Each species has its own means of surviving in a hostile world. Dwarves possess skin as hard as stone and an innate aptitude for geomancy. Orcs are freakishly strong. Kobolds are cunning and natural pyromancers. Dragons, as flying, fire-breathing fortresses, appear to have won the genetic lottery. Some have come to question how it is that humans have survived so long, when they appear to possess no specific advantage, being rather bland brownish-beige-ish blobs that excel neither physically, mentally, nor magically.

It has been postulated that the sole gift humans possess is their natural capacity (and apparent eagerness) to produce viable offspring with nigh on anything. This has opened certain avenues for diplomatic relations, though has given humans something of a reputation. Elves, in particular, hold them in low regard for their tendency to rudely shirk the burdens of child-rearing by dropping dead of old age.

This rapacious hybridity has endowed humans with an eclectic gene pool. Moreover, this inborn ability to fuse wildly disparate biologies can be externalised through the art of semancy (from the ancient elven serere - 'to sow'). Through this, human semancers of the past created such hybrid menaces as the chimera, the manticore, and the owlbear.

The soupiness of the human gene pool can also yield unexpected surprises. On rare occasions, a human may spontaneously undergo a secondary puberty, as some distant ancestor stirs within the blood and abruptly asserts itself as dominant over the human anatomy.