THE OFFERING

"What I document here cost me everything - my standing in the Geneticist Order, my access to their libraries, and nearly my life when the Scarlet Watch came for me in the night. But the truth demands recording, even when it contradicts the sacred doctrine of parthenogenesis. The Demi-Mutants exist, they thrive, and they represent a path forward that my former sisters refuse to acknowledge. I have spent three years living among a scavenger tribe called the “Beast Clan” in the deep mud lands, documenting their communities, their struggles, and their remarkable adaptations. What follows challenges everything the pure-blood factions believe about humanity's future."

• Personal Notes from Sister Elena, former Geneticist Order researcher,
  written in exile, Day 12 of The Blooming Death, 124 AP

During my time infiltrating the Beast Clan and living among them in order to study them, I witnessed their most sacred and terrifying ritual - the Offering of Flesh. When a clone warrior reaches the decision that she wants to prove her ultimate devotion to the clan, she may choose to undergo a rite of passage that transforms her from mere scavenger into something approaching a fertility goddess within their savage hierarchy.

The ritual begins at dawn, when the chosen clones strip naked save for their breathing masks with their distinctive antlers - those horned facades that all Beast Clan members wear to disguise their shameful human features when venturing into the mud lands. The clan's philosophy runs deeper than mere survival; they aspire to transcend their human limitations and become one with the ecosystem that birthed the mutants. By donning masks and antlers that mimic the creatures of the wasteland, they symbolically shed their inferior human forms in favor of something more adapted to this transformed world. For the Offering, fellow clan members paint the volunteer's exposed body with white ritual markings that mark her as a living sacrifice to the mud itself, before she receives the shamans' blessing and ventures alone into the toxic wilderness:

Armed with nothing but a crude hand weapon - more symbolic than useful - the volunteers walk into the mud land, their naked bodies glistening with its painted on white patterns as they disappear into the toxic mist. They seeks the watering grounds of a pack of mutants, following their territorial markings and scent trails with skills learned through years of raids and survival. 

When they reach the mutant territory, the warriors separate, each seeking their own fate. Each warrior approaches her chosen mutant with carefully practiced gestures: arms spread out, head tilted back to expose the throat: body language communicating submission without fear.

Some mutants are purely bestial, their intelligence dimmed by generations of genetic drift. The warrior's submission is seen as weakness and her life extinguished, her flesh a sacrifice to the soil of the mud.

Another warrior encounters a mutant possessed by enough intelligence to recognise her offering, an impressive specimen whose muscles ripple beneath its skin which is thick and dark like cracked leather. His eyes, clouded with a primal intelligence, gleam with predatory hunger. The warriors kneels down, spread her arms and slightly tilts her head exposing her neck, her body language communicating submission without fear. Her movements, though seemingly yielding, hold an undercurrent of fierce determination.

The mutant circles the warrior, smelling her, his movements slow and deliberate. Recognising a compatible female, the mutant is assessing whether to mate, or to kill. Then, with a guttural groan, he lowers himself to her level. The mating between clone and mutant is neither gentle, nor violent, but possessed with a primal urge.

Afterwards, the clone finds her dead sister, honouring the ultimate sacrifice she has made for the Beast Clan.

When the warrior returns to the camp the next morning, the clan erupts in celebration, welcoming the new Life-bearer.

In the months that follow, the pregnant warrior is tended to by a dedicated servant, serving her every need, fulfilling her nutritional requirements and giving her emotional support,

The results of my infiltration defy easy categorization. Unlike their "Reborn" cousins - men transformed by the Reaper Agent who retained their intelligence - Demi-Mutants are born into their hybrid nature, their cellular structure incorporating the mutagen from conception. Their appearances vary wildly, even among siblings. Some bear only subtle marks of their heritage: eyes that glow faintly in darkness, skin with the texture of bark, or bones dense enough to deflect small-caliber rounds. Others display more dramatic adaptations - elongated limbs that grant surprising reach and leverage, natural ridged armor plating under their skin, or exaggerated muscular development.

Demi-Mutants represent more than genetic curiosity or an evolutionary dead-end - on the contrary, they embody adaptation in its purest form. They take the scattered pieces of humanity's shattered legacy and forge them into something new, something that might actually thrive in the world the Reaper Agent created.

The question is not whether Demi-Mutants will survive the Desolation, but how their ascendance will transform it. In a world obsessed with returning to some imagined purity of the past, they represent the promise of a future that has never existed - one where humanity's greatest strength comes not from what it preserves unchanged, but from what it becomes when forced to evolve.