Setting Overview
The year is 2041. Humans on an alternate Earth have advanced well beyond modern standards, and in the process practically perfected bioengineering: ways of altering a person’s very DNA have been developed, improving them as people, but also providing the option to infuse them with modified animal DNA to further enhance their abilities. Naturally, because humans are fractious enough as it is, this has resulted in a large-scale war between humans and their chimera cousins, something only up-scaled by the existence of magic, a rare and dangerous phenomenon, as well as the discovery of the fossils of dragons, and the subsequent creation of Draconids, a subset of chimeras with great power, but also great pride. This war has been violent and continuous for but a couple of years, and much life has been lost in the process. And the recent plague of zombified insects threatening to engulf the planet certainly doesn’t help.
Races
Humans - Baseline humans, similar to the real world. They tend to work with a lot of technology, up to and including exoskeletons akin to power armour and reasonably advanced AI, to keep up with the extremely superhuman chimeras. The bionetics they possess are comparatively weak, as unaltered human biology cannot effectively handle more heavily integrated biomods.
Chimeras - Humans modified with DNA from up to three other animals, becoming highly superhuman in the process, complete with various physiological changes over a few days spent comatose in a specialised medical pod, ranging from fur growth to changes in various aspects of body structure, up to and including increases in height and mass when DNA from particularly large creatures is involved. They prefer their natural weapons as a consequence of changes to mindset and their own physical abilities, but are also likely to utilise bionetic mods to further augment themselves. Chimera physiology is much more varied and difficult for cybernetics to properly integrate with compared to human physiology, and many chimeras believe that biomods and their native abilities can replicate most artificial benefits anyway.
Draconids - Humans modified with dragon DNA, an extinct race almost unique for certain magical properties. They all possess wings capable of magically-assisted flight, and magic-based breath weapons corresponding to the type of dragon they acquired DNA from. They are very physically powerful, typically growing to two meters or more in height if they weren't so tall already during an alteration process that can last a week or more for various reasons, as well as gaining a great deal of muscle mass and highly durable scales, but due to magical inclinations and extreme pride have a lot more mages than other races on top of this. They are only rarely seen with either cybernetics or bionetics, as both seem to interact poorly with their biology unless specifically designed.
Husks - An extinct insectoid race resurrected as zombies which are now spreading across the environment, killing people and using their corpses as hosts to create new Husks. When not hunting, they generally live in wide-spanning hives led by the most powerful mage of the hive, or Monarch, which in turn maintain a certain degree of intra-hive competition in the form of duels for leadership, and inter-hive competition through attempts to absorb another hive’s Husks non-lethally. They possess an extremely variable external exoskeleton and similarly-varied innate abilities due to the nature of the infection process, with their insides uniformly converted into necrotic goo which is essentially injected into a corpse to begin the process of Husk conversion, but they evidently lack access to cybernetics and bionetics alike.
Timeline
Early history - Nameless magical prodigy rises to prominence, turns himself effectively undead in order to live forever, and subjugates the majority of lesser mages in the world at the time. Deciding magic is too powerful to allow its users to dominate society, the self-proclaimed Lord of Silence forges the group that would later organise and reorganise into the Ordo Obscurum, with the goal of hiding magic from those who fear its use.
Recorded history to ~1940s onward - Majority of history progresses as normal, with Ordo Obscurum doing what it can to cloak the existence of magic from the world; minor failures in its task often lead to supernatural stories, or at worst events such as the Salem Witch Hunts. In the mid-20th century, genetic experiments within Germany’s National Socialist Party progress far farther than in the real world, kickstarting a revolution in the field of biology and genetics that allows it to maintain pace with more artificial technology, to the point that, for instance, anti-aging technology becomes available around the year 2000 A.D.
1960-2025 - Rapidly-increasing human population results in the mage population rapidly expanding, with the Ordo Obscurum finding it more and more difficult to keep tabs on every mage. In the early to mid 2020’s, multiple magical incidents occur, and with the advances of the internet, rumours about “a secret magic cult” rapidly become more and more popular.
