Anachronos

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RACES

Mutants: The most numerous inhabitants of the badlands, mutants are a catch all term for the hardy survivor races and species, most humanoid, that have been adapted to the harsh new realm. They are usually, though not necessarily, tribal or clannish in outlook, and tend to be comfortable with a rough, simple existence. They tend to live in the moment and be quite straightforward.

● Mutants have approximately doubled strength. They deal much more damage in close combat (as well as being able to use larger weapons), and may carry crew-served weapons and the prodigious ammunition requirements easily.

● Mutants have natural armor, which is very effective against low-velocity attacks (swords, axes, claws, bites, arrows, spears, punches, etc.). This takes various forms, whether thick hides, furs, carapaces, extra-dense flesh, or an insensibility to pain. Beyond this, they often have access to primitive hide or forged metal plate armor, and the strength and endurance to wear it comfortably, giving them even better defense against primitive and/or mutated foes. They can take approximately double the number of damage most other characters can, even after this is considered.

● Their resilient biology grants them increased protection against toxins, disease, and bleeding out. They have powerful healing capabilities and require only the most crude of medical techniques to recover from even severe wounds. If toxins or infections imperil a mutant, it is almost certainly robotic in origin, custom tailored to eradicate mutants.

● They are scavengers and omnivores to the extreme, and may consume poisoned waters, long-decayed carcasses, and irradiated foods without harm. There are mutants who have adapted to nearly any form of energy collection; cannibalistic, photovoric, or even parasitic mutants have been sighted on occasion.

● Talented looters and tinkerers, mutants are incredibly adept at finding or crafting additional munitions, devices, and pieces of equipment, particularly that which is suited to their nature -- they receive extra rolls and bonuses to find and craft bullets, rockets, explosives, primitive weaponry, primitive armors, and automatic or heavy weaponry, and mechanical, non-electronic devices in general. Their memories are often encoded at the genetic level, and the child of a great mutant technologist may be able to "remember" how to build even relatively powerful weapon systems and use them without any understanding of the principles involved.

● They may further mutate throughout their lives, and often do in response to great perils and stressful events. They may unlock symbiotic generation, energy assimilation, biological assimilation, inborn technologist, new limb development, and new organ development abilities.

X Mutants do not fare well against powerful ballistic attacks. Mutants tend to be of large size or have irregular body forms that reduce the advantage they can receive from cover or ballistic armor. Their natural and primitive armor does not help much against high caliber, high velocity weapons fire.

X Mutants are susceptible to psionic trickery. Though not at all unintelligent, they exist in a world where survival requires a lack of doubt, snap decisions, and trusting their instincts, which makes it unfortunately easy to control them psychically.

X Mutant communities view psychics with a deep hatred due to the tendency to be enslaved by the mentalists, and view cyborgs and robots with a mixture of violent greed as well as hatred. Both mechanical races are infamous for their attempts to exterminate mutants, as unworthy and dangerous forms of life, but their forms can be looted. Mutants are often surprisingly friendly and tolerant towards both each other and humans -- an ogre-like humanoid mutant is unlikely to judge even a plant-like or blood-feeding mutant, and a mutant is likely to be deeply humbled by the presence of a human, as one of the precursor races. They may fight or kill other purely organic beings, but the mutant mindset is a world emptied of suffering -- it is their way to kill without question, but only out of necessity, and they likewise face death without angst, knowing they resisted it to their fullest.

Cyborgs: More machine than man, cyborgs dwell in hidden compounds and represent a technological attempt to adapt to a hostile world rather than a biological one. Cyborgs normally live in controlled subterranean environments watched over by AIs which provide for their every need -- including the need for direction. They can be easily mistaken as being emotionless, which is false -- they tend to have deep emotions they scarcely acknowledge.

● Cyborgs all possess mighty on-board power generators, batteries, and capacitors which afford them nearly limitless power. They favor high-energy ranged weapons for attacking, as they may recharge such after a battle, and some may even do so during a fight.

● Cyborgs all possess inherent ballistic armor, whether this be integrated combat plating or subdermal safety features varies. In addition, bullets were designed to kill beings mainly formed of water rather than of metal and plastic, and so even bullets that penetrate have little effect. This may be combined with ballistic or even power armor -- which they may charge with their inherent energy reserves.

● Cyborgs all possess basic energy field projectors, which tend to intercept high-velocity attacks. Low-velocity objects may pass the field relatively easy. They may upgrade these.

● Their biological parts are shielded from external contaminants and deadly radiations by their mechanical parts, which are in turn shielded by their defense fields. Atomic radiation, intense heat, and even EMP blasts have little effect on cyborgs.

