Cyclops

In addition to the main intelligent races of Ronar, there are a number of other 'sub-intelligent' races, or at least races created as such. Cyclops are one of them.

Originally, Cyclops were created by the gods in the place of the Unofotine, intended to be one with the rock and the land. However, the gods were unsatisfied with their creation, and created but created a single demigod, insead of a race. This demigod was to later be known as Tel'Aak-Reji, which in the language of the people he created in his own image means te stone king.

Cyclops are tall and humanoid, with broad shoulders and wide hips. Have tiny ears and noses, and a single massive eye. They have a small amount of hair on the top of their head, often only along the back of their head and the sides, which is always black. Their skin ranges in many of the colors of stone, from which Tel'Aak-Reji created them - normally grey, brown, but occasionally darker oranges or the occasional pale yellow.

While physically they resemble humans in most regards, and socially they are smilar to Unofotine, biologically they are fairly different. To gain depth perception with only a single eye, the cyclops eye must rapidly change focal distance, through flexing their iris, often as rapidly as once per second. This allows them almost as perfect depth perception as the other races. As their eye takes up the majority of their heads, their brain is stored in their upper pelvis, behind their stomach. As such, while few cyclops survive the loss of senses and the loss of ability to eat that comes with beheading, they are able to survive it if care is taken immediately, and the head is magically reattached. Some Cyclops have been known to, with proper care, live for months without a head.

Mostly, Cyclops are content to live under the ground, in the vast underground tunnels beneath the island of Raitdas, worshiping and living off the rock and ground. While they are considered sub-intelligent, and as a race they are not nearly as advanced as the other races, individuals have been known to interact with the other races with little to no difficulty, implying they need litte other than time to develop as a race.

Shadowkin, in detail

Since I've finally nailed down what shadowkin actually look like properly, I'll cover that bit first.

Shadowkin are smaller than humans, though mostly in height, and have skin typically black or grey. Lighter skinned shadowkin are not unknown, but always the skin is monochromatically black and white, without a drop of color. Their nose and upper lip is hard and bone-like, resembling an oddly shaped beak of a bird, though their bottom lip and tongue are similar to that of a human. Their eyes are large and placed closer to the side of their head. They have tiny ears, and their hair is stiff and coarse and contains tiny threads, almost exactly like feathers of birds.

They are an industrious race, and particularly magical. In the age of magic, one shadowkin by the name of Marshal Hian, built a large castle powered by the magic of one of the great weapons of legend (wait, weapons of legend? Yes, I'll go into them later), and tied to himself to the power, granting him intense power and prolonged life. This castle became the center of shadowkin culture and society, and Marshal Hian used his great magic power to lift the castle into the air above Grittlanni. Years passed, and while shadowkin were reclusive, they made great strides in magic and society. The other races generally held them in awe until the day that Marshal Hian died of old age - as his magic gave him a long, but not infinite life. His death cut the power to the spells holding the magic castle in the air, and in under a minute, decades of progress and all the greatest minds of Shadowkin kind were smashed to peices. The castle remains unfound, or at least unexplored to the current day, as it is fiercely guarded by the natives of the jungles of Grittlanni in the depths of which it crashed.

After that day, Shadowkin rallied together, but the age of magic was drawing to an end, and they fell back into savagery. They are not unintelligent, but with all their leadership destroyed the few other cities they build fell into disarray and they were a superpower no longer.

In current day Ronar, few shadowkin leave the continent of Grittlanni, but those that do are members of society as much as any other intelligent race. They are simply rare and generally reclusive, which is justified because their rarity and unusual ability to become incorporial for a short time scares the other races.

Shadowkin, like all races, can interbreed with the other races. These crossbreeds are extremely rare, due to the inital scarcity of shadowkin and the tentativeness of the other races regarding them. When they do exist, they typically appear to have washed out colors, even to the point of seeming to be charcoal drawings, and have literally stiff upper lips, and large, wide-set eyes.