2025-26 - The source of the prior incidents is revealed as a splinter group of the Ordo Obscurum, deliberately naming themselves the Illuminati after the secret society, who promptly attempt to cull the non-magical population of many cities around the world “to make the human race stronger”. Multiple battles involving mages ensue, and the Lord of Silence ultimately sacrifices himself in something akin to a nuclear blast to destroy the Illuminati entirely. With magic well and truly revealed to the world, and amidst much political upset, the Ordo Obscurum officially disbands, though some remnants remain in the shadows of society as minor groups doing a variety of tasks.
2027-2031 - Genetic modification advances well beyond the standards of the real world, and a process is developed that allows human genes to be modified in just about every cell of the body at once. In civilised societies, disability and mental illness drop to their lowest levels in known history, whilst traits like intelligence and physical ability skyrocket. Similarly, cybernetics and artificial intelligence improve enough that it begins to factor heavily into everyday life, though even before now it has infringed upon nominally-human jobs, warping capitalism to the point that a new system is required and in many places implemented. In particular, a large augmentation company is discovered by one of its rivals to be placing backdoors into cybernetic human augmentations, ruining the former and allowing the latter to come into prominence.
2032 - Experiments are performed involving the fusion of animal DNA into human cells, modified to try and amplify the most useful traits in an effort to stay ahead of AI advancements. Despite early difficulties, they are eventually figured out, and the first chimeras are created, the technology eventually becoming reasonably widespread in more liberal countries.
2032-36 - Political manipulation and comparisons of chimeras to magic, which by now has been cemented as a potentially-useful-yet-profoundly-dangerous resource, eventually incites many nations with the power to do so to limit chimera rights and utilise artificial means to force chimeras into less palatable jobs in spite of protests against this treatment. Less civilised nations respond by suddenly appropriating gene-modifying technology in order to mass-produce chimeras for these purposes; as a result, person trafficking reaches an all-time high, uncomfortably so for the more civilised nations. The Nordic countries pointedly maintain equal rights for both humans and chimeras, whilst Japan and many associated East Asian countries uphold chimeras as beloved icons of a sort, though most of these eventually normalise as citizens equivalent to humans.
2033 - Gene mod techniques further advance, and the first bionetic enhancements begin to be produced. Replacements for body parts and organs had been achieved some time ago, but more esoteric alterations such as bioelectricity generators and actual double joints are now viable. This is particularly notable for chimeras, who generally have far more robust constitutions than humans, and so can handle much greater bionetic integration than humans.
2034 - Through fluke and magical detection methods, the first dragon fossil is discovered. In spite of carbon dating suggesting it is many millions of years old, well beyond anything resembling the human genome, fully intact DNA is discovered, sequenced, and promptly integrated into human subjects. The results are the first dragon-based chimeras, who would eventually become known as the Draconids.
2034-36 - Additional dragon fossils are discovered and their DNA sequenced over time, with differing DNA structures resulting in different scale colours and breath weapons. It is also discovered that Draconids are far harder to control than most other chimeras, due to a combination of very great strength and durability, passive magical effects including breath weapons and almost-free flight, and an unexpected element of unwillingness to bow to many methods of suppression. Therefore, pure Draconid mutation soon becomes more of a commodity than other forms of chimerism, largely limited to already-rich individuals whose own proud mindsets compound on top of the influence of dragon DNA. Theories abound as to how intelligent dragons were whilst still alive, as well as what caused them to go extinct so long ago.
2036 - By this time, bionetics focus almost entirely on chimeras, including both direct biomods and extremely potent drugs that would kill most humans with even minor doses, with human bionetics generally ignored in favour of cybernetic methods of self-enhancement, e.g. robotic limbs and powered exoskeletons. Oddly, theorised as being due to their passive magical affinity, Draconids have issues integrating with either unless any given Draconid has specific designs for integration into themselves.
