Other races: the fractured souls

Other races of people that live in Nardish did not evolve directly from the first people. Instead they were made in other ways, either naturally or unnaturally, from the fractured souls post wave. They do not go to the ethereal plane upon death, or dream in the astral plane, and their souls are not reincarnated into other planes as the major races are. Instead, they spend their death drifting across nardish, until they are called into another body in the material.

Fractured souls

When the arcana collided with the material plane, the resulting 'wave' of energy ripped through nardish. The people close to the centre were completely obliterated, their souls scattered like dust. Most other people escaped unscathed, to have to adapt to the rapidly changing world. In between the two are the fractured ones, souls permenantly changed by the sheer force of magic. Many fractured souls simply float through nardish, unaware of their existance. Others are races of people, who are no less varied and brilliant for their brokeness, but definitely, undeniably different.

Types

Beast-heart

The beast-hearted are those people who resemble animals in some way. Many of them originally occured directly after the wave, by the natural fusion of fractured souls with animals, slowly developing into small and isolated groups of people. It is possible to artificially create beast-heart people, and indeed some magic users on nardish have been able to do so. A beast-heart requires several generations of development before it is recognisable as a race; a process that often leads the creatures to die from mental exhaustion as the fractured soul struggles to control such an alien body.

Most beast-heart are at least aware of their ancient heritage, and the existance of groups of their people. Whilst they find themselves perscuted due to sheer oddness, the fact that they rarely pose any threat and are wholly material in origin means they have a relatively free life.

Wild peoples

Mostly humanoid in form, wild people shun the societies of most of the world, building their own communities. They originated from first people who survived the wave, but with fractured souls. Unaware that their lives were any different to others, they lived through an age of gradual change, becoming more and more outcast from the post-apocalyptic societies. Their different approach to life, coming from their fractured soul, isolated them, and they developed into another race, either within other settlements or in the wilderness.

By far the most common of the fractured ones, wild people live, as the name suggests, far from any others. Most races have a simmering hatred of the main races, and a relatively low level of technology. Several of the more agressive are well aquainted with orcs, and in some places orcs consider themselves a wild people.

Deep-fused

Made from a wide variety of unnatural and otherplanar elements, the deep-fused are the rarest and most universally feared of the races. They are only made by incredibly powerful beings, and considered shrouded in mystery. Where specifically they come from, how they're made, even what they are, is unknown to most societies. Sometimes the individual itself is not aware of it's heritage. Usually the deep-fused make attempts to hide their differences from the world they live in, and try to live in the shadows of nations that are largely unaware of their precence.

Fractured soul races:

Beast-heart: Tabaxi, Tortles, Centaurs, Minotaurs, Yuan Ti, Kenku, Arakokra, Lizardfolk, Loxodon.

Wild peoples: Goblins, Giants, Firbolg, Bugbear, Goliath, Ogre, Kobold, Gnoll, Hobgoblin.

Deep-fused: Kua-Toa, Kalashtar, Shifter, Warforged.