There are as many origin stories on Oram as there are different cultures.
The most often told is that the gods brought creatures to Oram from other worlds. Since there are hundreds of gods and goddesses, there were at least that many species brought to inhabit the planet. Eventually, these species adapted to their new world, many of them changing very much from their original forms.
But that’s just one theory…
Although the following species show only a limited number of careers, most species are able to do nearly all occupations, especially those still living in their ancestral homes. However, some species are either sought after for their natural abilities or gravitate to (or avoid) certain occupations. As such, not all farmers are hablises, nor are all miners dwarves.
Abandi
If you’ve ever met an Abandi, you’ll never forget them–unless you’re somewhat colorblind–because they have green skin and red hair. The shades and tones vary somewhat, so you could come up with a hundred names for the varied hues (trust me, the abandis already have) but for the most part, they’re green and red. Their eyes come in all shades of blue and purple. Oh yeah. And pink, although I’ve been told that pink eyes is the albino shade and always accompanies grey skin and hair.
I’ve heard that they got their name from the black band across their eyes, but I doubt it. They’ve been around a lot longer than the Oramische language, and they’re the ones that call themselves that. Another theory is that they were named for masked bandits, but not all bandits wear just a strip of cloth around their eyes. If you’re having a tough time picturing the band, just imagine a raccoon.
One very interesting thing about them is that they’re all exactly the same height and weight as newborns and as adults. And they grow at the same rate, so you can always tell a youngster’s age. They’re so consistent, that part of Oram’s measurements are named for them. An adult abandi is three feet tall, so they call that unit of measure a bandi. Get it? A-bandi? As a matter of fact, the man put in charge of designing a universal measuring system on Oram was an abandi. The base unit of measure for weight is called a baba and is named after the weight of a newborn abandi.
They are excellent mathematicians and designers and often get jobs as engineers or bookkeepers or carpenters. A structure built by an abandi will be very precise. They don’t do approximations. They’re often hired to build intricate machinery, and they make the best clocks on Oram. City governments often hire them as tax auditors, but only the honest ones. Abandis may look like little bandits, but they’re too honest to let a crooked official get away with fleecing the people. They live to about two hundred and fifty years and their favorite pastime is telling stories.
Arghor
This hoofed umanid is quite peaceful, preferring to either avoid a fight or settle it with words. City-dwellers typically live together in large family units. Outside of the city, however, their villages are often found on top of grassy hills. They build longhouses and sleep segregated by gender and age.
The males grow to six or seven feet while the females are always less than six feet. Their hair usually varies from reddish-brown to greyish-brown and is often grown to their waist. Neither sex grows facial hair. Their ears are small. They have horizontally slitted eyes that are widespread on their face. They have buff-colored skin and straight wiry hair on their legs.
Their favorite pastime is picnics and games. They are strict vegetarians and wear only plant-based clothing such as cotton. Their diets are primarily grains and vegetables with plenty of herbs and spices. They make the most savory bread and are quite successful bakers in cities.
Daga
Adult dagas are about three to six feet tall. Males are slightly larger than females, but females are more aggressive, especially when protecting children. You’ll know a daga when you see one because they’ll have hair all over their face and body. They have long legs built for speed and are the fastest of all the umanids. They also have excellent hearing.
Dagas don’t care about politics. They care only for loyalty and will work for anyone that treats family, friends, and employees well. They are extremely protective and will always defend the most vulnerable member of their party. As such, they make excellent nannies. Additionally, they are sought after by most military for their unrivaled patrolling and investigative abilities.
Danaash
Danaash are as close to human as you’re going to find on Oram. Their age averages about seventy-five years, and their height ranges from five to six feet tall. They typically are brown-skinned with brown to black hair. Their eyes are all shades of brown.
However, danaash can also be quite diverse as they are one of the few species that can reproduce with the other umanid species. It’s not entirely rare to find danaash with horns or tails. As a matter of fact, Qat and Qrow are danaash with cat-like gold eyes.
Another unique feature is that there isn’t just one danaash language, although most of the danaash found in large cities speak primarily Oramishe. However, remote areas often have their own cultural language. Akin speaks Owanulafa, and Qat and Qrow speak Karatol.
Danaash typically build their homes above ground using local resources like wood and stone. If clay can be found locally, they may use it for bricks or tile. They are avid shipbuilders and have extensive trade routes.
Dwarf
You’ve probably heard of dwarfs. They’re short and stocky and usually speak with Scottish accents. Oram’s dwarfs range from three and a half to five and a half feet tall, but not all of them have the stocky build you may be used to seeing. Dwarfs from different areas may look very different from each other. Their coloring spans the range of Earth’s humans. They are long-lived, to nearly four hundred years. Some are acclimated to the heat, others to the cold. They occupy nearly all climates on Kish. However, only a few of them can swim.
