Humans
The humans of New Horizon are more versatile than ever before. Back on Earth, they were divided into two separate races: normal humans and those who received robotic implants. When humans reached New Horizon, a third race was added to the mix: DNA manipulated humans, mixed with the unique fauna of their new home. These three distinct races co-exist as best they can, but their differences have been the cause of many fights and arguments.
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Becoming a Promethean or Medean
All human characters start out as olympians when they are born, no character is born a medean, even if both parents are medean themselves, and obviously nobody is born with implants. Due to medical advancements and both natural and forced 'filtering' of the gene pool, severe birth defects and other unwanted abnormalities are a true rarity, and can be at least treated, if not cured. Rare is the case that newborns and young children need implants or medean transformations to survive.
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Thus, in almost every case, a human character will have had at least a mostly Olympian childhood. Their lives start to branch when they enter their teenage and young adult years, and choices are made, either done willingly, or out of desperation.
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The choice to become a promethean or medean is never made lightly. Humans at one time were nearly wiped off the earth, due to disease and their own penchant for killing one another. During their recovery, they began breeding out what they considered weaker genes. Eventually, they viewed themselves as superior to their previous incarnations. Thus in the minds of most early olympians, pure humans are as perfect as it gets. This mindset is still common in many areas and clings in the back of many olympians' minds even when they believe themselves tolerant. This taints the relationship between olympians and the two races descended from them. Relations between the races have improved lately, but things can and do become testy from time to time.
The heirs of Homo Sapiens
Olympians
• Proper Name: Olympian Human.
• Slang Names: Progenitor, makers,
• Derogatory: Apes, monkeys, meat, meat bags, breeders,
• Height Range: 1.52 to 1.95 meter (females), 1.71 to 2.07 meter (males).
• Weight Range: 45 to 100 kg (females), 65 to 125 kg (males).
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Olympian humans, or simply olympians, are the most recognizable of the races, despite their differences from humans of the past. For most intents and purposes, they are humans. What separates olympians from modern day humans is hundreds of years of medical advancement and changes in lifestyle. Olympians are stronger, faster and smarter than the humans of the 21st century. They are more resilient to cuts and bruises, and much more resilient – almost immune, in fact – to most common earthly diseases. Olympian humans can go without food, drink or sleep for longer periods than what was possible for previous humans. They also live longer, in general close to 150 years, as their cellular breakdown process has been slowed down drastically.
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Origin
In the early 21st century, mankind tried to destroy itself. The sabotage of clean energy production by many who stood to profit led to what would become known as the Subsistence War. The full military might of the world turned toward this war, bringing to bear vast numbers of soldiers, and all the power of the atom. Over the course of more than a decade, this massive world war saw many nations destroyed, and the rest left limping. Large tracts of land were left as blasted irradiated landscapes, and the mutated diseases of wartime lurked in the shadows.
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Even after a rudimentary peace was formed, it took many years for the effects of the war to begin to reverse. This reversal would never have happened if not for the development of a deuterium based cold fusion. With clean and abundant energy now available, fighting over energy resources ceased. Mankind was left to clean up a world that they had nearly destroyed. Technology and medicine began to advance once more. Science and biology became the pillars which supported the newly developing world order. The survivors of the Subsistence War spent the next fifty years slowly restoring the world and rebuilding civilization. A decade later, they developed wafans.
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Within a quarter of a century of creating their sister race, humanity found themselves at war with them. Physically outmatched by their synthetic counterparts, and having to contend with mutated diseases recently released from the uncovered ruins of the last war, mankind began to look for an answer. While many turned towards attempts at peace, there were those who sought answers in biology. Scientists focused on new medical advancements, trying to strengthen the human species. The rapid spread and mutation of disease was their first hurdle. Dedicated research would eventually see the human immune system strengthened to fight off such plagues, curtailing the massive deaths that were so common.
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The human body was made more durable. Their muscles were strengthened. Their lungs became more efficient at drawing oxygen, even from depleted environments, and their bodies utilized it more effectively. Their digestive systems became increasingly adept at drawing even the tiniest amount of nutrition from any source. Overall, their bodies and minds were strengthened to deal with harsher environments. The improvements to the human genome were administered to the population through gene therapy and special screenings. After years of forced evolution, mankind began to look back and compare themselves to what they had been. They realized that they were no longer simply homo sapiens. They considered themselves superior in every way. In order to differentiate themselves from the previous generations, they adopted the name olympians.
