MODERN RACES OF THE VES
A blisteringly fast speed guide to what happened after the original Ves adapted to their wacky new homelands. One day I'll draw all these fuckers and oh yeah by the way? Yeah I fucking did design an entire fantasy world with nothing but different flavors of elf.

The Nenn- brown skinned, furry tails and furry ears. They have the widest range of skin tones, encompassing all human skin tones, but they just call all of those shades "brown." They're built for endurance hunting and running across Valbaara's massive steppeland. They seem to be magically "in tune" with animals, and they have successfully domesticated animals that have no right to be domesticatable. More than any other, horses are inseparable from nenn culture. Traditionally, they practice extreme respect of their animal companions and even their prey. In modern times, they struggle with whether to maintain these traditions as their ancestors did, or to interpret them a bit more loosely for the sake of societal progress. Traditionalism vs progressivism is at its peak in Valbaara, and it ends in violence a lot.

The Iroth- grey skinned, short horns, and large talons on their big toes. Their skin tones can have undertones of green and sometimes purple, but they are grey predominantly. They are one of the three races who independantly lost their tails, and it's not known why they did. They're built for climbing, and their two large, hooked talons help with that quite a bit. They need specially built shoes, though. Among mountain cultures, the talon is less hooked, and instead denser and more solid, almost hoof-like. Iroth civilizations are built with verticality in mind, and they perfected vertical agriculture pretty early on in their history. They build their cities in and around the trees of Grenvel's endless forests. They have a lot of incredibly harsh laws regarding trees, so think twice before starting a logging operation anywhere in Grenvel.

The Naiko- white and black skinned, small antlers, and patches of black fur. Naiko have a very narrow range of skin tones- white to off-white. But every Naiko has black hands and feet. They're born with no fur, but they begin growing black fur on their feet, chest, and pubic area as they age. This is in addition to normal vesian body hair. Not the pubes though, they dont have those tradtional style. That's all fur for them. Thanks to their frigid homeland, naiko have developed impressive resistance to cold. Some remote tribes have developed near-perfect resistance to the cold. This comes at the cost of very poor heat tolerance, so it's rare to find naiko outside of Uir and parts of Grenvel, making them the least widespread of the six races. Their culture is based heavily around reindeer (and regular deer, to a lesser extent). About half of the population live as reindeer herders, and the rest are dependant either on the venison trade or hunting wild deer. The naiko attribute their own antlers to the significance of deer in their culture.

The Kurai- gold skinned, long horns, long tails, and tusks. Kurai are naturally predisposed to being taller and more muscular than the other races. They have the largest fangs of any Ves, which they call tusks. Bigger tusks = sexier, regardless of gender. Bigger muscles, bigger horns, same thing. Despite being naturally stacked, Kurai traditionally live slow lives. They sleep through the heat of the day and are most active at dawn and dusk, when their prey is. Enjoying life in the moment is emphasized in their culture, and they don't value work for work's sake. Like the naiko, they've adapted to the harsh climate of their homeland, and kurai thrive in hot, dry climates. Their densest population centers cluster around the eastern gulf, but most live either in small villages or as nomads, following game.

The Sephid- green skinned, long necks, countershaded bellies. They're a seafaring people who have "learned" to stay underwater for long periods. Sephid are split into two major ethnic groups- freshwater and saltwater. Freshwater peoples, specifically the swamp dwellers, breathe underwater as well as they do above water, meaning they can stay under for indefinite periods. Saltwater peoples, who make up the majority of the Sephid population, can hold their breath for upwards of half an hour but do still need to breathe air. The water plays a very significant role in their culture, and it's rare to find a sephid willing to migrate to drier climates. Thanks to a unique sort of geographic isolation, sephid are the only mammalian animals native to Amasa. And after many, many generations of not eating mammalian meat and byproducts, they've developed a bad intolerance to all red meat. Think lactose intolerance, but for anything that comes from a mammal. Their ideal diet is based around mostly fruit and seafood, both of which are so abundant in Amasa that starvation is pretty uncommon around those parts.

The Mirken- are fucking enigmas to me, I'm sorry. I've changed these fuckers completely at least four times so far and I still haven't found anything that hits right. All I know is that they've got two major ethnic groups that have almost no interaction with each other. There's the ones who are from the rainforest, and the ones who are from the caves. The latter live their entire lives underground in massive, sprawling, completely self-sustained communities. Cave people know about the outside world and more or less what's going on up there, but they're not super interested in participating. And while there's light sources (natural and vesian) in open expanses, the tunnels between them are pitch black, labyrinthian, and super easy to die in if you don't have generations of navigator blood in your veins (and the ability to see in pure darkness). Any topsider who successfully makes it down into the cave cities is considered worthy of respect and treated with hospitality. But as for what any of these fuckers look like, I don't even know man.