Dwarfs often live in large, organized cities designed to support expansion. They have little trust for outsiders or change. Most of the ancestral cities do not allow non-dwarf species within. Fortunately, nearly all of them have modified their cities to have an access center to allow them to host holiday celebrations and festivals that attract visitors. These centers usually have a bank managed by Grimm and one hotel. Dwarfs only use a Grimm bank when leaving their city. Otherwise, they keep their coin and other valuables in their home.
Dwarfs are very traditional with jobs strictly segregated by sex and–in a few instances–by subspecies. They are considered adults about the age of fifty, at which time, they are allowed to become apprentices in their chosen profession. Prior to then, they are encouraged to investigate work opportunities for which they have an interest. Despite that, most of them choose the profession of their parent.
Kasaandra is a dwarf from Toithdd Croieanan, a large metropolis built inside a mountain in Alalngar.
Elf
Elves are long-lived and one of the earliest species on Oram. They typically live in concert with the natural environment, gaining permission from the resources there before building their homes within trees, rocks, or soil. There are eleven subspecies that are all quite distinct, ranging in height from four to over seven feet tall. A few subspecies have the ability to breathe underwater and make their homes in the rivers and oceans and lakes on Oram. Others can shape trees or rocks.
Elves are able to mate between subspecies but retain the coloring and the majority of traits from only one parent. Variations are typically found in the shade of their skin, the color of their eyes, and their height and weight, but–except for their eye color–they remain within a narrow margin of their subspecies. Female elves don’t become fertile until after their 100th year, and can only conceive once every five years. Their gestation period is 900 days (approximately nine seasons) or just over two years.
Elves have a naming ceremony on their 100th nascency day. During the ceremony, they choose to either keep their given name–by dropping the elfling prefix–or a completely new name. After which time, they are expected to leave their parent’s home and embark on their Sodaphari–a journey to discover their true life’s purpose. Only once they’ve completed their Sodaphari may they build a home of their own.
Click here to learn more about the different subspecies of elves.
Faerie
Faeries exist on Oram, but few people have ever seen one and remember it.
Falkiras
One of the few species where females are larger than males by almost a foot on average, females range from four and a half to five and a half feet tall. Despite their robust size, they are very lightweight, maxing out at thirty-six babas (about 80 pounds). Their wingspan is just more than double their height. They fly by two years old, reach maturity at seven years, and can live for well over one hundred years.
Except for their wings and taloned feet, falkiras look very much like danaash. An individual’s skin and hair color are always the same but may range within the species from snowy white to brown to black. They lack external earlobes, but they can hear as well as any danaash. They have excellent eyesight, perhaps the best of all Oram’s species. Their eye colors are white, yellow, orange, red, brown, or green.
Falkiras are found all over Oram, from the snowy mountain peaks of Alalngar to the deserts of Uruk and Puannum’s swamps, as long as there are tall enough trees in which to build their treehouses.
Falkiras are found in nearly every mixed-species city. They are excellent archers, preferring a bow over nearly all other weapons. They train with other lightweight ranged weapons such as knives and throwing stars, axes, and darts. They tend to avoid large melee weapons but may train with spears or harpoons. They are some of the most skilled bowyers in all of Oram. Falkiras are recruited as scouts, surveyors, and hunters, but are skilled in most professions. However, they tend to avoid forges, for obvious reasons.
Grimm
Grimms are about six and a half feet at the shortest and have pot bellies. They have no hair and no ears. There are two subspecies of grimm.
They have a shared consciousness and can telepathically tap into all grimm memories (of their own subspecies) at any time, which is why they dominate in the banking profession. It’s also why they aren’t hired into any position that requires confidentiality outside of the banking industry. It’s not because they can’t be trusted not to talk, it’s that other grimms will be privy to the information. As such, they place honesty in very high regard and trust no one outside of their own subspecies.
Because the two species’ collective memories are separate, they are specialized by subspecies: one handles business banking, the other handles personal.
Hablis
Imagine an overweight Hobbit with shoes and a tall hat. That’s sort of what a hablis may look like. Their cities are usually underground, and you’d never know they were there if it weren’t for all the crops growing above them. In areas that get heavy rainfall, they usually build wooden homes above ground with stone-paved streets. They seldom live near a water source; instead, they dig deep wells.
Hablis live in clans of large family groups within towns of many clans. Each clan has a leader they call a Mayor, and the leader of the town is the Governor. Above-ground cities have fences that separate the clans, and the town is bordered by walls. They are very territorial. There are constant disputes between clans and neighbors, but they are as affectionate as they are argumentative. They greet family by kissing each other’s noses.
