✘ setting

[circumitus]

and lead us not into sickness, but deliver us from evil

SETTING

WARNING

THIS POST CONTAINS MONDO SPOILERS.
(Yeah, I know. It's weird for me to say that, too.)
{If you want more basic info on Rey, go here.}

PROJECT SERAPHIM takes place in the middle of the twenty-second century. But it began with a man who was born on November 30th, 1770.

It began in a village called Hartlone Hollow. Leland Cleary, an intellectually prodigal professor who hailed from a simple Irish community, was trying to breakdown a cure for typhus, during a time in which an epidemic had been going around. The disease had already claimed his twin son and daughter -- Fergus and Fiona -- and then threatened the life of his wife, Shea. Unknown to him, Leland was born with a strain of “immortal” cells (much later in history, they will be known as the Cleary cells).

Eventually, Leland ventured out in a fever. He stumbled upon a foreign compound near a hazel tree, way off in the outskirts of the village. He had no idea what it was at the time, as the concept of material from another world was completely unheard of. Still, he took the substance. His wife was on the near verge of death. He worked with the substance in solitude. He barely saw her.

She died. Leland waited patiently to reunite with his family, only to recover from what turned out to be a terrible flu. He lived.

Many years went on. Leland continued to work on the compound, giving little of a shit about his own health. His friend, Garrett Tremond, expressed concern for Leland’s mental state. As Leland closed in on a breakthrough with the compound, he fell ill once again, this time carrying the same symptoms of the plague that had taken the rest of Hartlone Hollow. In his desperation to survive in order to invent a “panacea”, Leland attempted to test the results on himself. The panacea proved to be a painful process that proceeded for several months. He kept records in a series of leather journals.

Just when the disease nearly took him, Leland miraculously recovered after six months of unbearable agony as a result of his impeccable immune system. He later discovered that not only had he just invented his panacea, but the key to rewriting the human gene sequence entirely with this alien compound. The panacea was, however, stolen by Garrett Tremond, who took the cure for his own dying child, Charlotte.

The effects left something to be desired.

Unlike himself, the child began to twist into something else. Leland himself tried to put the creature out of its misery, but Garrett stopped him, trying to protect his own daughter. A crazed little Charlotte bit his ear off. With her father disabled, Leland killed the child by drowning her in the river while Garrett plunged into a catatonic state. Leland would discover that when an infected child made contact with something alive, it would begin to infect that organism like a virus, and Garrett Tremond’s body acted as a carrier.

Out of the seeds of good intentions, an unnatural disease was born.

Leland tried what he could to contain the mutation, but as it turned out, several of those affected by the panacea could not be easily killed. Charlotte had not even fully died after the drowning.

While the panacea began to rapidly spread throughout Hartlone Hollow, Leland experimented on the few infected individual children that created the Orphans. When the entire village became compromised, Leland burned Hartlone Hollow to the ground, successfully killing most of the villagers. Leland stayed to deal with the remaining locals, murdering his own friends, neighbors, and acquaintances that he had grown up with.

After his research with the Orphans and the panacea run him into dead ends, Leland decided to euthanize his friend. He smothered Garrett with a pillow, and abandoned his hometown now in ruins.

As centuries went on, Leland learned that he never aged, and he never got sick again. He took on a number of aliases (all of them with the initials of L.C.). While the world around him waged on in its own battles, Leland worked to contain the unknown virus from further festering humankind, inevitable as it might have been.

By the 1900s, Leland learned how to heal other people, as well as regenerate himself in the event that he lost any limbs. While he tried to figure out how to revive the dead, this much his powers are limited to. Instead, he worked on trying to preserve and recreate life.

MAJOR EVENTS THAT FOLLOWED...

