Earth 6047: Homo Urbis

These names are all really bad Latin, I hope you know. Homo Urbis roughly translates to “man of the city.” But not really, probably.

Living in massive bunker complexes for hundreds of years is not a particularly pleasant prospect, so as soon as the engineers said there was a chance that you might possibly conceivably not sizzle and melt as soon as you stepped outside, many humans did. As expected, most of them did sizzle and melt, but as the fallout subsided, more and more of them seeped out of the massive tunnel complexes that had been dug before the nukes hit. This roughly corresponded with generations: people would raise a family and leave the bunker, while their conservative neighbors shook their heads in pity. Then, the children of the conservative neighbors would raise a family and leave. The core of the remaining populations dwindled to a paranoid, controlling few, and they never heard from anyone outside their concrete safehouses. The assumption was that everything was dead.

That changed when the descendants of the first humans to leave the bunkers returned, mutated horrifically, and tore the last few true homo sapiens into very small pieces, blind to the fact that they were finishing off the remnants of the greatest species Earth has ever seen.

Not all city-people are this degenerate. In fact, some of them retain a very similar shape to humanity. The reason for this is closely tied to their exodus history. The first humans to survive outside the bunkers were mutated to horrible, cannibalistic, skulking monsters within generations. The early waves have since descended into hideous depravity, sanctifying certain parts of the city and living nomadic, primitive lives, hunting each other and the mutant animals that trickle back into their cities. Their skin ranges anywhere from pitch black to dusky, mottled gray, and their eyes are usually ash-colored, with bloodshot, swirling irises. Random bone protrusions give them a sickening, tumorous appearance. They typically have quite sharp teeth, which are better for sinking into flesh. They’re quite unpleasant.

On the other hand, the later waves retain a very similar appearance to their extinct ancestors. They stand more or less upright, and their random cancers and bone protrusions are much rarer and less pronounced. Their skin has gone the other direction, often incredibly pale, and their eyes often have a washed-out grey or brown color, sometimes even fading to yellow. Rather than following a horrible, violent lifestyle, they have a simple animistic culture, revering the ruins around them as artifacts of a godlike predecessor civilization. They are not above armed conflict, however, and their better-preserved Homo Sapiens brains make them effective against their cannibalistic brethren. They are also incredibly xenophobic, and do not generally tolerate outsiders, for a good reason. Collectively, all generational waves of humans are known as Emergents.

The vast amount of scattering of the Homo Urbis population means that no two cities have quite the same breed of denizens. Also, given the unpredictable nature of fallout mutation, the populations are often extremely different, although individuals who differ too far from the normal appearance are either eaten or shunned and subsequently eaten. However, some measures have fallen into place to institute some degree of normality amongst the city-people. The most important is that most of the poorer parts of the world had no bunkers, and therefore most of the inhabitants of the then-third world either died or became desert-dwellers. Thus, only the rich American, Asian, European, and Australian nations had survivors, who tended to react to their survival in similar ways.

The habitat of the city-folk is one of devastation, darkness, and other good death metal lyrics, but nonetheless they have found some things to sanctify. Parts of the city that are understood to have served an important purpose are hailed as religious landmarks and either closed off or turned into Meccas of the post-nuclear era. Examples of these are the Reichstag in Germany, Buckingham Palace in Britain, The Basilica of St. Peter in Italy Capitol Hill in America and, ironically, Mecca itself. Some of them even serve as fortresses for the more powerful tribes. All of them are ruined, and their purposes have been contorted.

Important City-Dwellers

Seer Shasaan Iliseni Amatu is the most powerful of the city people in what was formerly known as New York City, and arguably the most powerful anywhere. His lineage is unknown, but he doesn’t seem to be as mutated as even the late waves. In fact, he is coldly intellectual and completely ruthless. He has snow-white skin, which almost seems to have a thin, gauzy film over it, and long, thin fingers and toes. His entire body has a spindly, spidery appearance, which is quite at odds with his extreme strength and dexterity. It has been suggested that he is a psychic, and it doesn’t seem too far from the truth.

When he was growing up, he was constantly at risk of violent death, and the only thing stopping his village from tossing him to the wolves was his unsettling aura. He emanated a calm, quiet sense of danger that was helped along by his near-muteness: he did not speak unless he absolutely needed to. As he grew, though, his position in the village was solidified, and he became a respected – if feared – member of the community.

Ultimately, he killed the village’s elder with his bare hands and took his place, and since then the small cluster of aged lofts that his people inhabited has been superseded by an empire that stretches through all of the land-covered boroughs of former New York and into the land that once was the Atlantic ocean off the coast. His ultimate goal is unknown, but his presence is felt all the way through the northeast coast of the former USA, especially since the cities effectively ceased to exist years before the war – the entire northeast coast had been one megacity by the time the nukes hit, and so now, from what was once Boston to the former city of Philadelphia his name is whispered among the civilized people in fear.

He has done several good things for the population, though. Most importantly, under his rule, the cannibalistic nomads have been brought to heel, and some have even fled to greener pastures. He rules from what he calls the Vigilant Sentinel, a massive, hollowed-out statue, scorched but intact, in the center of what was once New York’s harbor. It stares ominously out into the Atlantic and holds some kind of short weapon over its head, as if to strike at invaders over its dead sea.

Warlord Kassan Ai-Mantri Takesu is a shadowy man. His presence is a constant threat on the eastern Pacific coast, and his agents are everywhere, in the shadows or high off the ground. He is responsible for violently unifying the early Emergents in Japan, who had been mutated horribly and shunned, and transforming them into a deadly cohesive force. His silent, vicious army has eradicated all late-wave life in Tokyo and continues to work its way through the peninsula of Japan, which is covered in a ruined cityscape. His stated aim is to continue on into Korea and China, but sympathizers there are beginning to do his work for him – the attacks on late-wave Emergents have become much, much more vicious since he began to take power.

Unlike Seer Amatu, his crusade is not politically motivated – he is storming through the countryside on a personal vendetta. His aim is to eradicate all life that waited in the bunkers while his people were dying in the fallout; he considers them filthy backstabbing cowards.

Warlord Takesu is hideous. He has mottled black skin and one eye, and his flesh is rough and even scorched-looking in some places. He stands hunched, but he has no disadvantage in combat – it is less a hunch than a wolflike crouch, and he moves with a terrifying lithe grace despite his physical appearance. He is one of the few early-Emergents who dresses in anything heavier than rags – he wears ragged black robes, long but still utilitarian and more than flexible enough to deal with any threat, as well as a black mask. His appearance is almost similar to that of the Japanese shinobi of old.

He has an insanely devoted brand of followers, all of whom are totally committed to his cause. The late-Emergent tribes of the former cities of Beijing, Seoul, and the rest of the ruined Japanese megacity are in an uproar over his presence, and their cannibalistic counterparts look on this with glee as a chance to take back what they believe is rightfully theirs.

Okay, so there’s the city guys. Next are the water people. That will be nicer, I swear.

~ by pieboy on August 6, 2007.