Females tend to their young, often sharing the responsibility within each clan, while males defend their territories. However, everyone contributes to farming. They are superb farmers with complicated, sophisticated irrigation systems. In an attempt to keep the peace, males leave their birth clan to find a mate, then move in with their mate’s clan. It seldom works.
Hablis’ favorite pastimes are sitting on their porches (or just outside their burrows) or visiting clan members’ homes. Gossip is quite rampant and often centered around border disputes. Extremely curious and very social, they have many parties.
They have sophisticated alarm systems within the town for emergencies. It’s not unusual for youngsters to call the alarms just to see everyone scramble.
Outside of farming, most professions are centered around fashion or food. They wear ruffles and lace in many layers. Their shoes have buckles or bows. Their hats are tall and their hair is styled in large curls. Males cannot grow mustaches, but their beards can get quite long when they choose.
The hablis diet is mostly vegetarian, high in grains, fruits, and vegetables. They keep flocks of chickens, pigeons, or other fowl for the eggs. They’re also known to keep rabbits and squirrels as pets.
Bell is a hablis of clan Tubaks from Bierenen.
Markali
Markali are closely related to the Arghor but are quite distinctively different. They are seldom taller than five feet (not including their corkscrew horns). Their feet are hooved and their lower bodies are quite hairy. Their tails are short. They have strong, muscular chests and arms that they show off at every opportunity. They are excellent climbers and often make their homes in rocky mountain ranges where others are unable to reach.
They refer to themselves only by the male pronoun. If there are any female markali, they don’t advertise it. Unlike the Arghor, they enjoy nothing more than a rousing fight. Most fighting establishments are managed by Markali.
Merkama
Merkama are primarily sea people, but they can breathe both underwater and out of the water. Imagine a human body with fins that run along the spine and the back of the arms and legs. They are devoid of hair and they have scales instead of skin.
They are one of the few species that still has royalty. However, the throne may not always be inherited as a birthright. When the time comes to select a new royal, challengers are put through a series of tests that will require strength, cunning, diplomacy, and many other traits.
Nonyx
Nonyx is an extinct species on Oram, made so because they were psychopathic serial killers. They were self-assured, extraverted, dominant, impulsive, and agreeable (even when they weren’t agreeing with you), controlling, easily bored, and distracted by new things. They were fiercely independent and extremely distrustful of strangers.
The best way to gain their favor was to ignore them. They couldn’t stand not investigating such a rarity. They were loners, keeping to themselves when they weren’t mating, which they did as often and with as many partners as they could.
In addition to fighting (which they loved more than anything), they were excellent climbers and very stealthy, often ambushing their prey just for the fun of it.
Quip
Quips are small umanids that live to dig. Few people have ever seen them, and even fewer have ever spoken to them.
Ukulu
Ukulus typically live no longer than forty years. They stay in groups of related females dominated by a matriarch. Adult males join the group periodically to mate but seldom stay longer than a season. Young males leave just before reaching adulthood at about ten years old. Multiple males born in the same season will often remain together for a few years after leaving their family and before branching off alone.
Ukulus are strong, with broad backs and chests, long arms, and short legs. They range from five and a half to seven feet tall. Distinctive traits are their long, lower tusks and enlarged upper canines. Their eyes are deep-set below a slanting forehead and heavy brows, with brown to black irises. Both sexes are bald and nearly devoid of hair. Males have short, wiry hair only along their spines, getting slightly longer between their shoulder blades. They have clawed nails that are excellent for defense or digging in hard, dry dirt. Despite living in such warm areas, ukulus are light-skinned, in varying shades of grey and light brown. Ukulus are also immune to most diseases and have a heightened sense of smell. They are also excellent swimmers.
Most ukulus are nomadic, moving with the seasons and food resources. They live in warm areas that are devoid of snowfall year-round and seldom build structures, preferring to sleep under the stars. A water source isn’t necessary, as they are adapted to arid regions and retain the water from their food sources. They consume roots, tubers, bulbs, nuts, seeds, berries, leaves, twigs, shoots, insects, fish, rodents, lizards, snakes, frogs, baby birds, and carrion. They use fires only to render animal fat or resins. They eat all their food raw except for the omikhekhe cakes made from foods that are dried and pounded into a powder, then mixed with rendered fat and stored inside bags made from animal stomachs. These cakes are made for travel or when there is a surplus of food.
Ukulu males are sometimes found in diversified cities, but females seldom leave their matriarchal groups. The offspring of ukulu males and danaash females are always male. Ukulus shun magic and seldom trust anyone that uses it. They are excellent fighters and are often hired as bodyguards, scouts, or mercenaries.
Akin is part ukulu but knows nothing of his parents. His earliest years were in a danaash village, but he was later raised by a woman he calls Aunt Imolena.
K.T. Pike 