The Mortal Races
All mortals in the known world belong to at least one of the four mortal races.
While geography and culture has kept most populations from homogenising, all races are naturally able to interbreed with one another, producing healthy offspring that may pick up a variety of traits from each parent. Mixed heritages are usually apparent for a few generations before children tend into one of the four categories.
Each of the races are said to lay claim to the blessing of one of the primordials, though most cultures will have their own answers as to why.
The Races
Humanity
Humans are deceptively normal among the races. Due to having the most traits in common with the other races they are often considered the most ‘basic’ in terms of physiology, but it is their unseen properties that make them stand out.
Humans have the blessing of the Ocean. The most direct way this manifests is that while seasickness is near-unavoidable for all other mortals, in humans it is not the norm, and even those who experience it can adjust over time.
Humans are said to be the most tenacious of the mortal races, able to cling to life through wounds that should be fatal. Though iligen are tougher to put in a critical state, humans are more likely to live to see another day. A side-effect of this apparent strength of spirit, is that humans take naturally to magic, able to enforce their will on reality easier. A human mage is more likely to be able to produce forceful magicks from earlier in their career.
Elvenkind
Elves are recognisably unique among the mortal races due to having longer, pointed ears. While otherwise mostly similar to humans, elves tend to be a little taller than humans living in similar areas.
Elves have the blessing of the Storm. It is believed that because of this, elves are highly adaptable, and adjust to new climes over several generations.
Where humans are tenacious, elves are resilient. The average elf is less prone to sickness and disease than other mortals, and this includes a propensity for being able to shrug off debilitating magic more easily too. This natural resilience also means elves show fewer of the signs of ageing than other mortals, which is thought to have led to the Hochlian myth that elves live for longer than humans.
The Jovatesz
The Jovan physiology shows a lot of difference to other mortals due to their affinity for underground living. They are on average stockier, and shorter, than other mortals, though within roughly the same range of heights. Their eyesight is different to that of other mortals, able to see more shades of red but fewer of blue. While other mortals have the same number of teeth, jova have more on each jaw. Most recognisable of their traits, however, is the pallor of their skin. Underground-dwelling jova have a deathly pallor to their skin, often appearing sickly to other mortals. Jova who live above ground with more exposure to the sun tend to have skin that looks less pallid and drawn.
Jova have the blessing of Earth. This manifests through an affinity for both the underground and the forge. Many jova choose to live in underground settlements, find confined dark spaces more comforting than wide-open and bright ones. Jovan skin burns very easily in the sun, but by contrast they resist heat itself better than other mortals. It’s believed as well that jova have a natural, rather than cultural, love of creating things with their own hands.
Near-enough every jova is skilled with weapons of war. Picking up skill at arms comes freely to jova, and even the least war-like of the jovatesz can defend themselves with proficiency.
Jova are the only mortals with the potential for a longer life-span without turning to magic. It is said that jova who have never seen sunlight may live several centuries, though such individuals are incredibly rare, and most jova live a life no longer than other mortals.
Iligen
Iligen have plant-like traits in addition to their mammalian ones. Jovan skin is green and waxy like the skin of a plant, and this allows them to feed off the sun’s light. Their hair may naturally be of bright or vibrant colours beyond what is natural for other mortals, such as blue. The average iligen is a little taller than the average human.
The iligen bear the blessing of Sun. As plants are life which are most close to the sun, it is believed this is where their plant-like skin comes from. The blessing allows them to heal more fully from injuries, scarring less and even being able to regrow lost limbs with time. Such a process is often exhausting, and requires much time spent resting in the sun.
Iligen are able to fight through pain better than other mortals, and are harder to mortally wound. While humans are more likely to get back up from injury, iligen are harder to put on the floor to begin with.
Worldsouls
Worldsouls are not considered one of the races in their own right, but are included among them in academic circles. Worldsouls all bear some mark of the primordial about their person. The mark varies wildly, often taking the shape of cultural symbols for the element in particular, such as the alchemical notation used throughout the empire. It shifts across the body, refusing to be hidden, and so is almost always visible on a worldsoul’s skin. Worldsouls are always worldsouls from birth, so while myths of people becoming worldsouls later in life persist in most cultures, this has not been substantiated. Although not provably hereditary, sometimes an element will ‘run in the family’, and even then almost never be present in every member of the family. Though this is the only physiological difference, worldsouls are usually more comfortable with their element than other members of their race. For example, oceansouls may take well to swimming, sunsouls rarely burn in the sun, and stormsouls often find themselves able to walk unbothered through torrential rain.
In imperial academia, the existence of worldsouls is said to be the blessing of Moon to mortals, manifesting as five phases of mortalkind. The blessing of the primordial of mystery is believed to be why worldsouls alone may manifest gnosis without a tutor, nightsouls chief among them.
Worldsouls all have an inherent connection to their element. Because of this, learning magic pertaining to the element comes naturally to them. Even those with no magic background might learn a trick or two. Such individuals still need foci or ritual to perform magic, and are still limited by the need to sense the aether through gnosis. For some, the connection feels like a personal bond with the primordial nature of the World.
Worldsouls were assumed to be a purely mortal phenomenon until 1019 AI when the Ardent Vigil discovered a stormsoul dire wolf. Since then, the number of worldsoul beasts and aberrations encountered in Hochlant has been increasing exponentially.
