Discover the races of Instarworld, their classes, capitals and the history of each people.
Classes still in development are marked individually; being listed for a race does not mean they are already playable in the Alpha.
The Covenant · Capital: Gale City
Where other peoples give up, humans adapt, learn and press on.
Short-lived tribes on the fringes of the elven domains. In the Age of Ash the elves used them as servants to clear the lands poisoned by Kzarith's blood; the humans freed themselves and spread like fire. Adaptable, ambitious and slow to forget: Salvalia and the Age of Blood are both their wound and their pride.
Gale City is a fortified capital of markets, knightly orders and trading tradition. Its inns are full of minstrels, news from the roads and tales from those who return from afar.
A living conflict: an academy in Gale City learned Spellblade techniques from elven knowledge. The elves call it theft; the humans, the right to learn.
The Covenant · Capital: Valaran
An ancestral people with a serene gaze. Their bond with magic and the forests lets them see beyond the obvious.
Their ancient civilization fell in the Fall. They failed to protect Ysmera's body while she transformed, and the dryads have not forgiven them. Valaran rises among ancient trees with its tradition of arcane magic, archers, scholars of the stars and the enchanted blade. The Elven Ruins hold what they lost; the Spellblade was born in an order of that age. They remember having human servants: some with shame, others with longing.
The Covenant · Capital: Tiral Mountain
Sturdy and stubborn, they live beneath the mountains. No one works metal or takes a blow like they do.
A fortress carved into the heart of the mountains. Clans of smiths and miners, clan oaths, runes in stone and metal, tavern songs; their knights ride rams. They claim they forged the Titans alongside Borkah. After the Fall they fought the Tunnel Wars against the Bugatra and chained the orcs to win them. The Abandoned Mine opened a path to the Thal'Keth.
The Unbound · Capital: Guazar
Warg riders of the eastern steppes. Chained by the dwarves, they broke free; they respect strength above all and never forget a debt.
Clans of the eastern steppes, warg riders since time immemorial. The dwarves chained them as fodder in the tunnels; they rebelled and carved a bloody path to the surface. That is their epic. The arenas of Guazar were born from that slavery: there an orc proves that no one will ever own them again. Storm shamans, warg hunters, war-wolf riders and keepers of the ancestors. They respect the humans of Kalawa, who also broke their chains.
The Unbound · Capital: Deadland
When Sennath the Weaver died, her loom of souls broke and the fallen rose. They guard orphaned souls and despise the Hunger of the vampires.
Since Sennath died, the souls of the fallen cannot depart and their bodies rise. Deadland is an underground metropolis wrapped in mist, beside Ground Zero where the goddess fell. They are not evil: they see themselves as guardians of orphaned souls until there is a Weaver again, and their keepers preserve the names of who they were in life. Their minstrels perform danses macabres; their mages and warlocks study powers others fear.
They are the natural enemies of the vampires: they feel no hunger and the vampires are pure Hunger; their cold blood is of no use to anyone. Their cold bodies are invisible to the Bugatra swarms.
The Covenant · Capital: Thornroot
The sap of Ysmera, the Green Mother, awakened in the Mother Trees. They guard forests, springs and birds, and do not forgive the elves who failed her.
Ysmera's sap awakened in the Mother Trees: wood, thorn and wild magic. They tend forests, springs and birds. They see the Bugatra, and anyone who fells trees, as pests to be pruned. They swore the Covenant to bind the elves to their promise.
The Unbound · Capital: Zhal'Ketar
An abyssal people who hear the dreams of Oshumar, the god asleep in the trench of Zhal'Ketar. The Sleepless refuse to wake him and have found refuge among the Unbound.
An abyssal cephalopod people, in cities of basalt and bioluminescence beneath the sea. Oshumar's dreams reach them as telepathy. Their traditions include watching dead stars and tending underground waters. The servants of the Sleeper climb onto the coasts to wake him; the Sleepless refuse and seek refuge among the Unbound.
