[@The Jest] All good, I'll await your final decision.

I'm mulling over a few ideas but I'm leaning towards a member of an insectoid alien race. The pitch for the species is that they were a hive-minded species that were a threat to the established powers eons ago but were defeated when they were forced into a state of stasis (like the dormancy period of cicadas) by a powerful magical spell. Because there were too many insects to kill without risking waking them up again and the spell was effectively permanent anyway, the powers that be elected to let the insects sleep, forbidding anyone to travel to the insectoid homeworld and burying any pockets of insects still left in the galaxy. 

Since the hive mind connection is where the spell resides, some insects have managed to wake up by losing connection with that hivemind. Most are small groups of insects who develop mini-hive-minds and become raiders or bandits, but a select few, including my character, would be one of the more powerful "leader bugs", insects given a degree of self-awareness and sentience to allow them to function as commanders which over time allows them to subconsciously reject the hive mind and wake up with newly gifted sentience. 

Besides that I also had the fun idea that as opposed to cybernetics or magic, this species 'exceptional skills' would come from their ability to rapidly mutate (Think Kha'Zix from league of legends). Otherwise I'm waiting to hear from you. c: