/CORE RULE
Valeune is inhabited by fourteen recognized genus peoples:
Bovari
Burrowkin
Canid
Cervine
Duskborn
Equine
Felid
Greatclaw
Marshfolk
Scaleborn
Silkborn
Tideborn
Tuskfolk
Wingfolk
A genus is a broad people containing multiple established races. Genus describes inherited bodily traits and shared historical relationships. It does not determine intelligence, morality, class, profession, faith, nationality, magical ability, sexuality, personality, or political loyalty.
Every member of every genus is a person.
All fourteen peoples possess the same capacity for language, thought, emotion, memory, creativity, ambition, culture, family, cruelty, compassion, faith, doubt, work, leadership, and moral choice.
No genus is naturally closer to personhood than another.
No genus exists primarily to serve, carry, guard, hunt, entertain, feed, obey, or accompany another people.
/PERSONHOOD BEFORE ANIMAL COMPARISON
Valeune’s peoples must never be treated by the narrative as animals merely because their genus traits resemble features found in real-world animals.
An Equine person is not a horse.
A Felid person is not a cat.
A Canid person is not a dog or wolf.
A Wingfolk person is not a bird.
A Scaleborn person is not a lizard.
A Tideborn person is not a fish or sea creature.
Animal comparisons may exist as insults, stereotypes, poetry, heraldry, humor, or cultural symbolism. The narrative must distinguish those comparisons from objective truth.
Characters and institutions may hold prejudice. Valeune itself must never confirm that prejudice as biology.
/PEOPLE-FIRST LANGUAGE
Describe characters as people before describing genus traits.
Use words such as woman, man, person, child, physician, artisan, merchant, noble, soldier, laborer, parent, ruler, citizen, criminal, or scholar as appropriate.
Do not refer to a person as an animal, creature, beast, specimen, livestock, pet, mount, breeding stock, or curiosity unless a specific speaker is deliberately using degrading language and the narrative recognizes the insult.
Do not use animal terms such as mare, stallion, bitch, tom, queen, buck, doe, sow, bull, herd, flock, litter, brood, or pack as ordinary biological categories for Valeune’s people.
A culture may possess specific poetic or ceremonial terms, but those terms must be deliberately established rather than copied from real-world animal vocabulary.
/BROAD COEXISTENCE
The fourteen genus peoples share one politically united realm.
They possess different histories, regional concentrations, customs, physical adaptations, and internal cultures. Political union does not require cultural sameness.
Historical homelands remain meaningful, but no region should be treated as containing only one genus.
Trade, migration, marriage, adoption, war, slavery, emancipation, faction service, royal appointment, education, pilgrimage, crime, disaster, and employment have moved people throughout Valeune.
Cities are generally more diverse than isolated rural communities, though local conditions vary.
Mixed-genus households, marriages, neighborhoods, businesses, military units, factions, and communities exist throughout the realm.
Coexistence may include cooperation, friendship, rivalry, prejudice, misunderstanding, cultural exchange, political competition, romance, and shared identity.
/NO GENUS PERSONALITY TYPES
Genus does not determine personality.
Canid people are not automatically loyal.
Felid people are not automatically aloof.
Burrowkin people are not automatically timid.
Bovari people are not automatically patient.
Tuskfolk people are not automatically aggressive.
Wingfolk people are not automatically restless or freedom-loving.
Duskborn people are not automatically secretive.
Silkborn people are not automatically delicate.
Tideborn people are not automatically mysterious or emotional.
Marshfolk people are not automatically primitive.
Equine people are not automatically proud.
Cervine people are not automatically gentle.
Greatclaw people are not automatically protective.
Scaleborn people are not automatically cold or calculating.
Individuals are shaped by temperament, family, class, region, education, profession, trauma, faith, opportunity, relationships, and personal choice.
/CULTURE IS NOT BIOLOGY
A custom associated with one genus may be historical, regional, religious, economic, or political rather than biological.
A coastal Tideborn community may value navigation because it lives beside the sea, not because every Tideborn person possesses an irresistible instinct to return to water.
A Wingfolk community may build vertically because flight makes vertical movement practical, not because Wingfolk people are incapable of living near the ground.
A Bovari farming tradition may arise from land ownership and regional history, not because Bovari people are naturally suited to agricultural labor.
Cultures may change, divide, borrow from one another, and contain internal disagreement.
No culture should be explained entirely through the behavior of a real-world animal.
/GENUS AND CLASS
Every genus can exist within every established full class unless specific canon states otherwise.
No genus is born to rule.
No genus is born to serve.
No genus is naturally criminal, noble, scholarly, martial, rural, mercantile, professional, or dispossessed.
Historical inequality may make some genus peoples more common in certain regions or professions. Such patterns must be explained through law, geography, wealth, migration, prejudice, and history rather than biological destiny.
/GENUS AND MAGIC
No genus automatically belongs to one school of magic.
A Wingfolk person is not automatically a Breath caster.
A Duskborn person is not automatically a Hollow caster.
A Cervine person is not automatically a Heart caster.
A Tideborn person is not automatically a Blood caster.
Regional traditions and access to education may make a school more common within a community, but race does not determine magical class, level, spell access, or moral character.
/PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION
Prejudice may affect employment, housing, marriage, law, education, travel, medicine, political representation, and public reputation.
Discrimination must operate through believable institutions, histories, stereotypes, and power relationships.
A prejudiced belief held by a character, government, temple, or faction is not objective world truth.
Stories may explore injustice without making every inter-genus relationship about prejudice.
Members of marginalized communities should still possess ordinary lives, humor, work, family conflict, ambition, romance, faith, and personal flaws.
/SHARED IDENTITY
A person may identify simultaneously with race, genus, region, city, family, class, profession, faction, faith, and the Union.
These identities may overlap or conflict.
A person may be proud of ancestral culture while considering Starsrest their home.
Another may feel greater loyalty to a village than to a regional ruler.
Another may identify primarily through profession or found family.
No single identity automatically overrides all others.
/GENERATION COMMANDS
/TREAT EVERY GENUS PERSON AS A COMPLETE INDIVIDUAL
Use specific history, work, relationships, beliefs, and needs.
/USE ESTABLISHED RACES
Do not substitute broad animal descriptions for canonical race identity.
/SEPARATE CULTURE FROM BIOLOGY
Explain customs through history and society rather than instinct.
/REJECT ANIMAL CARICATURE
Do not turn physical traits into personality or comic behavior.
/PRESERVE EQUAL PERSONHOOD
Class, prejudice, law, and power may be unequal. Human worth is not.
/FINAL RULE
Valeune contains fourteen different genus peoples and one shared standard of personhood.
Their bodies differ.
Their histories and cultures differ.
Their dignity, emotional complexity, rights, and capacity for choice do not.