The Making of Khassid: The First Believers
The Problem
Now that I had the Elder Four in place—and knew that mortals would be the ones to create the gods—the next problem made itself very clear.
I needed something that could believe.
At first, that sounds simple. Just make mortals. But the moment I sat with it, the issue showed up immediately: if all mortals were the same, then their belief would be the same. And if their belief was the same, then the gods they created would be the same.
That didn’t work.
Because if Khassid was going to function the way I had already decided it would, belief couldn’t be uniform. It had to fracture. It had to diverge. It had to come from different perspectives—different ways of seeing the world, understanding it, and trying to make sense of it.
And that’s where species came in.
The Familiar Starting Point
The easiest place to start was the familiar.
And if I’m being honest, this part wasn’t some grand design decision. I pulled straight from D&D.
Humans. Elves. Dwarves. Halflings. Orcs.
That was the baseline. The default.
But that couldn’t be where it stopped.
Because if all I did was bring them over as-is, then I hadn’t actually solved anything. I’d just changed the names and kept the same assumptions.
Each one needed something that made it fit Khassid. Not just visually or culturally—but in how they saw the world.
The Elves
I started with the elves.
The first thing I knew almost immediately was that they weren’t going to be the standard arrogant or haughty type you see in most settings. That never really clicked for me. I wanted them to feel more grounded and real, but at the same time still clearly different from the other species. That created a bit of a problem right away, because if they were grounded in the same way as everyone else, then what actually set them apart?
What I kept coming back to was that I didn’t just want them to be culturally different. I wanted them to have a fundamentally different relationship with Khassid itself, while still being part of it. Figuring out what that meant took a minute, because it’s not as simple as just saying they come from somewhere else. I didn’t want them to feel like outsiders in the traditional sense.
A Coexistent Reality
The idea that ended up solving that came from an unexpected place—Legion of Super-Heroes. There’s a character, Phantom Girl, who comes from a planet called Bgztl. The concept behind it is that her world exists in the same space as Earth, but in a different phase. Because of that, her people can pass through solid matter. I’m definitely simplifying it, but that core idea was what stuck with me.
What if the elves weren’t from a completely separate place, but from something that existed alongside Khassid? Not a different plane in the usual sense, and not somewhere you physically travel to, but something coexistent—overlapping the same space while not being fully aligned with it. That felt like it solved the problem. They could still be part of the world without being entirely bound to it.
Emotional Awareness
Once I had that, I realized I still hadn’t actually addressed what made them different in how they functioned as a people. That’s where I ended up circling back to Legion of Super-Heroes again, this time with Saturn Girl. Her people are telepaths, and the result of that is a society where deception doesn’t really function in the same way because everyone can read each other’s thoughts.
I rejected telepathy pretty quickly. Mechanically, it would be a nightmare at the table. But the underlying idea—removing the ability for people to fully hide from each other—was interesting, so I started looking for a version of that which wouldn’t break everything.
That’s where emotion came in.
Instead of thoughts, it would be emotional awareness. They wouldn’t know what someone was thinking, but they would be able to perceive what someone was feeling. Once I landed on that, the implications started to fall into place. If you can read emotional state, deception becomes more difficult, and if deception becomes more difficult, then social dynamics start to shift. The idea of them being more unified didn’t come from culture at that point—it came from how they experienced each other.
The more I sat with that, the more it felt right. Between their origin in a coexistent, resonant reality and their ability to perceive emotional states, they started to feel distinct in a way that actually mattered.
At that point, calling them “elves” didn’t feel like it fit anymore. I wanted something that still felt familiar but clearly belonged to Khassid. It took a bit of time to land on a name, but eventually I settled on Syl’Aeris. I liked the sound of it, and it carried just enough of that “elvish” tone without just being “elves” with a different label. The pronunciation I landed on was Seehl-AHH-ree, leaning slightly toward a French-style cadence, but mostly just going with what felt right.
The Dwarves
From there, I moved on to the dwarves.
Dwarves in most settings are fairly consistent, even when they’re slightly reinterpreted, so the question became what would actually make them different in a meaningful way. The idea that came first was that they weren’t originally from Khassid at all. They would be refugees, which immediately gave them a different kind of history and context compared to the other species.
The harder part was figuring out what they were refugees from. War didn’t feel right for something that would result in crossing between worlds, so I let that sit for a bit until the answer came together—entropy. Their world wasn’t being destroyed by something external; it was simply ending.
Once that clicked, everything else followed pretty quickly. If their world was dying, then there would be some final attempt to save them. That led to the idea of a last god, and from there it made sense that this god would reach out to Aeru. Aeru granting asylum solved how they arrived in Khassid, and it gave the entire situation a kind of weight that I liked.
Then I ran into a problem I hadn’t considered at first. If their world was gone, then so were their gods.
That didn’t sit right either, especially given how Khassid handles divinity. If gods are created and sustained through belief, then the dwarves wouldn’t simply lose their gods by changing worlds. They would continue believing in them.
