Embedded Files
THE REAPING
The catastrophic event that brought humanity to the brink of extinction. The Reaping began when the YX-series enhancement protocol—Nyx's engineered agent targeting the Y-chromosome—spread beyond control. What was meant to create superhuman soldiers instead transformed billions of men into savage mutants. Cities fell as husbands, fathers, and sons mutated before their families' eyes, their humanity burned away as they became monstrosities. The mutagen spread with terrifying speed, turning the planet hostile to humans. For several years, it seemed humanity would be extinguished until the Prime AI began producing clone armies to fight back.
REBORN
In the wake of the Reaper Agent, not all infected men became mindless mutants. A rare few retained their higher cognitive functions despite physical transformation. These "Reborn" have bodies twisted and enhanced by mutation—muscles dense as steel cable, skin like organic armor plating, bones reinforced through mutation. Despite their monstrous appearance, they maintain human intelligence and can reproduce with human females. Prized as workers and warriors for their strength and endurance, they essentially embody what the super soldier programs of the Great Collapse attempted to create.
RED DRAGON AI
A mysterious digital entity said to inhabit the deepest layers of cyberspace in the neon-drenched streets of Neon. Some claim it's a fragment of a pre-Collapse defense network, others insist it's a new form of digital life born from the chaos of the old world's fall. Few hackers that encounter the Red Dragon survive—those hunted by it have their neural links to cyberspace overloaded and die in agony as powerful electric charges destroy their brain.
REEF DIVERS
The most daring hunters of Eden's treacherous coastlines, Reef Divers plunge into predator-infested waters to salvage treasures from the drowned cities that once lined the shore. These specialists descend through layers of crystal-clear shallows into the murky twilight zones where pre-Collapse skyscrapers lie entombed in coral and silt. The elite among them free-dive without equipment, their lungs expanded through years of training to hold air for up to seven minutes, their bodies adorned with ritual scarification that supposedly grants protection from the depths. Others use salvaged or handcrafted diving apparatus - patched wetsuits and cobbled-together oxygen systems that frequently malfunction with fatal consequences. What unites all Reef Divers is their unflinching courage in the face of constant peril. Mutated sharks circle in packs through flooded ruins, while tentacled horrors nest in submerged hiding places, and the very coral itself sometimes reaches out with paralytic tendrils. The most valuable prizes lie in the sealed vaults and preservation chambers of the dead cities - untouched medicine, functional technology, and pre-Collapse data cores. A single successful expedition can yield enough wealth to support an entire coastal village for months, but the profession's mortality rate is high. Those Reef Divers who survive past their third year gain near-mythical status in coastal communities, their bodies mapped with scars from close encounters, their minds carrying detailed mental maps of the ever-shifting underwater ruins. In the port markets of Eden, these veterans command the respect typically reserved for tribal chiefs and warlords. Those who have faced the crushing depths and returned with both treasures and breath, deserve no less.
RUST EATERS
The cult of Rust Eaters can mainly be found in the north-western regions of Kush. Born from the desperate practice of scraping rust off ancient machines to supplement mineral-poor diets, the Rust Eaters have transformed survival cannibalism into sacred communion, believing that the corroded remnants of the old world contain not just metallic nutrients but the accumulated wisdom of humanity's lost golden age. Their bodies serve as living testimonies to their faith, their flesh deliberately scarred and embedded with machine fragments, ritual piercings made from salvaged components, and the telltale metallic sheen to their skin that comes from years of consuming oxidized metal, their organs slowly failing as copper and iron deposits accumulate in vital tissues. Unlike typical scavengers who seek functional technology, the Rust Eaters perform elaborate pre-battle ceremonies, coating their bodies in oil and rust powder before launching ritualistic attacks on settlements, ignoring working equipment in favor of corroded machinery and ancient factory remains which they believe hold the concentrated essence of the ancestors' knowledge. Their most revered leaders are the "Living Machines", high priests whose decades of rust consumption have triggered actual metallic growths sprouting from their flesh like technological tumors, carefully shaped and maintained as they slowly transform into hybrid beings of meat and metal, their bodies unconsciously commanding dormant nanobots consumed alongside the corroded materials to reshape tissue into crude mechanical appendages. Most die from massive organ failure as their bodies literally rust from within, but followers view this deterioration not as poisoning but as ascension beyond mere humanity, each meal of metal shavings bringing them closer to becoming one with the mechanical gods they worship in their scrapyard temples, never understanding that their miraculous transformations stem from pre-Collapse technology rather than divine intervention.
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