Colossus By Design: New Human Hierarchy

[Working Title]: Secrets of the New Universe
[Authors]: Dr. Anna Maximoff
[Subjects]: Storm Covenant; Zeus A.I.; Order of Homo Novus

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[Subject]: Storm Covenant


[Footnotes]:

Ah, the ever illustrious Children of Monsters. A weird bunch of monster-based cultists, they were.

I'm glad we kicked the everliving shit outta them! Uhhh........ Anyways........

The group didn't die down so easily. Even though we killed several of their gods, incarcerated many members, and reappropriated their technological research and resources, they STILL didn't give up. Sure, we really cut down their numbers and got the more sensible ones to leave the organization, but the damn zealots have a way of convincing their ranks to stick around. How, I have no idea, since they don't seem to have access to a brainwashing monster like King Ghidorah anymore.

The remnants decided to call themselves the Storm Covenant, since they supposedly liken themselves to a storm..... and a covenant.......

Not too creative on their part. I would just stop using any kind of name at all if I was being hunted down by all the governments of the world for years on end. Still, I can't fault them for falling back on old tactics. Those seem to be all they have nowadays..

It's been a few years since we've seen any major activity from the Storm Covenant, just a few stragglers getting into protests that are pretty quickly taken care of by the Civil Defense Force. However, the most interesting thing we've seen out of them is the long-term effects that their prototype nano-machines had on their biological makeup.

During the Legion Invasion, we encountered the full might of their military strength, and I gotta say that it was a real doozy for us when we fought them the first time around. They created nanomachines that they implanted into their soldiers. These little tiny robots worked somewhat like the Ki-Interface Engines that we equip all of our standard military personnel with currently, albeit a bit less refined and more..... invasive.

Turns out that those nanomachines were unstable, and, over years of sitting in their bodies, they began affecting both their bodies and their minds. The mental problems are relatively standard, things like psychosis and paranoia, but the physical mutations.... HO BOY the physical mutations. They ain't pretty.

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[Subject]: Zeus A.I.


[Footnotes]:

Atlantis was a civilization full of marvels and wonders, They had magnificent architecture, energy development, biological advancement, and even artificial intelligence. The greatest of these A.I.s would be the construct known as "Zeus", a digital replica of the real person.

He was quite helpful when we first visited the main city years back to stop Bagan and his P.E.M.F.s, although he seemed to only fully respond to Laura, bless her soul. Whilst he was actively helping us, we learned a great deal about not only Atlantis's secrets, but also his own history.

Turns out that he was created by Zeus himself, after the Atlanteans were wiped out by the Gyaos and the original Irys, to manage and maintain the main city's technology, and to pass on the civilization's secrets to the first Humans to be able to reach him. I'm amazed he's still working over ten thousand years later, but I guess Atlantean things are built to last for awhile.

However, in the years after Laura's passing, the Zeus A.I. grew more and more distant. He became less forthcoming with knowledge, and eventually just stopped helping us. Zeus also seemed to have growing psychotic tendencies, like randomly sealing off research teams from each other and generally acting all creepy and shit. I swear, it's like he's trying his best HAL 9000 impression. Freaky stuff.

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[Subject]: Order of Homo Novus


[Footnotes]:

So, as if one crazy cult wasn't bad enough, now we have ANOTHER ONE. This time, these guys worship their own superpowers.

"Homo Novus", they call themselves. They're actually Post-Humans, and they're not a different species. They just got that idea from some Russian novel about life after the nuclear apocalypse. Metro something. Doesn't matter.

Anyways, these guys were formed almost immediately after Post-Humans first started showing up. Natural, really, when you suddenly have powers that put you at a level beyond normal Humans. Their founder is a woman who likes to call herself "Bloody Mary". Yeah, THAT Bloody Mary from the urban legends from nearly two centuries ago.

She was one of the first observed Post-Humans, and her chosen name isn't without credence. Her powers involved growing in strength when she feeds on blood. Like a vampire, except without all that sparkly teen drama fan-fiction bullshit.

Unfortunately, she's been in hiding for years now, and we still haven't located her. We don't even have any visual identification or DNA records. She's very good at what she does, too, since the Order has been on a spree of terrorist attacks for the past two years, and it doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. It also doesn't help that our governments want to crush the Order of Homo Novus with sheer military might.

They just don't seem to get that you don't fight terrorism with war, you fight it with ideas. A lesson we learned all too well in the early years of the 21st century.

Anyways, I'm getting off track here. Of the members of the cult that were detained that I've interviewed, they seem to mostly be comprised of ordinary people who were looking for a group that would accept them, and I can empathize with that. The crazy ones who just like to cause wanton destruction and death don't give these guys a good image. If the Order had been formed under more civil circumstances, I probably wouldn't be so opposed to them.

As long as the Order remains an isolated and relatively small organization, there shouldn't be any problems.