While humans in Dark Heritage are, as they are in the real world, quite diverse ethnically with rather easily discernable population clusters that have various physical and mental and behavioral averages that differ within each cluster, for simplicity's sake, all humans are treated as the same under the game rules. That said, there are several major human ethnic groups that you are likely to see in the area that I'm developing, as well as a few that might turn up on occasion from elsewhere in the setting, in parts that I will not develop. Other human ethnic groups based on other real world human ethnic groups do not feature in this setting, merely because I want to keep it from becoming too large and sprawling. I'm not trying to echo the entire real world, just a part of traditional Eurocentric fantasy Medievalism in an Old West-like frontier environment. While the front page summary is sufficient to make a character and start playing a game in the Dark Fantasy X setting, this page will expand on that for those who want more, both from an in-game as well as a meta-game perspective. Speaking of the latter, I'm a strong believer in making fantasy cultures resemble romanticized versions of real-life peoples, from today or our historical heritage either one, so that readers and players have something immediate to latch on to and time doesn't have to be spent on the relatively less interesting need to do extensive world-building about the culture of the people you're interacting with. Although I doubt he was the first to think of this, Robert E. Howard did this very effectively with his Hyborian Age model. Tolkien himself did it, although slightly less transparently, as has George Martin, Raymond Feist, or even Ed Greenwood. Many other well-known and successful fantasy settings have done so as well with the transparency turned all the way up; the Warhammer World, for instance, or Golarion, the house setting for the Pathfinder game are also clear examples. I'm happy to continue with the same idea because it works so well; better than most alternatives, in my opinion. For most of the races of humans that will appear in Dark Heritage, you can relate them to a real life culture and time period as a convenient short-hand so that you don't need to spend time figuring out how their culture works.
Hillmen: The most iconic and "protagonist" culture of the setting are the Hillmen, the inhabitants of the Hill Country. They should be seen as Middle Ages English, but in a frontier region that is similar to America during the Old West; a vast wilderness full of dangerous wildlife and sometimes dangerous savages, but also a land of opportunity and freedom for those who chafed under the more rigid and controlling cultures from further east. The Hillmen are iconically freedom-loving, and hate being told what to do. Rugged individualists of the frontier; although that's a stereotype that isn't exactly true—more people live in the two large cities of Waychester and Dunsbury (the capitals of the two halves of the region; Northumbria and Southumbria respectively) then in the rest of the entire region combined, and life there, like urban life everywhere, is bound up with laws, customs and authority.
While the Hillmen are usually seen as a monolithic ethnic group, the reality is that they come from a more diverse set of backgrounds further east, and sometimes those ancestral ties are still important, especially if they are relatively recent immigrants to the area as opposed to more established and mingled peoples who have been here for generations. But, as in real-life Britain you can usually distinguish lingering behavioral, social, cultural and physical differences between someone who's the descendant of a Norman aristocrat vs a Cornish miner vs a Wessex Anglo-Saxon farmer, or whatever, these differences still matter too to some degree. A better analog would be America, however, where many class and cultural differences were greatly eroded due to ongoing generational intermarriage. Most people in the Hill Country don't really make a bit deal out of, or even necessarily know, their specific background (to the extent that it isn't significantly mixed anyway) but regardless, it comes from one of the following:
Those from Culmerland are the majority of the ancestry of the Hillmen, and represent the good old-fashioned countryside English or Anglo-Saxon yeoman. Independent farmers/homesteaders and craftsmen and traders, mostly.
Those from Brynach on the other hand should be seen as a specifically British Celtic nation; most like the Scots, but there's room in there for some Welsh or Cornish if needed too.
Those from Skeldale should be seen as the Vikings. Given that the England that I'm borrowing the culture from isn't really very far removed from the Danelaw, it makes sense to me that discernable Viking-like people are still sufficiently different from the Culmerish to be notable, even in the Hill Country itself.
Those from Carlovingia should be seen as Medieval Germans, from the Holy Roman Empire, if you will, although any of the various German nations all the way from the Franks to the Lombards to the Goths can all be simplified here as Carlovingians. Although fairly well integrated into Hill Country culture, just as people of German descent are largely integrated into American culture today, many Hill Men still recognize their old descent from the Carlovingian Old Country. Along with the Brynish, this is tied for the largest plurality after the Culmerish majority of still recognizable differences. More of them tend to be in Northumbria and Waychester, as opposed to the thicker settlement of the Brynish in Southumbria.
The smallest group that still maintains enough cohesiveness to be recognizable sometimes are those from Normaund, who represent the Normans.
