Quickling

Is there anything more boring in fantasy fiction to me than “humans” being a default baseline without anything special to mark them? Quicklings, also called “tall-men”, while physically and in most other ways being similar to us, are not that. They are certainly the most widespread and populous demihumans, due to their quick lives and fecundity, but they are viewed as being fantastical in their own right. They are beings of ambition, of ingenuity and of personal strength, going all the way back to the Second World, in which they helped engineer the Apocalypse that brought in the Time of Dragons, achieving with their draconic patrons what the ogres could not do and unseating the Ordning of the giants from their perch above the world. Imagine these more as the Numenoreans of Tolkien’s myth more than anything else. Even so, they struggle sometimes to maintain the respect of longer-lived races, and have often driven conflict and war across Uskara because of their incessant desire to expand.

Quicklings average six feet tall, two feet taller than most dwarves, though certainly shorter than ogres. They are hale and hearty, with long legs that make them fantastic pursuers and runners, and athleticism is a common theme through quicklings no matter their culture. Their short lives drive them to achievement, and they sometimes lack the strong familial connections that other demihumans have or sense of history, instead being much more tied to civil institutions. While dwarves and elves have long been the architects of civilization, quicklings have adapted and mastered the structures built within it, seeming able to fill in any gap and having the ability to rapidly through their generations change according to the times. Quicklings are often the backbone of many militaries, even in cultures where they are not the majority, and are inclined towards martial pursuits because of their gifts, though they can flourish in other areas as well. They were shaped in many ways to be the most versatile tools of the giants, though at the cost of burning out early. On average, a quickling will live to the age of eighty. Partly due to this, quicklings tend to be fervently religious, as they are the most preoccupied with the afterlife since it is so much more a pressing concern for them than other demihumans. Quicklings were also the demihumans that were most influenced by the dragons during the Third World, and were seen as their stewards. The sunken continent of Ys is said to have given born to the merrow, an aquatic illbred race that hates the surface world deeply.

Quicklings are found in great numbers within every Talirean culture, though dominate Myrcian and Keshkevarine culture the most. Because of how quickly their generations succeed each other, they are often the agents of cultural change and exchange, the ones that adapt the first and break traditions as needed, but they also are the quickest to assimilate and be suborned. Foreign examples of quickling dominated societies include Zafara’s Land of Nod, where the necromancy-obsessed inhabitants lived amongst their honored dead in desert valleys filled with black pyramids that look strikingly similar to the basalt ones in the Keshkevar, and the fallen Ornassi Thalassocracy, which while eclipsed by the Commonwealth since the end of the Fifth World still made its mark through its voyages and colonies across Uskara, living on as a memory in a few scattered city-states. Unlike other demihumans, quicklings don’t organize themselves into lineages of clans as a rule, at least among the common folk. Familial ties matter to them less on the whole as allegiances to institutions, faiths or causes. Instead, aristocratic dynasties who use the stylings of elvish houses have risen in this current age of feudal kingdoms and organized churches, specific to their home cultures.