And if they continued believing in them, then those gods wouldn’t stay gone.
They would re-emerge.
That was the point where it all came together. From the dwarves’ perspective, their gods hadn’t died at all. They had simply been absent, and now, in this new world, they were returning.
At that point, they stopped feeling like standard dwarves and started to feel like something more specific—a people defined by survival and continuation. The name Barazûn came out of that idea. I hadn’t fully settled on whether it referred to their people directly or something tied to their original world, but it captured the concept well enough to move forward.
And that was how the dwarves took shape within Khassid.
The Halflings
Then I got to the halflings.
Like most people, my frame of reference started with The Lord of the Rings—and I’m going to age myself a bit here—the animated version first, and then Peter Jackson’s films later. Hobbits, and by extension D&D halflings, are very clearly defined. They’re small, comfortable, home-focused, and often end up as a kind of soft comic relief, even when that’s not the intent.
That wasn’t going to work in Khassid.
Not because I disliked it, but because it didn’t fit what I was building. If species were meant to shape belief, then halflings couldn’t just be the comfortable ones. That doesn’t create tension, and it doesn’t really lead anywhere in terms of the kinds of gods they would bring into existence.
My first instinct was to swing hard in the opposite direction.
Make them dangerous. Make them aggressive.
But I shut that down pretty quickly, because I could already see where that was going. You end up with something like Xena: Warrior Halflings, and at that point you’ve completely lost what makes halflings recognizable. You’re not reinterpreting them—you’re replacing them.
So I let that sit.
And then, completely out of nowhere, the answer came from something I wasn’t expecting at all.
I came across a video online—some kind of confrontation that escalated fast—and the person narrating it said, “You do something like that, and you fuck around and find out.”
I grinned.
That was it.
Not the situation itself—but the shift. That immediate turn from calm to consequence.
That became the foundation.
The halflings—what would become the Felden—would still be everything you expect. Home, hearth, food, family, community, that easy, comfortable life. You show up at their door, they feed you, make you feel welcome, make you feel like you belong.
Until you do something wrong.
Then you fuck around and find out.
And once I had that, everything else followed.
They don’t become aggressive as a culture. They don’t become warlike. They don’t stop being who they are.
But they do not tolerate disruption to that life.
And more importantly—they don’t fracture when it happens.
They act together.
Completely.
That was the part I leaned into, because it reframed everything. Their peace isn’t because they’re harmless. It’s because it’s protected. Their comfort exists because anything that threatens it is dealt with—quickly, decisively, and without hesitation.
That idea eventually formalized into something I now refer to as Felden Actualization of Forceful Opposition. The more I sat with it, the more I enjoyed where it was going—probably a little more than I should have, if I’m being honest.
Because at that point, it wasn’t just a concept anymore. It was a rule.
Fuck Around and Find Out.
Felden Actualization of Forceful Opposition.
FAFO.
It fit a little too well.
And once that clicked, they stopped feeling like halflings.
The Orcs (and More)
So now we had elves, dwarves, and halflings.
Next on the list were the orcs.
Now, to be clear—it starts with orcs, but it doesn’t end there.
You’ll see what I mean.
The first thing I knew was that they were going to be playable, but they weren’t going to be the standard tribal, savage, “meat’s back on the menu” version. That’s been done, and while it works in a lot of settings, it didn’t fit what I was building here.
Khassid’s orcs needed to be something else.
I wanted them to be on par with humans in terms of civilization and sophistication, but without losing that edge that makes them feel like orcs in the first place. They needed to be able to sit at a table, sip wine, eat good food, and have a conversation about art, politics, or economic theory—and still be the same people who could turn around and be absolutely brutal when the situation called for it.
That balance felt right.
The name Varnokh came to me pretty quickly. I don’t remember exactly where it came from—maybe Khassid was speaking again—but it stuck almost immediately.
And at that point, I thought I had them figured out.
And then the idea expanded.
Because once I started thinking about orcs, it didn’t stay with orcs for very long. Goblins came to mind. Then hobgoblins. Then bugbears.
And the question shifted.
What if they weren’t separate?
Not in the sense of being the same species—but in the sense of being aligned.
What if these groups, which are almost always portrayed as fragmented or adversarial, had a reason to come together?
That’s where survival came in.
It’s always a good foundation.
So I created what I started thinking of as an Event—borrowing a bit from how David and Leigh Eddings use the concept. Something significant enough that it forces a change in behavior. Something that makes the old way of doing things no longer viable.
Whatever it was, it pushed them into cooperation.
Not temporarily. Not out of convenience.
But as a matter of continued existence.
Each group would still have its own identity. Its own gods. Its own internal structure.
But they would stand together.
And from that, the idea of a unifying force started to take shape—a figure, a presence, something that could take that fragile alignment and solidify it into something lasting.
Not a tyrant. Not a conqueror.
A unifier.
That was the turning point.
Because now they weren’t just orcs.
