Most humans are descendants of pioneers, conquerors, traders, travelers, refugees, and other people on the move. As a result, human lands are a mix of people -- physically, culturally, religiously, and politically. Hard or fine, light-skinned or dark, showy or austere, primitive or civilized, devout or impious, humans run the gamut. Within Thunder Rift, there are two main stock of humans, the civilized Pelosians and the semi-nomadic Keldon.
Personality: Humans are the most adaptable, flexible, and ambitious people among the common races. Theya re diverse in their tastes, morals, customs, and habits. Others accuse them of having little respect for history, but it's only natural that humans, with their relatively short life spans and constantly changing cultures, would have a shorter collective memory than dwarves, elves, gnomes, and even hobbits.
The Pelosians are the typical humans, which means they have no singular personality trait. They can be just a cruel as they are kind, but for the most part, their devotion to Pelor as their patron deity keeps them, generally, on the path of good.
The Keldon are a much more aggressive people than the Pelosians, being tribal they view anyone who is not of their tribe to be someone that must first prove themselves before being considered a friend or even an ally. The Keldon live by the rule of strength, that typically the strongest member of their tribe is the strongest. There is no sexism among the Keldon, a woman can be chieftain just as "easily" as a man can be.
Physical Description: Humans typically stand from 5 feet to a little over 6 feet tall and weigh from 125 to 250 pounds, with men noticeably taller and heavier than women. Thanks to their penchant for migration and conquest, and to their short generations, humans are more physically diverse than other common races, with skin shades that run from nearly black to very pale, hair from black to blonde (curly, kinky, or straight), and facial hair (for men) from sparse to thick. Plenty of humans have a dash of nonhuman blood, and they may demonstrate hints of elven, orc, or other lineages. Humans are often ostentatious or unorthodox in their grooming and dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, body piercings, and the like. Humans have short life spans, living longer than only the thri-kreen and achieving adulthood at about age 15 and rarely living a single century.
Pelosians have light skin with hair color ranging from brunette to blonde to red. Their eye color tends towards the lighter colors such as gray, hazel, and blue, with green being a rarity. The keldon have dark skin, usually being tan or ruddy brown. Their hair color is darker than the pelosians as well, often times being light to dark brunette with some even sporting black hair. There are red haired keldons, but they are a rarity. Eye color, like the rest of their features, tend towards darker coloration; shades of brown are the most common, getting so dark as to almost be black. Very rarely keldons have green or amber colored eyes.
Relations: Just as readily as they mix with each other, humans mix with members of other races. Among the other races humans are known as "everyone's second-best friends." They serve as ambassadors, diplomats, magistrates, merchants, and functionaries of all kinds.
An unfortunate trait of humans is their ingrained bias toward physical appearance. Humans tend to be friendliest to races that are the most like them, the most "human-like." This makes them most comfortable with elves, spirit folk, half-elves, and even dwarves. Though stocky, dwarves basically look human. Gnomes and hobbits fall into this category as well, though their reduced stature makes them constantly underestimate them. The human bias falls on the so-called "monster" races of Thunder Rift; orcs and half-orcs, minotaurs, and especially the thri-kreen.
Alignment: Humans as a race tend towards no particular alignment, individually however they run the spectrum. When humans are good, they are the best the race has to offer. And when they are evil, they are tyrants and conquerors.
Human Lands: Human lands are usually in flux, with new ideas, social changes, innovations, and new leaders constantly coming to the fore. Members of longer lived races find human culture exciting but eventually a little wearying or even bewildering.
Since humans lead such short lives, their leaders are all young compared to the political, religious, and military leaders among the other races. Even where individual humans are conservative traditionalists, human institution change with the generations, adapting and evolving faster than parallel institutions among the elves, dwarves, gnomes, and hobbits. Individually and as a group, humans are adaptable opportunists, and they stay on top of changing political dynamics.
Within Thunder Rift the humans could potentially be the most populated race, however they have spread themselves out through the region rather than gathering as one large community as the elves and dwarves do. Kleine, Torlynn, and Melinir are just a few of the settlements that humans have established within the Rift. Human communities generally include relatively large numbers of nonhumans (compared, for instance, to the number of nondwarves who live in dwarven lands).
Religion: Unlike members of the other races, humans do not have a chief patron deity or a single pantheon of gods they worship. Different sects of humans worship different deities, and each has their own creation mythos -- and each one believes they are correct. The pelosians, for example, worship Pelor and the small pantheon that goes along with him, such as St Cuthbert and Hextor. The keldon worship Kord, the Mountain King, as well as the Erythnul, Tiamat, and Wee Jas. And still other tribes of humans have even more pantheons that they give worship to.
Language: The human tongue has come to be known simply as the Common Tongue, and it is the standard language spoken by most intelligent beings within Thunder Rift, and the Known World. Some tribes learn their own languages in addition to the Common Tongue; pelosians speak only Common but the keldon, for example, speak a variant of the language called keldonian which is their own, unique language. Humans typically learn other languages, including obscure ones, and they are fond of sprinkling their speech with words borrowed from other languages. Orc curses, hobbit culinary terms, dwarven mining phrases, and so on.
Names: Human names vary greatly. Without a unifying deity to give them a touchstone for their culture, and with such a fast breeding cycle, humans mutate socially at a fast rate. Human culture, therefore, is more diverse than other cultures, and no human names are truly typical.
COMMON HUMAN TRAITS