The Unbound · Capital: Rimehold
Penguin folk of the far north. Their colonies weather the blizzard together, and in Rimehold they keep a piece of the god Kzarith frozen.
A penguin-like people of the frozen northern coast. The Ash Winter hardened them: fishers and ice sailors, warriors and star readers, with colony choirs; their knights ride walruses. A piece of Kzarith fell in the north and they keep it frozen so that nothing hatches: they are the jailers at the end of the world.
The Covenant · Capital: Kzarith Hive
Insect folk of no specific insect type, generally resembling beetles, with Roman dress and customs, once the legions of the god Kzarith. The Legion of the Standard rejects the Hunger that ruined their empire and has found refuge in the Covenant.
Insect folk of no specific insect type, generally resembling beetles. The former legions of Kzarith's empire: banners, monumental architecture, discipline. Their empire fell with their god; today they live inside his shell and in rebuilt underground ruins. They are divided:
Faithful of the Hatching: they await Kzarith's return. Enemies of everyone.
Legion of the Standard: they want the empire without the god, believing the Hunger was their ruin. Deserters taken in by the Covenant.
The Unbound · Capital: Slagport
Lizardfolk of the warm coasts and southern marshes, descended from the ancient dragons. Once vassals of the Bugatra empire, they kneel before no god.
Lizardfolk of the warm coasts and southern marshes, children of the dragons. In the Age of Gods the Bugatra empire hunted their fathers and made them vassals: rowers, porters, border troops. When Kzarith fell they were set free, and since then they kneel before no god: to them a god is a master with more power. The only thing they revere is the Ancient Blood of their dragon fathers; their clerics are priests of the ancestors and their forgers work with draconic fire. Slagport is a port of slag and foundries built on the remains of the Bugatra empire: trade, piracy and the freest harbor in the world. They hate the Hatching and distrust the Legion of the Standard.
The fall of the gods changed the life, magic, and peoples of Instarworld forever.
Almost three thousand years ago the gods of Instar rose against Kzarith, the Hunger, who devoured other gods. In the Battle of the Gods their bodies fell upon the world: Kzarith died, the Weaver of souls died and the loom of death broke, the Green Mother became forest and the god of the sea sank asleep into the abyss. What remained of them are the Fragments, relics of divine power.
Twelve hundred years later, on the island of Salvalia, a few nobles drank Kzarith's ichor and became vampires. They enslaved humans for centuries, until the War of the Three Peaks united humans, werewolves and a rebel vampire. The island was renamed Kalawa.
Nine hundred years of peace ended at the Broken Tournament: the world split into two factions, The Covenant and The Unbound, who signed the Treaty of Brinehaven and shared the guardianship of five great Fragments: the Legacy of the Five Kingdoms. Today, four hundred and fifty years later, someone is gathering Fragments again.
No people created another. All of them existed before the Fall, and the Fall changed each one. Between peoples there was domination, never creation: elves over humans, dwarves over orcs, Bugatra over Skarn, vampires over humans.
Werewolves: humans of Nascajh who received Kurono's Howl. Agile and fierce, they heal their wounds, live in hide tents and trust smell before sight. Wary of outsiders. The Howl does not belong to Nascajh alone: a druid of any people can receive it in the Rite of the Howl (see the DLC).
Vampires: human nobles of Transalva who drank Kzarith's ichor and inherited his eternal Hunger. Pale, elegant, with nails hard as claws and mental illusions; they hate the Sun that burned Kzarith. Those bound by the pact live in the east of Kalawa. The Children of the Hunger hide in the Crypts of Transalva, beneath the ruins of the old vampire capital, and form the dark court of the Brotherhood of the Hatching. Every vampire is undead. There are two origins: noble blood (a living person who drinks ichor and is transformed, like the nobles of Transalva) and the fed corpse (a raised body given ichor). They are different vampires: the custodians of the Dead Lands see the second as heresy, because the ichor wakes in the dead a Hunger they never had.
