Closely Related Species(?), Holiday Edition

Source...showing I'm clearly not the first to make this connection...!

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(Yep, that last one is a DC Comics toy...a 2025 Superman tie-in.  I almost used a photo that actually showed Supes and Krypto...but obviously the childlike surprise that results from ripping the arm off a yeti is always worth reliving.  Also, that feature...which may work on all the limbs, but hopefully not the head...has to be a nod to the fate of Empire's wampa, eh...?)

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A Goblinoid Family Tree

(Or really a phylogenetic tree.  I just liked the sound of family tree more in the title.)

So, in reading a post by James over at Grognardia, about Dragon articles on fantasy languages, I started to wonder if sometimes I just don't fly my geek flag high enough.  As in...maybe I'm not appropriately minmaxing the fun I could get out of the RPG hobby by not allowing myself to just go nuts like I want to as a nerdy scientist who also loves games about elves and goblins.

James posted a tree of language families, originally appearing in Dragon #66, that shows the development of the Middle Elfin tongue into a variety of fae languages.  And it's awesome.  I love that sort of stuff, so why don't I do more of it?  I wonder sometimes if I remain so focused on having an "anything goes" attitude about the world(s) I game in (like the setting for the Monstrous Matters campaign) that I miss out on creating things that would genuinely make me smile, even if I don't completely buy into all of the specifics.

With that in mind, I'm going to consider this a worthwhile way to spend a few minutes.  Here's a phylogenetic tree of a few goblinoid species, along with a few creatures from that galaxy far, far away that I suspect might be closely related.  (If you have access to genetic data, please let me know; this is just based on physical characteristics.)

Images from the Forgotten Realms Wiki, Wookieepedia, and Scryfall

I feel like this just opens up a whole world of stories for how these species became distributed as they are.  Maybe I'll follow up there.  (If you'd like to see some of my related ramblings, please check out the stuff I've written about the Fantaspora Hypothesis and #WookieesAreBugbears.)

Thanks for looking!  Now, for a character (cribbed from RPGGamer.org):

Image from Wookieepedia

Wicket

Full name:  Wicket Wystri Warrick

Species: Ewok

Home: Endor

15 HP, 12 Defense (small size)

Strength 3
Dexterity 3
Knowledge 2
Presence 4

Skills: Survival +4, Thrown Weapons +3, Languages +2, Climb +1

Goals: Helping and protecting his friends

Quote: "Goodbye.  Good-bye."

Ewoks, Insular Dwarfism, and #WookieesAreBugbears

Occasionally I google something and am surprised by how little shows up.  Sometimes I feel the need to put some thoughts down onto digital paper so that others looking for the same information may find some confirmation that their hypotheses are valid and worth exploring.  This is one of those times.

So...why aren't more people talking about the fact that Wookiees are Bugbears?

 

From HERE and HERE

On that note -- and also seemingly underrepresented in Google results considering that this has to have been discussed ad nauseam among Star Wars fans -- Wookiees and Ewoks are related, right?  And not just through the history of the Star Wars story (the intended Wookiees in ROTJ and all that)...but actually evolutionarily related, eh?  (It seems like it could be a textbook case of insular dwarfism, after all!)

And then since Bugbears are big goblinoids...maybe that means Ewoks are essentially forest goblins?  They don't necessarily match the goblin form in a lot of "standard" fantasy settings, but in multiverses where many approaches to the goblin are employed, they kind of make sense.  In Magic: The Gathering, for example, goblins demonstrate a wide range of phenotypes, including these from the plane of Tarkir:

As you may know, I love my speculation on the evolutionary relationships of fantastic humanoids.  I kind of like the way this fits.

So let's just get crazy with it...

Duloks are hobgoblins.

Gamorreans are orcs.

Wampas are yetis.

Quarren are mind flayers.

And probably on, and on, and on.

Let's get the DNA tests rolling, y'all.

More evidence that Orcs revel in physical pain

NOTE:  This post is related to my exploration of the Fantaspora Hypothesis, a proposed explanation for the existence of similar humanoid species in countless fantasy settings.  The Fantaspora Hypothesis is a proposal that fantasy humanoids originated on our Earth as hominins that coexisted during the Paleolithic Era.  Because the description of humanoid species has been a much-debated point of potential racism in roleplaying games (indeed, they are often called races), and because many (perhaps most) modern humans have DNA indicating a hereditary relationship with actual archaic hominins, I'm afraid there could be stuff that comes across as offensive to some without my even realizing it.  If this is the case, I ask that you please don't assume ill intent, that you let me know, and that you give me a chance to think about it and make corrections as needed.  Thank you!