2037-39 - Chimera population begins to approach that of human population, and riots begin to become commonplace in chimeric labour camps. Ultimately, under the guidance and coordination of a cadre of Draconid generals, a massive worldwide civil war is instigated in 2039, called the Uprising by chimeras, the Insurrection by humans, and even World War III by certain doomsayers, but either way devolving into a practical race war between humans and chimeras in spite of efforts to negotiate on both sides. Population drops heavily in many locations, and in many countries, chimeras are eventually successful in acquiring control of government assets and/or driving out human natives, amplifying migration to those areas where chimeras were unsuccessful in these efforts and promptly exterminated. Additionally, some chimeras find homes in areas that humans would consider difficult to live in, most notably the central areas of Australia and a large swathe of the Amazon rainforest. Worldwide economic drops occur, but eventually stabilise at tolerable levels.
2039-40 - Even before the initial civil wars between humans and chimeras end, many Draconid leaders begin imposing tyrannical restrictions upon incumbent chimera populations, pointedly raising Draconid civilians above their would-be equals in terms of rights and, frequently, social status. Most chimeras make note of this, and being that they have not only been in fighting mode for a while, but are well-acquainted with oppression and are aware that the Draconids are largely outnumbered, promptly rebel against their former leaders and drive them out of most locations, though the majority of remaining Draconids eventually congregate in a fairly large area of land covering a large swathe of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Western Russia, defending their land bitterly against both humans and chimeras, who in turn continue to war against one another over border territories.
2040 - Draconids run a focused bombing campaign against chimeric territory within the Amazon rainforest, destroying great quantities of both life and land, the latter of which is promptly occupied by Draconids, with terraforming beginning almost immediately. Shortly into this process, deep caves are discovered containing oversized mummified carapaces of what would seem to be ancient insectoid creatures; a cadre of Draconid mages is given instruction to resurrect these entities as minions for the Draconids in a large scale necromantic ritual. The creatures return to a form of life, slaughter those present in short order, and begin spreading outward into the rainforest in all directions, slaying any life they come across and converting their corpses into new members, up to and including sentients.
2041 - The Husks now control more than 50% of South America simply for sheer weight of numbers, and are spreading in all directions - chimeras in the far South of the continent struggle to repel the undead creatures, the humans in North and Central America are doing what they can to fight them off and try to reclaim lost territory, and great numbers of Husks cross the oceans to begin infestation of Africa and Eastern Asia, even going so far as to make attempts to invade Draconid-held territory. War between humans, chimeras, and Draconids has slowed somewhat, though not stopped entirely, in light of the rising threat that the Husks represent, with bombing runs against their hives proving unsuccessful so far. Even though the few people who have encountered them on peaceful terms describe them as intelligent enough to at least utilise recognisable symbology to communicate, if not language proper, most seem to be single-minded in their goal of expanding their race, which requires dead bodies to transform into more Husks, which in turn requires other living beings to die.
Current Territories
The nature of the Uprising/Insurrection was such that the areas most heavily occupied by chimeras at the time were also the areas whose human rights were sorely lacking to begin with. As a result, it is primarily countries and continents that were more economically developed at the time that not only held fewer enslaved chimeras, but had more firepower to put them down with, including the entirety of North America and the majority of Western Europe. By contrast, many nations which encouraged vast use of chimeric slave labour have been largely purged of human inhabitants, including many countries in South America and Africa, as well as a great number of territories (though notably not all of them) across the Asian continent and the various smaller countries of Australasia.
By contrast, the areas held by the Draconids and Husks are comparatively small thus far. After being ousted from most other areas, the Draconids deliberately concentrated their numbers in the Middle East and surrounding areas, and consequently succeeded in overpowering both the local humans and chimeras, who are now treated as second-class citizens at best in these places. The Husks, meanwhile, currently hold control over “only” the Northern half of South America, but are very densely packed, and are quickly expanding the territory they hold (without trying, some might argue) by sheer weight of the numbers acquired from the Amazon rainforest and their own method of reproduction by what amounts to conversion of former opponents.
