Etherial Proliferation

Etherial prolifications is the name of a curious phenomena seens in various parts of the world where isolated communities of Soulbound Mages and humans interact with each other ove long periods of time. This phenomena, over the course of decades, causes the human community to be assimilated and its population greatly reduced, in favor of a growing soulbound mage population. However, a specific set of conditions and factors need to be met for a long time in order for the phenomenon to occur.

Conditions

Conditions #1: Isolation

For the phenomenon to occur, a small human population needs to stay isolated for a long period of time, at least decades, from other larger human communities, whilst also harbouring at least a few soulbound mage. This works because a baby born from a union between a human and a soulbound mage has about a 75% change of also becoming a soulbound mage themselves.

Condition #2: A long Time

Over many years, the number of mages within the population will gradualy increase until a tiping point is reach, where the majority of overall births inside the community are soulbound mages. Once this happens, the majority of the community's population will be soulbound mages of various types in about a generation or two. The remaining humans will naturaly assimilates over the following decades until its dissapearance.

Condition #3: Low population

However, if the human population isolated is too large, it seems that Etherial prolification doesn't happen amogst them, even with the presence of numerous mages within the community. This is possibly due to the fact that soulbound mage births from mixed couples are rarer in regions with large human populations in general, such as in cities, likely for magic- related reasons beyond or current understanding.

Important Factors

Factor #1: A lack of Elemental Mages

A baby from a union between an Elemental Mages and a Soulbound Mages has a 75% chance of becoming an elemental mage. However, that percentage drops to 25% when with a human, meaning that Elemental mages faces the opposite effect of Soulbound mages; Them being drowned out by a large human population. This also means that a high enough elemental mage population can keep the human population steady, delaying or stopping any etherial prolification effect.

Factor #2: A rich natural environment

A rich natural environment, combined with previous conditions, encourages the births of Shapeshifters especialy, sometime to the detriment of other types of soulbound mages. The kind of shapeshifters they are depends not only on their parent's species, but also on the naturaly occuring species in a given environement.

Affected regions in Arros

The Vechor islands

After the invasion of the Dragonkin refugies around the years 1100 Bc, the larger native human population was assimilated after 2-3 centuries on most of these islands. The southernmost island of Macoros is the only one in the archipelago that retains a majority human population. It is also where a lot of elemental mages live. The region's culture was greatly impacted by this change, most notably in terms of religion. The population now is higher than its ever been, approching the half a million people.

Dragon's Head and the Iron Hils

Unlike the vechor islands, the dragonkin population of this region is native. Its population rose steadely during the princely period of rumalian history, in the early second age. Thanks to its isolation, the region was much safer and attracted many refugies, who's descendents all eventualy became dragonkins. A similar thing happened in the Iron hills to the west, where a Wolfkin population assimilated large numbers of humans refugies from the south. Today, these two groups form the largest shapeshifter population in Rumalia, and some of the biggest on the entire continent.

The Ghoro marshlands

This area's population, despite being also perfectly in the centre of the continent, remained isolated for most of its history. It is unknown when the humans there were absorbed into the soulmage population, but by the year 1400 Bc, it seems most of them were. Reports from neighbouring kingdoms of raid parties coming from The Ghoro Marshlands talk about groups made entirely of shapeshifters. Nowdays, the population is made up of various species of shapeshifters, separated into Shapeshifter Clans, as well as a large community of Necromancers.

Other Affected regions

The Tarankema (South-East Mahador)

This vast savanna region of Mahador is home to the Kingdom of Asderaan, which is famous for its population being nearly all shapeshifter. However, the common species here are very different than what one might see in Arros or Enask. The population is divided into main clans, based on the three diminant shapeshifter species: The Lions, the tigers and the Hyenas. The Lion clan dominated the kingdom's nobility and royalty historicaly, but after a brutal civil war between them and the Tiger clan, which decimated both, the Hyena clan came to rule the kingdom. Before the Lion clan took over, it is possible that the country was ruled by humans, but how long ago the change occured is impossible to say for certainty.

The Land of the Wildmens (North-East Osian)

North of the great Kingdom of Nan-Tao, and north even of the plains of the Shah'ri, is the land of the Wildmen. Unlike other regions where etherial prolification occured, this population is not made up of just shapeshifters, but of all 4 types of Soulbound Mages, although shapeshifters do make about 2 thirds of the population by Taonese estimates. It is unknown when the phenomena began and concluded, since the earliest taonese records of the "barbarians" of the region come from the First Age, are were humans and elemental mages, but then a long period without records followed during the The Long Winter, and when the Taonese reestablished contact in the early Second Age, the population had already gone through the change.