I'm going to be expanding on the lore of the world here, to accommodate things that are given like, front row seats in canon but never really 'explained'.
The first thing you must understand about Shield Hero is that the Gods are real. This changes things. A lot of things. This means that I, need to explain the difference between sentient monsters and demihumans (and sort of why the distinction is sorta fucked).
Let me reiterate this:
Creation Myths are real, at least most of them. For example: A great dragon birthed your race and rose you from the very dust of the land? Yeah that happened
and you can prove it happened. This means that humanity was in fact created various times by deities in this realm. Humans were spun from clay, birthed by titans, created from the remains of dead gods, whatever. Along with other sentient beings that litter the land such as the Filolial, and many of the more sentient monster types... Humans were just lucky that they had more numbers and figured out tools and magic faster than most other races.
We're not going to go into how Gods being real in this setting fucks with me right now.
For example, a lot of the monster races (and when I say monster races, these are distinct from Demihumans who are 'merely' humans with supernatural ancestors, as 'sentient monsters' are entirely supernatural existences) came with their own massive draw backs. For example the Filolial can't achieve humanoid form until they gain enough 'strength' to manifest it... Even then, they rely on empathy and body language to communicate which isn't something many people are accurately able to communicate back with.
Now you might be asking 'what's the difference between Monsters, and Demihumans beyond their supernatural existence'. Because they aren't
human. This is an important distinction, we all know how humans reproduce, how they think, what we are... Now take a Filolial, who is a 'Sentient Monster' who can in 'maturity' manifest themselves into a humanlike form... They don't think like humans, they don't act like humans and they don't communicate like humans. They stay Filolial even in human form. Sure you could teach a Filolial human language, human culture and what have you, but at the end of the day
that's nurture vs nature. Their biology and base thought process will always remain similar to a avian then a human even if you could get them to fake it well enough to act human.
Filolial are fucked up in the fact that people enslave them to run
carts. Fucking
carts. The regular human doesn't have a clue that they could turn into something humanlike or have sentient thoughts, because to them it's just another farm animal. So many Filolial simply
don't gain enough strength to be anything more than beasts of burden. This is the largest difference and gap between a Human and a Filolial, the human can
communicate early on in its life, while a Filolial cannot do much more expression than the common dog, so are treated with around the same intelligence.
Compare this with say, a dragon. Dragons likely have the ability to transform themselves into a humanlike form, but simply don't. They are obsessive creatures that love not 'wealth' but
[Wealth], things that have 'value' rather than 'valuable looking things'. They can communicate with other beings easily but mostly don't... Because it's so much easier to swat the equivalent to a fly and take their shit instead of asking. Whether that be a person, the nation's treasury, a painting of incredible wealth, whatever. Naturally, by being such a hostile existence they were mostly hunted into near extinction but being quasi-immortal you can occasionally see remnants of dragons every once in a while.
You get the point, Sentient Monsters are nonhuman sentient biological intelligence.
AN:
So where are the Middle Easterners and Black people, Shield Hero
? They never bring it up, despite the fact that Shield Hero is basically a medieval Europe inspired powder keg where the equivalent of the Thirty Years War looks about to come into play. There is no Al Andalus despite a lot of the Spanish themes, and there is no Africa in canon geography. It's strange I bring it up because a lot of the LN and manga that came out around the time Shield Hero was at least
included a token middle eastern nation, hell Vanadis even had one. I'm going to assume it's because like a lot of fantasy that doesn't really give a shit about geography and world building outside of 'SMASH MONSTA FACE, KISS GRILL!' but still mindlessly rips off Europe and Japan in token effort.
Big fucking meme that we have dragon lore and their mating cycles but we don't have any brown people. So, I get to make up where they are, instead of you know brushing it aside and saying 'shhhh, don't think about it'.
