I have activated lots and lots of witches and kept in touch with many of them afterwards, and I haven't seen any patterns in personality change over time that make sense to attribute to soulbonding to relics. All it does is let you summon and dismiss them the same way you would mothergifts--that's this thing over here. She makes an Academic-aligned ranked-magic star light up. 

Hmm. I'll think about it.

He's much more drawn to the blue star, though. He hesitates, remembers Penelope's assurance that everything here is reversible until the final commitment, and tentatively selects it.

The next ring of stars is, once he touches it, races he can be. There are nine of them in total. 

Neutral - basically still human, but with some physical boosts. Recharges by sleeping.
Gnome - a four-inch-tall tinkerer of mad scientific proportions. Recharges by making stuff.
Gemini - imagine you fork, and then you and your fork are each other's HDM daemons, and also slightly Crystal Gems. Recharges by staying in sync with yourself.
Pixie - tiny little plant-related fae person with plant powers and leafy wings. Recharges from the blooming of associated flowers.
Lamia - Naga snakewoman. Recharges by vore. 
Aurai - so an Aurai has a normal speaking voice that steals lifespan from anyone who hears, and a scream that sends people back in time until and unless they find the magic escape butterfly. Recharges from the timeline not changing from people being sent back in time even though it really should. 
Wither - horrible constantly decomposing undead that repairs damage to themself via cannibalism and recharges via ambient decay.
Spider - magic sentient giant spider. Recharges through bondage.
Hollow - spirit bound to a suit of magic armor. Recharges by "eating" ore. 

...that is all... a lot. That is all just very. Okay, crossing everything that recharges by harming people off the list immediately, that leaves Neutral, Gnome, Gemini, Pixie, Spider, and Hollow. (You could make a case for Wither technically not recharging by harming people, but he would rather not make that case, actually.)

He attempts to investigate each of these in more depth, starting with Neutral.

Neutral witches age past maturity at about half the rate of mundane humans, and do so more gracefully, in general; their bodies also don't randomly trip over entropy and fuck up the way human bodies do that leads to cancer and dying of an air bubble in your brain and developing globs of fat in weird places and getting diabetes. 

(If he inspects it very carefully, there is a link to another star that mostly does not otherwise seem to exist.)

And can he follow that link and inspect what it refers to?

It's an upgrade of the Neutral witch type. Upgraded Neutrals can pick a second class's power-gain method (though not any of the other advantages of that class) and use that as well as their actual class's type, and get 20% spell resistance. 

Certainly interesting. He moves on to look at Gnome, keeping an eye out for another elusive extra link.

Gnomes are, despite being smaller than most adult humans' hands, about as strong as a normal-sized five year old, and also nearly immune to blunt force trauma. 

There is another elusive extra link! This one is much more expensive, but allows a gnome to invent devices to replicate forms of magic the gnome doesn't have. 

What a spectacular prize! He's definitely making a mental note to come back to this one. Though it would be very odd to be four inches tall. More odd than being a woman, though, or less? It's hard to say, having never tried either.

Now, the next was... Gemini?

Each half of a Gemini has an associated gemstone. 90% of your body mass is composed of your gemstone, including your hair, but not including your skin, although you can have arbitrary gemstone protrusions that act more like teeth or horns than like any human experience of non-tooth bone sticking out of your skin. Gemini all have an Earth affinity, but each half also has a second affinity linked to their gemstone. 

The Gemini bonus-star costs the same as the Neutral one, and it lets you swap places between your individual instances, either body-swapping or teleporting, and have a mental link, ranging from basic empathy up to full-blown telepathy. 

Hmmm. Interesting constraints, interesting possibilities. He's not sure he wants to go for it, but if he does, it definitely sounds like the bonus-star will be worthwhile.

How about Pixie?

Pixies are even tinier than Gnomes, at about an inch tall. They can have insectile wings, or wings shaped like any leaf that exists. Pixies can turn into any flower that they personally planted which has bloomed since, and can magically breed hybrids of any two flowering plants. When slain, they respawn within the bloom of one of their planted flowers. Pixies draw mana from the blooming of A) the same flowers-they-planted that they use for transforming and respawning, or B) any other flower that they have slept inside. 

The pixie bonus star, which is slightly cheaper than the Neutral or Gemini ones, allows a pixie to flap their wings to produce pixiedust, which can be used to boss animals around, make flowers bloom Right Now, or induce sleep in sapient beings. 

"I have... questions... about what it means to turn into a flower..."

"Well, you can turn into a flowering plant, more than just the flower itself."

"I'm not sure that quite addresses my question but thank you. I'll inquire further if Pixie makes the shortlist."

Moving on: Spider?

Spider witches are about hand-sized, produce up to a foot per minute of silk, which varies in thickness by spider from about a fortieth of an inch in diameter to about a quarter, but the median is about a twelfth. Spiders age at the same rate as humans but can rejuvenate themselves by spinning a cocoon and chilling in it for forty-eight hours (these are not spent conscious and bored). 

Spiders parthenogenically lay eggs that hatch non-sapient spiders, any of which the witch can body-jack if they die. 

The spider bonus star lets the spider: 

-Become very small

-Become very large, reaching a height of about four feet tall, in which form they get a bundle of goodies including:
--Extra-strength exoskeleton
--Go ZOOM 
--Can produce webbing as thick as steel cable and launch it about a hundred feet. 
--Can produce really thin webbing that is very difficult to see and will easily slice through flesh and bone

-Learn Arachnescence, which is not generally available. 

"Is there a reason why so many of my options are so small?? Is this normal? Are most witches tiny?"

"Most witches are not tiny, but also it's probably not a coincidence--you probably had a witch ancestor who was tiny and had recent ancestors who were lots of tiny things."

"I suppose that makes sense."

So, Hollow?

Hollows: Not tiny! Or, one could be tiny, but they aren't by default. 

Hollows are natively incorporeal beings who bond to suits of armor. The armor is totally non-biological, but the spirit does have some biological processes, having to eat spirit matter and having the ability to reproduce with other spirits. The Hollow bonus star allows them to actively replace the material of their armor with other metal, including special magic metals like Mythril. 

What an interesting way to live one's life.

But he should be thinking about the practicalities. The Gnome is certainly the most personally compelling option, and also has the most exciting prize; however, some of the others can cheat death, which sounds like in the long run it will turn out to be very important. The Pixie and Spider seem to have the best methods but the Gemini's would still help.

"I don't suppose there's any way to become more than one of these at once...?" he wonders. It definitely doesn't sound like, say, the Hollow could feasibly be combined with any of the rest, nor is he sure what it would look like to be simultaneously a spider and a plant, but he's torn enough that it seems worth asking, just in case.

"Oh, sure! It costs points, but there's a bit of wild magic," something in the farther echelons lights up, "that lets you combine two things. You can take it twice to be a chimera. You can only have one set of racial affinities, though."

You can take it twice, presumably for three total components though there's an off chance it might add up to four? Colour him intrigued. Best to be cautious about the implications, though.

"How does being multiple things at once work out in practice? Is it likely to weaken any of the advantages of the individual components?"

"No, it's just the affinities. And I suppose it depends on what things one is a hybrid of--siren and aurai both have magic voices such that having both would be less convenient than having one or the other. Generally you end up with a combination of the physical attributes of each type, so I suppose that might be considered a 'weakening of advantage' if you found one or another body type especially appealing...it's possible to guide how that shakes out to some extent, when you're starting out human, but not indefinitely."