Races

A relatively full list of custom races. Explains what they do and their history and lore significance.

## Humankind

These races are genetically similar enough to humans to count as such for most purposes. Game-rules wise, they have the *human* subtype. Most humankind races are born from humans and are infused with the essence of something, which is the case for illumians, azurins and kalashtars.

### Human

The baseline race for humankinds. They're... well, human. What did you expect? They have no innate powers, but are incredibly versatile. Naturally, they are the most frequently encountered race on Earth, as well as in Farauei.

### Kalashtar

This humankind race was born from the merging of Faraueian monks with Dersite quori from the Dreaming Dark. Sometimes, Prospitian quori following the Path of Light will create kalashtars to oppose their enemies. They are a true-breeding race where each bloodline is bound to a particular quori, and the offspring of a kalashtar that matches its kalashtar parent's gender inherits its quori spirit. They are generally seen in the service of Choko, who led their initial race out of Farauei and into the outside world, and was responsible for their technological advancements. They have the innate psionic ability to connect to the minds of others.

### Elan

This race of aberrations springs up from time to time in communities of powerful psionicists. They are an artifical life that has sustained itself through psionic power. They can use this power to avoid harm and sustain themselves in absence of food or water. Choko frequently employs them as high ranking soldiers or workers, seeing the transformation as a "promotion" of sorts. Rather than sleep, they refresh their minds with four hours of a meditative trance state called reverie.

### Illumian

Similar to elans, illumians are a magical race that were once human but have sort of become the physical manifestation of a magical language. They were born a long time ago via a ritual, but retreated into the Shadow World for an unknown reason. Illumians are the most likely race to become shades. They are highly skilled and proficient in magic, linguistics and mixing fields of study. They can live up to twice as much longer than regular humans, and only require four hours of reverie rather than eight hours of sleep. Nanasuji Shitodo is an illumian. Illumians are distinguished by the sigils that float around their heads and the particles that drip from their being.

#### Shade

A subrace that can be born from essentially any race. They have a powerful soul connection to shadow which grants them innate powers in the dark. Said powers are completely nonfunctional in bright light though. Their powers include teleportation, either short range hops or long range transport between planes; mirror images made of darkness; regenerative abilities as shadows tend to their wounds; the ability to make their surroundings darker; and a general increase in speed and power. When created from other races, they have an extended lifespan. Nanasuji Shitodo and Hiou Yoruan are both shades, Suji gaining her abilities from the energies of her home plane, and Hiou gaining his powers from the abyss in the blackness of the night sky.

### Lunarian

A race of humans originally from Earth, but who retreated to the Moon at some point during the Jomon period. They are touched by the void beyond the stars and have an innate connection to dreams and the stars. Their magic sways with the tide of the moon, and they commonly train as powerful arcanists. Due to their rejection of life and death, they rarely breed, usually doing so only to replenish numbers in the event they have to deal with war casualties. They are naturally immortal and don't require food or drink, but if they spend enough time in an impure land, they gain the properties of regular humans and continue to age and hunger and die. Hiou Yoruan is the prince of the lunarians.

### Azurin

A race of humans touched by the power of incarnum. They just kind of show up wherever, but they seem to show up most commonly in the United States, perhaps because of some kind of incarnum-related artifact or wondrous location over there. Most azurins never realize their powers because of this random ocurrence of birth. Two azurins who breed have a roughly 50/50 chance of producing another azurin, otherwise the offspring is an ordinary human. With other races, these odds are lowered down to about 15%. The entire Monomy Gang, consisting of Ellie Mark, John Miller, Belle Elmore and Rachel Clemont, are all azurins. The only unique powers azurins have is that they have an innate reserve of essentia; training is necessary to utilize this essentia.

### Youkai

A category that consists of elves, kappa, yamawaro, tengu, and other races that are non-human.

### Elves

Elves are descendants of eladrin, a fey race from the Fey Realm, the First World, etcetera. They possess an unearthly grace and beauty, a long life, and an innate talent for magic. Their physiques are uniformly slender; although they can have pronounced muscles from physical exercise, they are never generally *bulky*, as you might find in a human or orc. They are a secretive race who generally prefers to live amongst grand trees in huge, magical forests, although the Dusk Elf Kingdom lives in a city on a plains built of earth and stone. Elves have the second-most political clout of any race in Farauei, beaten only by humans. The elves of Farauei uniformly can see in the dark due to the natural darkness of that place.

#### Dusk Elves

Dusk elves, also known as night elves and sometimes dark elves (although that term also refers to drow) were a subrace most commonly found in the southern, less cold parts of Farauei. Their skin and hair are various shades of greyish brown, although their hair is usually fairly darker than their skin. Their phenotypes include some broad eye colors, pretty much in every color of the rainbow (although human colors are the most common, and lighter colors such as blues and greens and hazels are the most common over that) as well as some variations in skin and hair color.

In terms of their abilities, dark elves focus more on arcane magic rather than martial prowess, so they do not have the same ancestral weapon training of the northern elves. On the other hand, they prefer the night and darkness and like dim places to live in. Dusk elves are more attuned to the powers of sleep and dreaming, to the point where some powerful dusk elves can send messages to others in their sleep through a trance state.

#### Snow Elves

The snow elves of the north are the second most common subrace. Knowing only harsh, freezing winters and little resources, they are a survivable race who teach their young the arts of survival and martial arts; they lack the *innate* talent for magic that dusk elves have, but still possess all of the magical secrets of elvenkind.

**Drow**

The elves of the underground are descendants of dusk elves. Known as drow, or dark elves, they are wretched and violent creatures, a twisted and decadent society continuing the bloodlines of the elf refugees lead underground by the Spider Queen to escape humanity during the original Elf-Humanity wars. Generations of selective breeding enable them to draw out more of their magical potential, and they can tap the power of the earth, typically forming their civilizations in sources of the underground's magic. Compared to the elves of the surface, they are far more light-blind and even a particularly bright full moon can dazzle them. They are generally the same as in other worlds.

#### Half-elves

Owing to their similarities and humanity's apparent fecundity and ability to diversify, humans and elves can crossbreed to create half-elves. A half-elf combines many of the traits of both humans and elves, being somewhere in-between in terms of physique, and not exactly possessing the fey nature of an elf that grants them their unearthly grace or magical talent, but possessing something of a lingering remnant of said nature. Dusk half-elves tend to be dark-skinned and dark-haired, while snow half-elves are almost universally blonde and fair-skinned, though this is primarily due to the human phenotypes that tend to intermix with these subraces; a dark-skinned human from the south and a snow elf of the north could come together to create a half-elf with features that break these patterns. Half-drow almost universally inherit the purple, blue, grey or obsidian black skin of their drow ancestry, and their skin is generally darker than their hair, though exceptions exist in all cases.