Races of Bas-Lag

This is a list of the races of British author China Mieville's created world, Bas-Lag. These races feature in novels including Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council.

Human races

Humans

Humans are apparently the dominant race in New Crobuzon, and perhaps on Bas-Lag as well. They seem to be identical to their real world counterparts in most respects, except that many have the ability to use magic. Using the term "anthopoi" (sing. Antropos) is considered more culturally sensitive, given the connotations of the word "human." The alternative, used to refer collectively to non-human races, is xenos, or xenoi

Remade

Main article: Remade

Usually human but often another race, the Remade are invariably the victims of cruel and unusual punishment. Rather than imprisoning criminals, the city of New Crobuzon will send them to a ReMaker of the punishment factories, where their bodies are warped and twisted in a variety of ways. Some are combined with machines, to enslave them to one particular purpose. Others have bizzare limbs or organs grafted onto their bodies, making them a freak of nature. The Remade are primarily a sad, pathetic lot. However some Remade, like the infamous Jack Half-A-Prayer, have used their remaking to their benefit, becoming vigilante heroes.

Other major races

Anophelii

Mosquito-like beings (singular anopheleus). The females look like wretched, scrawny human women, bent in a strange way, with huge paddle-like wings with which they fly after their prey. From their mouths they can extend a hideous bony proboscis, a foot and a half long, which they stab into their prey to suck them dry. Female Anophelii are vicious, bloodthirsty and very dangerous except immediately after feeding when they demonstrate an intelligence equal to that of the male sex. They will drain any living being of its blood (only Scabmettlers, whose blood solidifies, and Cactacae, who have no blood, are safe). The males are short, stocky men that look no different from human men, aside from their mouths. Anophelii males' mouths are jawless, instead having a sphincter that looks (by the book's description) like an anus. Anophelii have been confined to a single island, but once ruled much of the world in an empire called The Malarial Queendom. Only seen in The Scar.

Cactacae

Humanoid cacti. The Cactacae are enormous plant people, often towering over human beings. Cactacae grow flowers in spring and usually shave off their spines where flesh rubs against flesh. Although their young grow out of the ground, they nurse them as mammals do. Cactacae have wooden bones and sap for blood. They sleep standing up. They bristle with needles that they often style like hair, or pluck altogether. They are known for their strength, and are often employed as laborers and bodyguards. Cactacae are notoriously difficult to kill or wound with normal weapons, even to each other. The Cactacae community in New Crobuzon is based around The Glasshouse, and is allowed to exist as a nominally independent community within the city. In Iron Council, we see Cactacae using their weapons of choice - Rivebows, oversized crossbows that fire a spinning metal disc capable of shearing off cactacae limbs - in the service of the Militia.

Cray

An aquatic race who look like humans from the waist up (with the exception of protruding gills behind the ears) and rock lobsters from the waist down. They use domesticated squids to hunt. Many live in an underwater city, Salkrikaltor, which rivals New Crobuzon itself in size.

Garuda

The garuda are nomadic humanoid vultures. Most hail from the Cymek desert, where they live in tribes. They are hunters with a fierce sense of individualism. They resemble winged humans with avian heads and feet. A small ghetto of garuda live in New Crobuzon, and a few are described as living new the Cacotopic Stain in Iron Council. Miéville plundered the garuda from Hindu mythology.

Khepri

Main article: Khepri (literature)

The khepri are a race of humanoid scarab beetles. Female khepri possesses bodies very similar to that of a human female, except their skin is crimson in color and they possess large scarab beetles in place of heads. Some khepri are known to communicate with humans via sign-language, using their "headlegs". The female khepri are noted artisans, using a biological excretion blended with "colourberries" to sculpt breathtaking works of organic art. Male khepri, on the other hand, are lobster-sized, nonsentient scarabs, without the depending humanoid body. They mate by latching onto a female's head scarab and fertilizing her. This is most unpleasant for the female. In discussing his inspiration for the khepri, Miéville has said:

"Khepri was the ancient Egyptian god of the rising sun, and of transformations. He was represented by a man with a scarab for a head. My attitude to this sort of stuff is entirely piratical and philistine. I plunder myths or whatever but without any respect for their symbolic heritage. So the khepri in my world are categorically not symbolic of transformation or anything like that."

