The Races of Overgrowth: Cephalids

The cephalids of Guthreham are not quite like the ones of Dominaria. They are deep-sea, octopus-like humanoids, but they lack the xenophobia-driven conspiracies and predatory mindset of the Dominarian counterparts.

For Overgrowth I actually took inspiration for cephalids from octopuses themselves. Octopuses are known for being incredibly smart, but unlike pretty much every other intelligent race, they typically are not a communal or collective species. In the animal kingdom, pretty much every race that ranks high in intelligence--whether, humans, monkeys, parrots, dolphins, elephants, etc.--also favors communal living and child-rearing. Octopuses are very rare in that they do not.

So in Guthreham, cephalids are brilliantly smart creatures from birth with a natural adeptness with magic. And they're not raised or schooled in any conventional sense. Each cephalid, even as a young child, is expected to fend for him or herself and make their own way in the seas.

This would sound cruel for any other race, but their high early intelligence means that this is not some absurd death sentence. The young cephalids adapt and grow very quickly.

Culturally, this led to a very self-directed society that doesn't really have any sense of a "community." And while cephalids are not emotionless automatons, they are also not terribly empathetic creatures and don't easily grasp concepts that involve caring about what other people do. Their emotions are deeply personal, both in good and bad ways. They can feel fear when they're in danger and happiness when they succeed. But they don't feel grief over another cephalid's death or outrage over injustices (on the flip side they also don't envy over somebody else's accomplishments or feel greed for their belongings).

All of this very self-directed, inward-focused society matters because they remained out of the war between the humans and elves and the undead and demons entirely decades and decades ago, and they were generally oblivious to the developing overgrowth. Not completely unaware--they are intensely curious consumers of knowledge and history. But they didn't see a threat. And they were completely unprepared when the growth led to the spread of diseases, and the diseases pushed the afflicted to coastal regions, and then the afflictions got passed into the ecology of the sea.

Because cephalids are so self-directed, they have no concept of public health. They are not religious. They have no priests or healers. Since they have no emotional attachment to each other, they typically just accepted that cephalids get sick and die eventually. Even when it's them.

But the the overgrowth brought an alarming escalation of disease into the cephalids' ecology and they are dying now at a much more rapid rate. The diseases are affecting their brilliant minds, causing them to go crazy, which in turn makes them extremely dangerous to themselves and others, particularly the desperate and also sick communities of humans who have taken up refuge on the Blightcoast.

Cephalids are now increasingly realizing that they have to start thinking of themselves as a race and a community or they are going to die off entirely. They still might be too late.