Aether

Aether is just one continent in a great wide world full of magic and wonder. On this continent, there are a number of civilizations. These civilizations are generally divided by species, although some migration occurs. The civilizations here are Farreta, the kingdom of cats, Aquanis, the mer-cat territory that seceded from Faretta, [wolf/dog], the kingdom of canines, [fox], the kindgom of foxes, [bird], the empire of birds ruled by the phoenixes, [cloven animal], the kindgom of cloven hooved quadrupeds with a rotating monarchy between their species, [rabbit], the mercantile country of rabbits, and somewhere in the far North of the continent it is rumored that there live dragons.

The residents of Aether are unique in that they are what we in the outside world would call "wereanimals" or "shifters". All sentient species of Aether have animal ears and tails, or their species' equivalent, in their 'human' form and can shift into a 'feral' form of the matching animal. Besides these shifters, there are also 'normal' animals which are able to be told apart from shifters through two abilities (almost) all shifters have, called mana cores and mana sense. Mana cores are the source of the shifters' ability to take on animal form and where they gather magic/mana into if they have the ability to manipulate it, which not everyone does. If their mana core is damaged or "sick", they cannot take on their animal form nor tell shifters from animals. Mana sense is the ability to "see" others' mana cores and, for highly mana-sensitive individuals, the ability to "see" the flow of mana around them