The sun doesn’t rise and the stars don’t shine. Utter darkness encapsulates the surface world, broken only by a Scarlet Moon that illuminates a banquet of bloodshed for the deathless Tyrants roaming remnants of the Age of Indulgence. A black miasma pervades civilization’s ruins, rotting the lungs and deluding the mind, white carcasses strewn everywhere as monsters enjoy their immortality within this lifeless landscape.
The world had ended, God slain and its children slaughtered.
But humanity’s last clung on, persistently surviving deep underground, huddling in the darkness of caves, subsisting off subterranean lifeforms and finding comfort in what flames could be cultivated within. Small communities flourished into multi-level towns, held together by scaffolding, rudimentary tunnels becoming the foundation for an entire network. They survived, yet still, they were vermin, hiding in the shadows of their predators, their desperation for survival enough that entire towns would be quarantined if monsters sniffed it out.
It was a pitiful, cowardly, disgusting way of life, one that was nevertheless ‘accepted’.
Indeed, humans could not face the immortal Tyrants, the immortal monsters that exuded a flesh-decaying fog.
No, a different soul was required. One that was not satisfied with simply ‘living’. One that still held dreams in a world that was already dead. One that had an irresistible longing for the unattainable.
Wielding the vestiges of a dead God, consuming the might of the Tyrants they slay, they are the last amongst humanity that still choose to fight.
With Hope as their spark, Desire as their fuel, their flames chase away the darkness.
With God as their blade, Corruption as their strength, their fangs reach even the undying.
No matter how many times they die, their will shall not collapse.
They are Daybreakers, illuminators of a lightless world, incinerators of a sin-drenched present.
The ones that fight for a happy ending in a world seeking tragedy.
Vegetation had long disappeared from the world, leafy canopies replaced by the rustic remains of concrete buildings that have been skewered by massive obsidian spikes. Often, a heavy cloud cover obscures the stars, leaving nothing but a dreary, dark sky to look to, revolving from dim to pitch black. This darkness is broken only by the advent of the Scarlet Moon, the only celestial object that still easily asserts its presence upon the land. A terrible sight to behold, this disc of red sets the entire cloudscape afire, serving as a six hour period where the Tyrants are ‘fully’ awakened and active, rampaging and reveling in the destruction they can cause each other. For humans, the Scarlet Moon serves both as a friend and an enemy, being their warning to scurry back underground.
Rain, snow, and other heavy weather comes regularly upon the Ashen Lands, violent lightning coursing through the ever-present cloud cover, while torrential rains can both flood tunnels and fill reservoirs. For all the dangers that the surface world presents, there are nevertheless a few salvagers willing to risk it. Wearing gas masks of questionable quality, they brave the dangers of the environment and the presence of the Tyrants in order to get their hands on technology from a lost era. An ill-advised, but incredibly ludicrous profession, only the best survive without the aid of the Daybreakers.
Where men live alongside their buried dead, the Catacombs is a network of communities connected by tunnels, taking advantage of manmade and natural forming caves to create living spaces for them. Often situated close to an underwater lake or river, it isn’t uncommon for buildings to be stacked on top of each other in order to make space. Clay and stone are the most common building materials, though sheets of steel and canvas are similarly used. Most construction effort, however, is put on the reinforcement of the great gates that allow access to the tunnels. From deep moats that divert the flow of a rapid river in order to sweep away all that fall into it to massive gates that can collapse outwardly and completely block off a tunnel with the ensuring rubble, these serve as the only line of defense against any Tyrants that discover one of these tunnels.
While the majority of construction efforts are primitive, major cities can be found in what used to be large, underground shopping malls. Food is mainly gathered through carefully managing the population of fish within a lake, while a rare luminescent ore mined in certain towns allow for the growth of greenery underground, the few seeds scavenged from aboveground being incomparably valuable if they turn out to be edible. Outside of powerful individuals living within the Lastlights, underground metropolises that still have some degree of functioning technology, the towns of the Catacombs are bereft of any benefits lingering from the Era of Indulgence, homes lit up with torches or bioluminescent fish.
From skyscraping behemoths to the shadow of a small child, there is no rhyme or reason to the appearance of Tyrants, immortal monsters that have terrorized humanity for as long as anyone can remember. Their origin is unknown. Their physiology is extraordinarily varied. Their powers are innumerable. Even the weakest of Tyrants cannot be harmed by mortal hands, only buried or removed with traps that take immense amounts of manpower to set up, while the strongest of their kind have singlehandedly threatened the extinction of the human race with their colossal might.
