The world of Steel Horizons is populated by five primary
ancestries: humans, trolls, orcs, dwarves, and elves. Much information from the Wasteland Period, the centuries of struggle that preceded Olympia’s Founding, has been destroyed or lost. Even less is known about the nature of
the Change that first broke the Ancients from one ancestry into five. What is known, however, is that in the chaos of the Wasteland Period, loyalties and cultures developed more along social units than they did along racial bloodlines. Anthropologists of the University of Apollo credit this in part to the persistent human urge to pack-bond with anything - a trait some ancestries lost after the Change. To this day, while individual branches of a tribe may run strong in one ancestry or another, the tribes as a whole tend to be representative of all five ancestries, with humans bridging the cultural gaps between their peers and descendants.
In this, the City of Olympia is actually something of an exception. The Founding drew people of all tribes, and thus, people of all ancestry, to its doorstep. However, the physically tougher and more resilient ancestries tended to have less reason to join. When your strength of arm already keeps you safe, metal walls that cut you off from your ancestral homes seem far less appealing. This makes Olympia primarily a city of humans and elves. Dwarves are the next most populous ancestry, followed by orcs and trolls.
What Your Character Should Know
The thing you gotta remember, kittens, is that our streets are alive.
This city teems with shoals of humans. From the heights of Zeus’ power to the depths of Hades’ slums, they're digging their fingers into every crack and crevice that'll hold ‘em. Storytellers and superstars. Leaders and law-men. Workers and weavers. Dreamers and doers. Olympia's got everything, and when you have everything, humans can become ANYTHING. What better place for such a tenacious bunch? You can't begrudge ‘em that. After all, when they needed to, they became us, too.
The dwarves still keep to themselves when they can. The Arks birthed all of us, and the dwarves never really wanted to leave. Why would they? The world outside tried to kill us all long before we hid ourselves away. It tried again the second we weaned ourselves away from the Arks’ teats. It's still trying, even now. But you'll find Hephaestus and Ares full of dwarves who know when to build up and when to dig in. You'll find among ‘em the cowards and the skinflints, too - ones who'd sell you to the Horrors to save their own skins. Still, keep your wits about you and you'll get on just fine.
No tribe survives without folks willing to do the hard work, and nobody's more willing to work hard than trolls. Whether it's rough farm life in Demeter or trash collection and recycling in Hades, a troll knows what's gotta be done, and knows the quickest way to do it. Not that every one you meet is so industrious. You'll find the lazy, the indolent, the ones who'd rather do something fast than right. They're efficient, though, and practical. You need someone to cut through Zeus’ red-tape and bullshitting, you call a troll.
There are elves on every vidscreen. They shine ethereal in Aphrodite's finest fashions, filling every niche in Dionysus’ entertainment ecosystem, talking their new fads and their old politics. They're natural stars - dynamic, charismatic, beautiful. ‘Course, you never do see the ugly elves up there. Easy to pigeonhole a whole people when that's all you see on the screens, ain't it? Just don't get it twisted. Elves have as many nasty customers with pretty faces as homely sorts with hearts of gold.
And us? The freqs belong to us, kittens. It's orcs that found rock and radio and brought them back to the surface. We were the first historians of Apollo, and now we're the true souls of Hermes, bringing our message to the masses on foot and over the airwaves. The pretty faces of other races might dominate what you see, but not a soul can control what you hear, and orcs have long memories. We tell our histories, our sagas, our stories. We'll tell yours, too, if you ask us.
The City of Olympia is a living beast. It's a thousand arms all trying to tear each other apart. The worst facets of Hermes will lie to you. The worst facets of Dionysus will distract you. Zeus will ignore you. Apollo will erase you. Demeter will poison you, Ares will beat you down, Hades will bury you, and Aphrodite will hide your grave under a bed of roses. But when the wind carries the right words to the right ears, Olympia raises all its voices together as one. And our strength can beat down anything that threatens us.
This is Mama Bear signing off for Radio Polaris, your true north star. Sleep tight out there, kittens, and remember: Raise your voices. In the end, they're all you've got.
