Omega wrote:If you had a setting where humans never existed, what would you have to modify for that to happen?
My understanding of the major modifications that humans made to our world are ...
[*] Extinction of most Megafauna (except those that co-evolved with proto-humans).
[*] Domestication of most other appropriate fauna (those with alpha-male social structures and passive young for easing the relevant evolutionary steps).
[*] Domestication of massive numbers of crops, all modern fruits, vegetables, grains.
[*] Clear-felling of dry-summer temperate forests in the Bronze age for smelting. Associated climate shifts and desertification from the lost forests.
[*] Massive land reclamation and river-control projects in the Iron age. Loss of almost all coastal wetlands (natural flat coastlines mostly have miles of deep salty swamps reaching inland, natural deep-water ports are vanishingly rare, natural rivers only rarely naviagable). Note some of this started in the stone age.
[*] Clear-felling of cold temperate forests in the middle ages for shipbuilding.
[*] The spread of diseases and free-rider species to being global, rather than each land mass having unique viruses and rat species and such.
A Bunch more since, various Island critters who'd chase off seagulls by crowding around them and flapping their stunted wings, they didn't last long once someone stuck one in a pot and liked it. Dodos would actually run at the people gathering them and then stand around puffing out their chest. Local maxima are a bitch for evolution.
So if you just have Elves, and they live in the forests in harmony and shit, then almost all of the world where humans would live is still an endless forest canopy, but the giant monsters that live in the Chinese forests are totally different to the giant monsters that live in Australia's forests, or America's, and the European Camel and Tiger and Lion and Bovines and Wolves are very different to the North African ones, or Indian ones.
If you add dwarves, then they've mined and they've variously been at war with the elves over the forests they fell for smelting, or at war with the deep things they disturb in the deeps, but they don't travel or spread fast, so it's just local and may even start to recover given time. Especially after that last big flaming shadow thing.
Each species you add then does it's own thing.
[*] Orcs can be a seasonal migratory wave that crosses the great Savannas after the rains and they've left the local animals easily spooked and all fast runners, like our African ones, and they only domesticated the forest boar, which they bred for size to ride into battle.
[*] Gnolls mastered being desert nomads, outrunning all the wetland races and raiding them for supplies every generation or two at great cost each time, loosely domesticating the Hyena, but having more success with dromedary, breeding giant types of both.
[*] Halflings live in ancient glacial-moraine mountains of pure soil. They've controlled the local flooding and domesticated a few grains for brewing. They also domesticated sheep.
[*] But the Sahagin rule the great coastal swamps and prevent any draining. Much handier way to encounter them, really. Sea Elves live out on the reefs, sunning on the surface and diving for fish, all lazy like the dolphins they share lore with.
Pick things we modified, decide who did it instead, or who's keeping it in the old state, or what surprising new thing has emerged. Maybe India is still a sparse monsoon forest ruled by cat-people and their psychic connection to the great tigers, holding the borders against the Gnu-folk and Elephant-men by stealthy night strikes.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
