NATURE

The most numerous and politically dominant race of the current age. Their kingdoms rise and fall across Atheron and the Western Lands. Where other races measure history in deep cycles, humans measure it in generations — and that urgency shapes everything.

MAGIC

No innate magic, but they produced the magika tradition — alchemy, incantation, and herbalism. A skilled magika is among the most dangerous individuals in any kingdom.

NATURE

Among the oldest settled peoples, their communities woven into forests across centuries. They build in conversation with the land, their architecture following the grain of living wood and paths of underground water.

MAGIC

Elves possess no innate magical ability. What they have instead is time — centuries of accumulated knowledge, patience, and an understanding of the natural world that can appear, to shorter-lived races, indistinguishable from magic.

NATURE

Their great strongholds are carved into the bones of the mountains — vast underground cities of stone and firelight. To a dwarf, the surface world is useful but exposed. Beneath the rock is where things last.

CRAFT

Their metalwork is unsurpassed. A weapon forged in a dwarven stronghold is not merely a tool — it is a statement. Their folklore is rich with tales of heroic underground battles fought in absolute darkness.

APPEARANCE

Large robust humanoids with dense white or creamy-yellow fur — water-repellent and insulating. Wide flat hands and feet act as natural snowshoes with sharp retractable claws. Fur adorned with intricate patterns signifying family lineage.

CULTURE

The Asakal built great stone cities across Ijovar — permanent, enduring structures that reflected a people who intended to last. Deeply spiritual, they worshipped the Wind, the Aurora, and the Eternal Ice. The First War took most of them. Their cities stand empty. Sporadic sightings suggest some survived — but nothing has been confirmed.

NATURE

Towering figures with jackal-like heads, eyes adapted to read the shimmer of heat across dunes. Their knowledge of the desert's rhythms so complete that what appears hostile terrain to a traveller is, to a Namite, simply home.

SOCIETY

The Namites are not a single people in the way outsiders assume. In Aesulyn, they built great sandstone cities that have endured for centuries — a settled civilisation of traders, warriors, and builders. Elsewhere in the Western Lands, nomadic tribes still move with the desert, following routes memorised across generations and carrying news no other messenger could survive to deliver.

APPEARANCE

Tall and lean with fine overlapping scales — deep emerald, ash-grey, bronze, or black with faint iridescence. Slitted pupils expanding in low light. A large tail aids balance and combat movement.

ORIGINS

Legend holds that the Reptan were once the human inhabitants of Stonebreach — a great city that sank beneath the Andrean ocean in a catastrophe that scholars still argue over. Whether the cause was a wayward magika or the hand of Athris himself, the city fell, the surrounding forest became swampland, and those who survived the transformation were no longer human. The Reptan do not confirm or deny the story. They move through the fog of the swamps and say nothing.

THE GIFT

Outwardly indistinguishable from humans, the Arvi possess a magical lineage allowing them to become a raven. The transformation is rapid and violent — bones compress, flesh draws inward, feathers emerge. Natural to the Arvi. Deeply unsettling to witness.

PERSECUTION

Hunters use Earthbind to prevent transformation and Wing-Bane to force it violently. Once hunted for their magical properties, few remain. Those that are left have retreated deep into wilderness, hiding their true nature entirely.

APPEARANCE

Short thick-bodied woodland beings — round and heavy-set with large bulbous noses, wild hair packed with twigs and moss. Huge expressive eyes shifting from curiosity to rage instantly. Clothing of bark fibre, woven moss, and stitched leaves.

MAGIC & HABITAT

Ancient instinctive magic — blending into foliage, commanding animals, causing roots to trip intruders, calling thick mist into the forest. Their settlements are hidden within it, unwelcoming to those who happen upon them.

APPEARANCE

Grotesque subterranean creatures with distorted hunched bodies dominated by oversized heads. Unusually long arms hang far below their torsos, knuckles dragging along the ground. Mottled green and yellow skin stretched tight in places, sagging loosely in others. Eyes glow faintly like wet embers, watching without blinking.

BEHAVIOUR

Driven primarily by hunger and cruelty. They capture travellers and keep them in cages suspended from cavern ceilings, stored like livestock. Their speech is simple and repetitive, often reduced to a single word. Their caverns are littered with bones, broken weapons, and the remains of those who came before.