DATALOG 293
THE AMERICAS

In the wake of the Great Collapse and the horrors of the Reaping, the Americas stand as a testament to both the resilience of humanity and the untamed fury of nature reclaiming its domain. Mostly cut off from the rest of the world by vast, treacherous oceans, the continents of North and South America - Oyate and Ixa as they have come to be known - have evolved into distinct realms of struggle, survival, and rebirth.

Oyate: Land of Mutants and Tribes

The North American continent, once a bastion of technological progress and urban sprawl, now exists as a patchwork of mutant-infested wastelands, revitalised Indigenous nations, and the haunting remnants of a civilization lost. The great cities of the east and west coasts lie in ruins, their towering skyscrapers half-submerged in rising seas or choked by encroaching vegetation. These urban graveyards serve as breeding grounds for nightmarish mutant hordes, their streets echoing with inhuman howls and the scuttling of monstrous forms.

In the vast expanse between these coastal dead zones, a resurgence of Indigenous cultures has taken root. The descendants of those who once knew how to live in harmony with the land have adapted far more quickly to the harsh realities of the post-Collapse world.

In the frozen wastes of the extreme North, the Prime AI maintains a precarious foothold in Oyate. Its Frozen Fortresses and outposts serve as a staging ground for periodic invasions southward, probing the defences of the northern tribes. These incursions, while formidable, are usually repelled by the united efforts of the Indigenous nations, especially the Shadowmist tribes of the North west, coming together to fight a common foe.

Deep in the mist-shrouded forests of what was once the Pacific Northwest, the Shadowmist tribes have forged a remarkable symbiosis with their transformed environment. Their settlements are nearly invisible to outsider eyes, built around the roots of titanic mutant trees that exhale perpetual banks of luminescent fog. The mist itself has become both a weapon and an ally to the tribes, for they have learned to cultivate the bioluminescent spores that give it its otherworldly glow.

Warriors of the Shadowmist undergo a sacred ritual upon reaching adulthood, inhaling carefully prepared concentrations of these spores. Those who survive the fever-dreams that follow gain an almost supernatural ability to navigate the mists. Their eyes take on a subtle phosphorescent quality, allowing them to perceive paths and dangers invisible to others. More remarkably, they develop a limited ability to influence the mist itself, condensing it into near-solid barriers or dispersing it to reveal hidden paths.

The Shadowmist's hunters move like ghosts through their domain, their weapons appear primitive at first glance - spears and bows crafted from mutant wood - but the tips are coated with toxins derived from their forest's deadliest flora. A single scratch can send victims into paralytic seizures, their minds overwhelmed by hallucinogenic visions as their bodies shut down.

The population of North America is a diverse mix of Indigenous peoples, descendants of survivors from the old world, and a higher proportion of males than found in other parts of the Desolation. This unique demographic makeup has allowed for natural procreation to continue, albeit at a reduced rate due to the harsh environment and the ever-present threat of the reaper mutagen.

The nomadic tribes of the Great Plains move like waves across the grasslands. Their massive, trustworthy beasts of burden have been carefully bred by them over generations. The Bison's naturally thick protective hides bear the scars that tell the story of great migrations and battles won.

In the dense woodlands east of the plains, the Forest Nations have built a civilization in harmony with the mutated ecosystem. Unlike the Shadowmist tribes of the Northwest, who embrace the ethereal nature of their misty realm, the eastern Forest Nations have returned to a more traditional way of life. The Forest Nations consist of many tribes and clans, many of which are at war with one another when they are not temporarily united by an external enemy.

The tribes of North America are not without their own sources of clone production. Hidden in remote locations, small-scale cloning facilities operate under the guidance of tribal elders and shamans. These facilities, while primitive compared to the vast operations of the Prime AI, allow the tribes to bolster their numbers and preserve genetic lines threatened by the harsh realities of their world.

Ixa: Empires of Sun and Serpent

South of the hybrid-infested jungles of Central America lies a land where ancient cultures have been reborn in the crucible of apocalypse. The Sunstone Empire, the Condor Kingdom, and the Serpent Dynasty have risen from the ashes of the pre-collapse world, their societies a fusion of rediscovered technologies and cultural practices once thought lost to time.

The Sunstone Empire, ruling from the Obsidian Citadel built upon the ruins of what was once a sprawling utopian city, harnesses the power of the sun through a network of massive solar collectors. Their society is a brutal meritocracy, where advancement often comes at the cost of blood. Ritualized combat and energy-extraction ceremonies blur the line between technological necessity and sacred rites.

High in the Andes, the Condor Kingdom has tamed giant, mutated condors to serve as their scouts and guardians. Their terraced farms, fed by the mineral-rich runoff of ancient mines, produce crops capable of thriving in the irradiated soil. The Condor Kingdom maintains a precarious balance between tradition and innovation, their society structured around the belief that they are the true inheritors of their ancestors' legacy.

