Guide to the Arcane Realm

Inhabitants

On Kaf, life is broadly grouped into a few categories. One group is called natural creatures, defined by coming into only through natural selection or artificial selection by an intelligent race.  This group includes plants, animals, and fungi for example.

There is also a group of beings that are called preternatural creatures. Their origin and development is heavily influenced by the metaphysical forces that exist within nature. Finally there are supernatural creatures, who originate from another form of reality that is governed by a different set of rules than our own.

This section will cover the sapient and intelligent beings throughout the world, who are individually called races but collectively, people.

Sapience

A species given the sapient definition is considered able to reason and understand abstract metaphorical concepts and ideas like morality, or innovate on learned behaviors, make and use tools, or communicate with written or spoken language. Sapient species are legally considered people, and are subject to all the responsibilities, liberties, and rights that come with that status. Species that are incapable of reason at all and survive mainly through natural instincts, are classified as non-sapient or feral. The term races is colloquially used to refer to sapient species and sometimes used to differentiate them from feral species.

Body Types

One common way to classify the races is by the shape of their body. Body shapes tend to have similar appendages that led to similar abilities. Body shapes have also been useful for infrastructure due to different ones requiring public places and transportation to conform to them.

Humanoid

Humanoid refers to a specific body plan shared by various creatures. Across the races, it is also one of the most common body types either inherently or through shapeshifting. 

A humanoid overall body plan has one head, a hominid primate torso, two arms, and two legs used to support the body and consistently run/walk bipedally as the main form of movement.  

Liminal

Liminals share a similar body plan to humanoids with one head, one torso, but typically differ in their limbs or sections of their body, usually having plantlike or animalistic features or appendages. Liminal beings often either lack or have their own replacement for either a humanoid's arms or legs, for example. And despite not all technically being bipedal, nearly all have hands or at least a close dexterous analogue. In the past they were referred to as ‘monstrous humanoids’ but were officially renamed by international organizations first as demihumanoids before their modern name.