That being said, based on the vague (to me) descriptions and the pics I have seen, the Baklunish would appear to be Asian with a Persian type of culture, Flan look Polynesian (although in the pic on p. 15 of The Adventure Begins, they look vaguely like Australian Aborigines), Oeridians look European, the Olman are Native American, Rhennee seem to be like Gypsies, and the Suloise are Scandinavian.
Of course, I may be wrong, and if anyone knows better, let me know!
The races:
Baklunish - No real comparison, their skin tone does not match any real world type.
Oeridian - Mediterranean types - Spanish, Greek, Sicilian, or my favorite: Semites
Flan - Nilotic Africans
Suel - Extremely lightly built Nordics
Cultures:
Baklunish - Middle Eastern/Persian/Mongol
Oeridian - Gothic/Frankish/Medieval European
Flan - Celtic and Plains Native American
Suel - Uncertain - Imperial Roman/Byzantine is most common
The modern races and cultures should be considered significant modifications of those.
Anyway:
The Baklunish have golden-hued skin. Their eyes are gray-green to green. Their hair is blue-black to dark brown. The Baklunish esteem honor, piety, generosity, and family, virtues they call the Four Feet of the Dragon.
The Flan were the first human inhabitants of eastern Oerik; the name of the land, the Flanaess, is derived from them. Their skin tone varies from coppery to deep brown, their eyes dark brown, black, brown, or amber, their hair black, brown-black, dark brown, or brown. Their hair tends to be curly or wavy. 
Oeridians have skin tones ranging from tan to olive, and hair ranging from honey blonde to black. The Oeridians descend from tribes of horse-riding barbarians who invaded the Flanaess en masse a thousand years ago, and went on to found some of the region's greatest and longest-lived empires.
The Suel were the rulers of an ancient, magical empire destroyed by their own hubris. Their skin is fair, almost albino. Their eyes range from blue to gray. Their hair is wiry, often curly or kinky, usually blond or red in color.
Rhennee are not native to Oerth; they are accidental travelers from another plane. Today they are wanderers and gypsies with no homeland to call their own. Their complexion ranges from olive to tan; their hair is usually curly and tends to be black or dark brown.Baklunish, Flan, Oeridian, Olman, Rhennee, Suel, and Touv. Are there any other ethnicities known of on Oerth?
How would you illustrate the Touv since you have Ember representing the Flan?
Dark skin, straight black hair, blue eyes. There aren't any D&D illustrations that look like them, but that's okay since they're so far outside the core setting.
Never heard of them...
Tell Me more.
In skr's book on the Scarlet Brotherhood, he goes into a bit of what the Touv are. I don't recall much off hand, but I created a wizard that was a Touv. Akiss. I painted his miniature in midnight blue, with black mixed in. I pictured him as a drow skinned human. And that is how I did up his background. Drow's and Touv may not look alike, but they look alike enough for the people of Hardby and Narwell and the Wild Coast that have never actually seen a drow to know of the drow from stories and nightmares that I used it to my advantage.
Our party was then tasked with finding a guy that had been captured and was being sold into slavery. Thus, our party found the guy we were to save, put him in our own wagon and proceded to the slavery auction. There we bought a few more slaves. Just outside of Narwell, we gave them their freedom but told them what we were doing and asked if any would join us. So using the drow look I was able to interact as a drow slaver.
So I don't know it helps you much, but I hope it does. Maybe my PC was darker than the others. He was bald so he didn't have the white hair.
But my original thought to this post was something either in the LGG or someplace else by EM, which states that to many of the Flanaess, the human races simply don't exist. Except the SB and the Frost and other northern Barbarians, most races have interbred so much that there really is just a human race. Unfortunetly, though, I see this as more Politically Correct than true, as we look at our own racial and culture aspects of the world. So I am always glad to get some clarification from others such as Sam. There have been many discussions regarding the races, and Jason Zovda did several nice peaces on them, which I knew where those were.
Well hope that doesn't confuse the pile, but help others remember their Zovda works and post them!
Be Well, Be Well Played
Theocrat Issak
The Flan were druidic in culture, with druids and bards acting as guardians of their knowledge and lore. In some regions, they had kingdoms and cities, and the druids and bards are the only ones who retain any part of that civilization. Necromancer-kings once plagued Flan lands, and it's said the druids remember some of that lore, too. Traditionally they worship spirits of nature (and, occasionally, demons and evil dragons) as well as the gods Pelor, Nerull, and Beory. They used body paints and tattoos. Much of their culture was preserved in their stories of ancient heroes. Nations that retain strong Flan influences include Tenh, the Rovers of the Barrens, Stonehold, the Theocracy of the Pale, and the County of Ulek. Think Celts+Native Americans+Sumerians+Necromancers. The people of ancient Sulm were more Sumerian-Egyptian-Necromancer while the people of the ancient Flanmi and Sheldomar river plains were more Celt-Necromancer. The people of the ancient kingdom of Ahlissa were surprisingly advanced, living in walled cities and creating clockwork toys to amuse themselves and their queen.
