An Intro to the Woodlings

Meet the Woodlings, one of the playable races from Entyl: Chaos Prophecies, the MMORPG I'm helping to develop.

The People remembered the Sundering. They remembered watching the world as it was ripped apart and the land drifted across the seas. They remembered who can been responsible. They had fought on the front lines against the giants, the ogres, the brutes, pitting strength against strength. They had settled as sentinels, every watchful, ever awake.

The People remembered watching the other mortal races as they struggled to piece their lives back together after the lands settled. They settled into the soil of the land to slumber and to leave the world to those who would watch over it. They watched as the humans spread across the land, their short lives and frantic lifestyles almost incomprehensible to The People.

One day The People heard the humans and other mortal races giving name to all the things. They called The People Treefolk, for they were the Forest given life, the trees that could pull up their roots and move across the world. The People did not mind the name, but the humans in their typical frantic need for change eventually changed even that name. Treefolk became the shorter Trelk. The People cared not one way or another.

The People noticed that the humans had grown numerous, their settlements stretching across the land, which the humans named Ryode. Though there was plenty of land on Ryode, the humans started fighting over those scraps of land that had already been settled. They insisted on fighting each other for what the other had rather than finding new places in which to setup roots.

For the most part, The People ignored the humans. The humans rarely lived long enough to trouble the people. Until one day in which the humans decided they needed to burn back the forest to make way for more fields to feed the every growing horde. Dozens of the people were lost that day, more than had died than ever since the ending of the Sundering.

The People were unable to defend themselves against the efforts of the humans. They feared that the humans would continue to consume the forest until none remained, only for the humans to stop as suddenly as they had started and with just as much explanation. This continued for a century, until again the humans suddenly burned a huge swath of a forest, with many of The People perishing in the flames.

After centuries of watching the humans, The People were no closer to understanding the short lives and frantic pace by which the humans lived. The People realized that they lacked a fundamental ability to understand the humans. Something had to be done. They formed smaller bodies, modeling them after the humans. The bodies were crafted to appear pleasant to the humans, to be more relatable than the talk, hulking forms of The People.

The People called the new bodies The Kin. They were shorter lived than The People, marking their lives as a single century rather than several. The humans who interacted with The Kin called them Woodlings, after their appearance and affinity for the forests. Each of the Woodlings contained a portion of member of The People who had formed it.

The crafted Woodlings were different. They grew different than The People and they understood different than The People. They could understand the humans, but they couldn’t properly convey that information to The People. They needed another set to bridge the gap. Another generation of The Kin were made, these ones slowly grown over several years, though the bodies were much the same as those that had been quickly crafted over the period of the month.

It was easy to tell which of the Woodlings were crafted and which were grown. The crafted Woodlings had a more humanoid appearance, though their skin always felt like smooth, soft wood, and resembled whichever member of The People that formed it. The Woodlings which were grown would randomly manifest aspects of The People, whether growing flowers that would fade away, or vines that would twist about before fading away.