Naturally, most of these areas lacking in Husks have at least some members of other races present in some form, be it a human researching for a documentary on chimera culture (a semi-misnomer, since chimeras are still roughly human as far as culture goes aside from the use of bionetics over cybernetics), a Draconid entrepreneur seeking to get rich in lands with fewer other Draconids to interfere, or a chimera who avoided expulsion from human-occupied territory for whatever reason, be it lack of involvement in the matter or hiding out as part of a terrorist cell. However, some countries- the exceptions- are habitats for more even populations of humans and chimeras alike, for good or ill.
Human - North America (North of Nicaragua), Western Europe (West of Western Poland)
Chimera - South America (South of Amazon rainforest), Africa (Western borders threatened by Husks), Asia (excluding most of East Asia), Australasia (excluding Australia)
Draconid - Eastern Europe (East of central Czech Republic, excluding Italy), Middle East (entirety), Western Russia (West of Siberia)
Husk - North America (South of Honduras, spreading North) South America (North-West of Brazil and Northwards, spreading South), West Africa and East Asia (attempting to spread inland)
Cohabitation - Nordic countries (humans, chimeras, and Draconids have consistently shared equal rights throughout recent history), Japan (chimeras were initially considered icons rather than slaves, and now share relatively equal rights, including many chimera celebrities), Korea (successful rebellion against North Korean government by humans and chimeras, followed by Korea merging back into a single nation under former South Korean government, wherein humans and chimeras share equal rights), most East Asian countries (mostly similar reasons to Japan), Australia (uneasy truce: humans continue to inhabit major cities and regional areas along country’s coastline, adapted chimeras primarily occupy larger but more hazardous remote Australia as well as Alice Springs and the surrounding land, with agreement to not attack cross-country travellers regardless of race), China and Indian subcontinent (due to exceptionally large populations and schizophrenic technology access based on social class, sub-wars between humans, chimeras, and some Draconids persist in both areas, spilling into one another at borders)
Notable Organisations
Branson Mechanics Ltd. - The current largest cybernetics corporation in the world, after discovering and preventing an attempt to control great numbers of cybernetically-augmented humans by another hardware and software company some years ago. Founded and headed by the human David Branson, who keeps up a good public image as a philanthropist and tries to innovate with new cybernetic options as often as he can. A rare few people accuse him of being involved in dubiously-legal activities, and are generally branded as conspiracy theorists at best for their efforts.
Geneshaper Industries - Originally founded as The Elegant Chimera’s High Society Club, with many such club locations still active in chimera and even Draconid territory, the company branched out into bionetics in order to curb and replace illegal biomod installation occurring in their locations, and swiftly became one of the largest bionetics companies in the game under chimera CEO Scarlet Jones.
The White Furies - A chimera gang, seemingly an evolution from or replacement for the Russian mafiya, which is involved very heavily in people trafficking and illegal biomods, amongst other such activities. The leader’s identity isn’t well known, but rumours abound that the group has some unidentified connection to Geneshaper Industries, something which the company’s CEO denies wholeheartedly whenever it is suggested. Those seeking to insult them often refer to them as the White Furries, though many who do so publicly are often noted as vanishing without trace at a later date.
The Splendent Brood - To Draconids, the Splendent Brood reads as basically a military organisation with religious reasons for their actions against other races. To humans and chimeras, they are recognised more as a combination of a personality cult and a terrorist group alike to those of the early 2000’s. In any case, their leader Lucia Platinous claims to be the avatar of the true mother of dragonkind, the deific Platinum Dragon, and constantly advertises the Brood within Draconid society to try and acquire yet more loyal servants for the cause. Members of the Brood are known to have undergone “rebirth” rituals in “dragon egg” chambers, which coat their scales in what visually resembles various metals, beginning with iron neophytes, followed by the ranks of bronze clerics, silver priests, and gold high priests, up to the platinum avatar Lucia herself, all accompanied by mandatory last name changes (to Ferrous, Cuprous, Argentous, Aurous, and Platinous respectively) and strongly recommended first name changes. Though weak at the initial rank, the scales of each rank are known to possess increasingly powerful defensive and energy-absorbing capabilities, irrespective of the properties of their specific metals.
