With all this Magic flaring around, one would expect that man isn't the only creature capable of harnessing such power, but in the end, it's just like that. Although there are beasts and creatures magical in nature, whose anatomy defies any scientific explanation, although Spirits are a commonplace these days, taking on many forms and sharing many mortal goals, although Science itself spawned mutations and aberrations that could be easily called "Monsters", despite all this, mankind is still the only known intelligent and biological life form in EcatombCheriArk and, for what I know, in the whole rest of the world. Like anyone, I wasn't bent on believing this when, as a child, my mother told me monsters didn't exist and everybody knows that religions and cults thrive on the supernatural beings that fill their "Holy Books", but, as a matter of facts, when you grow up you must cope with the fact that the Lizard Man you saw cleaning the floors at the swimming pool was just some experiment gone awry and all the monsters your religion of choice spoke of are quite explained by spirits who can take the most different (and intelligent) tangible shapes...
So it seems that we are left alone... but I can bet you too find this "alone" already a bit too crowded... the degrees of mutations mankind inflicted upon tself are quite enough to make you, the averarge Joe, feel very different: mastering the forces of darkness to survive death as an undead has been a favorite past time of sorcerers and dark priests for a long time, and, although They finally declared it illegal since such "change" brought a quite asocial behaviour in the "subjects", laws aren't a big problem for the wealthy so you can expect Corporation to have their labor forces made up by a handful of zombies... And probably their extraction teams made up by something more lethal... Science answered the call for the Freakier-Than-You magical attitude with an impressing array of cybernetic implants and biological mutations and somebody just thought that, if magic and science had taken man that far, perhaps the two of them could combine to create a Really Freaky result... So... I guess by now it's difficult to walk down the Streets and tell what was meant to be and what escapes natural order (if anything like that still exists): it's anybody's guess that man had it's large share of responsibility for how it came to be this way...