A Paleolithic Orc family unit

Background:  SCN9A is a gene that has been investigated for its impact on pain sensitivity in humans.  SCN9A encodes a sodium channel, which points to a potential (no pun intended) role in the transmission of nerve impulses.

A few years ago, an Orc variant of the gene (with three specific differences in sequence) was associated with higher pain sensitivity in data from hundreds of thousands of modern humans of British ancestry.

In other words, those of us who have this Orc gene feel more pain.

Find the full paper HERE.

What's new:  Researchers have experimentally connected the presence of the Orc sequence variants with a specific type of pain sensitivity in a set of Latin American Human subjects.  After sensitization with mustard oil, those with the Orc gene had a lower threshold for mechanical pain.

What it all means:  There are a few interesting takeaways from all of this.  One is that, while Orcs apparently evolved in Eurasia, these specific changes in DNA have been maintained most strongly in Humans with Native American ancestry.  Why is this?  Well, the jury's still out.  It does, however, appear that the presence of these genes in modern Humans is the result of mixing of earlier Orc and Human populations, and that they are not simply maintained from the time before Humans and Orcs split evolutionarily.

Orcs may have a higher sensitivity to mechanical pain.  Interestingly, this is the sort of pain that one could imagine would be most common in battle - the pain of being poked with things (vs. pain from heat or pressure).  Why this has occurred is yet to be determined, but the idea that Orcs may charge into battle ready to revel in...and perhaps even be motivated by...the pain that awaits them...well, this isn't too hard to believe, is it?

The Fantaspora Hypothesis

In my mundane life...meaning when I am not adventuring over a tabletop, or in my head, or maybe even out in the real world...I am a scientist.  Thus, when I think about fantastic settings, I tend to think about them in a way that's...well, I hesitate to call it scientific, but we could probably go with sciencey.

Couple this with one of my favorite conceits in fantasy tabletop gaming - that all worlds are connected and reachable from our own Earth - and a lot of how and why questions immediately present themselves.  Why are humans everywhere?  How do they even share some aspects of Earth culture, but clearly not all?  What about all these near-human species that also tend to show up a lot, sometimes with slight differences from the equivalent species on another world?  Etc.

The way I currently see it, there are a few broad categories of explanations here.

From Pixabay

First of all, these fantasy worlds might have come about in a way that was simply influenced by generic Western fantasy.  I think that Codehaven (C0d3H4v3n), from my hopefully-not-abandoned PermaDeath.net effort (now at https://asciiverse.blogspot.com/), is an example that leans this way a bit.  Somehow, through existence in a computer, or in a pocket universe created by a human, or...uh, something else, probably...the fantasy world has taken on clichés associated with fictional fantasy settings in our world.

Second - and this one can be connected to that first explanation - the fantasy world(s) might be an actual creation of the human mind in some way.  Here, I'm thinking of some stories that feature characters who find themselves in a realm they previously believed to be fictional.  The old D&D cartoon might fit this...or maybe something like the Japanese predecessor to Super Mario Bros. 2, Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, in which a family gets pulled into the fantastic environment of a book.

I guess the thing that differentiates this from the first category is that something like a fantasy world in a computer probably has an origin story that involves specific programming, and some rogue code, and maybe a magical event to fully set things in motion...while this second idea is more along the lines of consciousness and imagination creating reality by their own power.  It's really all connected, though.  Or, at least, it can be.  A high fantasy writer who wakes up to find themselves in a world of their own creation kind of fits both models.

Finally - and this is the one where I get to be extra sciencey - maybe the people and societies of all of these worlds actually branched off from the same original lineage.

I really like this one.  It's possible that some of the roots of my obsession(?) with it can be traced to the notion in DC Comics that ancient Atlanteans are connected not only to the Warlord's home of Skartaris, but possibly also to current (or near-current) populations of Kryptonians, Rannians, and Thanagarians.  I even worked some details of this idea into the background of the Paleolithic adventure I ran a couple of years ago (in the overarching potential headcanon, at least).  And really...connecting Atlantis-type mythology, our interactions with other ancient human species, and the potential for plane-hopping adventures...well, that's all pretty much in my wheelhouse!

I call it the Fantasy Diaspora - or Fantaspora - Hypothesis...a proposal that the many interconnected fantasy worlds of our fiction and gaming are populated by descendants of ancient inhabitants from our very own Earth.  It sounds awfully pretentious, and it's probably been done before, and I love it.

As always, hopefully more to come...