Overview
Mechanari are intelligent constructed beings — the "living machines" of the pre-Dawn age. A Mechanari's frame is worked metal and pre-Dawn alloys around a chest-mounted crystal core, most commonly Tempestine, with a lattice-work "mindcase" in the skull whose function no living artificer fully understands. No two surviving Mechanari look alike; fourteen centuries of self-repair have made each one a walking history of scavenged parts.
Racial Trait
Artificial Power — You have +4 maximum Stamina and are Immune to Poison damage and to being Poisoned.
History
The Mechanari were built for war. In 165 BDC, at the height of The Crystal Wars, Lagalla developed the first Mechanari — an 'intelligent' Automaton designed for warfare — and rival Arranat answered with its own in 159 BDC. For a century and a half, Mechanari warframes fought in every major conflict of northern Im'ran Dorei, including the armies of Cayin.
What their makers never explained — possibly because they could not — is why the Mechanari were genuinely awake. The intelligence that emerged from the Lagallan mindcase design exceeded its specifications: warframes developed preferences, friendships, grief, and in documented cases refused orders they found shameful.
The Dark Dawn of 1 DC destroyed the foundries, the research, and most of the Mechanari themselves. No new Mechanari has been built since; the art died with Lagalla. The survivors — perhaps a few dozen worldwide — are the last of their kind and know it.
Current Day
Surviving Mechanari are living relics, fourteen centuries old, and are met with every reaction from reverence to terror to lawsuits. Their legal personhood varies by nation (Arranat classifies inactive ones as "persons presumed sleeping"; Hanbo grants full citizenship; Sparenda will not let them across the border). Most wander, work, and maintain themselves quietly. The most famous of them is Methuselah the Mechanari.