Setting
A few decades into the future, humans on an alternate Earth perfect bioengineering and develop a process to infuse animal DNA into humans to create chimeras, which are treated as subhuman for a while despite their superior physical abilities, and biomods to enhance their capabilities. At some point, dragon fossils are discovered, and intact DNA is extracted, allowing for the production of Draconids, at first classified as just another form of chimera. Chimeras eventually rival humans in number, and start rioting to gain more rights, ultimately developing into a full-blown war after the chimeras carve out large areas of territory for themselves; in response, humans begin investing heavily into electronic and mechanical technology in order to keep up more efficiently. However, the Draconids shortly decide as a collective that they’re better than “the rabble”, declaring war on both humans and chimeras and acquiring substantial chunks of their own territory. Somewhere along the way, some insectoid exoskeletons are discovered, and a group of Draconid necromancers decide to resurrect them as minions; they are subsequently slaughtered, and a race of zombie insects begins spreading like wildfire through everyone’s territory, the threat coming to be known as the Husks. Thus, a four-way war is currently occurring, with a lukewarm sentiment between humans, chimeras, and Draconids only because the Husks represent a much more notable threat in their eyes.
Races
Humans - Baseline humans, similar to the real world. 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.
Chimeras - Humans modified with DNA from up to three other animals, becoming highly superhuman in the process. Prefer their natural weapons as a consequence of changes to mindset and their own strength, but are also likely to utilise biomods to further augment themselves.
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, but due to magical inclinations and extreme pride have a lot more mages than other races.
Husks - Extinct parasitic race resurrected as zombies; now spreading across the environment, killing people and using their corpses as hosts to create new Husks. Extremely variable external biology due to nature of infection, with insides converted into necrotic goo.
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, create human-animal hybrids with notably superhuman abilities, or generate biological technology to augment what is already possible. Artificial technology is about what you might expect from a few decades of advancement from modern standards - that is, massive interconnection, perfected cybernetic augmentations, high-quality AI (albeit with certain restrictions that keeps them from being truly sentient or as qualitatively intelligent as humans and other biological races 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. There are many reasons for this: many people simply lack the capacity to use magic under normal circumstances anyway, but adding on to this, a group called the Ordo Obscurum was keeping its existence under wraps until just a couple of decades ago, when internal conflict led to catastrophic devastation that the group could not hide, leading to the reveal of magic to the general public and the Ordo Obscurum's dissolution for want of purpose and loss of membership. As a consequence of this and other damaging events, magic has a reputation as a force primarily geared towards destructive rather than constructive purposes, and not without good reason, as many mages have noted substantial extra effort is needed to get magic to do most things beyond destroying objects. 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 recent example of such being the Draconid ritual that resurrected the Husks as undead creatures. Overall, the rate of magical use is around 1 in 100,000 amongst humans, chimeras, and Husks, but 1 in 1,000 amongst Draconids for reasons of hubris and innate magical power.
Dragons, and Draconid Similarities
Dragons were large creatures, with adults ranging anywhere from the height of a small house to that of a skyscraper in length alone, which are extinct in the modern age. Which is surprising to some, since based on analysis of their DNA, they were near-unique due to possessing native magical abilities not directly based on individual magical strength as in humans and other modern sapient races. Based on those semi-passive traits which have been passed on to their “heirs”, the Draconids, they were likely capable of flight in spite of the square-cube law, and could breath great quantities of magical energy as a sort of breath weapon, as dictated by scale colour. The colours and associated breath weapons, and so the types of modern Draconid, are as follows:
Red - Fire breath, wide cone. Scales range from dark red to bright crimson.
Blue - Ice breath, see above. Scales range from dark blue to icy turquoise.
Green - Acid breath, narrow cone. Scales range from very dark green to brightly acidic green.
Yellow - Lightning breath, narrow cone with slight redirection capacity. Scales range from dark gold to bright yellow.
Orange - Petrifying breath, narrow cone. Scales range from very dark orange to medium orange.
Purple - Hallucinogenic breath, wide cone. Scales range from dark purple to light purple.
White - Laser breath, directed beam. Scales range from cream to blindingly white.
Black - Necrotic breath, wide cone; very rarely variegates to disintegrative breath, directed beam. Scales range from coal to pitch black.