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Appearance
The different racial features of humanity are still found among olympians, but centuries of interracial marriage and genetic engineering means that the typical olympian exhibits an appearance of highly mixed ancestry. Hair and eye color still runs the gamut of those that were around during the 22nd century, and genetic engineering has included a few more shades that were not commonly seen, but are not so far different as to be distracting. These include darker and lighter shades of the standard colors, as well as modified versions that produce new shades. Among the new colors is a modified brown eye gene that lowers the green balance causing the eyes to appear slightly red. Yellow and various shades of green are now seen as often as most other colors. As far as hair goes, the standard is still various shades of black, brown, red and blond, yet there is also a shade of white beginning to make an appearance that is similar in color to a pearl.
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OLYMPIAN TRAITS
It’s hard to make generalizations about olympians, but your olympian character has these traits.
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Ability Score Increase. Your ability scores each increase by 1.
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Size. Your size is Medium.
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Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
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Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.
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The paragons of pariahdom
Prometheans
• Proper Name: Promethean cyborg.
• Slang Names: Augments, cyborgs.
• Derogatory: Canned meat, retread, chopjobs.
• Height Range: 1.52 to 1.95 meter (females), 1.71 to 2.07 meter (males).
• Weight Range: 65 to 175 kg (females), 80 to 200 kg (males).
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During war, or even sometimes by accident, an olympian human loses a limb or becomes nearly fatally wounded. In such an event, the promethean implantation process is one of the few options.
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This is a process where, more often than not, vital organs of the human are merged with advanced technology. During this process, advanced electronics are embedded into living tissue, merged on a cellular level with protein interactions and neuron signals. This extremely advanced engineering process is tailor-made for each individual, since no two individuals are completely identical. The promethean implantation process cannot be performed on medeans since a medean’s chemical and biological processes are totally unknown and differ for each individual. The promethean implantation process is therefore only performed on olympian humans.
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Prometheans as found on New Horizon are born from advances in prosthetics on Earth. Early cybernetics dealt mostly with replacing lost limbs or replacing the function of a failed organ. During the wars that ravaged Earth after the creation of wafans, cybernetics attempted to turn subjects into the perfect weapon. This was the time promethean technology was perfected.
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While there are plenty of civilian grade cybernetics designed solely for replacing some lost body function, prometheans have a hard time shaking off the reputation of the killer cyborg. Olympians often view prometheans with a mixture of fear, due to their power, and disgust, due to the weakness that the cybernetics overcame. Sadly, if given the choice, many prometheans would gladly have remained purely ‘olympian’. A large number of prometheans are those who were caught up in some fighting or disaster and lost a limb. The issue is one of cost, cloning a limb and replacing it takes a lot of time and more money than most individuals will ever see. The added fact that most insurance companies will not pay for cloning leaves victims of such circumstance in a tricky position. Many of these individuals turn to a much cheaper cybernetic replacement.
The result? While some welcome the added power and abilities that their new limbs give, to most it’s a curse. Family and friends, particularly if they are conservative or have a negative view of cyborgs, tend to back off and become distant. Many relationships are strained or lost altogether, leaving the promethean to fade from common society. Thus the fate of a promethean is that of eternal isolation, with most of olympian society frowning on them and the other races neither supportive or antagonistic, they tend to fall down the social ladder, or move in with the more accepting wafan cultures. Added to the mix oftentimes are the drugs that keep the body from fighting the implants. These drugs often cause aggression in humans as well as a weakened immune system. To many outsiders, prometheans are little more than aggressive animals. This is due in part to the drugs, and to the warlike image of many of the first prometheans, as well as a large number of them coming from military or mercenary backgrounds.
Characters becoming prometheans can play out more or less in two ways. The first option is that a player might decide to create a promethean from the start. Most characters beginning as prometheans have already adjusted to the strain and torment of losing family and friends, and to the stigma of living as an outcast. In this case they have likely already accepted their life and are simply trying to make the best of it.
The second option is that a character may somehow lose a limb or suffer some other traumatic injury during the course of gameplay. The player can then choose to purchase the appropriate cybernetics, thereby turning the character into a promethean. In this case, the character would be experiencing the promethean lifestyle for the first time.
An olympian appearance can still be maintained through the appropriate implants, partially helping the promethean to better integrate back into society. Things are often easier for a promethean when outsiders believe that they are still olympian.
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Promethean cyborgs are not actually a distinct race, but are rather a modification of baseline olympian humans who have chosen to have their bodies altered with cybernetic components either to correct disfigurement or mutilation, or to improve their own physical performance. ‘Cyborgs’ existed as early as the 20th century, with the advent of technologies like the pacemaker, but what we call prometheans did not appear until much later in history, and were actually an offshoot of the wafan war for independence.
At the height of the war, wafans had made substantial inroads into toppling the human world government, but humans were beginning to hold their own, and use their unpredictable nature to very slowly push back.
