Dungeon Fantasy Ancient Races

[b-dog]

Ancient Races in dungeon fantasy are races that evolved in the dungeon fantasy world. These include fishmen, reptilemen, dinosaurmen, insectmen, coleopterans, ratmen, catmen, and any other man human hybrid. The cold blooded, including dinosaurmen were around long before man was around and they may have had encounters with strange and alien gods. It is said that there were cults that worshipped things from beyond space and time. There are said to be ruins left behind by ancient races with artifacts that resemble science fiction.
Once man evolved, he was able to make contact with the mythic ad faery realms. These realms existed for as long as the ancient races existed but since the ancient races never worshipped Zeus, Thor or Quetzalcoatl, these realm didn't interact with the dungeon fantasy realm. Once man began praying to and believing in these myths then the mythic creatures came into the dungeon fantasy realm.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by b-dog

Ancient Races in dungeon fantasy are races that evolved in the dungeon fantasy world. (...)

I just posted my take about that in the Dungeon Fantasy Faery Goblin-kin thread.

[vitruvian]

These include fishmen, reptilemen, dinosaurmen, insectmen, coleopterans, ratmen, catmen, and any other man human hybrid.

For my part, while I might have fishmen, reptilemen, etc., predating humanity by aeons (although the idea of evolution, or at least Darwinian natural selection, is probably foreign to the Dungeon Fantasy mindset), for other human-animal hybrids, I prefer a different set of explanations.

Barbarian/shamanic Just-So-Story: In the Dawn of the World, all creatures came to this world from the Spirit Realms, and all animals could talk amongst their tribes. In fact, not only did the animals all speak, so too could the trees, the rocks, and the waters. This was the time that the city-dwellers call the Age of High Wizardry, and it waned when Trickster Man stole not only Fire from the spirits, but also the art of Speech, and all that was not human was silenced, except where the spirits were very strong. Now, only the Druids can routinely awaken and converse with the spirits of nature, except for the strongest among those spirits (Dryads and other nymphs, Elementals, and Talking Beasts), or in those few places where the magic of the Dawn Times lingers (i.e., High or Very High Mana zones). The Talking Beasts are of three kinds - those who appear just as any other beasts of their kind, but can speak in the tongues of Men and reason as well as any tribesman or city-dweller; those who can transform themselves into a semblance of Man, perhaps with a few signs remaining to identify the Tribe from which they come (e.g., horns, fangs, a tail, etc.); and those who live all their days in a form halfway between Beast and Man, able to speak and handle tools and somewhat close to Men in size (e.g., Mice are only SM-1 or -2, Bears are only SM +1), but always clearly of their tribe and kind. Of the first and second kind, some possess the powers of Speech and shapeshifting only in areas of wild nature magic, while others retain them in the lands of Men as well; the third type, the Beastmen, are everywhere the same.

There are also Men who gain the power to shift to animal form by aligning themselves with a particular Spirit and Tribe of Beasts, but they are still Men, not Talking Beasts. In fact, it is rare that they retain the power of Speech when in beast form.

Civilized/wizardly Just-So-Story: There are many kinds of Talking Beasts (of the three types already discussed), but sages say all their origins come to the same thing. After one of the worst of the Mage-Wars that wracked the Age of High Wizardry, before much of the magic of the world was depleted, the world was almost completely depopulated of human life. Accordingly, the greatest surviving wizard, sometimes called the Shaper, resolved to repopulate the world by sorcery. First he called all the surviving beasts of forest and field to him (for in these times the secrets of nature magic had not been stolen by the Druids), and then he wrought a mighty spell that transformed some of each type into human beings, fit to serve him and his daughter as servants and eventually to repopulate the world, although each did retain certain characteristics reminiscent of the type of animal from which it was derived (former eagles were brave, former weasels were sly and cunning, etc.). Over the millenia, there was interbreeding between the wizard's get and that of the people he had created from animals. Those of the purest line from the wizard and his daughter have the gift of wizardry. For the rest of humanity, the only sign of these origins lies in certain common character traits, by which one may divine which animal one's ancestors were mostly derived from. However, in some cases, the magic did not hold, breaking down over the years to produce the hybrid and other races of Talking Beasts. In some cases, there are whole peoples stuck permanently between Men and Beast (the Cynocephali and Gnolls, the Bears, etc.); in others, some lines reverted entirely to animal form and may only be able to mimic human speech or even shapeshift into partial human form in areas where magic is powerful