Foundations
The Peoples of Caeldon
The peoples as kinds: their bodies, their life patterns, and the customs that run deep enough to survive every era.
Overviews
- Species 55A broad kind of people sharing an inheritable continuity, whether biological, metaphysical, or constructed; in ordinary speech the word is people.
Most Named in This Part
- Humans PeopleThe young, fast people of the cradle-web's basins and headwaters, of the balanced adaptive field, who emerged c. 300,000-c. 220,000 BR; what marks them is pace, and they form regional peoples rather…
- Elves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, stabilized in the Elderweald from an inheritance marked by the Verdant Expanse that shows in presence more than in anatomy; their branches are the Wood, Thorn…
- Dwarves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, a dense and durable people stabilized under the Ironspine from an inheritance marked by the Iron Backbone; their branches are the Ironspine and Stonewake Dwarves.
- Orcs PeopleThe far-side people of harsh-land endurance, escorted roads, and sworn passage, neither twisted Humans nor mere raiders; their homeland is the Windscar Expanse and their civilization the Windscar…
- Goblins PeopleA ruin-adapted people, not a malicious one, who live well in abandoned works, failed towns, and road shadows and know every gap and culvert in them; their strongest country is the Broken Marches and…
- Gnomes PeopleThe far-side people of fine craft and exact measure, who read an unstable coast truly and make others keep to the reading; their country is the Tidelace Coasts and their civilization the Gaugeward…
- Thaluren PeopleAn ancient oceanic people of the Tidebound Reaches, no branch of the Elves despite the misnomer "sea-elves"; they live at sea but are born upriver, and the return to spawn shapes all their custom and…
- Kavari PeopleA resident freshwater people of the far side's tributary braids, gravel runs, and deep pools, neither Thaluren nor a river branch of the Reedfolk; their civilization is the Bankright Circles.
- Halflings PeopleThe far-side people of sheltered measure, who live where plenty has to be kept rather than taken; their first homeland is the Leeward Folds and their civilization the Foldward Commons.
- Reedfolk PeopleA secondary species of the wet threshold, at home where land and water never settle which is which, and no branch of Humans, Elves, or Dwarves; their strongest country is the lower Confluence Basins…
- Ogres PeopleA load-bearing people, living where settled worlds need heavy work but will not let the workers belong; their custom is hearth-weight and their civilization the Hearth-Weight Compacts.
- Trolls PeopleA people of wounded frontiers, whose bodies carry Failed Mending, found where land and works refuse to heal and holding the crossings no one else will keep; their civilization is the Crossing-Oath…
- Kobolds PeopleA small, careful, underwork-adapted people who live wherever surface and underworld meet imperfectly, in mine-edges, drains, vents, and ruin underlevels; their civilization is the Underhouse Compacts.
- Giants PeopleRare, withdrawn, and real: the living remainder of the Upland Colossal world, who keep to the storm shelves and hidden basins and keep the Mountain-Father's sleep.
- The Wrought PeopleThe made people, youngest of Caeldon, who began when Dwarven predecessor-frames stopped being tools; their continuity passes through design and repair, and their civilization is the Mending Orders.
- The Ironspine RegionThe long mountain belt beside the forest and the oldest Dwarven homeland, its holds cut into the mountain faces and its mines and underways running down into the rock.
Terms
The balanced adaptive field · Bank councils · Blightward Thaluren · Body-law · Branch · Bridge-oath families · Burden houses · Camp elders · Channel stewards · Cistern circles · Civilization · Far-Route Orcs · The First Material Lineages · Foldward Halflings · Hearth-keepers · Hunger-bands · Island Gnomes · Lifeway · The Long Summer · Memory-debt · Mixed-March Humans · Outer-Route Thaluren · Pool-kin · Protection · The Proving of the Unbroken Line · Redirection Assemblies · Restoration · Return-water · Siege-Scar Ogres · The Stele of Names · Stewardship · The Twofold Waters · The Unmakers · Vent-Kin Kobolds · Warrant · The waste-ground doctrine · Working right · Woundfield Trolls