● All cyborgs are provided with the nutrient slushes, powders, pellets, pastes, and gruels that is necessary to sustain both their meaty and metal portions. Their nanotech systems constantly rebuild their organic and inorganic portions, letting them heal from terrible wounds swiftly after taking damage, so long as these "food" items are available.

● The mind of a cyborg encompasses all the flexibility and creativity of a human brain, and all the power and precision of a futuristic computer. They may flawlessly perform incredible feats of mathematics, they have total recall whenever desired, the ability to purge unpleasant memories as well as the ability to exchange memories and sensory perception with allies. The meat and machine halves of a cyborg's mind can function independently or in tandem, rendering it impossible for telepathic attacks or hacking attempts to affect them. They may reject any negative sensory input and only experience pain when they desire it. They may increase subjective time to prolong pleasant moments or to give hours instead of seconds to deliberate strategic decisions and react instantly, or they may decrease it to turn the most mind-numbing tedium and drudgery into a passing diversion.

● The body of a cyborg is both meat and machine from the moment of conception. Sexual communion happens with both reproductive cells and nanites, and cybernetic and bionic systems grow in the fetus alongside the biological components. More than simply humans with prosthetic limbs, a cyborg merges flesh and machine on every level and it is impossible to separate one half from the other.

X Cyborgs are not built to be hardy survivors outside of their own controlled environments for long periods; strange foods can trigger terrible illnesses, and they cannot endure the pollution and impurity of the outside world forever. They lack the brutal killing instincts and physiques to thrive in melee combat.

X The AIs that rule cyborg communities have concluded that mutants are an intolerable threat to their constituents; they are unpredictable, violent, and biologically hazardous life forms that cannot be trusted. Psychics are viewed as incalculably perilous avatars of the Id, and not permitted into cyborg communities either, though for whatever reason the man-machine development invariably prohibits psychic development. Cyborgs of different communities are generally warmly accepted, and surviving humans are cherished as miraculous finds. Robots are considered to be malfunctioning pests, as they do not acknowledge the half-machine cyborgs to be human, while cyborgs do normally consider themselves to be humans.

Psychics: Their power is that of a god, their form is that of man, and their self-control is that of a child. Psychics have incredible mental powers that causes reality to conform to their desire. While a cyborg's mind is completely controlled, a psychic's mind is completely controlling.

● Alpha psychics dominate wills, create tempests of devastating telekinetic force, and bring displays of fire and chaos. They wear their power on their sleeve, and people begin to exhibit their personality traits and mannerisms when an alpha is nearby. Their wrath can crush tanks and demolish houses, but they can't not dominate the environment and those around them. Their presence is a violation to the wills of everyone they meet; their existence causes natural law to seem to be perverted with their presence. When they die, they tend to go out with a cataclysmic, vengeful explosion to obliterate those killers or those who seem to have betrayed them.

● Beta psychics manipulate emotions, probability, and forces. A beta psychic doesn't steal your will, but you feel like you can trust his suggestions utterly. A beta psychic doesn't destroy with psychic force, but his shots and attacks always hit at the right time and right moment. Things work out for him and his friends. Weird coincidences follow him everywhere. Killing them always creates worse problems than letting them live; when they die, their agenda always seems to work out as a result.

● Omega psychics are sucking voids and contradictions made flesh. They negate. They undo. They drift through the air as a negation of gravity, and kill with cold and darkness as the negation of all light and warmth. They are not as uncontrollable as alpha psychics and seek to contain the seething, hungry emptiness as long as they can, before lowering their barriers to let out the infection. They can fill victims with crippling negative emotion, or numb a person to all feeling, but they can't control minds to make them do what they want. They can smother the life from living things, extinguish fires and drain the motion from projectiles, but they can't bend a spoon. Death leaves their mental abilities unchanged, only now anchored to a stagnant corpse. They become intimately aware that it was better to be alive.

● Gatherings of psychics are even stranger than solitaries. An alpha who dominates a balanced community creates a gestalt mind that inhabits many bodies. An unbalanced community of alphas creates a wasteland of destructive force, or even tears a mass of land from the ground to drift through the sky. An omega who dominates a balanced community is nearly undetectable and typically forgotten, and those under his psychic dominion find a restraint and peace they thought impossible. An unbalanced community of omegas is a nihilistic realm of clutching stagnation where death cannot be found.

● Alphas may heal with a glance, betas cause probability and biology to conspire to bring a speedy recovery to themselves and others, and omegas may drain the life from others to sustain themselves.

● Psychics breed true. The child is never the same type of psychic as either parent.

X Psychics largely depend on active defenses to protect them against attacks; as such, surprise attacks are extremely deadly. Betas are capable of reacting to events before they happen, and cannot be surprised.

X Energy weapons may not be reacted to quickly enough to deflect, normally.

X Psychic communities tend to reject cyborgs and robots for their inability to have their thoughts monitored, and find mutants perfect to mind control.