The Forgotten Folk

The Folk are not a single people. The original arrivals through The Rift in 1487 included roughly a dozen distinct lineages from the Lost Realm, and five centuries of careful, quiet life on Earth has only multiplied that diversity through marriage with each other and (rarely, controversially) with humans.

Lineages

The Folk recognize their own descent through lineages, not nations. Membership is a matter of heritage, taught traditions, and (for some) physical traits that no glamour can fully hide.

The lineages that came through the Rift, in roughly descending order of how many live on Earth today:

Humans of the Lost Realm: descendants of the wizards, scholars, and craftspeople who made up the largest share of the original arrivals. Visually indistinguishable from Earth humans, which has made hiding correspondingly easy.
Halflings: the second most populous lineage, with a talent for passing unremarked in human society (their height attributed to whatever ordinary human condition fits the circumstances).
Gnomes: small, specialized craft-clans, often tied to a particular trade (clockwork, illusion, or explosives, in varying ratios).
Goblinoids: the goblin clans of the Goblin Bank and the Underpath, plus their hobgoblin and bugbear cousins. Fewer in number than popular imagination suggests, but disproportionately influential financially.
Dwarves: mostly of the hill and mountain lineages, concentrated in the Appalachians and the Rockies. Close ties to goblin mining operations, despite loud protests to the contrary.
Tieflings: a small but notable population. Their infernal ancestry predates the Rift, and the particular branches that came through keep careful records of their genealogies, which they will share if pressed and correctly bribed.
Half-elves: exiles, in the original sense. Many came through the Rift specifically because they did not fit where they were.
Elves: only a few hundred came through, and they did not bring their longevity’s worth of good humor with them. Most are quiet, older, and rarely seen outside a handful of enclaves.
Dragonborn, orcs, and half-orcs: smaller populations, each with their own accords with the broader Folk community.
The Deepfolk: a small, persistent population the rest of the Folk politely do not discuss.
Other lineages: tabaxi, genasi, firbolg, goliath, aasimar, kenku, and a few others whose numbers are too small to form distinct enclaves. They live among the larger lineages as guests and, increasingly, as family.

The Menagerie

The Rift did not only carry people. A startling variety of magical creatures came through in the eleven days it stood open: beasts of the air, beasts of water, beasts of the deep forest, and a handful of things that do not fit any of those categories. In Folk lore this is called the Menagerie, and it is something of an open question why it happened.

The most common theory is that a wizard of the Lost Realm deliberately opened the Rift and pushed through what they could of the Realm’s living heritage, possibly because they knew what was happening on the other side and expected it to be worse. Others insist it was chaos, or mercy, or neither. The Folk have never agreed, and the Folk who might have known have never been willing to say.

By 1990, the Menagerie’s descendants live in the same warded places the Folk do: in the valleys, under the lakes, in the forests, in the cities. Some serve as familiars and mounts. Some are wild and dangerous. Some are genuinely difficult to categorize, and are generally given the courtesy of not being asked.

Society

By 1990, Folk society spans every continent. It is loosely federated under the Concordat of Lyon, a 1797 treaty signed in the wake of the French Revolution (which the Folk found deeply alarming for reasons of visibility, not politics).

Day to day, the Folk live alongside humans: in apartments, in suburbs, in farmhouses. Most hold ordinary human jobs. Magic happens at home, after dark, in warded enclaves and the occasional permitted public space. Children of the Folk are taught from infancy to never, ever cast in front of an unknowing human.

When children come of age, those with sufficient talent are invited (sometimes pressured) to attend one of the regional academies. The oldest and most respected in North America is the Nawadzi School for Forgotten Folk.