Is there anything a human can't breed with?

[berelinde]

So, I'm working on this mod, and decided from day 1 that there would be no racial romance requirements.

 

So, that led to a very strange mental detour that got me to thinking about the possible conflict between Lathander's doctrine that fertility is good and his doctrine that racial harmony is good.

 

Let's put it this way: you never hear of three-quarterlings.

 

So what do you get when a human and a dwarf mate? How about a human and a gnome? Are such things even possible?

 

They must be. There are half-dragons, and half-ogres, and half-all-kinds-of-things, not to mention tieflings. If a human can produce offspring with a demon, a dwarf should present no problems.

 

For said dwarf-human pairing, I'm guessing you'd just get a short, stocky human with a facial hair problem.

 

Anybody else ever thought about this?

[Domi]

Well, imagine a 3 feet woman trying to give birth to a half-human child that's well, take it from a person with a recent labor experience, that's scary. That's if she can carry to term. The interfertile races are roughly the same size (medium). Ther eis mention of dwelves, but it is obscure. I'd just avoid the issue, lest it become something you probably don't want to see discussed in the romance.

[Smoketest]

Eh, well in the realms magic could probably be used to make sure the birth didn't kill the mother or the child. They don't have the same limitations as we do here on Earth. So you could write it just about any way you wanted without worrying about physical limitations. Just keep a priest nearby during the latter stages, or perhaps have the mother wear a magical item that would protect her from internal damage and allow her to give birth naturally.

[berelinde]

Thanks for the input.

 

I know with dogs, the size of the female determines the size of the pup. If it's a small dog and the sire is a much larger dog, the pup is usually bigger than a typical pup of that breed, but not too big to be born. After birth, the pup grows quickly.

 

It's kind of like how some fish will keep growing to monstrous size if they are placed in a big enough body of water (carp and pike, for example). If they are in a smaller body of water, they stay smaller.

 

A halfling mother might curse the human father during labor, but she'd probably be cursing the father anyway. But I'm guessing everything would turn out all right.

 

I seem to remember Tolkien's halfling varieties (tallfelows and stoors?) carrying the blood of other races. The Forgotten Realms aren't Middle Earth, though.

 

But these are valid considerations. I think, though, that I'm going to have to avoid hypocrisy. It really makes no sense for someone who's always spouting the desire that everyone should just get along to avoid romance with someone of a shorter race on the grounds that the kids would look funny.

 

I probably shouldn't worry about this. Anomen will romance halflings IIRC, and they're the smallest of the races.

 

It's always possible that the reasons you don't see any half-dwarves is cultural rather than physical.

[NiGHTMARE]

Half-dwarves do exist in the Forgotten Realms (one is the leader of the Knights of the Crescent Moon, an order of Tethyrian knights), but are extremely rare. They are most likely to be born to inhabitants of a settlement that has both human and dwarven occupants.

 

Tolkein's hobbits were copied very closely by D&D. Middle Earth's varieties are harfoots, fallohides, and stoors, whilst 2E D&D's are hairfoots, tallfellows, and stouts. Harfoot/hairfeet are the original variety, fallohides/tallfellows are descendants of hairfeet who bred with elves, and stoors/stouts are decendants of hairfeet who bred with dwarves. It's interesting that there are no subraces that are the results of hairfeet breeding with humans or gnomes, considering halflings are said to interact more frequently with these two species than they do with elves and dwarves. In the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms, the halfling subraces were changed to lightfeet, strongheart, and ghostwise and, since the differences are more than mere name changes, it's unknown whether the two "non-standard" subraces are still intended to be the results of breeding with other species.

[Miloch]

A halfling mother might curse the human father during labor, but she'd probably be cursing the father anyway. But I'm guessing everything would turn out all right.

Of course, it could go the other way too (halfling father, human mother). Though conceptually I find any such pairing to be a bit absurd. But crazier pairs happen IRL.

I seem to remember Tolkien's halfling varieties (tallfelows and stoors?) carrying the blood of other races. The Forgotten Realms aren't Middle Earth, though.

