Halflings

Halflings are a diminutive race who generally resemble short, compactly built humans. They usually live either as minorities intermixed with human populations, or in self-contained halfling communities that form pockets or enclaves within larger human-inhabited areas; there are not halfling kingdoms per se, since halflings as a race are not much given to conquest and state-building, and tend to be suspicious of grand authority.

Halflings generally venerate Touz as a mother-goddess figure, along with [a couple other deities, probably mainly children of Touz, like the good-aligned patron of travellers and good luck and good-aligned thieves or whatever, maybe also Deinoa]. When living among Oritheans, they are generally permitted to practice their own ways outside of the strictures of Utara-Vaati, but their emphasis on the worship of Touz sometimes puts them at odds with Vanir-Vaati (both priests and common people) who view her cult with suspicion.

The origins of the halfling race are obscure. Wherever halflings live, their local folklore tends to speak of a long-ago period of wandering before they settled in their current environs, which suggests some long-ago shared racial experience of exile or nomadism. Such a period may have scattered them from some ancestral homeland and sent them roaming across wide areas, accounting for the far-flung dispersion of current halfling enclaves. Howver, there are no recorded histories of such, so it remains speculative.

Some consider the halflings no more than an especially physically distinct branch of humanity, a strange tribe descended from forgotten forebears of unusually slight stature, or who have become exceptionally short over the millennia for some unknown reason. Many unflattering suggestions have been made as to this unknown reason; various forms of curse or enchantment inflicted in long-ago times, deviant sexual practices such as interbreeding with rabbits, bizarre dietary practices (usually intended to sound repulsive), generations of hereditary criminality producing offspring well-suited to hiding and sneaking, etc. These suggestions usually come in the form of nothing more than mean-spirited jokes by humans at halflings' expense, although they may feed into episodes of ugly violence that sometimes occur where the two races live side-by-side.

Many halflings take offense (although sometimes amusement) at the suggestion that they are no more than an abnormally small sub-race of humans. When confronted with such claims, they may semi-sarcastically respond that actually they came first and all mankind are an overgrown and degenerate sub-branch of *their* noble lineage. In earnest, halflings typically consider themselves “children of Touz.” This is an ambiguous term at best because it could also describe the human race (although a devout Vanir-Vaati would protest), or could imply that the halflings were directly and separately created by the goddess. Delving into such theological distinctions is not appealing to most halflings, and they are unnerved when humans become preoccupied with them.

Halflings have a general reputation as sneaks and thieves among humans in some areas, which is partially undeserved. They do often find their way into criminal occupations, but this is arguably because in places where they are mistrusted, they have difficulty finding honest work and are forced into disreputable niches. The negative stereotype thus becomes a self-fulfilling expectation. It is also the case that the halflings who venture out of their communities and into human society are often either restless misfits or those who are unwelcome with their own kind due to some misdeed, so humans who judge halflings as crime-prone may be basing their assumptions on a minority that is unrepresentative (or even self-selected for criminal tendencies).

Halflings in Orithea can be found scattered throughout many human lands, but especially Kelimaria, Ojaum, Rhydain, Enyrion, and Khadoa. They tend to speak Tuvai like the humans they live among, usually whatever local dialect is prevalent, but they also have their own distinct variant of the common tongue that can be difficult for others to make sense of.