Almost every race of Nimoria traces its origins to natural evolution, but Istania are among the few exceptions. Their beginnings lie in catastrophe.

Long ago, The Kindred Three sought to pierce the veil and create a bridge between the material plane and what lies beyond, following visions shown to them by a greater being. Against all reason, they succeeded, however what they found was not what they sought. There was no glorious rain of grace, instead the rift they opened poured forth raw, chaotic magic, destroying the Last Echdrassil, obliterating everything within its immediate vicinity, and unleashing the first wave of pure choral magic throughout the world.

Those who stood just beyond the blast were not spared. Instead of death, they were remade. Their bodies warped by the fallout of unbridled arcane energy. Horns sprouted where none had been before. Their sclera blackened, their flesh shifted to unnatural hues, and fragments of the Aria wove themselves into their very being. These survivors were no longer what they had been, but something entirely different; marked, changed, and forever “touched.”

Over generations, these altered peoples mingled with one another and with the races around them. Human blood proved dominant, shaping the scattered forms of the touched into a more consistent, humanoid lineage. Yet the arcane scars of their genesis endured. From this mingling of magic and mortality, the Istania were born.