These are humans whose genetic material was messed with by mages back in the days when the Mage Council was more active in trying to adapt the world to human life--the period when the mountains were raised around Sartor, etc.

Because the mages don't let their records out to anyone, there are many stories about how the color people came to be. The truth is that, aghast at the destruction caused by warring Venn (with their pale skin and hair) and Toarans (who were dark of skin and hair) the mages marked off a battling fleet of warships sent of slave-taking expeditions, the mages in a group created a massive enchantment that altered the DNA that controls pigmentation in humans. Color people are born with any bright color of skin, eyes, and hair; the colors appear randomly and can neither be predicted nor controlled. Nor do they mix. Body birth or Birth Spell make no difference. So a person with orange hair and red eyes could mate with someone with yellow skin, purple hair, and green eyes--and their offspring might be black-skinned (and this is a true black) with green hair and yellow eyes, or green-skinned with red hair and orange eyes.

Though long gone are the days when the Venn killed Color People on sight (because they could not determine if the persons were Toaran or Venn originally, and because it reminded them of abject defeat by a parcel of mages) Color People rarely go outside of Goerael; some have left, and tired of standing out among the uniform browns of the rest of the world, petitioned to have the Colors removed. If that happens, they understand they will never be accepted at home again. Also, though mages have studied the phenomenon carefully, sometimes the offspring revert to Color, and sometimes not.

The Mage Council has concluded that there might be interference here from the indigenous species, for whatever reasons.