For all that is unknown about the Tyrants, though, there are three things that are clear: their obsession with the eradication of humanity is reasonless, the strength of a Tyrant correlates with their intelligence, and, most importantly, they all exude a black mist from their body that spreads like a poison. Those that breathe in this debilitating fog will quickly collapse, their organs failing one by one before they die, flesh turning into ash a couple minutes afterwards. Even the usage of gas masks only delays the inevitable, a five minute death extended to ten to fifteen minutes. Only the flames of the Daybreakers can burn away the fog, and even then, that flame may not be enough to chase away the dark mist. It is this mist that makes it inconceivable for any sane human to seek cooperation with the Tyrants.
By their mere presence, life withers away.
It takes an unnatural soul to assimilate a vestige of a dead god, a soul that refuses death, a soul that yearns for the unattainable. The Daybreakers are the rare existences within the Ashen Lands that can still visualize a future, that still believe in the bottom of their hearts that their dreams will come true. Their motivations may differ from one another, and their heads may not be screwed on right, but for Daybreakers, their strength comes from their ability to continuously smash into the barriers that stand before them, an obstinate heart that refuses to give up. This willpower, this dedication, this desperate is what empowers the remnants of divinity that they house within their body.
Upon the invocation of their Epitaph, the keyword that fully awakens the vestige within them, their Cowl and their Crown, the garments and the weapons respectively, manifest, overwriting all else upon their body. The Cowl is an all-purpose armor, heaped with blessings that provide night vision, immunity to suffocation, and, most importantly, the ability to dull damage. The Crown, on the other hand, manifests as a weapon that aligns most accurately with the Daybreaker’s image of ‘power’. Whether it be a sword, a shield, or a gun, they are all invariably capable of being called to the Daybreaker’s side regardless of distance, and feel nigh-weightless in their hands. Furthermore, these Crowns are shrouded within a bright flame, burning in proportion to the strength of the Daybreaker. These flames are the only things capable of burning away and reversing the effects of a Tyrant’s black miasma.
But, most importantly, these flaming weapons are the only tools capable of suppressing the Corruption that dwells within the body of a Daybreaker and that enables the immortality of the Tyrants.
For all the blessings granted to the Daybreakers by their Cowl and Crown, however, they still must take a step further in order to match the incomprehensibly powerful Tyrants. The tools alone aren’t enough. To face them, what is needed is the power to match.
Thus, to truly slay a monster, they must become monsters.
Once the vestige is assimilated with their souls, the body of a Daybreaker is baptized in the Corruption extracted from the bodies of Tyrants. Through this exposure, their bodies undergo significant changes, becoming something no longer human. They too are immortal, possessing regenerative capabilities that allow them to come back even after being crushed to pulp or minced into tiny cubes. The blood that they bleed is endless, and they lose their need to eat or sleep, though both are still preferred when necessary. Beyond that, however, their physical bodies change as well, while many Daybreakers have encountered visions of a ‘demon’ that exists in their body. The physical strength that they possess becomes nothing short of superhuman, and the manifestation of a supernatural ability is to be expected.
The most frightening part, however, is the fact that the Daybreakers can, by giving away more of their humanity, increase their power further, using the protection of their divine vestiges in order to maintain their sanity. Most Daybreakers start off at 10% Corruption, but, as time passes, will incrementally increase that amount at the face of challenges they cannot surpass with their current strength. Once reaching 50%, most are no longer capable of deactivating their Cowl and Crown, for the constant presence of their cleansing flame is what keeps them sane. Once reaching 75%, only the most exceptional can still be sure that they are the same person they once were. At 90%, those that still maintain their identities as Daybreakers willingly banish themselves to the Ashen Lands, reveling in the god-like strength they’ve made theirs.
Past that threshold, no one knows. It’s commonly believed they too turn into Tyrants, devout to destruction.
Sometimes, the strength of demons and the might of your beliefs still isn’t enough to overcome the adversary before you. Sometimes, all you can do is pass your dream on to someone else. For Daybreakers, falling into despair is the same as death, as their Cowl and Crown lose their powers, Corruption eating away their mind and body.
And so, on the brink of despair, against a foe that they know they cannot defeat, there is a song that comes to the minds of all Daybreakers. A swan song woven from a tongue humans were not meant to understand. A password that unlocks the final power that can be granted by mixing divinity and corruption together.
Self Destruction.
Incineration is the last resort of all Daybreakers, a tenfold boost to their power that takes their lifeforce as a collateral, every remaining year in their lifespan converted into the tenth of a second, before, just like any other person poisoned by the Tyrant’s miasma, their bodies crumble to dust, leaving not a single trace of the person who was once there.
This is their prayer to the future that they believed in, the greatest symbol of trust they have to those who will come after them.
