<aside> 💡 This page describes the typical societies these races live in, and the general background that your characters would be aware of, but there are exceptions to every rule; don’t let these descriptions limit player characters’ backstories.
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The majority of people on Scrollworld belong to one of these races.
The Orcs are big on oral traditions, with an excellent memory, especially for things set to song or rhyme. Writing is nearly nonexistent. Every Orc nation has a historic saga, which is a compendium of everything they know, and it’s always **being sung by someone; at any given point, every Orcish settlement has someone reciting the saga while some others listen and learn; the singers come and go as needed to rest, practice, and learn.
Bloodying adolescence rituals are required for entry to adulthood; some people outside of Orc nations know about this, but many don't. Orcs will raid nearby civilizations, but their intent is not to pillage or take slaves; their goal is provoke combat to prove their mettle, but not necessarily to kill. This makes Orc attacks are baffling to anyone not familiar with Orcish culture.
The Orcs are often equally baffled in turn; the people they come to challenge either turn and run, or return a disproportionate amount of violence (which is seen as slightly weird and maybe a little rude, but doesn't upset the Orcs; they accept a high rate of attrition, and venerate those lost in combat.)
The Orcs have always known the moving nature of the world, and think less of those who tend to forget or ignore or deny it.
Orcs are more than happy to see a Rammer kingdom come through - the Rammers have no interest in staying long enough to become an existential threat to the Orcs, and in the meanwhile provide a proving ground for young Orcs.
<aside> 💡 A PC could either be an unbloodied Orc looking to earn their adulthood; or one who's unhappy with the entire prospect and leaves the nation over it.
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Specialized to their latitude and clime, slowly migrate south, maintaining the local “microclimate” in their Glades as best as they can. Elves are long lived, so they well know the nature of Scrollworld. Elves are not territorial per se, but very protective of their holdings - they’re fine with people passing through a Glade, and are fine with outsiders staying with them, but they understand how fragile their particular environment is, and will protect it.
Only exceptional Elves can become adventurers - most Elves are too adapted to their environment, and cannot thrive outside it; some cannot survive at all.
Most Dwarven societies spend their time split between the surface and underground - they’ll slowly tunnel south to keep up with the habitable surface, and emerge every so often to trade. Given their tendency to lose touch with the surface, sometimes whole Dwarven civilizations vanish to the north, and sometimes they have to make a mad underground dash to escape this fate. (The latter is a major endeavour, on par with the effort required in a Rammer push south.)
The Dwarves often trade with surface civilizations, but their internal economy is entirely reputation based; they only value the money they’re paid as an external validation of their skill, and don’t use currency internally.
Typically the only race that becomes Rammers, and thus typically the only race that has large civilizations. Humans are relatively short-lived, and often put things off until the last minute. Humans civilizations often forget the true nature of the world, since it’s easy to live an entire human life without seeing the ice bordering the habitable zone to the north and south.