Humans

## Brief Overview

*In the reckonings of most worlds, humans are the youngest of the non-cataclysm races, later to arrive on the world scene and short-lived in comparison to Dwarves, Elves, Merfolk, Orcs and Draconians. Perhaps it is because of their shorter lives that they strive to achieve as much as they can in the years they are given. Or maybe they feel they have something to prove to the elder races, and that's why they build their mighty empires on the foundation of conquest and trade. Whatever drives them, humans are the innovators, the achievers, and the pioneers of the worlds.*

The human race is widely regarded as the most adaptable race in Eldoria not only thanks to their ancestors sowing the seeds of empire throughout multiple climates and landscapes, but due to their very biology itself. The Human race was constructed and born into life much the same way as the other non-cataclysm races were, by the joint effort of Aurelius and Lysandra. However, there was one distinct difference in the physical constructs of human beings compared to the physical bodies of the other races, and that is the presence of a magically altered gene known as the "blessing of adaptation". As the last of the races originally created by the gods, Aurelius felt a desire to replicate his wonder of creativity in the humans, wishing for them to forever invent new innovative ways of surviving and overcoming obstacles in their path. As such, this gene also allows humans to breed with any race, creating human hybrids, a unique type of offspring that only a human and non-human parent can produce.

## Appearance

Humans appear much similar to humans in the real world, and tend to stand between 5"1-6"4 tall. Ingame, human players are 2 blocks tall (regular player height) and retain a regular player model appearance. Humans often dress in leather and cloth based clothing. Humans tend to be able to speak, read, and write in common tongue, though some individuals have learned the tongue of other species through research and dedication, typically learning the languages of other peoples they deal with, including obscure dialects. They are fond of sprinkling their speech with words borrowed from other tongues: Orcish banter, Elvish musical expressions, Dwarvish phrases, and so on. Some humans are born with "attunement marks" which have become known as a key identifier for whether a human has the ability to learn and practice magic or not. These attunement marks come in many shapes and sizes, but glow slightly when the user is casting various spells, and touching the attunement mark is usually involved in spellcasting as a way to ground the user and channel elemental energy (which can prove quite cumbersome if the mark is in a spot that is hard to reach).

## History of the Human Race

The Humans were the 6th race to be born into the Realm of Eldoria, and the last of the races created by the gods, meaning compared to the other older races they are viewed often as being a much younger race. In the beginning, where the Elves had looked inwards and cultivated the Elder Forests, and the Dwarves had looked upwards to expand out of their subterranean homes, the humans looked beyond the horizon and began to colonise lands across the sea. There were 12 Human houses back in those days, each with the ability to rule the human empire so long as they gained the majority support of the other houses which caused periods of unrest whenever a new king was to be selected (due to death or stepping down etc) and often civil wars would break out until a candidate stepped forth and claimed the throne. These civil wars were few and far between, as it was widely regarded that the House of Galohad had nobility running through its bloodline, securing stable support from the other houses. The House Of Galohad spawned many monarchs over the years and had gained a name for itself for producing honourable and strong-headed leaders.

Of the 11 other houses, each tended to specialise in a specific sector, be that trade, exploration, industry, or agriculture, each house contributed to the Human empire in their own way. This, coupled with their wide reach across Eldoria with various established settlements, meaning that the humans not only had stable communication with multiple races (allowing for lucrative trade) but it also allowed them to catch up to the older races in terms of civilisation advancement (especially due in part to their "blessing of adaptation" which allowed them to take on the unique abilities of other races to an extent with rigorous training). This 2000-year period of growth and prosperity is looked back upon as the "Meridian Era" in which the Older Races prospered in the lands and oceans they had been gifted by their Gods. Nations and Kingdoms arose, the soil was rich and fruitful, as were the waters of the rivers and the caverns beneath their feet.

However, this period came to an abrupt end as the Orcs had grown restless, believing themselves to be deserving of all the lands and resources around them as well as believing themselves to be unmatched by any other race in terms of strength. Tensions had been rising within the Orcish empire, amalgamating in the declaration of an expansionist war that later became known as "The Great Orc Wars" with the main targets of this war being the Dwarves and Humans. The orcs turned their eyes to the towering mountain ranges of the Dwarves and the plentiful fields of the Humans.

The Dwarves had no issue in defending from their heavily reinforced mountain strongholds, the Orcs had vastly underestimated the might of dwarven-steel and thus failed miserably at getting beyond the outer mountain ranges, securing the Dwarves' Title as the best defenders in all of Eldoria. The Orcs did, however, have much more success at sieging the humans. They sent masses of Orcish legions to attack the outer human settlements with no warning, steamrolling them with ease. It was not until the enemy armies got closer to the main capital that the Humans finally decided to go to the Dwarves in a request for aid. The Human King (King Artheus III at the time) secretly arranged an alliance with the dwarven lords, and with the Dwarves' help they beat the orcs back to their homeland in a grueling war of attrition. The orcs were a prideful race, and refused to back down or surrender until eventually their lands and resources had suffered so much they were forced to retreat lest they lose what little life and fertility they had left in their once plentiful savannah which had been turned to scorched earth for the most part.

With this victory finally achieved, the humans immediately focussed on rebuilding as they had lost a great many lives to the atrocities of the Orc wars. The overall number of houses had decreased from 8 down to 12, the orcs had spared no restraint in eradicating all who tried to stand in their way. The reconstruction was not meant to be, as the draconic war raged on long after the orc wars had ceased, and before the human race could recover they were struck once again with devastating travesty. The Elemental Cataclysm ripped through the realm, causing the earth itself to split apart in a great upheaval of the landscape. Natural disasters ravaged the land, and new horrors emerged that presented new threats that no race had experienced before. In the aftermath of this utter catastrophe only 5 of the original 12 houses remained, scrambling to organise any scraps of resources they had left. What little infrastructure remained of the Human Empire was reduced to rubble and ruin, and many of the remaining houses became isolated from each other or outright destroyed, throwing the Human race into a dark age that has since lasted to this day.

## In Game Origin

If you select the Human origin ingame, you will play as a regular minecraft player with no extra abilities or modifiers to your player. However, it is important to note that whilst the human race doesn't have any ingame modifiers, a lot of their modifiers come in the form of RP discounts/buffs and Human unique districts. Humans one of the only races that can send out scholars to research other races and integrate that knowledge into their own society to an extent, as well as being the only race able to create hybrids by interbreeding with other species. If you wish to RP or play as a hybrid, you must select either the human origin upon starting or the origin of the half-breed race your character shares heritage with (e.g a half-orc can choose to play as a human origin or an orcish origin). Equally, these half-breeds may choose to align themselves with either of the two factions their heritance is from (e.g a half-orc can choose to play as part of the orcs or as part of the humans).