Races / 种族

The types of off-humans in this world.

The people in TIR are just "humans." But not really since they have ears and horns.

Ear and horn shapes are affected by genetics; i.e. you'll look similar to your parents in terms of ear / horn shape.

You can split them into roughly three races based on what they have: unicorns, bicorns, and aurians.

Mixed races don't exist… for now. At least until I figure out how they would look without making their heads too heavy. For now, a kid with parents of different races would only present as one of them.

Cultures are less determined by race than other factors, and despite there being a general idea of which races are more prominent in which areas, they're still kind of all over the place. Constant mingling had greatly reduced the barrier between races (a barrier that shouldn't have existed in the first place), though the fact that the Bauhinian Royal Family and their closest allies were all aurians led to some discrimination against horned-people, such as the widespread belief in the medical use of horns.

Ultimately, races in TIR are more character design traits than anything.

Horns

Horned-people have their horn colors the same as their soul colors. The horns are made of what horns are usually made of.

A horned-person's horns usually gets set in place when they reach 18, when their bones have typically set in place.

In the past, underground horn markets were really big because people believed the grinded horn powder can cure diseases, or because some people — especially aurians — would just like them as decorations. In modern times, as education spread and ways of synthesizing the material are developed, both kinds of people are greatly reduced — not zero, but few enough for this to be an abandoned crude tradition.

Unicorns

People with one horn in the center of their foreheads. Most live near the north of the continent.

Bicorns

People with two horns. Most live near the center of the continent.

Bicorns shed their horns once in their lifetime, usually at the start of puberty. The new horns that grow in their place would be identical.

Like teeth, people would sometimes put the shed horns on the rooftop or a mountain, hoping that it would make the new horns grow tall faster. Or perhaps they would sell it themselves, though parents are usually against this since it's seen as just really creepy and bad-luck-inducing. Most of the time they go straight into the trash though.

Ears (Aurians)

Aurians have white ears that can resemble any animal (or none at all), with the insides being their soul color. They mostly live in the south of the continent.

Design notes

Since all races are defined as such, assume all skin color and other features are the same. I don't mind you interpreting / drawing my characters in any skin color, as long as they all have the same color and that color is something a human would have (not me saying this while all my drawings look like they have jaundice 😭). Grayscale is cool too, since grayscale goes well with any soul!