	► PROJECT G
	When the Long Winter, a future series of wars over civil, political, religious, and regional conflicts was first precedented, several minds banded together. Researchers, politicians, and programmers began developing schemas to protect the human race. In the year 1979, the GRIGORI Program was set into motion, also known as Project G. The program was only at its primal state in the decades of technology and computer development, but the prospect of a quantum board (a near-limitless processor) was in conception. Dr. Linus Carter was the one who instigated the operation. Two other programers, a Russian (Algernon Boryenka) a German-American (Alyssa Wolfgang) software engineers were fundamental contributors to the propagation of the program. After nearly two decades, Project G were able to predict the global warfare over resources within the next fifty years. The intelligence had advanced by this point, almost becoming a sentient form in itself. It had learned intrigue, and became curious in the chemical anomalies that lied with its creator, Dr. Carter. Once its usefulness was deemed done, the GRIGORI Program was shut down. Predicting this months ahead of the decision, the quantum board created backup servers in the event of it ever being wiped clean from the government database entirely, and rested only in a hibernation state for the time being. Over the course of the next decade, the original developers of the program were being targeted and murdered... In the end, Dr. Carter was the last survivor of Project G.
	► THE BREACH
	The Watchers Bureau was established at the Pacific Northwest in 2012. They were the follow up of Project G to ensure present and future peace of the nation. However effective this was, is debatable. The bureau was founded by former Homeland Security agents, Edgar and Cordelia Wakeman. Margot Earle and Straye Banquo infiltrated the recently established Watchers Bureau’s surveillance, and implanted the GRIGORI program into the security’s mainframe. This allowed full access to the GRIGORI when they went online a few weeks later, allowing the GRIGORI full access to the entire global network. It was also hinted that the two were behind the murders of the GRIGORI developers over the last twelve years. Their reasons are unknown, as Margot Earle was gunned down by Straye Banquo, who was then taken into captivity. However, his secrets died with him after he had taken a cyanide pill.
	► PROJECT SERAPHIM
	Funded by the government in 2012, PROJECT SERAPHIM was officially launched at the Niflheim Research Center in the Ashwater Underground City (AUC). This project consisted of specialists in human genetics and gene sequencing, as well as the creation of artificial life and intelligence. Ultimately a mean to end the many civil and global wars. In his attempt to preserve and recreate a perfect life, Leland (now known as Lucas Coffey) aided in the project to create the Pieces. The Pieces were a race of swarm intelligent synthetics created by Lucas Coffey and several other researchers. Some are robots, but a small few are not exactly what you would consider mechanic. In 2046, the first Piece was born — a Class Rook named Heimdall. Unlike the other Pieces created afterwards, Heimdall’s A.I. was unique, seeming more human in nature than any of the previous prototypes. Heimdall’s mainframe consisted of the ability to manifest an Id, Ego, and Super-ego and slaved to those intentions, swayed by both his own rationalization and desires. As these personas formed, a psychologist named Dr. Undine Stransky began working closely with Heimdall, drawing parallels between Freud’s psychic apparatus and the Rook’s behavioral tendencies. Seemed fitting to her at the time.
	► THE LONG WINTER
	The aforementioned precedented series of global wars over resources and civil conflicts that will last for over a century begins in 2056, and will end in the year 2148. To the rest of the world, “they” blamed each other for the start of the wars, but there were other theories — most of them coined by conspiracy enthusiasts. Before long, countries and allies were turning against one another in arms, developing advanced weaponry that was seemingly leaked to their servers from unknown roots. These roots turned out to be the GRIGORI Program, as its processor stemmed further and further outward across its quantum board and into the data world. Caught up in the mess of the new global wars, Lucas Coffey frantically resumed his work with PROJECT SERAPHIM, specializing in enhanced cloning. Edgar Wakeman of the wealthy Watchers Bureau helped finance his research in Niflheim.
	► THE INFECTION
	The first orbital HEIMDALL satellite was launched in 2057. The server that instigated the global wars turns out to be the true nature of the GRIGORI Program. Heimdall, who was able to synch with every network in the world, came into contact with the GRIGORI once the satellite was launched. The GRIGORI attempted to override Heimdall’s infiltration protocol, but thanks to the detection system, the GRIGORI were unable to penetrate his defense. Heimdall adopted a human persona and the name, Gregory Tremond.
	► EYES OF THE WATCHERS
	Era of the Twenty-Second Century. In 2100, the HEIMDALL satellites were launched. With the GRIGORI Program still active (albeit dormant) in the Watchers Bureau’s mainframe, it launched with the HEIMDALL satellites, allowing it to access all of its backup terminals Margot Earle and Stray Banquo had installed. Because the Pieces were artificial intelligence that were in tune with the HEIMDALL satellites, most of them were affected by the GRIGORI Program’s infection — Heimdall included. The phrase “Era of the Watchers” was said to have been coined by critics of the bureau, which was actually in reference to the HEIMDALL satellites, ever vigilant over the world.
	► SCHISM