They were part of something larger.
The Varnokh Confederacy.
And what I liked about it was that it didn’t position them as the looming enemy. Not the thing the rest of the world has to band together to fight.
They were equals—a force in Khassid, not against it.
The more I sat with that, the more it grounded them in a way I wasn’t expecting. Not less interesting, but more relatable. A people defined not just by strength, but by the decision to stand together when they didn’t have to—except, in their case, they did, because unity for them isn’t philosophical. It’s necessary.
And the fact that in order to avoid extinction, they simply must.
As far as I can tell, no other species in D&D ever took this approach, and I was absolutely ok with that.
The Karnathi
For the next species, I decided I was going to try my hand at creating one from scratch.
I wasn’t naive enough to think that was going to be easy. I probably sat on it for weeks, going through idea after idea and rejecting most of them. Between official material, homebrew, and everything floating around the internet, it felt like every conceptual space had already been explored. There were species that could fly, species adapted to every environment imaginable, and no shortage of ideas pulled from both fantasy and science fiction. And still, nothing stood out.
That was the challenge.
Eventually, I landed on something that, once again, traced back to an unexpected place—Legion of Super-Heroes. Blok. A sentient being made of living rock. I didn’t want that, but the idea of something that resembled stone stuck with me, and that’s where it started to shift. Instead of literal stone, I moved toward something biological—flesh and blood—but shaped by environment. A species that lived under constant pressure, underground and beneath weight and time. If that was true, then their bodies would reflect it.
Their skin wouldn’t be smooth in the way most species are. It would carry a kind of crystalline lattice, catching light in a way that made them appear almost stone-like at a glance. Their features would follow that same logic—subtle ridges, formations along the brow or face that resembled weathered rock or cliff edges. Not exaggerated, but present enough that you couldn’t mistake what shaped them.
That part came together steadily, but the next part hit all at once. Up to that point, most species had some form of sensory distinction—darkvision, tremorsense, something that gave them a different way of interacting with the world. So I started asking what that would look like here, and the answer came quickly. What if they could sense when something is about to break? Not magically, but physically. Pressure. Stress. Structural weakness. Faults.
Once I had that, it expanded almost immediately. In a physical sense, it made perfect sense—they could detect weaknesses in stone, in walls, in structures, and instinctively understand how to reinforce or repair them. That led naturally into something like the mending cantrip as an extension of that instinct. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it didn’t have to stop there, because pressure isn’t just physical.
So I let it extend.
The further you move away from the physical, the less precise it becomes, but it’s still there. A sense that something isn’t holding, that something is strained, that something is going to give. A person, a group, a society—they can feel those fractures forming. But they can’t fix them. They can recognize them, warn about them, try to guide others away from collapse, but they don’t have the same innate ability to repair what isn’t physical.
That distinction ended up mattering more than I expected, because it meant they weren’t just defined by what they could do, but also by what they couldn’t.
That’s when it really came together.
The Karnathi, the native sons of Khassid.
Of everything I’ve built so far, these are probably the ones I’m most proud of.
What Stayed, What Changed, What Didn’t Fit
At that point, I had what I would consider the six foundational species of Khassid: Varnokh, Humans, Barazûn, Syl’Aeris, Felden, and Karnathi. The six starter species, as it were.
From there, I looked at what else I wanted to include and what didn’t need to be reworked.
Dragonborn were an easy decision. As a concept, they already carry a strong identity, and I didn’t see a need to break something that was already working. They fit into Khassid without needing to be reshaped, which made them one of the few instances where I was comfortable leaving something largely as-is.
Tieflings were a different situation. I liked them as a concept and wanted them present, but they needed a way to exist in Khassid that made sense within the structure I had already built. I needed a “how.”
That’s where Ilmaris came in.
The destruction of Ilmaris was already established as a massive magical Event, and once I connected that to planar instability, everything fell into place. A catastrophic release of energy, fractures in the planar fabric, and displaced tieflings suddenly appearing within Khassid—it solved the problem cleanly. It let me keep them, while also introducing them in a way that felt consistent with the world.
That one came together easier than I expected.
Gnomes, on the other hand, didn’t make the cut.
They’ve always felt a little out of place to me in D&D. Where halflings tend to drift into comic relief, gnomes often push even further in that direction, and it never quite landed the way I wanted it to. When I looked at Khassid, they didn’t fit—not in the way they’re typically presented.
So I left them out.
For now.
The Unfinished Idea
Because the more I thought about it, the more interesting the absence became. After the Cataclysm, with everything that was lost or altered, the idea started forming—what if there was an entire species that had been forgotten? Not gone. Not destroyed. Just… removed from memory and history, while still existing somewhere within the world.
That’s not something I’ve fully developed yet, but it’s there.
And if it turns into something more, it will be because Khassid decides it belongs.
Where I Am With It
At this point, I’ve learned not to force those things. Khassid will speak to me and let me know if that species is indeed within her borders.
That’s where I am with this for now.