Wow... okay I didn't get a chance to check back on this after my initial post yesterday, so my sincere thanks to you guys for all the great ideas!

Lethorian, I gotta say I really like your idea of us being summoned from another world entirely. That fits well for me as my most recent character is Tails of Vesperia themed, so I can have some fun coming up with her origin story using that.

I've already got a fairly convoluted concept for Riko, so I'll leave that more or less as is.

I also think the ideas of us being summons or created specifically by the Mother Crystal are interesting and worth considering as well. At least if I make a Doman (which is extremely likely once the race is revealed) I have being a refugee to fall on. It just would be nice to have an official Lore answer to this. I've posed the question in the Lore Panel thread, so we'll see what happens there.