longer.blue

I want a fantasy world where humans are actually a really rare and ancient race and that + their shorter lifespans makes them valuable like most finite, rare things are. Like, an elf meets a human who's a 5th their age and treasures that moment forever because they know that they might never see a human again, let alone that specific person. Yes, some societies would see humans as fragile beings that need protection. Others may view them as useless creatures that are just holdovers of a bygone era. Regardless, everyone would know them as an ancient race that has been around for like forever and, despite their mortality, have survived through countless tragedies and disasters. Like, because humans have no real attunement with magic, their societies relied solely on constantly advancing technology. Like in our real world, they didn't really know magic was real for most of human history. Then, when the other typical fantasy races (elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.) had prominent enough societies, they were introduced to real magic, but since 99.9% of humans can't attune with it anyway and their thousands of years of culture has centered around the lack of magic, they just don't mess with it much. Due to multiple reasons, human communities are more isolated and few and far between: (1) Humans aren't xenophobic, just cautious. The fantasy races introduced changes in culture that they haven't fully adjusted to, plus they introduced new magic based illnesses that human immune systems aren't evolved to deal with. They accept outside help with curing and inoculating against those diseases, but only VERY qualified and sterile individuals get to enter human settlements, for the safety of the people. Humans might open up more once they feel more secure, health wise. (2) Humans have a ridiculous amount of languages that are all vastly different. The chances are that there's going to be a significant language barrier every time a non-human encounters one. Elves, dwarves, orcs, and so on, usually have languages that span their entire races with just different accents and dialects. Chances are, your local dialect might have developed with influence from the nearest human settlement's language, so you might have an easier time learning that specific human language compared to others. (3) Human populations have significantly dwindled over the past millennia, further separating the populations that do still exist. This is mostly because the awakening of magic in the world has made natural settings like forests harder to survive in + there are places that are called Fey Wilds by humans. Those places are pockets of concentrated magic where the Veil between realms is extremely thin or nonexistent. Only a tiny 0.01 percent of humans can survive exposure to raw atmospheric magic. It's literally like radiation poisoning. Magic has been spreading so much that there are now only a few places without any magic at all where human's can safely settle. Some small numbers of humans do travel, of course for many reasons. They might be scientists or historians, scholars in general, trying to study the world. They could be one of the 0.01% that can attune with magic and therefore start adventuring to learn more and become some kind of caster. They could be a courier or caravan who travel between human settlements to circulate resources. They could even just be some daring, fearless youths who just want to explore and get elf pussy. Those ones tend to live the shortest lives, but they're quite memorable. Human tech is pretty advanced. Like, imagine those Utopia memes. So their settlements look unimaginable to the fantasy races. The ruins dotted around the world are remnants of older human cities. Like, New York is like Pompeii kinda shit. IF This became a worldbuilding project, I'd probably say this was just normal Earth, but then some sort of merge happened with another universe's version of Earth that very suddenly introduced fantasy races and creatures and magic. The spreading of the Veil is just the merger slowly continuing until it will eventually finalize with there being no places on Earth that aren't touched by magic. Like the initial merge started when at what would be considered our modern times and at least 3000 years have passed since then, making it ancient history that no one remembers.