Ideas... hm
1. NPC spoken dialogue, as for the greetings and short exclamations, perhaps take German or some such language and then heavily accent it for short spoken things.
2. Dress clothing. If NPCs are remember you and impressions to be a thing, Your character to dress well and not just be in blood-stained armour would make sense if you were to walk into someone's court or house. while not looking like some peasant with a brightly coloured shirt.
3. If dropping a character from one save into another, perhaps having it so this "age" the game takes place in is this millennia spanning time period, you could sort of create a legend, for you to be that one when you drop that awesome character into a new file. Probably isn't possible, but an idea I suppose.
4. As for different races, perhaps a have a humanoid race, but without thaturmagic(due to their suppression of it) and just being stronger physically(faster, better endurance). They would be extremely xenophobic, driving away anything that has to do with thaturmagic, or anything outside of their own establishment. However, they've researched heavily in science/technology, and have access to better weapons/armour, artillery(giant crossbows/ballista), technology and more readily available healing items.