The current wafan leader, an aesir dubbed ‘Caligula’ by his former human masters, decided to use the humans’ own unpredictable creativity against them. Seeking the finest genetic specimens the human race had to offer, a trial and error process of surgical amputation and grafting produced many failures and unacceptable candidates before the ‘rictus exoroid’ project reached fruition with the subject designated as ‘Grenzenlos Ritter’. Grenzenlos Ritter was a cyborg whose base human form had a massive frame, well developed muscles, advanced cognitive abilities as well as the rare genetic condition called photographic memory and physical feat.
This allowed the finished subject not just to remember anything he saw with perfect accuracy, but also to mimic any physical feat he had witnessed with a high degree of accuracy. Memory wiped and brainwashed, he was put to use in combat. His human limbs, spinal cord and many organs and bones were either replaced or reinforced to create a specimen with strength drastically superior to an ordinary human (and most wafans) as well as impressive durability. However, instead of bringing a decisive end to the war, over the next few years the war escalated to heights previously unequaled at any point in history. This was brought about by the unexpected escape of a previous specimen, Tier Ritter, a new faction specifically forged to replace wafans and humans as the dominant race, making them subservient to a race that Tier believed had both of their strengths and none of their weaknesses.
Eventually Tier and Gren killed each other, putting an end to Tier’s plans. However, the legacy of cyborg technology remained. Cyborgs as extensive as Grenzenlos (known to history as ‘Gren’) were too expensive and too powerful to be mass produced, as, excepting all but the most powerful and skilled wafan and humans, they were virtual gods on the battlefield.
Those who later received the ‘fire of the gods’, as it has been dubbed since, were far less advanced in overall modification. They were named prometheans, and despite having no direct connection to the grim horrors of all too well remembered war, they find themselves shunned even to this very day, centuries later.
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PROMETHEAN TRAITS
Prometheans vary from having only minor cybernetic modifications to having their entire body replaced. Prometheans with limited augmentation can be played using the base olympian traits. Those with heavier modifications might use the traits of a wafan. The traits given below are for a promethean who is lightly cybernetically modified.
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Ability Score Increase. Your strength or constitution score increases by 2.
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Size. Your size is Medium.
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Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
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Skills. You gain proficiency in any combination of two skills or tools. These tools might be incorporated into your cybernetics, or a standard set.
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Cybernetics. you gain one cybernetics feat
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Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.
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The new genetic aristocracy
Medeans
• Proper Name: Medean human.
• Slang Names: Trow, spliced, fae.
• Derogatory: Flea bags, fuzz buckets, pixies, elves, fairies, mutants.
• Height Range: 1.46 to 2.19 meter (females), 1.52 to 2.29 meter (males).
• Weight Range: Substantial variation (normally between 45 and 150 kg).
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Medeans are a young race that came into existence after the colonization of New Chania. Using a special substance called medea, they are able to transform themselves with the DNA of the local fauna. The transformation is almost always done willingly by someone trying to better themselves or reach some goal. However, those seeking to replace lost limbs or senses may also strongly consider the option.
During the transformation into a medean, a chemical and biological chain-process occurs on a cellular level, changing everything from the human’s DNA, genes and chromosomes to protein interactions and biological pathways. The process is extremely complicated and the absolute outcome cannot be predicted since over a hundred thousand proteins exist which are merged, split or transformed in billions upon billions of different possible ways.
Because of this, no two medeans are truly alike. However, certain traits have proven to be very stable and are carried over to the olympian when he or she goes through the medean Splicing process. These more stable traits have been developed into certain helices which offer specific traits for the new medean. Examples of such traits are flight, tissue regeneration and night vision. The medean transformation process takes a huge toll on the individual. After each treatment, a week of recovery time is required before the subject can function normally.
A full month of acclimation is required before more helices can be added. As such, individuals prefer to make as many changes as possible at one time, to lessen the period of recovery from multiple procedures. The medean transformation process can be reversed, but it’s usually prohibitively expensive.
In a vast majority of the cases, a medean transformation is overseen by a member of the medean hierarchy. In fact, aside from black market splicings, an individual is only granted access to medean splicing once they have proven themselves. This process ensures that those who enter proper medean society are individuals who will complement and work within the society for its betterment. This also ensures that those who are chosen have a home with like minded people. This does have the noticeable effect of severely limiting the ‘proper’ medean population world wide, and also limiting its influence on the world as a whole.
