Shadowkin, in detail

Since I've finally nailed down what shadowkin actually look like properly, I'll cover that bit first.

Shadowkin are smaller than humans, though mostly in height, and have skin typically black or grey. Lighter skinned shadowkin are not unknown, but always the skin is monochromatically black and white, without a drop of color. Their nose and upper lip is hard and bone-like, resembling an oddly shaped beak of a bird, though their bottom lip and tongue are similar to that of a human. Their eyes are large and placed closer to the side of their head. They have tiny ears, and their hair is stiff and coarse and contains tiny threads, almost exactly like feathers of birds.

They are an industrious race, and particularly magical. In the age of magic, one shadowkin by the name of Marshal Hian, built a large castle powered by the magic of one of the great weapons of legend (wait, weapons of legend? Yes, I'll go into them later), and tied to himself to the power, granting him intense power and prolonged life. This castle became the center of shadowkin culture and society, and Marshal Hian used his great magic power to lift the castle into the air above Grittlanni. Years passed, and while shadowkin were reclusive, they made great strides in magic and society. The other races generally held them in awe until the day that Marshal Hian died of old age - as his magic gave him a long, but not infinite life. His death cut the power to the spells holding the magic castle in the air, and in under a minute, decades of progress and all the greatest minds of Shadowkin kind were smashed to peices. The castle remains unfound, or at least unexplored to the current day, as it is fiercely guarded by the natives of the jungles of Grittlanni in the depths of which it crashed.

After that day, Shadowkin rallied together, but the age of magic was drawing to an end, and they fell back into savagery. They are not unintelligent, but with all their leadership destroyed the few other cities they build fell into disarray and they were a superpower no longer.

In current day Ronar, few shadowkin leave the continent of Grittlanni, but those that do are members of society as much as any other intelligent race. They are simply rare and generally reclusive, which is justified because their rarity and unusual ability to become incorporial for a short time scares the other races.

Shadowkin, like all races, can interbreed with the other races. These crossbreeds are extremely rare, due to the inital scarcity of shadowkin and the tentativeness of the other races regarding them. When they do exist, they typically appear to have washed out colors, even to the point of seeming to be charcoal drawings, and have literally stiff upper lips, and large, wide-set eyes.