Cryptborn

actually just going to put everyone in here  

"Ninjas" / Revenants

Wraith-like beings; telepathic, able to teleport to a place they've been before. Have innate knowledge of cryptidland, are able to teleport there without need of a ritual.   Non-reproducing, will enter incorporeal hibernation states when not filled with PURPOSE.   Rouges or assassins of sufficient skill who have studied under one of these can become a Revenant after death. Extremely high skill wall.   A few exist outside of the vaults with implanted memories of some terrible catastrophic event, having awoken in a ruined pseudo-New York (same spooky architecture as the vaults). They awake in a circle of 47 with most of the spaces empty.  

Cowboys

  Sort of like those cowboy costumes for dogs but if they were really fucked up.   "True" cowboy body does not have functional legs (mobility is roughly akin to walking on stilts), and is composed of the waist-up of a human with a "false" horse head below the waist.   Horse head is basically just another limb; has fake eyes presumably to deter predators like a bug would.   False human legs are relatively immobile, akin to walking on stilts; attached to the "true" body.   Stomach is in the horse torso, though food can be temporarily stored in the joint "true" body for later transportation to and absorption by the horse body.   Horse body is rendered immobile and vulnerable when "true" body leaves.   Put a diagram here eventually.  

Pirates

  Sentience is contained in the boat; the people have different aesthetics based on the boat itself. (ex: sea urchin beards, different dress, etc)   "Samurai" / Mirror Constructs   100% sentient   don't need to eat, drink, breath, or sleep, basic construct things   cannot reproduce! Set number in the world. Let's sayyy like 5 thousand?   they consider their swords a part of them, and are the only unbreakable part of themselves.   only things I instill in them is the drive to hone their swordcraft, and that killing each other is wrong   immortal  

Knights

  Chitinous plating that can regrow if damaged/lost  

Jesters

  they're kind of like hand-stitched jester monster husks, not inherently good or evil (they have free will, they're all fairly chaotic though)   because they're fabric husks (filled with some kind of mildly tangible shadow substance), they're not very sturdy or solid, so they're also sorta half-scarecrow (have wooden support beams for backbones & shoulders, probably also to some degree in legs)   they have weird uncanny proportions   they have a harlequin pattern all over them because the fabric swatches that make them appear to have been woven together in a way that produces a diamond pattern; they were also stitched along those lines   they can loosen or tighten their own stitching. loosening their stitches makes them more mobile, agile, and powerful, but much more fragile- literally get the shadowy stuffing beaten out of them. if they tighten their stitches, they're much more resistant to blows but can't move well   their eyes and mouth are literally just gashes on their face fabric that have bust their stitches/patches (but they do this willingly! and can "resew" those gashes to close their eyes/mouths)   they can regenerate "stuffing"/shadow after a while but if they lose it all they're just a dead, empty husk   the prong/horn/tentacle things of a jester's hat are part of their heads, and are prehensile (length varies between individuals)  

Plague Doctors

  Bird skeleton constructs with skeletal human arms   Wear dark, cowled robes that are also kind of a part of them – thin sinew and ligament-esque tendrils of shadow and fabric hold their bones together.   Faces resemble stitched leather masks (of a solid color, any color) make from a leather-like substance, with shiny dark lenses over their eyes. Under this is their skull.   Masks can be removed both voluntarily and involuntarily; masks take a year and a day to regen and are rendered blind until the mask reappears.   Lenses in the masks grant truesight and/or the ability to visually detect magic – maybe tuned to the qualities essences that can be extracted via alchemy.   Appear with limited technical alchemical knowledge – each one knows a set of alchemical sigils, the structure/complexity of a ritual ring, or something akin to that.   50% have corvid heads, the rest can be anything with a statistical sway towards vultures.