OK the title is a bit misleading but if your reading this its done its job.
Does anyone have any pointers to help create races in the twilight universe, just looking at the current races we have they are all very organic and can easily relate to the current world in that we live. There is no magic and no undead and i was wondering if this is something that will never ever but looked at or not. Not that I don't like the current crop lets get the straight.
I know from the first book that Mike said he wanted to get away from the Tolken, GW style of creatures. The main reason why i ask is that i'm looking forward to seeing what is in the Naralon forest. One thing i like about this game and it's current state is that the designers have their ears open to ideas from it's gamer's and I'd like to try and put mine forward but don't want to deviate from any structure that they might have for building new forces.
I normally would love a race that dewles in the woods, wood elves of course being the most common, but my view is that any race that comes out of the wood would have to of lived in harmony with it's surroundings. So these guys would be with one with the woods and comfortable living in them. I also love watching the Kung-fu panda films with my boys and have wondered what a game set in the films surroundings would be like. My feeling is that parts of the twilight universe and the Kung Fu panda would would be alike.
So this brings me to one of the design aspects that might break the current structure that is use. My thoughts about the forest is that there has been a war going on in iit, but word has never got out. Two races dwell in the woods and have been at war for years. Now this where i hit a mental block so i'll describe the races but have no clue how they look. One if like the famous five from Kung Fu panda
http://www.dreamworks.com/kungfupanda/characters , A small group of very elite fighters trying to uphold the spirit of the forest while a darker force is looking to take over the forest for its dark needs. The elite fighters will use kung fu, to give their fighting style a name and some simple magic to try and stop the rot. A lot of the time these guys will fight on there own or in pairs using basic staves or other items to out fox their opponents, but only when the threat is really big that you will see then all together. The magic that im thinking is along the lines of a pulse of as many stamina points in inches of their choice that will push back any opponents. So if they have five stamina points it will burn the five stamina but push every opponent away from it to five inches.
As for the dark forces what i thought would be good would be a swarm type of force, and i'm sorry but i'll have to reference some other type of fantasy races to try and get my point over. But i'm looking for a race that spawns out of the ground and will consume what ever is in it's way, multiplying as it goes. A bit like a plague, evil in its doing but programmed in that way. When it sets hold in an area it will take generations to culling and constant fighting to remove them from the area. But the creatures that are spawned are quite easy to kill in small numbers but can swarm an opponent to over power him. I'm kinda thinking along the lines of skaven in there size and style and nids in their relentless pursuit of destruction. They have no leader and when they spawn they just get on with slowly destroying the forest. There are some Hive masters to give them a name that wounder the forest planting these spawns and this is what the famous five are hunting for. They drop the seeds that will later grow the spawn but are again few in number but hard to kill because they also know kung fu and use small magic but in a more dark way. They used to be the same race as the famous five but have been turned dark by an unknown source.
The story line could be that the spawn guys have been winning and the famous five type guys numbers have been dwindling and the spawn guys/hive guys have now broken out of the forest and are affecting the other races.
I know from looking at the other races that the look of the spawn guys could be based on real life animals. Spiders could quite hit the mark for the spawn but as for the famous five i keep thinking of a more mouse type figure, in that its a creature that lives in the woods and leaves a really small footprint on its environment. Again a link to try and help
http://www.mouseguard.net/.
Now of course we can't use any other ip but im using these links to try and help you picture what i'm thinking.
Your thoughts please and i'll try and fill in the gaps in my creative thinking to help. Also please move if wrong place.