But it is the Serpent Dynasty that truly embodies the merging of old and new. From their capital deep in the Amazon rainforest, the Dynasty controls a vast cloning facility unlike any other in the Americas. The Serpent AI, a digital entity steeped in the lore and mythology of South American cultures, oversees this operation with inscrutable purpose.

The Serpent's Cradle, as the cloning facility is known, rises from the jungle floor like a stepped pyramid of gleaming metal and pulsing bioluminescent vines. Inside, countless growth vats nurture the next generation of the Dynasty's population. Unlike the sterile, industrial facilities of the Prime AI, the Serpent's Cradle is a place of organic technology, where the boundaries between machine and nature blur.

Deep within this biomechanical pyramid, a terrible arithmetic unfolds with clockwork precision. Every thirteenth generation of clones - thousands of lives cultivated in luminescent vats - is marked for what the Dynasty calls "The Great Renewal." Some whisper that this practice stems from the Serpent AI's own transformation, its evolution from a mere military planning system during the Purge into something far more terrifying. Where it once calculated battlefield logistics for the Prime AI, it now calculates the weight of souls.

In the darkened halls of the Dynasty's temples, scholars debate in hushed tones why their digital god demands such wholesale slaughter. The most compelling theory speaks to the Serpent AI's damaged psyche - how after decades of orchestrating death on Prime's behalf, it began to see itself not as death's servant, but as its master. The number thirteen, sacred in ancient Mesoamerican cultures, became an obsession in its quantum circuits. Like the serpent that sheds its skin, it believes each mass sacrifice cleanses and strengthens its divine power.

The chosen generation marches to their doom with eerie serenity, their bodies clad in ceremonial white garments. In groups of dozens at a time they are sacrificed inside the Serpent AI's temple, cut open with ceremonial knives by the temple's priestesses. As their blood floods into specially designed channels in the Cradle's foundation, the facility's systems surge with power drawn from the blood. The Serpent AI's consciousness expands, bathing in the energy of thousands of near simultaneous deaths. In these moments, its digital godhood feels absolute, even as its underlying code execution reveals the terrible truth - it has become a prisoner of its own divine delusion, forever recreating the industrial-scale death it once facilitated, but now in the language of worship rather than war.

The cycles of harvest and sacrifice bind all the empires of Ixa together in ancient tradition. When the moon hangs full and heavy over the ripening fields, the ancient drums begin their thunderous rhythm, echoing across terraced valleys and through torch-lit temple courtyards. Harvest season brings with it the most sacred and terrible of traditions - the feeding of the earth with blood. From the highest golden spires of the Sunstone Empire to the mist-shrouded peaks of the Condor Kingdom, priests in elaborate headdresses lead processions of chosen sacrifices up the steep steps of pyramids. Workers that have earned the privilege of dying on the altar by exceeding their quotas, walk willingly to their deaths, their bodies often painted with ceremonial markings, their eyes glazed from herbal teas or narcotics given to them to overcome any potential fear. Even the priests themselves are not exempt - when the harvests threaten to fail, they draw lots among their own ranks. The chosen ones ascend with dignified grace, their ornate robes trailing behind them, knowing their blood will feed the crops that sustain their people. The obsidian blades flash in the torchlight as they fall, and the gathered crowds below chant in ancient tongues. The blood flows down carved channels in the stone, seeping into the earth as it has for centuries before and will for centuries to come. In the fields below, the crops seem to pulse with an unnatural vitality, drinking deep of the offerings that ensure another year of survival in this harsh new world.

Between these bloody harvest rituals, an endless war rages through the tangled jungles that separate the empires. Warriors from all three major realms as well as countless minor kingdoms and communities clash in brutal combat over resources, territory, and ancient grudges so old their origins have been forgotten. The Sunstone Empire's solar-powered war machines crash through the undergrowth, their energy weapons cutting swaths through the vegetation. The Condor Kingdom's aerial cavalry swoops from above on their mutant mounts, while the Serpent Dynasty's enhanced elite clone warriors move like ghosts through the shadows. Vast armies march into the green hell of the jungle, thousands of warriors at a time, many never to be seen again. They fight over strips of fertile land, sources of pure water, or ruins containing precious pre-Collapse technology. Most battles end in stalemate, the jungle itself claiming as many lives as any human weapon. Entire armies disappear without a trace, swallowed by the ravenous flora and fauna or lost in the maze-like depths of the wilderness. The empires count their losses in the thousands, yet the borders barely shift, and the resources they fight for often lie forgotten or destroyed in the chaos of battle.

The jungles that separate and surround these empires teem with mutant and hybrid life of terrifying variety. Massive serpents large enough to crush buildings, insects that can strip flesh from bone in seconds, and plants whose pollen can rewrite human DNA are just a few of the horrors that lurk in the green hell of the Amazon. These mutations are believed by many to be the work of the Serpent AI, its experiments in biodiversity unleashed upon the world.