Dwarvish scholars confirm that humans are referenced in some of their oldest oral histories; this suggests that, like the dwarves, humans in fact vastly predate even the dinosaurs.
Unfortunately, time wears all things to nothing, and we are left to wonder and guess at what sorts of disasters and miracles the race may have seen, and survived, in prior ages.
Historical Figures
It is known that the current deity of death, fate, and time ascended to divinity from a human, and still appears in human form. While her mortal name and history are a guarded secret for reasons she will not share, the entire race takes a certain amount of pride from having been the only mortal species to birth a god... sometimes to the irritation of other races.
Common Myths and Legends
There is one creation myth that is told among a variety of human communities, though it is carefully never repeated within earshot of those devout souls dedicated to the worship of the gods.
Thanks to the talkative nature of the deity of death, it is known (or at least accepted as the most likely truth) that there were other deity-like figures to exist before the gods as they are known. These were broken down into their component pieces and cast out into the universe to be absorbed into Creation. One blasphemous theory suggests that the first humans formed from the pieces of such a being, or perhaps that a group of humans found said pieces and absorbed them. What exactly this is meant to imply about human nature and their relationship to the rest of existence isn't clear... but the story persists.
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