Hey, I'm new to the site. I just wanted to start it off with a hopefully constructive and inspiring discussion.

I guess I should get to the topic of the thread. It's pretty straightforward. Share your favorite homebrew race that you have made (preferably from D&D and preferably from 5e, but other systems are fine). If you have multiple, choose up to 3. This thread should be focused more on the lore and theme of the race than on the mechanics, but including a general outline of their mechanics to help people get a better idea for them is perfectly fine. I just want the thread to be more ideas for races than ideas for mechanics.

Here are my two examples:

1) The Felshen. In my world, hundreds of years ago a group of alchemists, fleshmancers, and other mages decided to set out and see if they could create a fully-reproducing, hyper-intelligent, fleshy humanoid race, just to see if they had the capability of doing it (they essentially wanted to "play God" to prove that deities are nothing but powerful mortals). It took nearly a century of innovation and experimentation, but the group of mages managed to create a whole new race by grafting together lab-grown, alchemically enhanced flesh. The magical experiments used to create the Felshen gave them latent psychic powers (telepathy, mind-reading, and the ability to hurt people mentally) that were eventually unleashed when members of the race ventured out to find a place to live and came across a Sapphire Dragon that taught them to use their psionic abilities. The race's psionic abilities eventually spread wherever the race travelled, creating an international society of psionic humanoids that use psionic devices to communicate with each other long-distance through their Telepathy. (They also have mental-libraries, dream-hubs, and other psionic-enhancing tools in their settlements.)

The Felshen have a diverse array of brightly-colored skin-tones, most often being turquoise, cyan, neon-green, violet, cream-orange, lemon-yellow, and scarlet-red, with their hair being just as vibrant and diverse in hue. The race has had a centuries-long conflict with a society of goblinoids that worships magic (which they call the "Yikare", and where they derive their name from, as "Yikkan Goblinoids"/"the Yikkan Contingent"). The culture of the goblinoids says that souls cannot be created, that experimenting on flesh is taboo, and that psionic powers are an abomination, so they have always shunned the Felshen and at times have attempted to eradicate them. The name "Felshen" even comes from the Yikkan Goblinoids, roughly translating to "False-lings/False-Ones", and there is no shortage of contempt from both the Felshen towards the Yikkan Goblinoids and vice versa.

2) The Vezyi. Same world as above, but this race dwells in the Underdark of the Shadowfell (named the Underfell). The Vezyi are undead-touched humanoids with ash-gray hair, typically with dark-gray or black hair, that were created by Vecna in order to serve him in his goal to claim control of the Afterlife-system from the Raven Queen. The head of the Vezyi society is run by powerful Death and Arcana clerics to Vecna, known as "Iremongers". Each Vezyi is born with a circular black-mark that's about a centimeter in diameter on their left hand's thumb. Whenever a Vezyi dies, if their body can be recovered without the loss of other Vezyi lives, it is brought to the closest Iremonger, who then raise the Vezyi from the dead for free. Once an Iremonger raises a Vezyi from the dead, they get another black-dot on their left hand's index finger, or whatever finger is closest to it (assuming that you're cupping both of your hands together in a bowl-shape). Being raised in this manner is called a "Death Pardon", and is typically just shortened to a "Pardon" (being raised from the dead in any other manner does not give you pardons). Once a Vezyi has been raised from the dead by an Iremonger 9 times (which is when their right hand's thumb gets a pardon-mark), they have run out of "free" resurrections, and are no longer granted any more pardons if and when they die. This time when they die, their body is brought to an Iremonger, who then reanimates their corpse as some kind of corporeal undead (typically a zombie or skeleton, but occasionally a wight, ghoul, ghast, or mummy) and sends the undead to wander the Underfell until it reaches Vecna's fortress and becomes a member of his undead army. The souls of Vezyi that died in the Underfell are siphoned to Vecna, who typically feeds them to his phylactery in order to maintain his undeath and godhood.

I'm curious as to what ideas people on this site have.