A Scattered Worlds race which flourished c. 220 million BCE in a globular cluster far below the Galactic Plane. At their peak, the Folk commanded an empire that nearly encompassed the entire globular cluster, and lasted for nearly 10 million years..
The Folk were space-dwellers, evolved in the chaotic cometary shells of stars near the center of the globular cluster. There, where stars were at an average separation of a third of a parsec or less, the intensity of radiation drove evolution at enormous speed.
Individually, the Folk were large, hundreds of kilometers across. They were very long-lived, and had means of propulsion that allowed them to move from star to star. By choosing the level of cosmic ray flux in which they reproduced, the Folk had some control over how much their offspring would diverge from the parent's form.