Let's Make Humans Weird
It has been over a year since my last post, and what a decade that year has been. -_-
Anyways, I've been thinking more about alternatives to traditional fantasy species, and have decided to spice up the humans in my science-fantasy setting.
The juice upfront:
Human
Keeper, Ogre, Journeyer
Humans have a tentative lineage to the powerful Old Ones who left this world littered with uncanny ruins.
Talent - Their gold-inlaid bones act as arcane antenna, allowing each human to cast one spell (rolled randomly at character creation) regardless of background/class.
Photosynthesis - Thanks to the colony of symbiotic algae in their skin, humans can supplement that day's food rations with 8 hours of direct sunlight.
Soul Recovery - A copy of a human's experiences and personality is stored in golden nodules in their skull. If their remains (or at the very least their intact skull) are recovered, then a limited facsimile of their mind may be accessed (it is lacking the last couple of days before death). Returning their remains to a temple is believed to be the primary path to an afterlife.
That's it, that's the human description. Now if you are tolerant of a little self-indulgence, we can explore each of those traits a bit more below.
Old One Descendants
"Humans have a tentative lineage to the powerful Old Ones who left this world littered with uncanny ruins."
I think my humans' whole deal is that they are in some way descended from the ancient high-tech civilization who created all of the bizarre dungeons and artifacts. Instead of being direct descendants, I think my humans are descendants of the engineered replicant-like caste who outlived their creators. I think it's more interesting to leave the connection a bit fuzzy, so the reality is not something confidently known by the denizens of the world or my players.
Spell Talent
"Talent - Their gold-inlaid bones act as arcane antenna, allowing each human to cast one spell (rolled randomly at character creation) regardless of background/class."
Since I'm running Cairn right now, this means that every human player will know one random spell without having to carry the spellbook. They still have to add a Fatigue when casting it.
The ancient Old Ones, and to a lesser extent their human creations, internally grew the mechanisms required to harness the magic fields permeating their world. I like the idea that in a sufficiently magical society, everyday folks know one or two minor spells that would help them with their vocation; this idea started with the Elves in 5e all knowing one cantrip regardless of class. NPCs probably know a relevant spell to their lives, but the misfit adventurer players each get a random spell.
Photosynthesis
"Photosynthesis - Thanks to the colony of symbiotic algae in their skin, humans can supplement that day's food rations with 8 hours of direct sunlight."
This next feature was inspired by The Green Man from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (I believe this also shows up in Knights of Sidonia by Tsutomu Nihei, we'll get back to him in a bit). This is similar to something some sea slugs can do, but in their case they eat the algae and utilize the chloroplasts.
I think the Old Ones were a space-faring people (probably far far future Earth humans), and for them being able to live off of starlight was a necessary strategy. When they colonized this world they probably got rid of it in themselves, viewing a dependence on food as an opulent status symbol, but kept the photosynthesis in their utilitarian "human" creations.
People who spend most of their time in the sun are probably completely blue-green from a strong healthy algae colony, while people who spend most of their lives indoors or live closer to the poles have reduced colonies that more closely resemble blotchy tattoos. Like tattoos, the algae would be filtered through someone's natural skin-tone, so you'd probably get all sorts of interesting shades and levels of vibrancy.
Digital Souls
"Soul Recovery - A copy of a human's experiences and personality is stored in golden nodules in their skull. If their remains (or at the very least their intact skull) are recovered, then a limited facsimile of their mind may be accessed (it is lacking the last couple of days before death). Returning their remains to a temple is believed to be the primary path to an afterlife."
This one probably has the most setting implications. The idea came from a couple pages from my favorite manga Blame! (also by Tsutomu Nihei) (about 2/3 of the way through volume two of the Master Edition). After a big battle that killed lots of villagers, the community healer makes these bags with their remains, they seem to contain either organs or brains or implants (a bit like canopic jars). The implication is that at some point in the past the memories and personalities of people could be recovered after death. Now the recovery techniques have been lost but the tradition of preparing and preserving the special organs has been kept as a quasi-religious funeral rite. I think this is cool as hell, and I want it in my game!
Instead of special organs let's go with skulls, skulls are already cool and packed with meaning. Like how the "Talent" ability said that humans had golden arcane-antenna grown into their bones, I think their skulls have veins of gold leading to some sort of biomechanical nodules, looking a bit like a Kintsugi version of an EEG cap. The skull acts as a sort of black box flight recorder, preserving memories. The memories annoyingly cut off a couple days prior death. The real reason is so that talking to skeletons doesn't defeat all the the mystery of dungeon exploration, but an in-universe reason might be that only long-term memories are recorded or maybe remembering one's own death is too traumatic a thing to take with you to the "after-life".
Retrieving remains is now a strong incentive other than treasure to explore spooky dungeons. "Ghosts" are just holographic projections emanating from unrecovered remains trying to be found. Since the bio-device is primarily focused on backup, it doesn't have enough power to run a full emulation of the person's whole personality and talking to a ghost is a bit like talking to an early chatbot. Carrying around someone's head might work as a much less helpful version of Mimir or Cortana, but as soon as the players start leaning on that too hard, you can remind them that this is mostly a backup and data retrieval is something to be done at temples.
Temples probably have a bit of a Paris Catacombs vibe. The skulls of notable people are probably kept around long after their digital souls have been transferred out. But for most people, their skull is placed upon an alter (docking station), the eyes or nodules glow (status indicator) then go dark (transfer complete), the skull is then sent home with their loved-ones to be placed on the mantel or buried or what-have-you. The understanding is that their souls have gone to join the mysterious Old Ones in some sort of after-life. We might understand it more as their experiential backups have been transferred to a great server somewhere deep in the earth. Temples are probably access points to ancient computer systems under the ground, and act as emitters for the magical field that arcane bone antenna can tap into.
This opens the door to necromancy just being mad-scientists trying to create powerful enough new bodies to fully run the personality backups in skulls. It probably rarely goes smoothly and since they're circumventing the church it carries all sorts of cultural taboos. A lich is probably someone trying to wire themselves into an ancient computer. There are all sorts of fun science-fantasy possibilities.