Maybe not, but I recall the original Monster Manual (not sure about revisions) "borrowed" the idea of halflings pretty much wholesale from Tolkien, even down to the subraces... just had slightly different names for them. Neither source explains how they got their human/elven/dwarven blood though IIRC. [Addendum due to NiGHTMARE's posting while I was writing - I think the harfoots/hairfeet were said to have "human" blood.]

It's always possible that the reasons you don't see any half-dwarves is cultural rather than physical.

Possibly. Maybe they just blend into one population or another without advertising their heritage. Though you'd think the same would happen with half-orcs, and there is a stat definition for half-orc and not half-dwarf. If you want to get scientific and take the view that myths in our cultures about dwarves recall racial memories of Neanderthals, and that the latter weren't just killed off wholesale but absorbed into human populations, then there probably were half-dwarves IRL, possibly even into somewhat modern times. Though again, there's no concrete mention of such in Tolkien or PnP (though C.S. Lewis has half-dwarves in his later Narnia stories). Another theory is that although such crosses may be possible, they result in sterile offspring (like mules result from horse-donkey crossbreeds). So the pairings wouldn't've been too popular from a survival perspective.

[Domi]

But these are valid considerations. I think, though, that I'm going to have to avoid hypocrisy. It really makes no sense for someone who's always spouting the desire that everyone should just get along to avoid romance with someone of a shorter race on the grounds that the kids would look funny.

 

No, certainly not. But I think that the worry about kids look will be overshadowed by many other concernes if such a pregnancy would occur. Ie losing mother, child or both. Even smaller human females are more likely to have complications in pregnancy and during birth. In other words, if Gavin wants to sire a baby on a halfling lover, he'd better stand ready knowing all there is to know about cesarians, episotomies and tears. 'Cause he'll have to cut her apart one way or another to get the baby out. I honestly think that that will be a bigger hypocricy for him to make her pregnant to keep Lathander happy, than to adopt a child.

 

Heh, probably not something you all yearn to know, but damn, I did my reading, so... human children are born much less developed than many other animals because of their head size. Our survival depends on our brain, so we have evolved to be born in a way 'prematurely' in order to actually get out.

 

If we try to evolve some sort of a cross between a halfling and a human, the likelihood will be that she'll give birth prematurely, just like human multiples, because placenta have to function overtime, real-estate in uterus, and head size that still have to fit through. Dwarves are probably off the hook here, because they do have big heads and are as heavy as humans.

 

Unlike with dogs, human low birth weight babies face a whole array of complications. And magic or no magic, a baby born preterm simply will not be able to breath on his own - that's your last limitation in determening the 'full-term' vs 'pre-term'.

[berelinde]

For the record: no pregnancy will be introduced by any mod I write, now or ever.

 

As for what I'm going to do with Gavin's options, he's going to leave it up to the pc from the word go: his in his first lovetalk with anyone who is not at least partially human, she will have the option of asking him to restrict his interest to his own kind. Getting into spoiler territroy: he also expresses concern later on about the physical and cultural implications of a non-human relationship, and is not going to pressure a pc of any race to bear a child. That probably covers the bases tastefully. But I didn't really pose the question for his particular case. It was much more general.

 

After that, I start to get headaches. As a fraternal twin and a long-time emergency medical technician in an economically depressed area (cheaper to dial 911 than get prenatal care), I know all about what happens when things are crowded during development. On those grounds, Domi is right. But if we're going by head size, halflings are typically drawn with heads not all that much smaller than human heads. But that is neither here nor there. Since halflings don't actually exist, there is no basis for comparison. Humans who suffer from dwarfism have reduced fertility rates, but tend to be more than usually susceptible to other biological considerations that have nothing to do with their height. Oddly enough, humans who suffer from giantism suffer from similar problems.

 

Of course, this is meaningless, since Aerie, a 6-limbed creature at birth, is able to produce viable offspring with a 4-limbed creature. This should be impossible. So it is clear that all bets are off when it comes to what is or is not possible on Faerun.