Moderates - Most Husk hives are unimportant by Husk standards not due to their size, but because they tend to be very similar to one another, with only 1 in 20000 or so having any drive beyond expanding the species. A particular hive in Panama near the Costa Rica border, officially dubbed Hive 21 and unofficially known as the Moderates, is therefore notable for a 50% or higher population of “sentient” Husks, and a consequently much smarter approach to the goal of constant race expansion - namely, greater willingness to actually interact and engage in diplomacy with non-Husks, but also the idea that most such creatures will eventually be contained in what may as well be farms to produce new Husks from, thus avoiding stagnation in Husk growth; a few other hives that initially formed near civilised areas are also beginning to show similar traits of this sort, though none so prolifically as 21. Sometimes ironically called the Considerates by naysayers, since their end goal is technically more considerate to both the Husks and the other sapient races than those of their brethren hives.
Technology
Biotech is a lot more powerful than in the real world, developing roughly in tandem with standard IRL technology, and it is possible to modify a being’s DNA on a massive scale to, for instance, alter a person’s gender, replace a lost limb with a bionetic alternative, create human-animal hybrids with notably superhuman abilities, or generate biological technology to augment what is already possible. The latter developments are known as biomods, a distinct subset of the scientific field of bionetics (though the terms are often considered interchangeable), and to some extent act as improvements to already-existing biological developments, for instance powerful acid cannons, fangs or stingers to inject potent toxins, or skin-altering camouflage bordering on invisibility.
Artificial technology is about what might be expected from a few decades of advancement from modern standards - that is, massive interconnection, perfected cybernetic augmentations up to and including synthetic human tissue indistinguishable from biological tissue to the human eye, high-quality AI (albeit with certain restrictions that keeps them from being truly sentient or as qualitatively intelligent as humans for the time being, though there may be extremely rare exceptions), and overall greater sophistication, in particular many advances in offensive and defensive technology derived from wartime conditions, though the latter two are mostly concentrated in human territories.
Magic
Magic exists in this setting, and though it is prevalent in the world, it is very rarely used. Partially, this is because not everyone has the capacity to use magic in the first place; this is further exacerbated by the reputation it has as a force primarily geared towards destructive rather than constructive purposes, and not without good reason. Notably, most mages are not all that powerful, having about the destructive capacity on their own of between a pistol and a few pounds of high explosive - very dangerous on a personal level even with modern technology, but not exactly W.M.Ds, and even those few with more power than this tend to max out well before the greatest known evokers of history, capable of obliterating an entire city at a time. One city. This is perhaps for the best: beyond a certain threshold, magic tends more and more toward twisting to purposes that actively detriment the user, with a modern example of such being the Draconid ritual that resurrected the Husks as undead creatures. Overall, the rate of magical use is around 1 in 1,000,000 amongst humans, chimeras, and Husks, but 1 in 1,000 amongst Draconids for reasons of innate magical power as well as the general hubris to assume they won’t screw up whilst using it.
Due to the limitations of magic, there are various things it cannot do: energy conservation cannot be violated by use of magic, though whatever magic is composed of seems to provide the energy for any spell used or ritual performed regardless; it cannot have an absolutely unstoppable effect, such as dealing infinite damage or immunity to a particular form of damage; it cannot operate in terms of abstract concepts or information, for instance by manipulating an abstract concept to "steal" it or damaging a person by attacking their shadow; and magical effects cannot be created at a target location, but must travel from a source such as a mage to the target in question. There are also certain effects magic is limited in terms of: stronger mages and magically-enchanted objects are more resistant to magic in general; any given spell must be capable of manipulating all of the elements involved in its immediate effects, making it near-impossible for mages to directly alter a person's bodily structure or many alloys and compounds of the time period (such as those involved in creating cybernetics) due to the complexity that such spells would require; time manipulation seems to be essentially impossible, whilst space manipulation such as the creation of wormholes, teleportation, and intangibility is possible for some stronger mages but nonetheless extremely difficult.