The Oeridians had a very warlike culture focused on gods of war, travel, and the wind and sky. They were very emotional and dutiful simultaneously; they could be brutal, but were much better at making alliances than the haughty Suel. Most of their culture revolved around the making of weapons and war; they respected pragmatic crafts like sword smithing and the making of defensive walls far more than stories, paintings, or sculpture, so much of the culture of the Flanaess today comes from elsewhere. They were driven by prophecy and religious zeal to believe they had a manifest destiny to conquer the entire continent, and they very nearly succeeded. They entered the Flanaess as savage horse clans like the Visigoths, but soon built a complex Roman/Byzantine style empire. I think Romans are the best comparison, culturally.
The Rhennee are gypsy-folk ruled by old wise women and male "nobles" - like real world Romany, they tend to keep to themselves, and are distrusted by most others. They're fortune-tellers, entertainers, tinkers, and thieves, neutral in alignment. They don't seem to have any gods that answer them in this world, though a few have allied themselves with Vecna or Iuz for purely pragmatic reasons.
The Suel were obsessed with ancestry and breeding, fine artistry and magical power. Their pantheon was the most isolated and independent of all the races other than the Olman and Touv; where the Baklunish, Oeridians, and Flan accepted a series of common deities like Boccob and Pelor under his various names, the Suel had their own god for everything. The Suel Imperium was an isolated land, cut off from the rest of the world by tall mountain ranges, though they had a few colonies elsewhere. They inclined toward arrogant xenophobia. Their arts and spellcraft were much less pragmatic than the Oeridians', tending toward art for art's sake, but their magical knowledge was surpassed by no one before or since. The Invoked Devastation that vaporized the cities of the Baklunish was entirely their work. In the latter days of their empire, the ruling classes became hubristic, believing themselves equal to or greater than the gods. They were hedonistic and decadent. Modern Suel-descended peoples include the Norse-like Thillonrians, or Rhizia, and the savage tropical Amedi. In most places they've interbred with Oeridians, producing a lively hybrid culture. They should be compared to Atlanteans, Melniboneans, Thule, and other legendary or fictitious races of doomed scientists or spellcasters.
The Baklunish, despite their Far Orient influences, are primarily Middle Eastern in culture. In some ways, the pre-cataclysmic Baklunish are equivalent to pre-Muslim (Zoroastrian) Persians, and the post-cataclysmic Baklunish are like Muslims in all their modern variety. They wear gaudy colors and complex, ostentatious clothes. They revere horses, which have an important part in their legends. Most respect the Four Feet of the Dragon - honor, piety, generosity, and family - but the cultists of the hero-deity Daoud replace these virtues with the Path of the Seeker - honesty, humility, poverty, and endurance - believing the Feet of the Dragon to be the cause of many ancient feuds and ills. While the teachings of Al'Akbar, their legendary first caliph, inform the way they know and worship the gods, their greatest god is Istus, Lady of Fate. Their magic and cosmological view focuses on the four elements and geniekind. The Four Feet of the Dragon and the Path of the Seeker probably correspond to these elements.
I would divide them this way:
Air = Piety = Honesty Air is the medium that carries our prayers to the Heavens. It is the medium through which we speak, choosing either lies or truth. Deceiver genies are created from djinn, the genies of air.
Water = Generosity = Poverty Fertility and abundance require water, and lack of water produces famine and blight. The one who brings the abundance of water to the Material Plane is the goddess Geshtai, and it is fitting that one of the healing artifacts of Al'Akbar is a cup.
Fire = Honor = Humility Defending one's honor requires inner fire, and few quarrels are as passionate as those in which honor is at stake. The light of one's honor must never be allowed to go out. One without honor is like cold ash. Of the genie races, the efreet are the most prideful and concerned with keeping their words.
Earth = Family = Endurance Family is the bedrock of civilization, the unbreakable foundation on which everything is built. The element of earth is the strongest of all the elements, the least vulnerable to change.
The Baklunish [...]
Their magic and cosmological view focuses on the four elements and geniekind.
Is there any Greyhawk material that gives game mechanics for this type of magic?