	2108, an air strike over Washington DC brought an end to the American government. With the country on the brink of anarchy, Curan Wakeman of the Watchers Bureau assumed command of the American people under the title of the totalitarian Western Order. Wakeman became the first Chancellor. One year later, a counsel was established in the eastern part of the country after threats of civil war terrorized survivors. The counsel and Chancellor both agreed to divide the Americas to “east” and “west”. Thus, the Eastside Republic was created by a house of twenty-four democratically elected counsel members -- one for each state. This division would become known as the Schism.
	► THE PANDEMIC
	In 2127, Lucas/Leland’s panacea emerged again, extending from Hartlone Hollow and making its way to the mainlands. It began as a simple sickness that begins spreading across the Pacific Northwest, but then it spread throughout the war-torn world. The virus, once known as a panacea, became known as the allobion disease. Fatal symptoms of allobion include memory loss, violent outbursts, auditory hallucinations, blue skin, peeling lips, agony. Ultimately the disease leads to dementia and death. The disease most notably varies from person to person. Some cases have described the painful experience of a teenage girl, whose insides had hardened to the point of crystallization, like a deadly metamorphosis. Other cases involve boiling from inside, freezing to death. Rarer cases involved the victim's organs corroding, bloating, expanding, or decaying from within. Essentially the allobion disease fought against the immune system. There is no known cure for allobion, only a vaccine that boosts the immune system to reduce the chances of contracting the disease (this was not developed until years after the outbreak). However, not all are subjected to death and disfigurement by the allobion disease. A very small number of people exposed to allobion have experienced mental changes, shifting how their mind perceives the world around them. For instance, a man may be able to hear only truth, or a woman may be able to hear voices of the dead similar to those of ESP, or an individual may become invulnerable. Whether or not if these immune to the allobion have expressed a pre-existing extra sense or not is unknown to them.
	► THE FIRST CATACLYSM
	In 2129, the Battle-Brave was a weapon built underneath the city of Ashwater. It is said that some kids were traveling through the sewage system at the time and unintentionally detonated the supposed “bomb” from under the city. Though, through popular belief, the story of the kids was a ruse. The First Cataclysm was a monumental incident not just for the rising body count, but the way it had affected the few survivors, making them invulnerable to a future procedure called the Permutation Regimen. Supposedly, the trauma changed something in their psyche, making them psychologically impenetrable. Tejinder Wakeman was meant to be the beneficiary of the Western Order, but then the headquarters met its downfall during the Battle-Brave, killing its Chancellor, Cecil Wakeman, and leaving his heir, Tejinder Wakeman, blind. The capitol for the Western Order was then based in Engelus, Nevada. Gregory Tremond, formerly known as Heimdall, took over as Chancellor of the Western Order. The Western Order was also responsible for the Permutation Regimen. Permutation is, essentially, an act through several kinds of torture and personality reconditioning that is essentially brainwashing. It is done through chemical substances and several hours of strict and abusive actions. The regimen entails a number of adverse effects. For instance, the derangers, maddened by the reformation process, are created. Part of the reason was because of the drugs that were being tested on at the Renaissance Sanitarium, as it had been tested on by mental patients. As an effect of both the procedure as well as the chemical substances, the derangers are people who have been reduced to an animalistic state of mind. There is no treatment for derangers. It is only a mercy to put them down. In 2145, the first deranger appeared on the streets of Engelus, Nevada. Then more begin to show up. All of these people were former patients of Renaissance Sanitarium or survivors who were exposed to the energy from the First Cataclysm. By the year 2147, an end to the century-long struggle through the Long Winter wars is in sight. What remains, however, is a broken government, a plague of infected people and deranged children that fell prey to the panacea. It became known as the Allobion Epidemic. So really, not much has changed.
	► THE ALLIANCE
	In 2150, the new chancellor Lowe Huxley of the Order and Jane Beaumont of the Republic agreed on a union, merging the East and West. This became known as the Unity Alliance Treaty, which allowed the president and chancellor to mostly continue their leadership roles, but allow more leeway in terms of the law of the land. Beaumont and Huxley remained in close contact and developed a political relationship, allowing the union to flourish. Sort of. Conditions of the Unity Alliance focused on the search and detainment of the Archiver, Tejinder Wakeman, with the intentions of using him as a bargaining chip for the army of synthetics that were closing in to find him. While the reasons for their interests in the Archiver remained unclear, Beaumont and Huxley prioritized the search and formed the Marchmen. The Marchmen is a militia comprised of former mercenary, syndicate, and military groups that have been organized to track down those who are in opposition of the treaty. They target the Bark of Ash as a terrorist cult, seeing them among other individuals as “undesirables”, leaving many people of civil activist groups and lower class citizens as targets. Some cities, like Chicago, are also populated by an auxiliary task force to keep the peace. Though this tends to become an abuse of power than anything else. Typical.