Tarushans: These folk are the natives of Timischburg, and lived there before the Timischer came and took over rulership of that country. Prior to the installation of the Timischer ruling class, the country was called Tarush Noptii. Since Timischburg is to be seen as a kind of fantasy analog to Victorian era Transylvania, the Tarushans have to be the Eastern European majority and underclass; the peasants, mostly, of Vlach/Romanian-like or Hungarian-like or Slavic-like blood. Now, to be fair, there are still noble families of this ethnicity that linger, but the majority of them are simple folk. Some of them, often from specific families or exiled or otherwise outcast or outsider groups, have a more nomadic lifestyle as "Tarushan gypsies" and wander in wagon trains from location to location. These have a reputation for criminality that is not altogether undeserved—although if even half of the rumors of the haunted land of Timischburg are true, maybe they are the lucky ones, living free from the fear that grips their more sedentary relations.
Timischer: Similar in many respects to the Hillmen, the Timischers are nonetheless considerably more hierarchical and aristocratic in their outlook. Their histories suggest that they were originally a common people with the Carlovingians, but they have been in Timischburg for several centuries now, and the name of the country was even changed because of their arrival. That said, they are not numerous in Timischburg, making up no more than 15-20% of the human population. They do tend to dominate the social, political and economic positions, but they are somewhat more integrated than many people might think at first; there are lines between them and the Tarushans, but they are neither as hard nor as fast as many think. The Timischer do respect the Tarushan noble families, and treat them as equals. In many ways, the situation is similar to how it is in Mexico—where those of European Spaniard descent dominate the majority of the political, social and economic opportunities over those who are native Indian descent... but many in the vaguely defined middle are much more mixed than one might think.
Drylander: The native human inhabitants of Baal Hamazi, and presumably the ancestral stock from which the kemlings sprang after whatever curse or daemonic admixture changed their genetics, seem to be a truly autochthonous people to the area, with no history or hints of having come from anywhere else except for one thing; there are Wendaks there too. Few indeed, if any, are the places where Wendaks intruded into lands where humans already were; they seem in all cases to have been a population in decline in areas where humans took over their lands. The Drylandersare probably at least somewhat related to the Tarushans, but long separation has made that difficult to confirm. Frequently tall, but brown or reddish hair being most common, the Drylanders have Slavic-sounding and a Cossack-like physical appearance; especially the nomadic drylanders Many of them lived as urban drylanders during the Baal Hamazi empire, often as slaves, serfs or at best villeins, while many others lived as rebels and nomads in the wilderness, hounded and in constant conflict with the armies of the Hamazin. As the Empire started to wane, these outlaws grew tremendously in number, both because as the pressure started to move off of them and the kemlings and their armies were no longer hunting them, it turns out that the pastoral nomadism that they practiced was a a successful way to make a living, so their numbers grew. Meanwhile, those who could escape life in the cities swelled their numbers as well, and large confederations that were on the way to becoming tribes were growing, like the Untash and the Haltash. In the fall of the empire, the land had a significant drop in population, but a stable number remains and is slowly growing.
Northerner: Little is known about this group of peoples from the northeast, above even the Drylanders (keep in mind that this area is not a gigantic full continent, and warm currents have warmer weather at high latitude. These aren't ice-dwelling savages, but rather their climate is more like the PNW or Baltic coast.) Whatever culture they may have originally had is probably hard to recover now in any case, as they have been associated with the surturs of Kurushat for many centuries; from before the rise of the kemlings, even. They seem to have been sedentary hunter-gatherers with a high population density because of the rich fishing waters that they could take advantage of. They are of average to slightly short height, with coppery red skin (although not nearly as red as the surturs), and black hair and eyes.
Nizrekh: While these people only very occasionally find their way off of the Nizrekh Islands, they are not completely unknown. Nizrekh is an island archipelago country off the coast of Timischburg; about the distance of the Azores from the Iberian peninsula. Most believe that the archipelago is all that's left of a much larger landmass that sank beneath the waves in a terrible cataclysm two to three millennia ago. The current Nizrekh are not the natives leftover from the population that was on that larger island, but rather later arrivals. Actually, the Wendaks are those that are leftover from the sinking of Atlantis, although they are those who were not on the island when the cataclysm struck; supposedly nobody on Atlantis survived. That said, Nizrekh has a dark reputation, even if few can pinpoint what is wrong with it. The Nizrekh themselves who find themselves elsewhere only mutter darkly and refuse to say what is going on on Nizrekh. Indeed only a few who remember living on the island can be found in the Three Realms of Dark Fantasy X; most of the few that you will find are the first generation children of refugees. The Nizrekh are small and gracile people, bronze skinned and dark haired. While not exactly the same, the closest analogs would the ancient Early European Farmers, of which the modern day Sardinians are the closest genetic match.