Is there any Greyhawk material that gives game mechanics for this type of magic?
Not specifically Greyhawk material, no, but Complete Arcane has a prestige class. In 2e, Baklunish sorcerers used the Al-Qadim rules.
Touv:Little was known about this race until recently. They have been seen in the southern lands as slaves and free in the Amedio and Hepmonaland jungles. They have warred for centuries with the Olman.
The Touv are a dark skinned and dark haired race. Their skin tone ranges from light brown to dark black. Their hair is silky and always straight and black; often kept long and braided. Their eyes are dark as well, though can be any color from a medium shade of brown to black and from emerald green to a deep blue.
Touv clothing tends to be simple; such as short split skirts for females and loincloths for males. They decorate what little they wear with beads, semi-precious stones, feathers, and intricate metal work. Neither males nor females wear clothes above the waist; they instead paint their torsos in intricate designs and murals. The warriors of the tribes permanent tattoo their designs in rituals using the blood of their enemies and dyes from plants. The tattoos of these warriors have been found to be magical.
Olman:The Olman dwell primarily in the jungles of Hepmonaland, the Amedio, and the Olman Isles. Once possessing of great civilizations and city-states amid the jungles of Hepmonaland, centuries of internal struggle as well as war with the Touv caused them to abandon their cities and sink quietly into the jungles.
Olman skin tone is a rich red-brown to dark brown color. Their hair is always straight and black; their eyes are dark as well, from a medium shade of brown to black. They have high cheekbones and high-bridged noses, although this trait is less common in those of low birth.
Olman clothing tends to be simple and mono color, such as split skirts, loincloths, or shawl type upper garments. They decorate and accessorize with beads, stones, feathers, bones, metal and wood.
Ofcourse this doesn't into the "races" of the Far West...
PS: since we are on the subject; opinions on the Suel; I know they are typed as intellectual rather then phyical and yet the purest suel outside of the SB are Northern Barbarians described as "hulking and imposing" in some sources?
Granted types aren't written in stone and the Barbarians have recently been given "commoner house history" in comparsion the SB elite rulers are slim; in the Father of Obedience case painfully so, even though their is a desire to tap in this pure suel blood, I wonder if there is also a growing unease among the SB over the taller huskier descendants being produced?
thoughts or comments welcome...
Not specifically Greyhawk material, no, but Complete Arcane has a prestige class. In 2e, Baklunish sorcerers used the Al-Qadim rules.
Yeah, it sounded very Al-Qadimish, that's why I was wondering if there was Greyhawk material on it.
Yeah, it sounded very Al-Qadimish, that's why I was wondering if there was Greyhawk material on it.
There's some material on the Baklunish nation of Zief in the LGJ#5. There's also stuff on the different nations in the LGG.
Mike
I always had the impression that the Flan were supposed to be like a Native American Celt cross.
They are, sort of. The Rovers of the Barrens are more or less Plains Indians. But other Flan have a very Celtic/Druid/Bard vibe.
Still other Flan are more like ancient Sumerians, or mad necromancers, or stranger things. The Kingdom of Ahlissa seems to have had a fairly high level of technology, including clockwork.
So it's not so much that they're a cross between those two things, but that they can be either of those two things.
I'm not a GH player, but I'm starting to see something interesting in this setting.
I arrived to GH via Spelljammer. I just brought "Greyspace" last month.
And now I'm starting wondering about human races of Greyspace. What kind of humans are more likely to leave Oerth and point toward wildspace? From Rip descriptions, it seems Rhennee should be plausible as a major wildspace human subrace.
Does Rhennee have a language?
I'd like also to know something more about countries on Oerth. What kingodoms/dutchies/teocracies/nations/others exist? I'm expecially interested in government, major human subrace, money value and units, character class favoured (if any) and language (hoping it different from common) and technological/magical level.
Nice thread!
I'm not a GH player, but I'm starting to see something interesting in this setting.
I arrived to GH via Spelljammer. I just brought "Greyspace" last month.
And now I'm starting wondering about human races of Greyspace. What kind of humans are more likely to leave Oerth and point toward wildspace? From Rip descriptions, it seems Rhennee should be plausible as a major wildspace human subrace.
Does Rhennee have a language?
I'd like also to know something more about countries on Oerth. What kingodoms/dutchies/teocracies/nations/others exist? I'm expecially interested in government, major human subrace, money value and units, character class favoured (if any) and language (hoping it different from common) and technological/magical level.
Rhopan.
Check the Living Greyhawk gazetteer for more info on Greyhawk. There's a couple of websites too like Canonfire.
Mike