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docs: Faction Lore Update (#3915)
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* Lore Update

Based on stuff posted on the Discord

* style(autofix.ci): automated formatting

* Add disclaimers

Will soon deal with once I have Old Guard lore hashed out

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Co-authored-by: autofix-ci[bot] <114827586+autofix-ci[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
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KheirFerrum and autofix-ci[bot] authored Jan 20, 2024
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Expand Up @@ -8,143 +8,30 @@ spoilers below!

:::

### Day -3

The nation goes to high alert. Reasons are sketchy. Rumours of an imminent attack abound. News media
briefly brings up stories of a few drug fueled maniacs attacking civilians, but they are quickly
buried under speculation on a possible invasion.

### Day -2

Speculation continues. There are rumours of a new street drug turning people into violent, brutal
killers. There are sightings of strange, large, aggressive insects in the woods, but no official
confirmation.

### Day -1

There are suspected reports that the killers may be under the influence of a biological attack
slowly creeping it’s way through the population, turning people into killers. Others dismiss these
rumours as nonsense. The government refuses to comment, saying they are investigating and looking
into things. A portal opens in a remote field in, but the government responds quickly and suppresses
information about the event.

### Day 0

The bombs drop. Many cities in New England are hit with high explosives. The klaxons that are
supposed to warn of an attack never sound, and the strikes appear to be precisely targeted, though
there isn’t much special about the areas they strike at first glance. In reality, several of the
smaller labs that scatter the area providing relays for the primary dimensional manipulation
experiments have experience gateways opening in the immediate area, and their machinery refusing to
shut down. Those inside have quickly been overwhelmed by extradimensional horrors. The strikes are
against labs that have been overrun, or where the resonator equipment is still functioning, and
locations believed to have opened portals. It is hoped the high energy yield of high explosives will
collapse the portals, or at least destroy the equipment that makes it possible for them to open. In
many cases, this works. In others, the strikes make things worse, changing how the portals work
instead.

From several of these strikes, the portals absorb the energy and create a larger, fluctuating rift
that allows noxious alien chemicals to billow forth in huge plumes. Those in the immediate area have
their skin blister, boil, and slough off, and the chemicals quickly enter the atmosphere. Other
areas have their portals turn into blistering infernos, or areas of extreme cold. It is hypothesized
by scientists in-the-know that disrupting the lab network has caused permanent dimensional weakness
and expanded our susceptibility not only to connections to the subprime plane, but also a number of
neighboring planes. This is all fairly meaningless to the average citizen, who is mostly under the
impression that life has turned into hell-on-earth.

Additional portals begin appearing around the world, even as the number of new portals in New
England steadily dwindles. Creatures from the surviving portals, those expanded or missed by the
bombs, begin venturing forth and slaughtering those they find. One portal expands violently, causing
an explosion that erupts a cloud of spores into the air before closing permanently. These spores
begin floating on the breeze, and several eventually find a home.

Finally, the klaxons sound, and a biological attack is announced. There is utter chaos, and many
mixed messages. The military is deployed to try to control the situation, and martial law is
declared. It is hard to ignore now that the dead rise again short afterward, and abominations roam
the streets. Many head to evac shelters and bunkers, others try to lock their doors and stay in
their homes. There is a huge migration of vehicles heading west.

As day turns to night, the first caustic rain occurs, returning the alien chemicals to earth at
great distances even as they continue to pour from the portal rifts. The deadly rain lasts for
almost 9 hours, killing most of those caught outside while evacuating.

### Day 1

Most of the monsters die off, seemingly only able to operate within a certain distance of the
portals, before the effects of the prime plane begin causing severe degeneration. Unfortunately, the
damage has largely been done. Worse, a few find the new plane perfectly comfortable, and begin to
expand aggressively, while others such as the ooze that causes the zombies adapt to find forms that
will let them expand beyond the range of their connection to another plane.

Those who are killed by monsters, rain, or any of the other new threats to appear raise as zombies,
and even zombies that are killed with bullets or normal weapons will raise again soon afterwards.

In an effort to combat the new threats of both large amounts of undead humans and various
otherworldly horrors, the automated security forces are quickly reprogrammed to behave much more
aggressively, killing threats instead of just trying to arrest them if they were supposed to, and
adopting a much wider view of what constitutes a threat. Unfortunately, this backfires - though they
do identify the undead as a threat, and in several cases successfully engage them, the new settings
also lead them to target the human “trespassers” running the security networks, and the networked
security systems identify almost any living human as a hostile threat to be eliminated. The larger
network itself collapses shortly afterwards, leaving no way to adjust the settings back, as each
security unit - police station, military turret, autonomous hunter vehicle - reverts to independent
control operating under the last instructions received

The nation declares a national disaster, and FEMA camps are setup and a large-scale evacuation
begins, even as reports of portals opening in other locations begin to reach official ears. The
evacuation camps prove to be deathtraps, attracting the attention of deadly creatures and the
security forces who view them as “illegal homeless encampments”.

