Shifter

A subspecies of humanity, the shifters came with the race of Man from their shattered homeworld.
Long, long ago, in the earliest days of the human species when the shadow of magic still had a foothold in their lost world, rare families of men and women around the globe were born with the capacity to take on not only the characteristics and even shape of animals but to tap into the very spirit as well. For millennia, these shifters dwellt among their mundane brothers and sisters but when the last echoes of magic died upon that distant realm the families lost their connection to the natural world.
They still existed, but had no way of connecting to their totemic spirits and so their powers were reduced to legends and dismissed as myths.
But, when the gods gathered up the last remaining shreds of humanity from their dying world and brought them to Emeriss the magic pulsing alive and strong through their new home revived this connection returning to the shifters all their long lost gifts.
What a shame it is that the human race was so fearful. So new to this world and innocent of the power of the arcane, they thought the shifters an accident at best or a curse at worst and exiled them from their fledgling communities or even hunted them like the animals they so resembled.
In the millennia since, the shifters have still never fully earned back the trust of Men and most of the shifting tribes wander the borderlands between Duras and the Vennican Dominion living a nomadic life and keeping a healthy distance from the realms of humanity.