Overview
Humans are the most physically varied of all the peoples of Dúnamhar, as if the land itself couldn't settle on a single mold when shaping them. Their heights span an extraordinary range—some standing no taller than three feet, compact and quick, while others rise to a towering seven feet, built like the standing stones of the old mountain passes. Between these extremes lies every possible variation, and it isn't uncommon for a single human family to include both the short and the sky-reaching, with no clear pattern to explain why.
Their skin defies easy categorization as well. Where other races tend toward a narrower band of natural tones, humans range across a startling spectrum: warm tans and deep browns sit alongside skin toned in blue, red, or green, each shade occurring naturally and without regard to region, climate, or lineage in any way that scholars have been able to firmly pin down. A single human settlement might contain neighbors in ochre and crimson and slate-blue, none of them remarkable to the others—diversity of appearance is simply the human condition, so constant as to barely be commented on among themselves.
This variability has led some to theorize that humans carry within them an echo of the Churn itself—unshaped, unsettled, still finding their final form even now, generations after their first appearance in the world. Others reject this notion, pointing out that whatever their outward differences, humans have always shown a remarkable consistency of spirit: tenacious, industrious, and quick to rebuild what has been taken from them, whatever color their hands happen to be while doing it.
It is this same restless variability, some say, that fuels their tenacity—a people who cannot even agree amongst themselves what a human is supposed to look like are perhaps better equipped than most to adapt to a world that keeps refusing to hold still.
A People Without a Single Shape
The tome's authors, having now cataloged a considerable number of Dúnamhar's peoples, must note that humans remain the most difficult to summarize in the manner the others permit. Where a Korrigan or a Lúchorp can be described with confidence down to the particular tone of their skin or the texture of their hair, any such description of humans collapses the moment it is tested against the next human encountered. This has led more than one visiting scholar from another race to conclude, mistakenly, that humans have no coherent culture at all—a conclusion the watchers consider lazy rather than accurate. What humans share is not appearance, nor even temperament in its particulars, but a shared restlessness: a refusal to settle, whether into a single shape, a single trade, or a single circumstance, for longer than necessity demands.
This restlessness expresses itself most plainly in how quickly humans rebuild. The tome has already recorded, at some length, the fall of Cét-Talam and the founding of Glengarrow that followed it—events that, among a less adaptable people, might have ended the story of humankind in Dúnamhar entirely. Instead, within a handful of generations, the scattered survivors of a drowned kingdom had raised walls, forged a new system of governance, and begun building trade relationships with elf, dwarf-kin, and beast-folk alike that their old kingdom, for all its five centuries of standing, had never fully pursued. The tome considers this no coincidence: a people who have never agreed on what they are supposed to look like have little difficulty agreeing to become something new when the old shape no longer serves.
Settlement and Governance
Human settlements vary nearly as much as human appearance, shaped more by immediate circumstance and necessity than by any fixed cultural template—a mountain village organizes itself quite differently from a river port, and a river port differently still from the fortress-cities of the Synarchy proper. This adaptability extends to governance: where the High Synarchy of Glenmaura has settled on its particular model of joined rule by Synarch, smaller or more isolated human settlements beyond the valley's reach often develop their own local systems entirely, from simple elected councils to, in a few recorded cases, arrangements that borrow openly from neighboring races—a border village near Blackroot Ursian territory that has adopted something resembling den-leadership, or a southern settlement near Duskmere Lupin lands that has taken up an informal version of pack loyalty in all but name.
This willingness to borrow, adapt, and absorb what works from a neighboring people, rather than insisting on a single correct way of living, is a trait the tome's authors have come to regard as distinctly human, and one that has served the race well in a world shared so closely with so many other peoples.
Relations with Other Races
Of all the races catalogued in this tome, humans maintain contact—friendly, wary, or somewhere between—with nearly every one of them, a reach matched by few other peoples. The debt owed to the Athàn-Garrow elves, the Lupin, and the Slíogach for their aid during Cét-Talam's fall remains formally honored through the Synarch of the Bridge, and trade with the Korrigan, Lúchorp, and Abcán has grown, over generations, into the thriving three-fold craft economy the tome has already recorded at length. Even the more mischievous Bocans and Racán find willing, if wary, trading partners among human settlements, and human sailors speak of Selkie aid at sea with a consistent warmth the tome has rarely heard extended toward any other race by human voices.
This same openness occasionally invites difficulty. Human expansion along the Wyrm-Tooth foothills has strained relations with the Hollowvale Ursians, and human curiosity has, on more than one recorded occasion, pressed further into Juton or Nathair territory than wisdom strictly recommended. Yet even where friction exists, the tome notes that humans rarely withdraw from contact entirely, preferring instead to negotiate, adapt, or simply try again—the same restless refusal to settle that shapes their bodies shaping, it seems, their dealings with the wider world as well.
Humans Beyond Glenmaura
Though the High Synarchy represents the largest and best-recorded concentration of humankind in the tome's account thus far, the watchers are careful to note that it is far from the only one. Scattered human settlements exist across Dúnamhar wherever land and circumstance allow, from isolated mountain holds bordering Juton territory to small coastal villages along the Obsidian Sea that trade more readily with Selkies than with any inland power. The tome intends, in time, to record these more fully; for now, it is enough to say that wherever Dúnamhar offers a foothold, however precarious, some scattering of humans has generally found a way to take it, and to stay.
- ADAPTABLE: Humans begin play with any Novice Edge of their choosing. They must meet its Requirements as usual.