Humans are the most widespread people in the Fractured Reach, found in every settlement from Dustgate’s frontier bars to Iron Pass’s corporate megacities. Their strength is not biology, but adaptability — humans flourish under oppressive rule, in harsh frontier conditions, aboard drifting skycities, or even on ocean giants where the horizon seems endless.
Human cultures vary wildly by world, faction, and climate. On Credence, they farm and dig. On Zephyria, they smuggle and steal. On Iron Pass, they endure. Among the Freecrews, they command fleets of ramshackle ships. Wherever humans appear, innovation, danger, and trouble follow.
Humans are ordinary by physiology — and extraordinary by legacy. Their influence shapes nearly every major power in the Reach, for better or worse.
Traits:
Highly adaptable
Emotionally resilient
Ambitious to a fault
The dominant population across settled space
Humans are the baseline from which the extraordinary races diverge — but never underestimate their sheer willpower.
Nearkind are a broad, fluid category encompassing countless variations of human-adjacent species, hybrid peoples, engineered offshoots, genetic divergences, and culturally distinct lineages that evolved under different worlds or pressures. Unlike Farborn, Nearkind are comprehensible, mortal, and grounded in the physical universe — they simply took different evolutionary paths.
Nearkind can be anything.
A people shaped by crushing gravity, by radiation storms, by deep ocean living, by engineered adaptation, by frontier survival, or by centuries-old colonization quirks.
Nearkind might have:
different skin tones or patterns
unique sensory organs
enhanced lungs, eyes, or balance
subdermal plates, aquatic adaptations, or low-grav musculature
cultural traits shaped by isolation or planet-specific needs
Some Nearkind resemble humans closely.
Others differ enough to be visually alien yet biologically adjacent.
They are accepted almost everywhere except by the Corporate Constellations, who consider them “genetic inconsistencies.” Freecrews welcome them without question.
Nearkind are the infinite spectrum between humanity and the unknown — diverse, expressive, and entirely natural.
Traits:
Flexible category — can be nearly any humanoid form
Clear physical roots in biology
Adapted for environments humans struggle in
Often bridge cultural gaps between humans and Farborn
Farborn are entities whose origins lie beyond the stable fabric of known reality. They often manifest through Rifts, anomalies, dimensional fractures, or cosmic distortions that connect the Reach to… elsewhere. They are not one species, not one form, and not one biology. They are visitors, survivors, or expelled fragments of dimensions humans cannot fully perceive.
To mortal senses, Farborn range from “strange but humanoid” to “impossible to describe without hurting your head.” Some take stable physical shapes resembling stylized humanoid forms. Others flicker between states or hide aspects of themselves to avoid overwhelming observers.
Even the most “human-passing” Farborn feel different — subtly out of phase, emotionally distant, or shaped by logic unfit for the Reach.
Many Farborn arrive:
by accident, displaced across realities
through Rifts activated by cosmic storms
as runaways from collapsing dimensions
as explorers seeking stability
or as refugees fleeing incomprehensible threats
While not malevolent by default, Farborn operate under rules the Reach does not understand. Some become Wardens of anomalies. Others join the Rift Pilgrims. A few try to blend into regular society. But their presence ALWAYS creates ripples — culturally, metaphysically, and physically.
Few factions tolerate them openly.
Only the Freecrews and Rift Pilgrims welcome them without fear.
Traits:
Cosmic, dimensional, or eldritch origin
Physiology not fully consistent with physics
Sense of self and perception fundamentally alien
Unpredictable but often powerful
Rare, mysterious, heavily studied by scientists and cults alike
Farborn are not “magic” — they are the science of things not yet understood, the echoes of worlds where reality obeys different laws.
Grounded, ambitious, stubborn survivors.
The baseline of the Reach.
Endlessly varied humanoid offshoots shaped by environment or engineering.
The spectrum between human and alien.
Dimensional outsiders born of Rifts and cosmic fractures.
The unknowable stepping into the known.
Together, they form the diverse population of the Fractured Reach —
a frontier star sector where identity, biology, and reality itself are fluid, strange, and ever-changing.