TRIBES OF THE NORTH

"The vastness of Oyate defies my maps and measuring tools. Where the mud lands are chaos, here there is a pattern - a rhythm to survival I've never witnessed elsewhere. The Plains Tribes move with their Bison herds in migration cycles old as time itself, their warriors adorned with mutant-bone talismans that rattle when danger approaches. But it was in the mist-shrouded forests of the Northwest where I truly understood humility. The Shadowmist people don't just survive alongside the hybrids - they've become something new altogether. I watched initiates inhale the sacred spores, their eyes turning luminescent as forest and flesh merged in ways my notes can't properly describe. They moved through fog too toxic for me to breathe, communing with creatures that should have killed them. My guild master warned me not to romanticise what I saw, but how can I not? In Oyate, they haven't just adapted to desolation - they've transcended it."

• INX-394 "Inks," Apprentice Cartographer, Handelstaat, Day 9 of The Thaw, 124 AP

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 civilisation 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 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.

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 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.