Important Terms

Alignment
Term for a person's naturalization to a realm, in this case the realm of nexus. People do not arrive aligned to the realm normally, and over time, or through terrible means, may become aligned to it. Alignment allows a person to deal with unique energies and issues in the realm that outsiders could not, but it also makes them suceptable to the rules of the realm itself. A person aligned to a realm of fire would not feel the effects of the fire, while an outsider would burn, as an example.

Feralized
The feralized are those folk who, for various reasons, have lost their sentience and reverted to an animal like state and life. They run on instincts and are near impossible to discern from normal animals, save for their longer lifespans. This is usually the result of severe form shock, and rarely if ever occurs in anthromorphic or humanoids races. People who become feralized are often whisked away by Gradius and placed in a safe environment until a cure can be found, or given to friends or loved ones as pets kept safe away from harm. There is hope that the feralized will return to normal when a way home is found, and there is a magical cure, but said cure leaves the feralized without memory of who they are or were, which is often very traumatic for any loved ones and may risk their chances of returning fully to normal if a way back is found.

Forced Alignment
The dreaded plague of the nexus world that many fear and even more have fallen victim to. Those who arrive in the world come unaligned, and the realm has it's own way of pressing the issue and forcing the alignment to take place. This is often done through a drastic change in species, sparked by causes not fully understood but often linked to large bouts of energy of various natures. A person could become most anything alive, from dogs and cats, wolves and tigers, to dragons, insects, and even toons. Many people have died after a forced alignment, falling prey to new natural predators or taking their own lives in shock.

The nexus realm sees the new form as the person's true form in every way, making such a form their true form permanently and utterly. No cure, no magic, no change can fix it, and every form of sight and sense shows them as what they have become. Thankfully some issues seem to be taken care of in rather strange ways. A man turned into a feral wolf can still talk and keeps a long lifespan that normal wolves would not. This holds true with insects and any other race that may not be able to be intelligent normally. This does not solve issues of a man becoming a mouse, nor a cat turning into a dragon.

The alignment change also changes the mind and instincts of the victim. Their old lives and species becomes distant, like a waking dream. Humans turned to dragon may find their human lives strange, foriegn, and wrong. Instincts also play a role in many other behaviours, which aligned folk may not notice right away. Things such as age maturity, sexual attractions and desires, gender tendancies, and predator and prey urges. A man turned wolf will find himself howling, forming packs, and looking at other wolves in strange ways. A man turned mouse will be deathly afraid of cats and predators, even if said creatures used to be their friends. For these reasons forced alignement is greatly feared.

Form Shock
Form shock is the name given to the syndrome some folk go through after being forcefully aligned. Often times the instinctual change and loss of old self is too much to take. Even with changed minds and instincts a person still recognises they are not as they should be, and many take this harshly. They go into shock, sometimes losing days of time to blackouts, sometimes going fully feral and running fully on instincts until settled, other times harming themselves or others. People with form shock are kept under close supervision, to protect them not only from outside dangers like predators, but also from themselves. The only known cure for form shock is time and therapy, and in the most severe cases the relapse into a fully feral state becomes irreversable, leaving the victim an animal in every way and become refered to as the feralized.

Hollow
Hollow is the common term the residents of the nexus have come to call the strange, violent creatures often found in the land pieces outside the safe confines of the city. They tend to run on instinct, speaking in few broken words if any at all, and seek out living creatures to kill and devour. Not much is known about what causes the hollows to appear, what they are, how to get rid of them, nor how to cure them. What is known is that they seem to be soulless, emotionless, and near mindless, hence the term hollow. There is one known case of a hollow recovering after devouring a person, that hollow being Thanus the Thuraki. He has mentioned being plagues be feelings of feeling unnatural, wrong, sick, as if he shouldn't belong as well as feeling out of place. This lead to a hypothesis that hollow consume the souls of their victims, stealing the soul and instilling it in themselves, thus trapping another person not only as something they should not be, but as someone they should not be, a trully horrific possibility.