Demihumans in The Interzone

I don’t really like demihumans in D&D. It’s hard to beat Tolkien on the lore, and D&D is not Middle Earth so in a game they just strike me as fictionally weak. In my D&D settings I favor a more sword and sorcery style, where anything not human probably wants to eat you. (And some of the humans probably want to eat you too.)  In my “main game” Lasers & Loincloths the demihuman races exist (except nasty halflings *shudder*) but the players for the most part must play humans.

In OD&D , demihumans constitute three additional classes. I am trying to run the game by the book so players are welcome to play the Dwarf Fighting-Man, Hobbit Fighting-Man, or Elf Fighting-Man/Magic User.

Technically the OD&D game takes place in the same setting as Lasers & Loincloths, I've created fiction for the elves and dwarves, so I had to come up with something for nasty hobbitses.

Demihumans in The Interzone

Elfs and Dwarfs were manufactured in the bio-pools of the Primordial Ones.

Elfs were intended to be house slaves and dwarfs were used for hard labor.

Halflings are a result of spontaneous evolution from the waste run off of the bio-pools. The Primordial Ones exterminated them as pest but after the fall of the first men the pools leaked freely and halflings bred unchecked in the wilds.  Over millennia of violent evolution they eventually become the weasel Blarka.

Physical Characteristics

All demihumans share the following physical characteristics:

Cat like pupils that allow them to see in the dark

They are monotremes , laying a clutch of 1-6 eggs at a time.

Elfs were manufactured to be aesthetically pleasing servants and pleasure slaves. They have beautiful feminine features, and little to no body hair. They stand four to five feet tall, and weigh between 50 and 90 pounds. Elfs are hermaphroditic, capable of generating whatever sexual organ is required. An elf will live for up to a thousand years before their genetic material becomes degraded and they transform into ghouls.

Dwarfs were manufactured to perform hard labor, specifically to mine resources on other planets. They stand four feet tall and are thick and fat with square heads and no body hair other than beards.  Dwarfs have no sexual organs and are all clones. They carry 3d6 eggs inside of their lower abdominal paunches. These must be extracted surgically to germinate. Dwarfs can live for up to a thousand years before they explode and drop their eggs.

Halflings are the mutant spawn of the genetic run-off of the vats that produced Dwarfs and Elfs. They stand two to three feet tall and their physical characteristics vary wildly. They have 1d3 eyes, and 1d4+3 limbs. Any limb over four has a 1 in 6 chance of being functional; otherwise it is a misshapen fleshy lump.  Halflings may be hairless or hirsute, male or female. Halflings have volatile and unstable genetic structure and only live for 20-30 years.