### Day 2

National support is pulled out of New England, and the area is declared a lost cause as efforts
intensify to control the new appearances of portals throughout the rest of the US.

Acid rain occurs intermittently. The acid breaks down fairly quickly after it falls to earth, but
several portals remain open that pour the caustic material into the sky. Like a volcano, some
portals remain quiet for a while before letting forth a huge belch of a toxic cloud, while others
release a steady, uncomfortable trickle.

The first fungaloids are encountered by a small military patrol, and retreat to a nearby farmhouse
after one of the soldiers is killed by something erupting from the ground. They report the presence
of several large fungal growths, almost human height, and a haze that has settled over the area.
Fine powder seems to cover every surface within hours. By the end of the day, the spires will be
significantly larger, and the number of fungaloids surrounding the house grow endlessly in number .
The last reports from the soldiers indicate strange symptoms among the soldiers, and that fungal
growths from the engine are preventing their vehicle from starting. They are not heard from again.

Triffids, strange plant-like creatures that seem to build upon the existing root networks in local
forests, are seen growing in multiple places, having been dropped by Triffid seed-runners that
escaped through one or more portals. They quickly attune to the new landscape, and many regions of
forest begin slowly converting into triffid groves. The Triffids and Fungals seem to be related
somehow.

The giant insects begin spread as well, serving as a useful vessel for the goo, but maintaining many
of their primitive impulses. Construction begins on enormous hives, dens, and colonies.

The Netherum - whether zombies, flaming eyes, kreks or migo - can best be seen as individual
specialized cells in a larger organism, like a human being, sponge or (perhaps the best analogy) a
slime mold. The ooze that infects zombies is akin to a kind of netherum stem cell, and can
eventually take many forms. As with stem cells turning into specialized cells, though, more advanced
netherum creatures like the Migo no longer have the versatility of the basic slime and are locked
into their form.

Every basic component of Netherum contains the information for every possible Netherum creature,
but, just like with DNA, the information expressed depends on a variety of environmental stimulus -
including the proximity of a sufficient amount of nearby Netherum creatures of different types. This
is not the first time the triffids and the Netherum have encountered each other.

Initially large nether creatures died quite quickly in our world if they stay far from the energies
of a portal or other subprime access point. But some of them were able to adapt to our environment
to a certain extent and gained the ability to survive far away from portals. Still hostility of
Earth 's environment limits the spread of large nether creatures. So far, no reproduction or young
versions were observed. But no one knows how long this limitation holds.

On the other hand, the more distributed version of the netherum has quickly found its niche living
within the bodies of large native organisms, improving their odds of success in multiple passive
ways, and taking full control if the organisms life ceases to restart the organism’s basic functions
under the Netherum’s control. With a protective fleshy or carapacian shield between it and the
environment, the Netherum is able to comfortably persist in our world far from the portals.

There is more than one subprime plane. The Netherum comes from a more distant plane than the
triffids and fungals, and is part of why the triffids and fungals can survive in our reality more
reliably than the Netherum.
### Cataclysm

Many humans will remember the Cataclysm as a singular event, when the dead came to life and
unimaginable horrors took to the streets to pour death and carnage onto the Earth. However, it was
actually a fairly gradual process. Dimensional research, both by the United States and various other
nations, slowly weakened the dimensional walls separating our reality from the Nethereum, at least
on Earth. The effect of this was fairly gradual at first, with mutations becoming easier over time,
revivication near portals becoming faster and stronger, so slowly over the years that few even
noticed.

The tipping point however, was when XEDRA decided to open one of the largest portals of ever devised
by their minds in New England. This weakened the dimensional walls enough for it to shatter, letting
a deluge of both XE037 and it's associated energies into our reality. The proceeding event is what
is now known as the Cataclysm, as horrific portal storms and all the worst nightmares of a few dozen
realities flooded onto our world for several days. By the time the tides settled, the Nethereum and
ours finally reaching an equilibrium, the world had been devastated, governments had collapsed and
civilization as we knew it was destroyed.

The various portals throughout the world keep ours and the Nethereum connected, but this is not a
truly stable equilibrium. If the walls between our dimensions are not repaired, if not enough
portals are closed or stabilized, eventually the Earth will suffer a local dimensional collapse,
folding into itself like a used bandage to quarantine us and protect both the rest of our reality
and the Nethereum from further dimensional destruction. (Timeline unknown because if it's within a
lifetime I guarantee you some player will wait until that date just to make a bug report that
nothing happened.)

## More expansion to follow.
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