It is not uncommon for small settlements in the Walk of Man, and similarly isolated areas, to never see a medean. Medeans are most commonly found in New Chania, as the Tulgey Woods holds the key to their transformation, as well as the seat of their civilization. Those medeans seen outside of this civilization are often individuals who received black market splicings from some second rate doctor. Some go this route out of desperation and lack of funds, while others look for such splicings after being rejected by the medean hierarchy.
Black market splicings only require the cash to buy them, and someone with the skill to implement them. These splicings are nearly always sub-par in quality, having many negative traits along with the advertised positive one. That is the catch to the whole process; it’s expensive, and risky.
It does not help that many cheaper versions of medean Traits have almost as many disadvantages if not more, than the advantages. Characters may start the game as a medean, or become one later on by paying for the procedure. When starting as a medean, it is important to determine where the modifications came from. If they acquired black market helices, there are likely going to be flaws and downsides. Medeans who were chosen by the hierarchy are less likely to have any such flaws in their makeup. Alternately, a character can become a medean through gameplay. They still have to acquire the helices either through black market means, or by proving themselves worthy of being indoctrinated into medean civilization.
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Origin
Of all the mysteries of New Horizon, its ancient ruins and its bizarre life forms, there is one feature entirely alien to this world, more so by far than even its human visitors, the Tulgey Woods. This lush, verdant fungal paradise is believed to have been introduced to the planet sometime roughly five hundred years past. Arriving by means of a celestial impact, the life forms have slowly expanded outward ever since. The transplanted life has converted a large portion of the enormous island of New Chania into a lush but toxic alien paradise teeming with exotic plants and animals beyond anything seen either on Earth or New Horizon.
Due to the highly caustic nature of the wood’s spores exploration has proven very difficult. However in 2442, a team of olympians and aesir, using a new prototype exploration suit, was able to delve several miles into the interior of the massive fungal dome and make the discovery of the century. They found a species of deadly gravity-defying predatory jellyfish.
While unremarkable for what they were in and of themselves, these creatures were significant for what they could bring about. These deadly jellies seemed to come in an almost infinite number of variations, including adaptations which were simply not normal for any jellyfish-like species. These included large stingers, claws for their tendrils, armor plating, camouflage, the ability to spit poison and any number of other bizarre traits.
The most commonly assimilated trait seemed to be some sort of powerful paralytic poison, earning them the name “Gorgons”. A careful study of the creatures showed that they were all born roughly identical, but then changed at some point in their maturation, when they stalked other predators and took a large sample of their flesh. They would then cocoon themselves for a period of a month. Once they emerged from the cocoon they appeared to have incorporated useful traits from their victim, allowing them to hunt in many new and different ways, and ensuring the survival of the species through an impressive diversity. However, the offspring of such specimens were found to be missing the modified DNA of their parents.
Several weeks of research led to the discovery of the substance which allowed these creatures to perform their amazing feat. This is Medea, a very powerful substance which acts like a prion, attacking foreign DNA and incorporating it into the genetics of the Gorgons. It was postulated that Medea could be adapted for human use to create modified humans who would nevertheless breed completely true to baseline. Unfortunately the financial leaders of the research expedition were appalled by the idea, and pulled the plug immediately.
However, when the time came to pull out, many pieces of research equipment and sixteen members of the forty-two man team disappeared into the night. Where they had gone was never discovered, and all attempts to track them failed. The team was forced to pull out without them, and nothing more was heard for almost ten months. Believing them dead, a special team was sent to search out their fate, and an enormous press conference was held at a safe distance from the edge of the wood. This event was crashed by the remaining scientists.
Striding from the woods, the six modified humans simply walked into the press conference and unceremoniously made it their own, announcing themselves to the world. They revealed that they had made a quick breakthrough due to the ingenious thinking of their deceased colleague, Dr. Hans Phae, that the breakthrough had taken only two months, and that they’d been living and testing their bodies free of setbacks all this time.
The final development was the unveiling of two of the scientists’ newly born, entirely normal baby girl, Anastasia. The repercussions of this unveiling are still felt today, emphasizing that, regardless of how different they were, their genetic alterations were mere window dressings and their humanity remained untouched underneath it all. Since then, despite a few groups which demonstrate very virulent hatred of these ‘mutants’, especially pronounced in Xanadu, they have established their own city, Ilium, deep beneath Tulgey Woods.
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MEDEAN TRAITS
Medeans vary from having only minor genetic modifications to having their entire body modified. Medeans with only cosmetic changes can be represented using the traits for an olympian. With their varied nature, heavily modified medeans can be represented with nearly any of the races available in 5e. The traits given below are for a medean who is lightly genetically modified.
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Ability Score Increase. Your dexterity or charisma score increases by 2.
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Size. Your size is Medium.
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Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
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Medean Splicing. you gain two genetic feats
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Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.