Sign-Up Form
Name: Your character’s name. Nicknames, titles, and the like can also be included here.
Race: Human, chimera, Draconid, or Husk.
Age: Anti-aging and age reversing techniques mean that characters can be a lot older than they appear. For reasonable purposes, however, assume age reversal proper wasn’t an option at all until around the turn of the millenium (and then only in comparatively rich countries for a while after that), and apply ages accordingly.
Gender: No longer are human beings (and chimeras and Draconids) confined to just male and female as physical genders. Your character could also be both, or neither, or something in between, or figure out the logistics of doing something weird to your body that has off the wall results. Or you could play as a Husk and not have to think too hard about all that.
Appearance: What your character looks like, ideally as text rather than an image, though both is also acceptable. This should be self-explanatory - aside from cyber- or bionetic alternations, humans look human, chimeras look somewhat like bipedal animals (variable depending on which animals are merged into your DNA), and Draconids look like bipedal lizards with horns and wings. Husks are highly variable in external appearance, but for the most part appear to consist of an arthropodal exoskeleton filled with necrotic goo, and generally possess something resembling an ovipositor for corpse conversion purposes.
Personality: How your character acts, including hobbies, likes and dislikes, allegiances on both a personal and professional level, sexual and/or romantic orientations if relevant, and so on. As a general rule, chimeras tend to have their personalities tinted by the animals they have merged with, with Draconids in particular inheriting a prideful streak almost universally. Husks often share this personality tinting depending on the converted creature, and may even retain memories from that creature if they develop more personality than the drive to kill the living and convert the dead, but they are generally somewhat sociopathic, in particular lacking empathy toward other forms of life, as they generally need to kill others to turn them into more Husks; in the case of player characters, having them be as single-minded about this goal as most other Husks may not be advisable.
Biography: Your character’s history up to the present day, including how recent events have affected your character and where they are at the moment. Try not to be overly edgy, make sure your character’s biography justifies their personality, and if possible, attempt to coordinate your starting area so that at least one other player character is nearby.
Skills and Innate Abilities: What your character is technically skilled in, e.g. chess, cooking, singing, or any given style of combat, as well as any innate abilities they may possess that surpass human norms. Magic falls into this category, as do the various facets of a chimera’s superhuman physique, the passive magical abilities innate to Draconids, and essentially all abilities of any given Husk; unless they are exceptionally strong, agile, intelligent, or etcetera, humans lack “innate abilities” in this sense, though they are nonetheless as capable of mastering a skill (be that sooner or later) as any other sapient being.
Cybernetics: Artificial modifications to your character, such as replacement limbs or integrated body armour, to produce superhuman abilities such as enhanced strength or greater range of motion. These are mostly used by humans - chimeras have difficulty utilising cybernetics not built for their physiques, Draconid bodies actively reject most modifications without a bespoke design for the particular individual, and Husks lack access to these body modification processes.
Bionetics: Biological alterations to your character, ranging from DNA-level alterations to replacement limbs, as well as biomods to produce superhuman abilities such as venom injection or a form of active camouflage. These are mostly used by chimeras - humans cannot survive integration with most biomods powerful enough to be useful against other races, Draconid bodies actively reject most modifications without a bespoke design for the particular individual, and Husks lack access to these body modification processes.
Inventory: Other items on your character, be they sentimental trinkets or highly-advanced equipment that your character didn’t want integrated directly as a cybernetic. As examples, an inventory item could be a handheld infrared scanner, a locket belonging to a loved one, or a combat-enhancing pill of some sort.
Other: Is there anything else you want to discuss about your character that hasn’t been mentioned above? Mention it here.
Once you're at least started on making a sheet, I'll invite you into the Skype chat via PM.
