How do you justify the existence of beastfolk/furry races in your settings ?
More like ironflaw
>>98412538how do you justify removing humans as a race doe?
>>98412538
>>98412538Cursed humans
>>98412538Powerful magical person uplifting animals to a more human form to be better servants.Powerful magical animal uplifting humanoids to a more animal form to be better servants.Many years after either scenario they become their own race.
>>98412538why do things need explaining?my setting isnt run by cinemasins
Spirit beast are a walking crossroads. A liminal being. A imperfect synthesis that doesn't belong anywhere but can go everywhere. Also the meta reason is because werewolves are cool and I loved playing bloody roar as a kid, so magical animal people martial artist will always make me at least a little happy.
>>98412538Gods created them. They came before animals too, animals are just the offspring of individuals cursed to lose the humanoid parts.
They don't exist in my setting.
>>98412538Metaphysically, there are only four types of intelligent beings in my world.HumansSpirits/Divine ServantsDaimonsElementalsHumans are human, duh, but someone using magic could accidentally or intentionally alter their form to be beastlike, but this is usually temporary; the permanent ones would be madmen, basically.Spirits are former humans that became "servants" to the gods. They're intermediaries between deities and the human world; however, they have free will, are ageless, and are shapeshifters. They usually pick a form relevant to their deity's domain, but some regularly or semi-permanently use a humanoid form. They will sometimes include animal features, depending on the individual.Daimons are disembodied consciousnesses that must possess either humans, animals, plants, or nonliving things in order to interact with the physical world. Daimons can use their own magic to warp their form over time, so a daimon that possesses an animal may make it more human over time, or one possessing a human more animalistic over time.Elementals are exactly what they say on the tin; metaphysically speaking, they're earthbound daimons that have a body being their entire element, rendering them incapable of possession or embodying. However, enterprising alchemists have figured out how to bind individual elementals to a singular body using magic. These bodies vary a lot depending on the skill of the creator and the desire of the elemental, but they also sometimes incorporate animalistic elements if they're close enough to a living thing rather than being something like a statue, automaton, or construct of the element in question.So, yeah, theoretically all kinds of justifications depending on the flavor, but in practice the setting mostly focuses on humans.
If anything, races specifically becoming not just humanoid but looking directly like humans instead of beastfolk is something I find more farfetched. Like think about the leap from mammals/other apes to how we look. It'd be like as an entire species line suddenly thinking it's superior to adopt flat pug-like faces and lack of hair/fur like a sphynx cat/naked mole rat.
>>98413045Don't forget, losing the tail too.
>>98412538Love is blind.
>>98412538Catgirls are hot
>>98412538There's a patron deity of hybrid breeding and her blessings make even most unlikely unions feasible.
>>98413721Thank you for spoiling that anon but why on earth do you even have
>>98412538Weirdo furry commune tampering with genetics got blown back to the dark ages and now they just kinda live like that.
>>98412538slave races created by a now fallen empire a few centuries ago. Now trying to become civilized themselves without taking any shit from the races created by the gods instead of by some deranged wizards. About half of them (harpies, minotaurs, gnolls and others) have gone feral and become truly monstruousI literally ripped it off from the might and magic games>>98413721that's some... interesting... art you have there, anon. I appreciate the Lamashtu theme
>>98412538In Pathfinder, they got a thing called awakened animals, which are pretty much regular animals that manage to gain intelligence as a human, usual main reasons are stumbling upon or the subject/ victim of being affected by magic, they either become more humanoid or still animal just with the smarts of a human and depending said animal will affect them on who they become when they are awakened I like using this sort of concept for them. Descendants of animals that were affected by magic somehow and now they live as their own race out in the woodlands, mainly forest critters like rabbits, foxes, badgers, and a few bird groups and so on, keeping to themselves as they smoke pipeweed, banging the missus for another litter next year and chilling out with human traders before robbing them if they can get away with it
>>98412538Completely unironically buy my book that's called "The OSR Catgirl." It goes into the process of how the sorcerers of the ancient empire created catgirls and then walks you through the process in case you want to replicate it. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/572099/the-osr-catgirl-nine-lives-of-adventure
>>98412538Everything that isn't human exists only to be killed for loot and XP.
>>98413953>lamashtu>he doesn't know
>>98412538I don't because they don't exist
I like the Shifters from Ebberon. Only ~10% furry, with a "flip-out" button to turn them 25% and angry.