A-maze-ing

I was stumbling around the internet today, and I found something rather interesting.

Now, maze-solvers are relatively simply pieces of code. From the start point, follow the left (or right) wall until you reach the exit. There are some few variations as to whether or not the dead-ends are considered part of the end solution, generally they aren't, but that's not what this is about.

Random maze generators are the sort of thing that *sound* easy to make, but I would imagine are quite difficult. Heck, manually drawing a maze is tough to do. You have to come up with exactly one route through a series of squares, and the rest of the squares have to be part of routes that connect to the rest of the maze, but do not lead to the exit. Sure, you can draw a bunch of squiggly connected lines on a peice of paper, but you really have to give kudos to any guy who has a maze generator that follows all these rules, and generates truly random mazes with start and goal squares, and fills every single square on the map.

There was a windows screensaver where a dude ran around a 3d maze, but that maze was tiny, and didn't follow the one important rule - exactly one path from start to goal. I don't really have anything else to say on that, so I'll just give you all the link so you can take a look and see what you think of it yourself.

http://www.math.com/students/puzzles/mazegen/mazegen.html

Humans, in detail

Think you know everything about humans, eh?

Humans were the first race created by the gods, and the form which the gods them took in the world. They are pink-skinned with brown, yellow or occasionally red hair at the tops of their heads but virtually none elsewhere, save for some males with hair all about their faces.

They are very industrious, adventurous and always inventig new things. When they were created, the intention was that they would settle Ronar and then stop. So far, they haven't managed to do the second part, which was why the other races were created in the first place. However, they have progressed as a race, and most of their development has passed to the other races as well, faster than the gods had ever dreamed.

Humans create their cities in flat, open spaces, typically near waterways to facilitate transport of materials and produce, and will most often transform an area into what is needed rather than looking for a more ideal spot.

Humans are the most common race to crossbreed with any other race, mostly due to their adventurous nature. They also are naturally able to crossbreed with Orcs, which is upsetting to realize that they are the only compatable species without magical help. Then again, orcs were created in mockery of humans.

Most Human half-breeds live in small niches of society. Half-unofotine will work as laborers, half-shadowkin will work as spies, half-orcs will work as craftsmen. Half torins are the exception, as they are numerous enough to build ther own societies, and Torin viewpoints and appearances blend most easily into Human society unnoticed.

Unofotine in detail

The Unofotine were also created after humans had been, with a similar intent from the gods of a race that would not simply develop and expand to infinity within the world. Unlike Torin however, they were given drawbacks to expansion, large eyes to make the sun seem too bright, hands not shaped for holding tools, and a community-minded dispostion. The Unofotine were intended to be a race that expanded slowly, with tight knit villages, undergroud and unable to exploit the resources the humans were so fond of.

The Unofotine, however, did not take this particularly well, and within a half-dozen generations had built massive underground catacombs and structures, learned to use their large clawed hands in place of the tools they were unable to easily use, and developed a strong heirchacal society. The Unofotine were impossibly strong willed, and while they broke out of the mould set for them by the gods almost immediately they were smiled upon for doing so.

Now, the Unofotine still use almost the same ruling structure, although the leader has changed names now to King, rather than Mayor or Lord. They are united, and maintain a strong sense of duty to their people and their culture. They grow their hair long to keep the sun out of their eyes, and suffer none for it, and they are almost as nimble with their hands as humans are, despite their long claws.

Occasonally, Human and Unofotine people will have children, for Unofotine resemble the strongest humans - though also the hairiest. These Half-Unofotine Half-humans are feirce though unweildly, and often find themselves among the outcasts of both races, not feeling the same draw to community that pure Unofotine do where they are shunned as lazy, and seeming monsterous to humans with their large eyes and clawed hands. It is fortunate there are few of these folk, for otherwise there might be a public stand against them ironically banding both races against their own kin.

Torin, more in depth

It's been a while since I've touched on Ronar, getting all caught up in procedural content and all. Let's look a little more in-depth at one o the races, the Torin.

