Musical instruments that developed consciousness and turned into polymorphing humanoids.
Marquins are traditionally musical instruments that cannot talk but play their music as a type of communication. It is only recently that they have mutated into people who can morph between the two states.
Linderen is the known world of the PCs. Most have a picture of the world in their heads because of satellite magic, which may have differing points of view, but generally relays the same picture.
Half if not most matter is animate and intelligent.