Draenei

Draenei are a fantasy alien race native to the Warcraft setting; originally introduced in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, they were later reintroduced and given their definitive appearance and lore in World of Warcraft with the Burning Crusade expansion pack. They are paladins that look like demons.

Originally described as the slaughtered native inhabitants of Draenor, the homeworld of Warcraft's Orcs, they were later retconned in WoW as being an alien race who departed from their homeworld after being rescued by the Naaru, angel-like energy beings who taught them the ways of divine magic and sought to help them fight against the demonic hordes of the Burning Legion. For an age, they settled upon Draenor, home of the orcs, until the Burning Legion followed them and the orcs fell to demonic corruption. The survivors fled once again, and settled upon Azeroth, where they readily joined with the Alliance in hopes of battling the Burning Legion once and for all.

In terms of appearance, draenei can only be described as "fiendish"; they resemble blue-skinned, tailed humanoids whose digitigrade legs end in large cloven hooves. There's a certain amount of sexual dimorphism; male draenei have multiple fleshy tendrils sprouting from their chins and overlapping, fan-like forehead plates on their skulls, giving them a somewhat Klingon esque look, whilst female draenei have backsweeping horn-like cranial extensions and their tendrils sprout from behind their ears, giving them a sort of "succubus-Twi'lek" look. Females are also drastically shorter than males, and have smaller, more dainty tails, almost vestigial-looking in some cases.

It bears mentioning that this appearance is a retcon; when they first appeared in The Frozen Throne, they were depicted as baleen-mouthed, withered, goblin-like creatures. These "Lost Ones" have since been depicted as mutants who were twisted into devolved states by the corruptive Fel energies that have ravaged Draenor, and the "Broken" were added as an in-between state because this drastic change was implausible.

This fiendish look has done nothing to hurt the popularity of the draenei. Indeed, part of the reason for their popularity is that they combine the "monster adventurer" appeal with membership in the Alliance, who are the more classic "good guys faction" in the eyes of many. Female draenei in particular are hugely popular amongst monstergirls fans - although collectors had best beware; for some reason, draenei dickgirls are hugely popular in those corners of the web where /tg/ and /d/ meet and cross-pollinate.

Sadly, there are no official TRPG stats for draenei out there; World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game was cancelled right after the Burning Crusade was released, and Blizzard shows no signs of licensing the setting out again. Still, /tg/ gets shit done, and so there are fanmade stats for draenei in WoW D20, 4e, 5e and Pathfinder all out there on the net.

Controversies

It bears mentioning that the draenei are a huge source of skub for many /tg/ fans. The biggest and most prominent complaint is that they make absolutely no sense as a fantasy race, because they're "too science-fictiony". Anyone with their head screwed on calls this one of the stupidest arguments ever made, for two main reasons.

Firstly, sci-fi and fantasy have cross-pollinated each other for decades. Gary Gygax himself wrote Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, in which an alien spaceship has crashlanded on Greyhawk, whilst Mystara was supposed to be the far-future of Blackmoor. Conan the Barbarian encountered an alien sorcerer who flew to Hyborea from another world in one of his first stories, something Conan the Adventurer homaged by having an episode where Conan rescued an alien ape-man wizard who traveled between worlds in a comet-like magic-fueled spaceship.

Secondly, Star Fantasy exists amongst the list of Setting Aesthetics for a reason. Hells, Star Wars and Warhammer 40,000 are themselves examples of the Star Fantasy setting. And the draenei are perfectly suited for it; their "spaceships" are actually giant fortresses that use divine magic to propel them between worlds and planes - something that would fit right into Spelljammer or any other cosmic D&D setting.

Perhaps for this reason, the argument has faded away over time.

Another argument that the draenei prompted was when 4th edition D&D was revealed; proponents of the "4e is WoW!" argument loved to point to tieflings and assert that they were clearly made to resemble draenei. Of course, these people didn't tend to admit that the draenei look was all but identical to the diabolus, a Mystaran race that came out decades earlier.