Peoples
Iru The progenitors, and the only naturally evolved people of Elshore. Tall, pale, and long-lived, they raised the Inarin civilization and the corporations that engineered the servant lines. In the present age living Iru are rare; most of their kind have withdrawn from the world.
Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age. Engineered as generalists meant to serve every role, the Maan instead built nations; the empire that rules Northland today is theirs. Versatile, adaptable, and outwardly assured, they are the world's common measure.
Annil Small, scaled, and easy to overlook, the Annil were the earliest of the engineered lines, made as household aides and keepers of the systems that kept the world running. Quiet, precise, and naturally watchful, they prefer to go unnoticed, and largely do.
Northern Erg The green-skinned Erg of the northern island of Rafadin, once the guardians of the Inarin administration's sacred codes. In the present age they are fragmented and semi-assimilated, holding the old forms under Iru rule and Maan supervision, the discipline kept even as the world it served has gone.
Southern Erg The violet-skinned Erg of the Frozen Highlands, nomadic tribal confederations who were never absorbed into any empire. They keep the ancient path-rites and the name-bound order of their tribes, cold-eyed and exact, every movement chosen and earned.
Bar Towering, massively built, and engineered for high-load work and vertical terrain, the Bar are the strength line. When still they feel immovable; when moving, unstoppable. The name itself means "strength, courage."
Northland Continental Bar A Bar subspecies that appears only in the later, medieval age: the descendants of Bars who left the forest of Baramma and took refuge in the Maan empire generations before. Three centuries among the Maan reshaped them entirely; they dress, speak, and think Maan, keep the Randenist faith, and most take up the soldier's trade.
Meir The only people of Elshore not born of it. The Meir crossed the dark in generation ships and settled the living arcology of Vaparium, the House of Blood, in the south. Immense, four-armed, and astonishingly long-lived, they keep to themselves, militarily neutral and bound by a morality of sanctuary.- Imbir A vanished people of the deep past: the Iru's sibling hominids, and the first on Elshore to raise true cities and councils that spoke for the many rather than the strong. They were lost in the Third Great Extinction long before recorded history, leaving the Iru as the world's sole naturally evolved kind.