Mortals: Anthropomorphs

The Quill already spent a season each on the ‘civilized’ people including: dwarves, elves, urchins (smalfolk) and orcs; along with humans. There are other mortal beings across the land. Mortals are considered to be sentient people who have a finite existence and are subject to death: they are not immortal. Follow the posts this season and the mortals tag to learn more about other sentient beings of Taluma and fantasy settings in general. Note: the classifications of the people of Taluma are different than the ‘monster types’ in core rules.

The last group of mortals include the anthropomorphs, hybrid humanoid beings with the features of a beast. Many of them are evolutions of fera or wyrs who gained sentience, especially when they are wicked or cruel (evil) folk. They include beings with avian, reptilian, piscean, even arachnid features including: aarakocras, driders, ettercaps, kenkus, lizardfolk, merfolk, and sahuagin.

Lizardfolk, Merrows and Sahuagin are thought to be descendants of reptilian and aquatic fera. Nagas are malefic serpents that evolved into nearly all snake-like monsters that retained mortal cunning (along with faces).

Wyrs of Taluma

Only recently, the petrifaction disease, which produces grymbeasts, mutated (likely with purposeful magical help) to be able to infect mortals. They are called wyrs and the prefix wyr is used with the Grymbeast that bit them to delineate them: as in wyrwolves. They mutate to have features of the Grymbeast that bit them: a Grymrat would make a human a wyrrat. They are classified as creatures instead of mortals as they generally lose their sentience and become feral beings.

Since the development of petrifaction among mortals, grymbeasts have become especially dangerous to communities because their bite transforms the citizens into mindless, savage beasts themselves, and like a plague can take over entire communities, even regions. They can breed, but only with another mottled of the same type. Their offspring are usually stronger than their parents and do not carry and pass petrifaction.