Dareth: Magic and Science make a world

[Prak]

Ok, this started with me working on Rodentia derived goblins. Then my mind kept working at things, because of this thread.

So, I'm going to do what I can. If something is scientifically flawed and not based on "A Wizard/God/Aether Did It," let me know, because I have only slightly better than a layperson's grasp of a lot of things science-y. Things marked with asterisks are things where even I know my ignorance is showing. Given that this is supposed to still be a fantasy setting, there is magic that can break some science rules.

Forgive the somewhat Genesis-y wording and tone of the first section, I was raised catholic so it's still natural to use that style when describing the development of a universe.
------------------------------------

In the beginning, there was Magic, and nothing else. Magic split into three spaces, the original, which is now known as the Ethereal Plane, the shadowy, always and forever known as the Plane of Shadow, and the light suffused, now known as the Astral.
From Magic's inherent potential arose the Entities. The Entities were the first things to wonder "Who are we? What Are We? Where Did We Come From? Are We Alone?" creatures of energy and raw magic which existed before and without time. While they questioned their existence, out of Magic came the universe. It started as a dense ball of energy, which rapidly expanded outward, coalescing into matter, which swirled and roiled and coalesced into stars and planets. As what are known as the Ephemeral Elements flared, blew, flowed or crystalized into existence, certain of the Entities took affinities to them, causing them to branch off of the material realm which was slowly developing between the transitional planes, and become planes themselves, the Inner Planes. Upon these planes, the essence of these entities tarried long enough to arise as discrete individual life forms, giving the multiverse the elementals, and, later, the outsiders.
In the material realm, life took a different, slower course. The ancestors of oozes were small things, invisible to the eye, dwelling in the muck of the early world. Soon, geologically speaking, some of these proto-oozes began acting as colonies*, joined together. Eventually the colonies grew large enough that specialization was needed, and so the individual proto-oozes diversified to the point that they were practically, and then literally, a single creature.

and then stuff happens. life goes through a relatively normal course, with possibly fewer mass extinctions, and a lot more creatures evolving into sapient life forms.

As life evolved in the material realm, notably as sapient creatures began developing civilizations, Entities began taking affinities for new things, ideas, concepts, phenomena, attitudes. They became new realms, the Outer Planes, from which arose new, lesser Entities, with more concrete, but also more limited, powers, which are commonly referred to as Gods. However, Magic still permeates the multiverse, occasionally showing itself through strange phenomena, and intervening at the behest of, or being controlled by, people. Some consider it a sentient force, and refer to it as the Aether, other consider it a force no more sentient than fire, or water, existing primarily as a tool.
--------------------------------

So what do people think, so far?

[Prak]

So, yeah, seeing as how Magic isn't purposefully doing much of anything, and the Entities are more like really sapient two year olds, the species evolve. Humans from primates, goblins from rodents (since that was the unbeknownst start to all this, for me). Bugbears and Hobgoblins, being goblinoids, also get to be rodentia, I'm thinking hobgoblins evolved from large rat-mole like creatures, allowing them to keep their hyper-rigid social structure, and, what the hell, bugbears evolved from porcupine like creatures, because why not? They're solitary, they're large for rodents, some are omnivorous, it works.

Then I'm thinking that gnomes and kobolds both evolved from mustelids, badger like creatures for gnomes, weasel-like creatures for kobolds, who were bled on by a dragon at some point, because I like reptilian kobolds.

Elves can go a couple of ways, I tend to like linking them to birds, but they could also be evolved from primates that stayed in, or went back to the trees.

Halflings could be a species in the Homo genus, which would actually make them roughly as close to humans as neanderthals were to us (which is damned close since apparently scientists have found something like 4% neanderthal DNA in europeans). Technically it also actually makes them humans, by really pedantic science terminology, at least according to Wikipedia, but we can ignore that little terminology quirk.

Lets say, for now, that Orcs are the evolutionary descendants of a fourth split from Miacidae, the family which split into the caniformia, feliformia and pinnepedia superfamilies, making them vaguely related to cats and dogs (but no more so than is, say, a bear).

Dwarfs, I was talking to a friend, and the idea of dwarfs evolving from burrowing owls came up, and is too good to pass up, so, yeah, dwarfs evolved from burrowing, owl like birds.