Here is some stuff I made for a previous game: please feel free to use whatever you like from it.

The Boneless

The beastfolk that are often most feared by humanity are those related to insects, often referred to as the “Boneless” for their lack of an internal endoskeleton.  This appellation is not factually accurate, since the Boneless do in fact have bones of a sort – the chitin exoskeleton that covers their bodies serves exactly the same function.  Unlike true insects, the Boneless have lungs that oxygenate their blood (since they are too large to breathe through their skin like smaller insects), which is why their blood is red rather than clear.

Corpsestalker

Corpsestalkers are related to the common housefly.  They get their name from their habit of flocking to battlefields, since their method of reproduction requires them to lay their eggs in carrion.  Over time, the larva devours the insides of the corpse, causing it to twitch and shift occasionally.  After several weeks, it bursts forth as a fully grown corpsestalker.

In Lemuria, corpsestalkers have a undeservedly poor reputation.  In uncivilized lands, the twitching corpses that ensue after they have visited a battlefield are often mistaken for undead, and so corpsestalkers are unfairly maligned as necromancers.  Even in civilized places where the reproductive cycle of a corpsestalker is understood, people may suspect them of murdering other sentient beings in order to reproduce (whereas in fact any dead body that is large enough is adequate for the corpsestalker’s purposes).  Because of this, corpsestalkers tend to congregate in groups for mutual defense.

Deathgripper

Deathgrippers are top predators in the southern desert of Lemuria.  Once they were relatively rare, but when the gnomes colonized the desert kingdoms - bringing irrigation, mining, and farming into the desert – the population of deathgrippers increases significantly, as the new ecosystem that the gnomes brought with them gave the deathgrippers an abundance of prey.  Gnomes greatly fear the deathgrippers (whom they refer to as “manscorpions”), since their small size makes them extremely vulnerable to deathgripper poison.  Any sighting of a deathgripper nearby gnome settlements typically results in patrols of gnome archers and mages being sent out to hunt down the deathgripper and make the land safe again.

Webspinner

Webspinners (also known as “arachnids”) are one of the most alien of the beastfolk races, both in terms of their personality and physiology.  Vaguely spiderlike in shape, they possess four legs and four arms.  The second set of arms does not possess any articulated digits, leading most academics to believe that they originated as a third pair of legs that gradually moved up on the body as the arachnids evolved, in order to help them grab and subdue prey with their venomous bite.  Webspinners are solitary hunters, and they tend to live alone except when they come together to mate.  They have an instinctive tendency to view helpless creatures as food, and even those that have managed to adapt to humanoid society generally consider weakness something to be exploited.

Earthminer

Earthminers are the most civilized of the Boneless species, and are the only one of these races known to build villages and towns – although these are always constructed deep underground.  This is in fact necessary to their life cycle, since most Earthminers are male – they live in hives organized around one queen, who lays several eggs each day.  Because the queen is the central point of vulnerability for any Earthminer hive, they guard her jealously.  Even on the rare occasions when other underground races share the town, the queen’s quarters are kept far away from them and are guarded jealously.

More so than many other beastfolk, Earthminers are tool users.  They value the innovative technology of other creatures and quickly assimilate it into their own culture, especially when it helps them safely mine or maintain the construction of their vast underground hives.  Because of this, Earthminers try to maintain peaceful relations with other races, particularly dwarves and kobolds.

Merfolk

The Merfolk (or Mer as they are more commonly known) are an alien folk who view themselves as inherently superior to surface-dwellers.  This attitude is certainly borne out when they are in the water, and few Mer willingly venture onto land where their xenophobic views can be truly tested in a more egalitarian setting.  Despite their air of superiority, most are reliant on the surface world for manufactured goods such as metal weapons, rope, and glass.  Merfolk tend to swim about in schools, like the fish from which they are descended, and find themselves feeling very uncomfortable when alone.  They prefer to make their homes in the shallow waters of the continental shelf, avoiding the massive predators that lurk in the abyssal depths.

Tritons

Tritons are perhaps the most understandable of the Mer, because they are most akin to humans in terms of personality and outlook.  In Lemuria, Tritons tend to inhabit the shallow waters of the Inland Sea, in the epipelagic zone where sunlight is strongest.  They tend to have features either of marine mammals such as dolphins and whales, or common underwater animals such as fish.  Tritons also tend to be the most civilized of the Mer, cultivating vast kelp farms to feed themselves and underwater homes sculpted from coral and other aquatic life.  They fear the Deep Ones, who consider them a “lesser” race, suitable only as slaves.

Deep Ones

In deeper waters, where the light from the surface fades into a perpetual twilight, live the Deep Ones.  The Deep Ones were the species of Mer that ruled over Lemuria once, and though their once-mighty civilization has long since degenerated into squabbling tribes, they still have a well-honed sense of co-operation on the tribal level. These mer hunt in packs, stripping any prey they catch down to the bone.  They think in an alien way that most humans find difficult to understand, and their bodies are strange as well – incorporating aspect of strange aquatic life such as eels or pufferfish.  One interesting thing about the physiology of the Deep Ones is that because of the darkness of the depths where they live, they are much less dependent upon sight than other organisms – they use an electric field generated by nodules in their skin to sense the bioelectric field of other living creatures, and can even amplify this field to stun prey with electric shocks.

Abyssal Revenants

In the deepest trenches of the ocean, the water pressure becomes so intense that even the Deep Ones become dizzy.  Somewhere here is where the deity of the Mer – the Sea Demon – is said to live.  Every year, the Deep Ones choose one of their own to descend into the abyssal trenches and seek out the Sea Demon.  These chosen ones are part emissary, part sacrifice – for most of them are never seen again.  However, every once in a while one of them will come back decades later.  These revenants are warped in both body and mind.  Their eyes – useless in the depths - are shriveled away, while their bodies grow to vast sizes in order to better retain heat in the cold depths.  Invariably, these revenants will have odd mutations, such as chitinous claws similar to those of a crab, or long squid-like tentacles which they use to feed.  Almost always, their minds are broken and they consider all other creatures nothing more than food.  The handful of revenants who return coherent and sane never remember anything that happened to them down in the darkness of the abyssal trenches.  These rare mer are accorded the highest status in Deep One society, since they are considered to be direct representatives of the Sea Demon herself.  They are the rulers and high priests of the Deep Ones.