Five Races

Shade's animals include five dominant, humanoid sapient species. They haven't wiped each other out yet, and, atypically among other mixed-species worlds, show much more prejudice towards people of other countries than other species.

When people talk about the Five Races, they mean, collectively:

• Ferais (singular and plural), Shade's 'elves'
• Voks (singular and plural), also called 'yaps' (pejorative), Shade's 'goblins'
• Faleighs, Shade's 'humans'
• Srolli, singular 'sroll', Shade's 'trolls'
• Rocca (singular and plural), Shade's 'orcs'

Mutt takes the view that Shade's sapients are similar, down to a cellular level, to other humanoids, but are completely genetically incompatible. In other words: your alien can poison one, can stab one in the heart, can't get one pregnant. (There may be other small anatomical differences, such as teeth: this isn't known yet.)

Incidence of left-handedness: roughly 2 in 7.