Human

"I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds." - Addamar, Creator of Humanity

Addatamaruhhu (Ah-dah-tah-Mar-uh-Hu), generally called just "humans" or "Men"(or "Menschen," among Tellarian Gnomes and the now almost extinct southern Firbolg) by everyone except scholars with ages in the seven digit range, are a bipedal race with a low to middling life expectancy, high birth rate, and greater than average proficiency with magic and warfare.

### Human Nature

If asked about themselves, humans generally describe their race as "adaptable, driven, and individualistic." This is only partially true. Humans are not actually more individualistic or driven than other races. They simply appear to be because of the degree to which they diverge from each other. Humans can, and will, migrate to and survive virtually anywhere. This is by design (see below). Humans also tend to rapidly create, destroy, recreate, and modify their various cultures and beliefs as compared to other races. While they can cling to tradition as firmly as any Dwarf, they are just as likely to completely reinvent their cultures and belief systems after any major change as they are to hold onto them. Humans have a fluid and ever shifting understanding of reality defined more by circumstance than anything else, which does make them highly adaptable to change.

#### Soldiers of the Gods

Unlike the elves and dwarves that preceded them, humans were not created as an artistic endeavor by loving gods. Humans were created for one purpose and one purpose only: to stem the tide of Xalin if and when they breached Annarrion. Success was never guaranteed or even likely. They were designed to be thrown against the tide of silver death in massive numbers, continuing to fight and die without stopping until the end of time if necessary. The fact that combining their blood with that of the elves produced so many of Annarrion's heroes was a happy accident. Humans were meant to be the foot-soldiers and suicide chargers of a world at war. Only later, on Dorhaun, did they discover their propensity for building and annihilating complex cultures in a never ending spiral of birth and decay reminiscent of the Cycles themselves. Most humans are not actually any more fond of violence than a member of any other species. They are, however, comparatively better suited to it, and sometimes this leads them to make rash and bloody decisions that all parties later regret.

##### Sorcery in the Blood

Humans manifest a lot of magic. They produce one half to two thirds as many magical births as high elves, which is still vastly more than any other common race. Addamar designed them that way. Magic is a potent weapon, and they were built to be warriors. Further, they take better to magical changes and mutations than other races, a property that lasts even beyond death. This is why there are so many more vampires and werewolves of human extraction than the other races, and also why human alchemists and arcanists tend to have better (if extremely dangerous) results when they experiment on themselves. The downside is that humans tend to be more vulnerable to offensive uses of magic that transfigure the flesh. All those stories about princes being turned into frogs feature human characters for a reason.

###### Kindred

Addamar has designed other types of human, though their populations on Dorhaun are small and they never appeared on Annarrion at all. The most common on Dorhaun are the Firbolg, with the rarest (possibly extinct) variant being the Grey Folk (or Khordash, as they called themselves). While made by the same deity and fully capable of interbreeding (most Dorhaunic Humans in specific regions actually get 1-4% of their genetic make-up from Firbolg) they typically do not live together. The Addatamaruhhu tend to reshape the area around themselves to a degree the Firbolg find excessive, and enough Addatamaruhhu found the Khordash unsettling that it was often simply more comfortable to live apart..

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