Random thought from listening to Tale of the Manticore during today’s workout:

In most fantasy settings, humans are the up-and-coming sapient species, the innovators, the shitdisturbers, the ones who move at high speed compared to the elder dwarven and elven species. They’re usually driving advances in science and engineering (unless gnomes, which have somehow become anonymous with neon-hued steampunk annoyance, have taken than role).

I’d like to tinker with using halflings (or the setting-specific equivalent) to fill that role. Rather than being the tubby, bucolic, barefoot, and socially-conservative species, what if they’re the force of dynamism and social upheaval? Keep them as the setting’s foodies and masters of agriculture – but it’s because they have to be. Their brains and metabolisms are overclocked, resulting in higher overall energy levels and greater intelligence but correspondingly greater caloric demands and shorter lifespans. In fact, they may have been the originators of agriculture because, of all the species, they were the ones with the narrowest margin between survival and starvation.

(Famine would feature prominently in their cultural baggage, probably as the greatest collective fear.)

… huh. As I consider this development, these halflings also owe a fair amount to the betas of Shadow Unit. Stealing further from that source, halfling dynamism may be a result of food security rather than the drive that led to it. Halfling metabolism is adapted to varying levels of food availability. In its default state, assuming a pre-industrial, low-magic level of food production, halflings are sedentary because they need to they conserve energy for survival. If they have calories to spare, though, their brains and bodies can and will use that surplus for bursts of intense activity.

Historically, this gave rise to legendary feats and heroes – and perhaps darker stories of what some of those heroes, pressed by desperate circumstances, did to get the extra food they needed to pull off their miracles. Now, in halfling communities that are edging toward industrial agribusiness models of food production, high levels of productivity and intellectual discovery are the norm.