Field notes — Panamera
An eternal winter entombs the continent of Panamera, turning a former territory of warmth and sunlight into a frosted wasteland. The environment demands patchwork modifications of pre-Crash technology just to sustain civilisation after a global panic.
Welcome to post-Crash Maçon
Water is scarce enough that people drink what they are given. Light comes from plant-based bio lanterns that throw a sickly yellow-green over the frost. What technology survives is patched, scavenged and owned by somebody else.
The tripartite hierarchy
A rigid, predatory hierarchy characterises the “lower races” as commodities, tools, or disposable art for the erebim elite. The system is reinforced through biological enslavement technology and the weaponisation of essential resources.
Tier I
The ruling class
Preternaturally beautiful, supremely powerful Lords who rule Panamera’s city-states as City Controllers. After the Crash they rose to absolute dominance and built a new order of digital feudalism on the ruins of the global panic.
Nearly immortal, the erebim do not reach physical majority until they are one hundred years old. Depending on age and power they grow one to three pairs of great wings, summoned or banished at will. They have sharp, wicked fangs, and they drink blood.
Tier II
Animal-spirited shifters of diverse varieties — nekomata, wolves, kitsune. Superhuman senses, agility and speed, with other animal traits borrowed from their spirit selves even in human form. Yōkai have a strong desire for pack and community.
Beginning life as human embryos selected in the womb for biological enhancement, each sanguinary is designed with purpose and bred into servitude. Their inhuman quickness, longevity and durability are fuelled by the continuous cellular regeneration their blood-drinking affords.
The unmodified human baseline, distinguished biologically by their olfactory blankness — a lack of any personal scent signature. Often dismissed as obsolete, they are the most vulnerable of the “lower races” and occupy the lowest tier of the hierarchy.
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A hierarchy this rigid needs an enforcement mechanism. Hemoglobal built one and put it inside everybody’s chest.