As I am sure you can tell, this shall not be taking place on our Earth, though it does take place on a place called Earth. With that, it shall be easiest for me to give you all a base understanding of how this world works, and how it categorizes things. To begin with, the living things that live in this world are categorized into five groups.

Name Origin Identifying bits. Races A group that has acquired a relic, becoming an official race. (ex. Humans, elves, the typical.) Highest tendency to building civilizations, collect knowledge, have wars, have political leaders. Forces of Nature(FoN) Things that existed long enough to gain consciousness. (ex. World Trees, old volcanoes, Earth itself probably.) Take a long while to decide, more territorial and protective. Usually live isolated lives. Tricksters Creatures that can communicate, typically form from stray mana. (ex. fairies, gnomes, sprites, etc.) Typically weak, sneaky pricks. More likely to just take your sandwich then kill you. Scavengers. Beasts Low mana beings. Pretty much just wild animals, wolves, deer, bears, etc. Least magically inclined, more suited to physical combat, run mostly off instinct. Monstrosities Anything born in areas with exceptionally high concentrations of mana, corrupted by mana. (ex. Hydras, chimera, hyppogriphs, griffins, etc.) Highly irritable, infertile, can range anywhere on the scalling of the other creature types.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Any questions? Yes? Good, launch them at me in the comments.

MOVING ON, magic, mana, the important things, magic is formed from two concepts around here, the 'body' and the 'soul'. The body being how the spell takes shape and the power behind it, think size of a fireball or fancily coloured lights. The soul is the intent behind the spell and the control around it, to harm, assist, go flying or spread by touch. And, the most important bit, mana itself, mana around this world exists in and around all things, with many ways to acquire more. One takes it in by breathing, by just existing pretty much one gets bits of mana. It is also absorbed through eating, if one cooks up some big ass monster they will most likely get a good amount of mana from that. Of course, mana measurements are very vague and hard to do, but in general the scale of magic one is capable of, of course, scales with the mana inside them. 

Now... what else am I missing, ah yes, relics. The thing that defines whether or not a creature officially becomes a race. They are created from the 'first' of a race taking an orb of concentrated mana, then by using the most simple, basic magic, of slapping two things together and creating something, fusion, in intense power, they fuse the orb into some odd object to generally represent the race as a whole. The relic then gives the beings of that race a larger base mana pool, and a general direction their magic would tend to lean towards. Of course, it doesn't mean much, aside from the typical 'Elves are good at druidic type magic' things.

Anyways, with that done, welcome to the show.