February: World-Building Month

[aldersprig]

piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The eighth question comes from kelkyag and is for Dragons Next Door

How do dweomers originate?

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There are probably as many theories of the origin of dweomers as there are dweomers - and possibly more than that, as many of the other races have opinions on these not-quite-human-more-than-humans.

What is known is: They rarely but occasionally appear to spontaneously generate; cases where two normal humans give birth to a dweomer are almost entirely the result of one or both humans lying or being misinformed about their own genetics.

There have been dweomers around as long as, say, Dragons and Centaurs and the like have been known - which is to say, at least as long as history has been written, and the dragons have very long histories. Dweomers are crossfertile with humans, they look like humans, they can generally pass as humans as long as blood or genetic tests are not involved, but they are not, in actuality, human.

(If you look at the science of this too hard, I will remind you that this world involves tiny-humanoids in two categories, as well as centaurs and dragons. <3)

One of the favorite theories is that humans themselves are the anomaly: the world grew up with dragons and ogres, centaurs and elkin and such, but at some point humans fell into this world from an alternate reality. They found dragons eggs to be immensely irresistible, and found clever ways to hunt them; they found centaurs to be very tempting mounts, and quickly managed to enslave some.

(This, of course, being a tale told around fires, especially non-human fires, does not say how the humans did such).

The short answer is: the question isn't so much how did dweomers originate, as how did humans originate.

Comments

[thnidu]

FAScinating! òô

Typoes: centuars and elkin
→ centaurs and elfkin

[clare_dragonfly]

Nope, it really is elkin :D

[thnidu]

Oh... indeed? Okay, thank you.

But not *〈centuars〉, I presume?

[clare_dragonfly]

Not that I'm aware!

[aldersprig]

Clare beat me to it!
Yes, the elkin are not elf-kin, although they may appear kin to elves.

[natf]

dragons have very long histories. They are crossfertile with humans, they look like humans, they can generally pass as humans as long as blood or genetic tests are not involved, but they are not, in actuality, human.

Dragons look like humans? Hmm, so they shape-change to fly?

[aldersprig]

No, massive typo, sigh, Lyn-self, fixing now. Thanks!