Genesis Season NFT: The Black Meta Identity — Races, Evolution Paths and Lore
Every scar and deformity you have suffered in this brutal effort to preserve humanity is a testament to the fact that flesh and bones are made to be broken. The human body, while resilient, is not without its vulnerabilities. New sciences and technologies have opened the door to bodily enhancements, and you have options.
While many see virtue in staying “pure,” preserving the physical form bestowed upon them by their creator, it is no wonder that some choose augmentation. The promise of enhanced strength, speed and stamina is a clear advantage. And as the body ages, there is now the prospect of eternal life through transfer of consciousness. This science, however, is largely experimental, and there are rumors of a clandestine menagerie on the ship, full of genetic modifications gone awry.
Races, Evolution Paths and Lore
Level 1: Genesis Human
Every Black Meta Executive will start their evolution as a GENESIS HUMAN aboard the Black Meta Research Facility where you will earn an opportunity to choose a dark path to follow.
Pure, old-fashioned, homegrown meat, minted straight from the embryo. Driven by a self-constructed mythology, humans consider themselves to be the top of the evolutionary chain, regardless of mutation or augmentation.
To them, every derivative, every offshoot, is a step down from the wonder of their magisterial creation, and they protect the purity of their bloodline at all costs, avoiding all radiation, enhancement, or addiction. For humans, the Dark Shards are a tool to be used, a weapon to be wielded… nothing more. They’ve left a human-dominated world behind, and plan on ensuring that dominance continues.
Level 2 Evolution Paths
You enter the laboratory, study the posters on the walls, and consider your options: human, android, enhanced human (cyborg), corrupted, chimera. Muted moans are heard from down the hall, and you realize you should not make this decision in haste. You pick up a pamphlet from the reception desk and abruptly exit. Maybe you should sleep on this.
GENESIS HUMANS are forced to choose between humanity or survival. You will be given an opportunity to burn your human form for a chance to mint a new version of yourself…
A darker version…
Choose wisely… the effects will alter your race and they will be irreversible.
Level 2: Android
Wracked with uncertainty about the multi-generation flight, a number of humans chose to forgo their corporeal bodies and transfer their consciousnesses from meat and bone into metal and wire. This decision proved to be… useful, as the merger with Artificial Intelligence provided a much faster iterative evolution than anyone expected. Within only a few years, these new self-aware machines were deconstructing themselves and using non-essential parts of the ship to build a more streamlined, more efficient second generation.
These new Androids, though bipedal, make no effort to appear “human.” Instead, they delight in their gleaming machinery and lack of all human weaknesses such as skin and bone. They consider themselves to be humanity refined, a new generation of perfect beings. Constantly integrating new machinery and implementing new ideas into their form, the Androids are the most structurally flexible of the races.
Level 2: Enhanced
In the vast boredom of space, biohacking became prevalent in large swathes of the ship. Ocular enhancements, cochlear implants, nanobot cellular integration, the Cyborgs simply… made the most out of their humanity and their environment.
Considering themselves fully human — just improved — they took great offense to the proclaimed “purity” of the increasingly isolated Human population, and rebelled by making further enhancements to their children in utero, creating a new generation of fully integrated machine/human hybrids. To others, monstrosities, but to themselves, the inevitable pinnacle of evolution. Though they straddle the line between man and machine, they identify as neither, and judge both.
Level 2: Corrupted
Though once fully human, prolonged contact with the Dark Shards has mutated the Corrupted Ones into pale approximations of moral creatures. Driven by the relentless need to consume, they roam the ship, leaving fear and hatred in their wake. Children whisper of the Corrupted entering their minds, of feeling icy hands grip their hearts; parents trade stories of impossible horrors and shocking miracles.
Their boundaries opaque, their skin translucent, even the Corrupted themselves do not know the limits of their powers… but whatever energy drives them seems to be growing. Insatiable, they pursue Dark Shards with every waking thought, pushing them further and further into a contorted interphase between life and death, between power and destruction. The question on everyone’s mind: What will happen if these creatures ever find a limitless supply of Darkness to consume?
Level 2: Chimera
Unsure what environment the colonists would eventually face, geneticists began experimenting with the massive stockpile of embryos gathered whilst fleeing Earth. Though they claimed to merely be seeking a more robust human population, capable of withstanding harsher climates and higher gravity, these first scientists let their egos run rampant, each attempting to outdo the other in creativity and boldness.
Within a generation, it was not uncommon to see any number of self-sustaining, biologically-cohesive Human/Animal creations roaming the ship. From the Reptilians, to the Avians, to the more dangerous Predator Hybrids, each offshoot quickly became genetically independent, able to reproduce only with others of their species. And, perhaps inevitably, progressive mutations only served to strengthen the creative embryonic work done by the master geneticists. Like each of the races, the Hybrids consider themselves to be nothing less than evolutionary miracles, exemplars of God’s hand wielding the sword of science.
Elite Evolution Paths
For some… the change is inevitable.
Level 3: The Pure
After undergoing extensive upgrades to their core architecture, the elite from each race evolved into their purest forms. Machinery was replaced, genes were mutated, claws were sharpened, and gray matter was folded again and again. When individuals reach this level, they’ve reached the limits of their race, perfect specimens of dark horror.
Level 4: The Banished
As time passes on Trinity West, exposure to the unique climate begins to cause strange mutations, and previously impossible interbreeding… becomes possible. Chimeras take on the most powerful aspects of the Corrupted, Androids begin to exhibit human intuition, disparate human hybrids begin to genetically intermingle. The power is unthinkable.
Level 5: Dark Lord
The rarest of evolutions, these Trinity West elite unify the most potent attributes of each race into an impossibly powerful whole.
