Hello, Logan!
About the cover: It's very different than the others, but I let myself experiment with it since it's a beta manual, not the actual rulebook. Being completely honest with you, I don't like the style of the old books looking back, of everything. I think it's bland, cheesy and unoriginal. I want Elegy to have a vibe that's more of its own, and that's why I'm experimenting with different colors and references, as well as a different "flavor" of text (and currently writing actual flavor text). The actual visual style of the rulebook as a whole will likely look kinda like this but not exactly like this. It's all experimentation.
About factions for different creatures, it's nice to know someone would like that. I actually had that idea but it happened at a point when the current manual was almost ready and I just wanted to get it done lol