Humans

Humans are the most populous race in Tal’Dorei today, though at one point in this land’s history, all of humankind’s holdings were naught but a speck on the western coastline.

If humans ever lived upon Tal’Dorei in the Age of Arcanum, they were wiped out entirely by the end of the Calamity. But after the world had begun to recover from the devastation wrought by that war of gods and mortals, an expedition of human explorers departed from Vasselheim in Issylra, thought to be the only bastion of humanoid culture on the surface of Exandria to survive the Calamity. Sailing eastward, they reached the land that would eventually come to be called Tal’Dorei, and were shocked to find elves, dwarves, orcs, and half-giants already living there—shattering their belief that the Calamity had washed away all mortal life except the people of Vasselheim.

Over the years, humans and their ambition have been responsible for bloody wars, weapons of unimaginable devastation, and spells that have reduced entire cultures to ruin. Yet humans have also driven great advances in art, music, poetry, and theater, and have shown love and compassion to the other mortal peoples of the world. The course of human history is never straight, and can turn at any time. After all, humans’ lives are short and their minds are chaotic—a fact that troubles many of the long-lived elves and dwarves of Tal’Dorei. Still, despite these weaknesses—or perhaps because of them—humans have produced some of the most innovative and forward-thinking figures Tal’Dorei has ever known.