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The cliche of dwarves is short, burly, bearded miners, masons and reclusive mountain dwellers following their vaguely Norse or Scots Celtic culture, making you think of Brian Blessed, if Blessed were short and stumpy. They are veritable tanks in battle and at the bar. But I don’t follow that in my game.

Udran dwarves are descended from the occasionally evil, occasionally cannibalistic, utucheckulu of Darth Lom. Generally most are lawful neutral rather than lawful good. Unlike their Lomite cousins, and unlike virtually all dwarfish cliches, they have an enormous fascination with magic, especially in combat. This is why they favor monk as a class over fighter. And those that cannot be monks, tend to be become wizards or sorcerers.

To further distinguish themselves from their Nyambian heritige, they tend to shave all body hair, often even the eyebrows, only the women are the exception to this, retaining short bobbed or cornrowed hair, eyebrows and beards occasionally. Generally a male Udran dwarf never lets his beard or hair grow out except as a form of shame, carelessness or penance. There are Udran dwarves who go about bearded but these are looked at as prisoners, hooligans, vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells.

A good example of an Udran dwarf can be found in the Neverwinter Nights character, Grimgnaw. They are short, dusky and ascetic, with strong influences from traditional African shamans, diviners and martial artists. Unlike their Nyambian cousins and unlike their D&D counterparts, they favor monk or wizard as a class. As such, they are always literate, often in several languages. The music they favor is something very similar to Mongol Throat Singing, kora harps, mbiras and mouth harps.

Aside from their different outlook and favored class, they have all the same advantages of dwarfs as described in the Players Handbook. As they have departed strongly from the traditions of Nyambe, they don’t have the advantages outlined in that source book.

Elves, in general, are rare in Udra, being outnumbered by other humanoid species. They are really only found in any numbers at all in the Talithanth Forest on the middle east coast of Udra. This area, by royal edict and ancient treaty, is given to them to rule as they see fit. There are three types of elves in Udra, all of which speak the elven language:

• The water breathing sea elves, which are the least common. They the claim that they came to Udra before the Wakyambi did by swimming across the deep ocean.
• The wakyambi elves originally from Darth Lom (Also known as “Nyambe Tande” in Lomite.) who are marked by their dark brown skins, dark brown eyes and tails. These claim themselves as the progenitor elves, the mothers and fathers of all elves. These are less common but they can be seen around Udra if you look.
• The most common are the tailless, occasionally mad, wood elves of Urda. Their history is youngest. The story goes, more than a thousand years ago, that by coming to be accepted by and connected to the forest spirits and gods of Udra, the wakyambi lost their tails, grew more prone to bouts of insanity and became the wood elves.

Udran elves, don’t follow a quasi-medieval European culture but instead follow precolonial, native African cultures like, Egypt, Mali, Zimbabwe or Meroë. They love jewelry made of gold and lapis, usually of quasi-Egyptian bird, hawk and sun motifs.  Udran elves have an affinity for magic but are more likely, especially the wakyambi elves for ancient historical reasons, to follow divine magic rather than sorcery, wizardry and arcane sources. They’re favored class is cleric, not wizard. (Other than that, Wood Elves follow the specifications in the PHB. Wakyambi follow the specifications in Chris Dolunt’s Nyambe: African Adventures. Sea Elves follow specifications given in the MM.)

There is some friction between the different cultures of elves in Udra. The Wakyambi are viewed by the other elves as rather haughty and aloof, even for an Elf–although this may be hard for a non-elf to notice. The Wood Elves are viewed, although this is never said publicly, certainly not in the hearing of non-elves, as betrayers of the old ways, upstarts and as dangerously prone to insanity. The Sea Elves are especially xenophobic, mistrustful and slow to befriend, even for elves.

There are some elves that have come to prominence in human lands, one is Duke Theramir, a Wood Elf and the ruler of the city and canton of Nah. Although there has been no proof, it has been rumored that in his youth, nearly a century ago, before he came to power, he was prone to the insanity of his kind. Another is Lord Mandark, a half-elf, a rogue and a troubleshooter for Queen Ellen and, again, prone to some eccentricities.

There are no Grey Elves, Wild Elves or High Elves, as described in the Monster Manual, anywhere on the world of Ednom, not even in myth or legend. They don’t exist.

But just recently D&D’s infamous, subterranean Drow elves have been discovered–hiding deep in caverns below the city of Waylon. The Drow, even among the histories of progenitor Wakyambi elves are pure myth. Only among the oldest stories tell of pitch black skinned elves of white hair in Darth Lom. The story goes they are not of Ednom and not of the gods of Ednom. The story is they were strange allies summoned by the Kosan more than 60,000 years ago. The story is they were alien creatures coming from some other world only the gods knew of, perhaps another universe or plane of existence but, until now, not one exists anywhere in Udra.

The cliche of halflings in D&D is that they are jolly burglars and shoeless, gourmand hippies, following the vaguely Irish or Welsh culture given them by Tolkien.

This is not so in Udra. In Udra, all the halflings came from the agogwe of Darth Lom. If their culture could be described in one sentence it would be this: African, dour, heretic burning Puritans all dressed in black hats and small swatches of white. Another way to think about them is to imagine the results of the following question, what if Frodo kept the One Ring? Imagine if he used it to forge a fanatical and xenophobic empire bent on ruling all of Middle-Earth?

A ridiculous image, to be sure, I mean halflings don’t have the strength and size to defeat the big folk in direct combat, right? But then again, neither do humans against giants and yet giants are rare and humans rule everything in most fantasy stories so, how does that work? Usually the humans don’t face the giants in direct combat unless vastly outnumbering them or, more often, just outsmarting them and finding weaknesses.

Udran halflings are a bit like that.

They are ambitious, rather than shy and retiring. They really want to rise high in the world rather let it pass them by.

They are highly disciplined, given to religious asceticism and spartan life. They are secretive, shrewd and cagey. They only tend to fight when the odds are overwhelmingly in their favor. They are mostly “good,” in a Jerry Falwell, Cotton Mather, Salem Witch Trials sense of being “good.” If they are rogue or criminal, they tend to be mastermind bank robbers and con artists, rather than second story men. If they are military, they tend to favor hugely massed Roman and Greek infantry tactics and the largest horses they can safely ride, rather than guerrilla tactics. (But they’ll go in for guerrilla tactics if that’s what it takes for them to win.) If they favor the divine or the arcane, they tend to go for the most ambitious, scholarly, dangerous, esoteric, and above all, powerful magical training or tend to be fanatical inquisitors, religious teachers or ruthless, controlling theocrats.

They are well aware of their limitations and tend to always put themselves in situations where they have a clear advantage. They’ll cheat. If a Udran halfing soldier is in a stand up fight with a human warrior, you can be sure the halfing is fighting with a poisoned blade or has worked out some way to push the human off a cliff. They are short, but somehow exude an reputation darkness, lawfulness and just vaguely creepy. “Cute” is usually the last word you’ll think of.

They aren’t barefoot. They tend to wear the biggest, highest hip boots they can get away with or big buckled shoes.

Of course there are some who defy this cultural stereotype.  You will find some halfings in Udra that follow the Tolkienesque idiom and others that are more primal like their ancient agogwe roots but most are short,  Mennonites or Puritans.

Their halfling advantages are a bit different from those in the book. They tend to be stronger and less dextrous, so no bonus for dexterity or penalty for strength. They favor the class of cleric, not rogue. They have very thick and tough toe and finger nails, these are usually clipped short but can be allowed to grow giving them advantages to dig and fight with. But other than that, they are more or less the same in their halfling traits.