Monday, June 2, 2014

Because my mind works oddly at times

For no particular reason, okay, that is not true. I have been reading Joe Abercrombie's First Law series - an entertaining fantasy yarn, incidentally, well worth the time - in which he presents a creature in his world called the Shanka. This is clearly his stand in for the standard non-human monstrous threat, very much in the same vein as Tolkien's Orcs in terms of being a 'created' species by a evil wizard-type.

Anyway... I challenged myself to to remember (without looking) the names of traditional monstrous humanoid races that function and act together in fantasy. And this is as far as I got.


  • Goblin
  • Kobold
  • Gnoll
  • Orc
  • Hobgoblin
  • Troglodyte
  • Troll (this is a bit of a reach, generally portrayed in small numbers, but often along with some of the above)


The following are not always 'good', and certainly are non-human:

  • Elves 
  • Dwarves
  • Gnomes

No comments:

Post a Comment