Torin were one of the races created after humans, and they were created with a mindset to preserve the world around them rather than to expand and develop wantonly. Hard-wired as naturalists, this instinct influences nearly every aspect of Torin life, although as is always the case different individuals take such a cause quite differently.

Most Torin have the view that one should live in harmony with nature, taking what you need and giving back in turn what you can. They do not hunt for sport, they do not cut down great trees to build their structures (Most often they will grow Rowan trees for this purpose, as they grow very large branches). They do not accept collateral damage in their fights and overall live a very peaceful, calm lifestyle. This also means that most Torin cities are reasonably small, to prevent the over-use of natural resourcesm unlike human cities that simply change the resources available to fit their expanding cities.

However, not every Torin is average. There are entire groups of Torins that view their proclaimed ward of nature as a calling to eliminate all creatures that abuse it. Humans, of course, are their prime goal, and these oft-fanatical sects will attack human cities, destroying as much as they can and murdering without pause especially when human settlements attempt to expand or grow beyond what they consider to be an acceptable size.

Some Torin, too, take it upon themselves to attempt to convert human cities over to their way of life, although few are particularly successful. These are few and far between, as most Torin feel that the humans and them are far too different to see eye to eye on such matters, which was why the gods created them seperately.

Torin and Human often see close enough eye-to-eye that they find each other attractive. Being the most similar two of the intelligent races, in the Age of mortals, Half-torin half-human children became easily the most dominant of the half-breed races. They appear mostly human, though they have pointed ears and a light fuzz often giving their skin odd colorings. They rarely have the tails that Torin have, apparently it not being a particularly dominant trait. These have-breeds strike a strong stance between the two races, expanding at a decent rate, but not abusing the resources of the world. It is unlikely they will ever become as dominant as either of their parent races, but the merging of traits andboth physical and cultural is truly a positive force in Ronar.

Randomly generated names

I've done some super-minor tweaks to the name generator, one of which allows me to generate more than one name at a time. Here is a random selection of names for you to judge how well this project is coming along on your own.

Iallquu
Igesposc
Zsui
Slegoita
Cruywausc-u
Sta
Stastia
Bleiy'scipu
Clesidro
Brie'naibr
Rflu
Tstai
Zcluau
Edabvydu
Geibrow
Nyu'rubliek
Mwezuuvl
Eiwflaa
Eziri
Aue'tu'okdrau
Reivl'aunaucr
Chahujausty
Fyaufe
Je'jiiwe
Audwai
Epaafauz
Eidau'ezusla
Uamquau
Fleiebrslaumeichyqui
Druhyo

My favorite I've generated to this point is: Rocksoutthejam, which becomes with spaces 'Rocks out the jam'

The longest 'name' I've generated yet is: Spousmeivlaeibrwuacle

which leads me to see fairly obviously that as a name gets longer, the chance that it becomes unreadable increases exponentially. Let's reduce the odds of extra syllables down a bit.

Vefauv! get back here!

One of the problems with my random name generator to now is that the only combinations of letters it can spit out are randomly generated ones. You could never ever generate the combination of letters 'str' because it generates one vowel and one consonant, adds them together in a random orer and then repeats. There's virtually no difference between the syllables, at all

One big change I've made so far, beyond randomly generating letters, is making the names end on a vowel more often. It makes a lot of names sound slightly more femminine, as ending with an 'e' or an 'a' often does, but I'm okay with that, because ending with an o or u makes the name more masculine and i is pretty neutral. But it adds more prevention to names ending with awkward letters like 'j'

The other thing I did, which is only big because the scope of the program is so small, is added letter combinations, mostly with 'l' and 'h' so we have 'cl' and 'ch' and 'sl' and so on. This allows combinations like str to exist, although it still enables things like to exist, which produces a few uncomfortable names.

Current percentage of random names that could be used for things, about 30%.
Next goal: increase liklihood of common letters,like 'e' or 'r'.