"What makes Hashut different?"
"Precisely. The Ancestor Gods are easy - they started as Dwarves, and ascended. Or perhaps descended. Did Hashut? Or is there some other mechanism at play?" It hums again, lowering its head to run an eye over the titles of the stacked books. "Are there any other species with their own unshared pantheons?"
"Well, yes. The Halflings." It turns its eye to give you a searching look. "Like humans, but shorter. You must have seen them, they're inhabiting the Eastern Valley, among the farmlands."
"I had simply assumed you used your young to tend the fields. They are a distinct species?" You nod. "Where did they come from?"
"We don't know, they've been living among us for as far back as written history goes. They came west with the tribes that eventually formed the Empire."
"And their Gods? Do they conform to the usual archetypes?"
"I'm not all that familiar with them, I'll have to borrow some research materials for you. But I do know that their main Goddess, Esmerelda, is the Goddess of Food and Hearth, which seems more similar to Valaya than Rhya or Isha - especially since they have a separate, masculine God of Farming, Josias."
"Are they notably resistant to magic?"
You frown in thought. "Perhaps. They produce Wizards only very rarely, and I remember hearing rumours as a child that they're resistant to mutation, though it was framed as being because they're already mutants." You think further. "There's Ogres, too. I've only read about them, but they supposedly only rarely serve Chaos, and most of them instead worship some sort of God of Eating called the Great Maw. I've got some books on their society, mostly from when the Dwarves were expanding into the mountains they inhabit."
"There is a greater variety of species here than in the west," it notes.
"Simple geography, perhaps? Less formidable natural barriers to stop the spread of species. Dwarves are from the south and Ogres from the east, after all."
"Perhaps," it says thoughtfully.