Races

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Then are dreamt of in your philosophy

-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Terrestrials

The inhabitants of the mortal plane.

Humans

The dominant race on Earth, but most are completely unaware that the supernatural exists. Humans who interact with the supernatural world include:

• Hunters: humans with supernatural strength, durability, intelligence and the ability to perceive the magical world, who generally see it as their mission to protect mortals from magic.
• Mages: also called wizards, witches, or sorcerers, mages are humans who, through blood, ritual, or both, can access magical power.
• Mediums: known also as shamans, seers, binders, or oracles, mediums are humans who can channel the power of spirits.
• Psychics: also called espers and psions, psychics are those who can access strange powers that defy conventional magic through thought and will alone.
• Savants: also called mad scientists, savants are humans who can violate the laws of reality through the power of SCIENCE!!!
• Warlocks: also called demonologists, cultists, or black mages, warlocks are humans who have traded their soul to another power to access powerful, and usually dark, magics.

Abnormals

Creatures who defy conventional explanation or classification. Basically a catch-all for the weird and wonderful creatures who fill the world. Most abnormals seem to have arisen from supernatural mutations and reactions to magical forces. However, there are those whose designs imply they were created for a purpose--the descendants and heirs of ancient magics and mad science.

Created

The created are unliving things given life and a soul through extremely powerful supernatural acts. This includes not only the iconic reanimated corpses in the vein of Doctor Frankenstein's Monster, but also gargoyles, terracotta soldiers, the golems of Jewish myth, the tomb guardians of Egypt, and even sentient robots and AIs.

Dragons

The ancient, nearly immortal dragons are creatures of vast intelligence, wisdom, and arcane power. Dragons have slowly recovered from their near extinction during the Middle Ages, but they lack the power to challenge the new world order, and thus begrudgingly hide their majesty behind the Veil.

Giants

The long-lived titans of legend, giants often claimed to be the kin of mankind's early gods. They taught humanity how to harness both fire and magic, but their wars with dragons nearly drove them to extinction.

Werebeasts

Also known as shifters, therianthropes, or beastfolk, werebeasts are mortal beings with the spirits of both man and beast, and have coexisted with humans since prehistoric times. Besides werewolves, there are dozens of other shifter bloodlines, from neizumi to nagual to bultungin to kitsune to weretigers.

Supernals

The supernals come from one of the realms bordering the mortal realm: Faerie, Shadow, Chaos, the Netherworld, and the Spirit World.

Fey

The children of light and life, fey embody various stories, myths, and dreams, and often seem to be something of a throwback to an earlier age of knightly virtues and great quests, of courtly intrigue and mighty heroes. Though the term fey typically brings to mind creatures such as pixies, sprites, nymphs and dryads, the children of Faerie are incredibly diverse, and include creatures such as phoenixes, kirin, unicorns, hags, pegasi, jotun, and even dwarves, though they are probably among the least fey-like fey one can come across.

Genies

The jinn are creatures of spirit and power, formed from the elemental building blocks of the multiverse. There are many kingdoms of jinn, each associated with an elemental force, from the Empire of the ifrit in the heart of Fire to the coral kingdom of the marid, to the mountain kingdom of the gnomes, and the forested realms of the nasnas.

Horrors

The spawn of the Pit and the incarnations of terror itself, horrors are the cause of many of the strange and unique monstrosities that plague humanity's legends. Horrors have popped up countless times through humanity's history, appearing as creatures as diverse as the Black Dog of English myth, yeti of the Himalayas, monstrous sea serpents, and even modern day creatures such as the mothman and the Men in Black.

Reapers

The ferrymen of death, reapers are beings that protect the divide between the temporal realms and the afterlife. Also known as psychopomps, they treat their duty extremely seriously, and tend not to appreciate those who tamper with the forces of creation.

Spirits

Spirits are hard to quantify, as they seem almost paradoxical in their diversity and outlooks. Spirits tend to represent various physical aspects, from rivers and mountains to forests to the moon and sun themselves to concepts such as law and invention and math and swords.

Astrals

Astrals are those strange entities that come from the Astral, the realm of belief.

Angels

Beings of glory and light, angels are the physical incarnations of various virtues. They have a stark morality, so it's a good thing they no longer wander the world of mortals as much as they used to.

Demons

In almost every faith and mythology, there exist beings of corruption and sin, who tempt and torment the faithful. Demons are beings who embody various sins and vices, though to say all are outright evil is a bit of a stretch; there are some among the infernal legions who are more free-spirited artists and hedonists who reject traditional forms of morality.

Outsiders

The twisted minions of the Outer Gods, outsiders defy all explanation and classification. Their very presence warps the fabric of reality around them, bringing with them ruin and madness.

Undead

Undead are mortal beings, typically but not always human, who have somehow extended their lives through supernatural means. Undead typically refers only to those beings who retain their sentience, as the zombies created by witch doctors and the skeletons created by necromancers are merely objects animated through magic, not unlike dancing brooms and self-cleaning pots. There are dozens of various types of undead, all who survive through various means that are typically detrimental to mortals around them.

Ghosts

Ghosts, specters, phantoms and other spectral undead survive by becoming tied to some person, object, place, or thing and lingering on as a spirit. However, unlike the spirits that arise naturally (such as nature and primal spirits) or those who chose their fates willingly (ancestor spirits), most of these new spirits do not accept their new existences, and tie themselves closely to the mortal world instead, incarnating there and essentially surviving among mortals by drawing upon potent anima from the spirit world.

Ghouls

Also called zombies, ghouls are undead who survive off of raw flesh. As mortal flesh contains less anima than blood, ghouls look far more decrepit than their vampiric kin, and they are possessed of an eternally gnawing hunger, which leads many a hungry ghouls to rob graves for a chance feast on corpses in an attempt obtain the trace amounts of anima that linger within a dead body.

Liches

Liches are a form of undead who continually draw occult energy into themselves, and survive upon the anima carried upon the tides of magic. Becoming a lich requires a fiendishly complex ritual that draws upon one's magical reserves, and thus virtually all liches are mortal mages, warlocks, or dragons who wished to peruse the immortality of undeath for one reason or another.

Mummies

Mummies are created by rituals, like liches, but the ritual to create a mummy doesn't have to be cast upon a willing participant. Instead, a mummy becomes linked to certain talismans, such as an amulet or their own coffin, and that talisman draws anima to it which the mummy then processes to live.

Revenants

Revenants arise from particularly strong-willed mortals who refuse to accept their demise for one reason or another, typically tied into a strong, primal emotion such as love or vengance. A revenant is much like a ghost animating their own body again, and forcing it to live through shear force or willing, forcing reality to bend to their own powerful desires.

Vampires

A form of undead who survive off of blood, humours, or other vital fluilds. Because of the great reserves of anima in blood, vampires appear the most lifelike of any undead, presuming they're kept well-fed; the power within blood is also responsible for a great deal of the mythical powers attributed to vampires, as mental domination, regeneration, and shapeshifting are all within the purview of blood magic.