Sentient life
From KneeQuickie
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Sentient life is a species or a designation of intelligent creatures. Generally, sentience is considered to be problem solving and tool-using, as well as having some sort of coherent language structure. Sentient life is often referred to as races, and generally govern such non-human forms of life. While conbiological speculation in general is common, most conworlders take a particular interest in creating sentient species since they can develop culture, language, and so forth for them.
Sentient life as an abstraction of human life is a common staple in fantasy and science-fiction stories. Such species are used as a vehicle for a concept, such as a statement about racism (such as the mutants in Marvel's X-Men), or to explore a psychology that could not be done otherwise with a human character. Using non-human creatures also brings a level of perceived diversity, where certain populations will only be found in certain environments: Mountain-dwelling dwarves, forest-squatting elves, swamp-bound orcs, and so on.
Sentient life can be summed as the following categories: Human and near-human, humanoid, and aliens.
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Human and near-human life
Human life is just that; Earth-born humans, a representation of the population of homo sapiens on this planet, whether told in an accurate style, or represented with a fictional cultural heritage, nationality, and language.
Near-human sentient life can be considered as any species that resembles the human species of Earth as a whole, but evolved on a different planet. Unless otherwise noted, any human that sprang up on a planet that is not Earth is near-human; this is a distinction that can be better ignored, because it hardly has any implication on the story, unless the details are examined. The detail of examining is, of course, dependent on the author's desire for verisimilitude.
Because near-human species plays so close to human behavior and anatomy, as well as diversity range and habitability, the distinction is very a fine one. Near-humans play the role of humans in any setting, unless there's meant to be a contrast drawn. Other forms of life, if near-humans do not contrast with humans, are then presented in contrast with near-humans.
- Uestî are the humans found on Mark Rosenfelder's Almea. They possess traits normally found on humans, with some exceptions, such as flatter noses and the lack of body hair.
- Neek's conworld, Ti Hpimahttanqmin has humans, though notably different, such as the growth of horns, physical development, and altered genetics (WZ-based gender determination, where males possess ZZ-genes, and females ZW).
Humanoid life
Humanoid life is any life that differs extremely from humans in behavior, diversity, and habitability, while yet retaining human-like qualities. They are generally presented in contrast or an abstraction with human or near-human qualities. The majority of races in Star Trek, for instance, are humanoid; Klingons are near-humanoid that contrast the human quality of peace with warfare, while Vulcans abstract human rationality while rejecting emotions.
Humanoid life is also predominant in roleplaying games, such as Dungeon and Dragons; each humanoid kind has its own sphere of habitability and has a deity represented in a pantheon of gods. The use of such races, such as dwarves, elves, or orcs, is often considered cliche in conworlding, though oftentimes conworlders can use them to good effect and expanding on them with with a different cultural mores and artifacts, and even perhaps renaming them; this allows the writer to utilize an archetype without being explicit.
- Cyborgs/robots are obviously not a biological race, however can exist with a civilization, motives, and cultural artifacts, as well as language. They can be their own culture, such as the Borg from Star Trek, or simply denizens of a highly technological civilization, such as Star Wars.
- Demons are generally evil and possibly otherworldly beings, often associated with the desire to wreak chaos and havoc, the underworld. Demons exist as a stereotype in fantasy as malignant creatures that are composed of pure hate and lies, generally attempting to undo society. Subtypes include succubi, tentacle monsters, and fallen angels.
- Dragons are massive reptilian creatures that are found in, with some variation, nearly all human cultures. They oftentimes have wings, breath fire, and hoard treasures depending on the relevant mythology. Killing a dragon is generally not a pedestrian feat.
- Dwarves are short-humans, as their name should imply, who tend to live in mountainous regions, operating as smiths, forgers, miners, et cetera. They're often depicted as rugged and bearded, and according to some fantasy mythologies, even the females are bearded.
- Gnomes are usually shorter in stature and subterranean, having a strong affinity for the element of earth. They appear in conworlds as one of several races, or petrified in gardens.
- Goblins are depicted as small humanoids covered in hair, living in unruly bands and conquering the lands around them. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings featured goblins as synonymous with orcs.
- Elves are perhaps the most iconic of fantasy races, and heavily associated with Tolkien and other imitators. Elves typically embody the epitome of nobility and grace and live far longer than humans, often indefinitely. Oftentimes elves are seen as being better than humans at anything. They may be paired with dark elves, an evil and fallen counterpart.
- Merfolk are aquatic humanoids generally depicted with a human torso and the tail of a fish in place of legs. They are often associate with song and the sea. Variants include the siren and the cecaelia (half-human and octopus).
- Orcs are brutish, warlike humanoids generally depicted as strong and dark (or green) skinned, possibly related to trolls or goblins.
- Trolls
- Vampires are former humanoids who return from the dead, generally requiring the consumption of blood to survive. Depending on which myth they are derived, a victim who is killed by a vampire rises up as a vampire, or the target is needed to be drained of all their blood and replaced with a drop of vampire blood. They are often used as a vehicle in fantasy to explore the psychology of the undead, mortality and morality. More broadly, they are a subgroup of the undead.
Alien races
Aliens run the gamut in creativity, though oftentimes aren't as ephemeral in form or design. Considering that aliens are bound only the imagination of the author, aliens can range from microbes to complex organisms made of silicon, breathing methane gas, or whatever. Due to budget constraints or creative laziness, however, many aliens resemble humans rather closely with simple techniques such as make-up or prosthesis to mark them as "different". Needless to say, this flies in the face of hard scientific plausibility unless carefully explained in some way.
Sentient life in conworlds
The use of sentient beings besides humans is a very common convention in conworlding, though it is not by any means a requirement. The complete absense of sentient life in a conworld rarely occurs, however.
Middle-Earth
Tolkien's Middle-Earth contains a variety of non-human races, most of which are superficially similar to humans.
- Dwarves
- Hobbits (halflings)
- Elves
- Ents
- Orcs
Star Trek
In the science fiction arena, Star Trek provides a slew of alien races, many resembling archetypes from mythology. Because of production costs, most aliens featured through the many TV series are humanoid or even barely distinguishable from humans. The list is potentially endless due to the sheer size of space, but among the most well-known and developed are:
- Borg
- Klingons
- Romulans
- Vulcans
