Page "Shadowrun" Paragraph 10

Characters in Shadowrun can be humans, orks, trolls, elves, dwarves, as well as certain diverging subspecies ( known as metavariants ) such as gnomes, giants, minotaurs, etc.

In the early days, when magic returned to the world, humans began to either change into, or give birth to elf and dwarf infants, a phenomenon called Unexplained Genetic Expression ( UGE ).

Later, some juvenile and adult humans " goblinized " into other races ( mostly orks, but also some trolls ).

The term " metahuman " is used either to refer to humanity as a whole, including all races, or to refer specifically to non-human races, depending on context.

With the return of Halley's Comet new human variants called " changelings " arose.

Two of the metahuman races have fictional languages.