 

I do want to make it clear that I do appreciate the comments. It is clear that I am not the only one who likes at least the illusion of credibility.

[Miloch]

Since halflings don't actually exist, there is no basis for comparison.

Ah... but they *do* exist! Or, well, they did sort of, until relatively recently. (No, I don't believe in leprechauns and pixies too... I just have an interest in archaeology .)

 

Homo floresiensis (aka "Flores man" or "Ebu Gogo")

The species is thought to have survived on Flores until at least as recently as 12,000 years ago making it the longest-lasting non-modern human, surviving long past the Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) which became extinct about 29,000 years ago. Homo floresiensis certainly coexisted for a long time with modern humans, who arrived in the region 35,000–55,000 years ago, but it is unknown how they may have interacted.

Though this species had half the height of modern humans (thus dubbed "hobbits" by palaeoanthropologists), they had rather small heads even relative to their own bodies. I doubt they interbred with humans though who knows... they certainly coexisted with them. Though this may add a basis-in-reality facet, I suppose it has little to do with FR.

[Andyr]

I am not sure on the current status of the homo sapiens floriensis arguments, but last I heard evidence suggest they weren't another species. Consensus hasn't been reached on this one...

 

Also, IIRC dwelves don't exist in the Realms. Though they are in other D&D settings.

[BigRob]

I don't recall too many hard and fast rules about who can and can't breed with one another written in the books. Though supposedly elves are the only race that orcs can't mix with.

 

I do recall reading somewhere that when humans and dwarves mix, the child tends to heavily favour the dwarven heritage and functions as a slightly too tall dwarf. Apparently dwarves don't have any cultural problems with this, because they're grateful for anything that makes more dwarves. I can't remember if that's 2nd or 3rd edition lore though.

 

 

Domi's probably got it right in that in the few cases where humans and gnomes/halflings get to the point of having children that low combined fertility rates and birth complications from prematurity in the case of a small mother make them extremely rare. One could get past that kind of thing with magic, but how many couples have access to the kind of specialised powers to do that?

[Miloch]

I am not sure on the current status of the homo sapiens floriensis arguments, but last I heard evidence suggest they weren't another species. Consensus hasn't been reached on this one...

Consensus will never be reached. At least, probably not in our lifetimes. There are still archaeologists debating the status of Neanderthals discovered 150 years ago.

 

But, by definition, if they are a different species from humans they couldn't've interbred (at least not to produce fertile offspring).

A species generally consists of all the individual organisms of a natural population which are able to interbreed.

So by reverse (and perhaps fallacious) logic, they would be able to interbreed if you accept they are a subspecies instead of a separate species (homo sapiens floriensis as opposed to homo floriensis).

 

I guess the Forgotten Realms might be free of such constraints of breeding reality though (chromosome number differences, sperm/egg enzyme differences, biological chemistry differences, immune system differences). Cultural/body size differences are rather minor compared with these things when it comes to producing offspring.

[Bri]

Not to mention the fun and games when you start talking about dragons with polymorph abilities.

 

Yes, they don a humanoid shape, and can mate with females, but yet their children start to exhibit draconic traits later on (scales, weakened breath weapon, etc.)

[Domi]

I do want to make it clear that I do appreciate the comments. It is clear that I am not the only one who likes at least the illusion of credibility.

 

Heh, you won't get much of it in FR. Geography, economics, biology, medicine, politics, they have eye-rolling-bad ideas in probably every science.

 

Though this species had half the height of modern humans (thus dubbed "hobbits" by palaeoanthropologists)

 

neat.

[NiGHTMARE]

Though this species had half the height of modern humans (thus dubbed "hobbits" by palaeoanthropologists), they had rather small heads even relative to their own bodies. I doubt they interbred with humans though who knows... they certainly coexisted with them.

 

Several of the island's villages are inhabitated by people who are almost all far below the average height. This would appear to be more than mere co-incidence...