>>98414006elaborate, please. at least the icon hanging around the neck of the cultists is a Lamashtu symbol
>>98413866I got it from local drawthread, it was essentially a troll delivery, but such a high effort (not to mention a high octane nightmare fuel) I felt compelled to save it and repost it when topically appropriate to share the burned of seeing artist vision made manifest.
>>98412538The world is just a series of trees stacked on top of one another like the shit you see in something like Etrian Odyssey. The Gods have their fun by making races and having them fight and compete against each other to try and prove that that God is the best. Every time the Gods wanna start a new "game" they just grow another tree series of World Trees whose canopies spread across the entire world and link together to form the land the next set of races would live on. Eventually the Gods noticed that Humans would continue to pop up on each layer time and time again, so one day they all decided to take Humans and mutate them to improve them and compete that way instead, leading to the creation of beast men, dwarves, elves, orcs, yada yada, all the demihuman style races. It is for this reason that Humans are the only (major/sentient) race not divinely blessed by a God, except for Orcs, who pissed off their God and were abandoned by them.
>>98413997*kills all humans*
>>98412538>>98412574Alternate evolutionary history where non-primates became the dominant sapient species.
>>98412538In my setting souls are made of multiple components/aggregates and go through cycles of rebirthWhen a soul with a particulary strong humonoid-ish self image component is reborn in a beast body or just that component end up it soul of a beast it can force a resonance with the other components and the body's nature, changing the tune of the being into somewhere between a humanoid and the given animal(and the other way arround for a strong beastial self image into a humanoid body) resulting in a de-novo beastfolkThose in turn are able to reproduce with, giving the right spiritual affinity, either their animal type or humans leading to beastfolk racesAn other path is humanoids groups that either through specific ritual or very close bonds/proximity start to incorporate 'beast like' components in there souls or entering in resonance with a given animal, leading them to develop into beastfolk across a few generations
Justifying anthropomorphic races in a fantasy setting is significantly easier than justifying 1:1 anime girls in the same setting, but for some reason a lot of fa/tg/uys will decry the former and defend the latter.
>>98412538beast people originate as divine curses from an ancient pantheon of gods for an ancient empire. (like, the first empire ever.) Like how the greek gods in our myths cursed a lot of people by turning them into animals, these ancient gods did the same.However, the soul of the person remains unchanged, even if their flesh was warped into beasthood. (it creates a horrible feeling of spiritual discomfort which makes the transformation curse extra miserable) The cursed victims would sometimes survive long enough mate with members of their new species (when in rome...) and most of the time, this would result in generally a few outcomes.The most common result was stillborn fetuses. Stricken dead in the womb from inheriting too much divine malice from their cursed parent.Uncommonly, the offspring would be bigger, stronger, healthier and far more intelligent than the usual members of their species. This is the result of inheriting the divine magic of transformation without too much of the malice that makes it a curse. Because the child is already of the target species, the magic instead just reinforces their existence, making them "more".And finally, very rarely the human soul would push through and the offspring would be mutant hybrids - humanoid but also very clearly bestial. This is flagrant heresy - human soul trumping divine power? So these offspring would often be halfway to madness, and become the equivalent of like, a troll setting up near a village. the gods were very busy cursing people though, and the empire lasted a fair while, so while it was very rare, enough coincidences would occur for various hybrids to meet, breed, and have children. At this point, the magic has "stabilised", so offspring of hybrids would always be hybrids. Millenia have passed, and beastmen of all kinds lurk here and there, some more "wild" than others. They are a race in truth now, the divine magic and malice long faded with the distant fall of that ancient empire.
I had this idea where beastfolk originated due to uplifting magical experiments. The twist is that when these experiments were attempted on apes and trees, humans and elves were created.
I don't, they are a timeless concept.
>>98412538Sex
>>98412538I don't. Beast-furry races just attract furries, who are always bad players and bad people. Every setting is better off without them.
>>98419545Always has and always be a dumb reasoning. At that point you are bending over backwards potentially excluding cool things or things you even like just because some people can't control themselves. Might as well ban female characters/npcs, elves, demons, robots, dragons, all sorts of stuff just because people are out there that MIGHT like them too much.
Mutants that came about because a wizards guild specifically specialized in transformation spells and potions, but would dump the reject potions in the rivers to avoid costly clean ups and an angry local royalty. Goes down stream, local village water supply and wildlife eventually start showing mutations.
>>98412538One of the gods is basically Zeus but he only fucks animals and all of his children became their own races which can breed with humans but only produce more of their own kind. Weirdly, they can't breed with other animal types, only their own and humans. Each progenitor animal was a rare member of its species, like the equivalent of the Nemean lion or the Cretan bull.