Vodyanoi

The vodyanoi are an aquatic people. They are fat and froglike, with webbed feet and toes. They are skilled in water magics, able to create temporary objects out of water. Vodyanoi dock workers once held a strike by creating water walls in the river, essentially "carving" out a 10-foot wide hole in the water. Ships could not pass, and thus trade and shipping was ground to a halt. Vodyanoi will often make pacts with Undines, the water spirits. They cannot survive out of water for more than a day, and do not swim in salt water. Taken from Russian folklore.

Deities and other colossal creatures

Avanc

The Avanc is a nearly mythological sea creature of unfathomable size featured only in The Scar. It was summoned by being "baited" through the use of fulmen (electricity elementals) out of a sinkhole deep enough to span dimensions (the creature is presumably native to another dimension). It was drugged and used to pull the city of Armada.

Weavers

Large, multidimensional spider-like beings who regard life on Bas-Lag as an ongoing work of art. They use their considerable powers to interfere with events according to their individual sense of aesthetics, and seem to appear primarily before major events. Weavers speak in a disjointed, babbling flow of half-poetry, and are totally unpredictable. The Weaver who appears in Perdido Street Station has an absurd fascination for scissors, however this fascination is only the most recent in a series, and can change radically without notice. Their minds, when read, seem to be in a constant state of dreaming.

Minor races

Archons

While not directly described, Archons are mentioned in conjunction with Daemons and so may be assumed to be extraplanar beings, possibly equivalent to angels in Bas-Lag's universe.

Beetle-people

A race of child-sized beetles that stand upright. They live on gigantic moving tortoises called chelonae. Their architecture is constructed out of a living mortar that consists of insects.

Daemon

The daemons of 'hell' are a sentient species that have an Ambassador in New Crobuzon. They are known to make deals with the government of New Crobuzon. Little else is known, save that they only take those who believe that they are condemend. Also called Hellkin.

Gessin

A single Gessin is mentioned in Iron Council, working as a bounty hunter. Nothing is known about them save they apparently use special suits of armor.

Grindylow

A race of mysterious, very powerful fish-people (something between eels and viperfish) who appear in The Scar. Their name comes from a creature of English nursery stories. Grindylow also make an appearance in the Harry Potter Books albeit in a softer, less demonic fashion.

Handlingers

Sentient parasitic disembodied hands which control the mind of their host. There are two types: sinistrals, the noble caste, and dextriers, the soldier caste. Sinistrals are left hands and dextriers are right hands.

Hotchi

Described as humanoid hedgehogs who ride giant roosters, the hotchi live primarily in the great forest outside New Crobuzon called Rudewood. They are burrowers.

Inchmen

A race who are caterpillars from the waist down and human from the waist up, mostly. Described as savage and with massive, tooth-filled maws, they move in an inch-worm like motion. They are primarily found in the area known as the Cacotopic Stain.

Llorgis

An undescribed race. All that is known of them is that they have three legs. The name seems derived from the word LLoigor, which, in Discordian mythology, is a term for a Lovecraftian entity/deity. Given Mièville's known admiration of Lovecraft, and his observed penchant for appropriating mythology, it is likely that a Llorgis may physically resemble, to some degree, a Lovecraftian creature. This evident in the surreal description of an indivual Llorgis as being three-legged.

Menfish

An aquatic race seen only in Armada. They live in Armada's Bask riding, but spend much time below the city. Menfish are said to look something like newts.

Scabmettler

Stocky, gray-skinned human-like beings whose blood, when shed, congeals into metallic armor. They practice a unique form of martial, arena combat called mortu crutt. Scabmettlers have only been seen in Armada, in the riding (district) called Shaddler.

Stiltspear

Driven to extinction after the railroad destroys their indigenous swamp lands, the Stiltspear were a race of stick insect-like creatures who were able to create golems through somaturgy. It is the Stiltspear who teach the making of golems to Judah Low, protagonist of Iron Council.

Trow

Cavedwellers also referred to as Troglodytes, whose name is possibly inspired from the Drow of Dungeons and Dragons, another underground race (Mieville has frequently stated in interviews that he reads roleplaying books and used to game himself), or possibly derived from the Norse "trowe", or troll.

Wyrmen

Hardly considered a race, the Wyrmen are sentient little creatures that look like gargoyles. They are pesky and annoying, and have bizzare names that seem to be picked at random from human words. They are no more than a foot tall, bright red, with little bat wings. They are crude, vulgar, and laugh at anything and everything.