Races Fortress

Now, there are few races across the world, humans being dominant (although a good deal of animal species have in fact, managed to survive, even if risking extinction for most part. Fortress tries it's best to protect whatever wildlife it can put...)

A lot of them have mutated as well, into oddities, and new species altogether have been born. For most part, these will involve a playable and unplayable races section. Read on then!

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Humans.

Good ol' humans. They are pretty normal here, except for the tendency of their souls to be useful for a number of difficult undertakings. Aside from that, humans operate pretty much the same way as you'd think they did.

One exception to this, is a sudden surge of WALL power, that can occur in moments of emotional intensity, however. It is mostly observed as an increase in physical ability of the individual in question.

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Stone-Birds

If you have been reading up until now you should have heard about these folks. Oddly enough, despite the thorough collapse of their society, the occasional Stone bird still survives. There is currently, only a single example of a living Stone-Bird, one self proclaimed "Lord" Manka, a lesser one among their ranks, nevertheless, still quite potent.

They are incredibly tall, six armed, and covered in black feathers, with large wings, and a huge bird-head, with a human stone face, and a fully functioning mouth in it. Thoroughly immortal, they cannot be truly destroyed. Aside from that, they exhibit the ability to empower humans in different forms, possess a scream that inflicts other organic beings with powerful headaches, internal bleeding and if prolonged listening occurs, death.

They were rumored to have immense psiconic and outright mystical powers, but no current, factual evidence exists in their favor.

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Machine lifeforms and semi-mechanical lifeforms.

Considered a species of their own, due to either being full blown automata (the Iron Guards of Fortress, or other automata left from the age of the Stone-Birds), or cybernetically altered humans. The later fall into several subcategories, whereas the first are simply put, mechanical constructs with set directives.

Prime Automates.

Prime Automates are the products of some of the worst experiments of the Stone-Birds, taking a human body and erasing it's consciousness and psyche as a whole (probably through some best left undisclosed procedure), rendering it a meat-puppet, and then performing the necessary alterations to it, turning them into some half-robotic, half-human entity. Prime Automates are, in this regard some of the least lucky.

Their changes usually involve a complete removal of human body parts,excluding the torso and head, and even then parts of the brain are altered. Not just that, but they are imbued with personality cores, which work as a combination of the perverse science and mystic arts of the Stone-birds. Prime Automates are very rare to this day, the few survivors usually being put to sleep, until suitably reprogrammed.

New Automates.

New Automates are...more moderate, in their modifications, their personality and human nature is left the same, but a lot of their memories are suppressed or outright erased. Not just that, but their alterations run deep too, their blood replaced with a fluid that seems to also provide them with regenerative capabilities, their skeleton is made into metal, their lungs turned to energy storage chambers, their heart is covered in a  material that helps conduct said energy throughout, etc.

Their brains are not safe from alteration either, although their humanity is not outright erased, their thinking processes and sensory perception is forever affected, and digitized in some aspects. New Automates tend to live exceptionally long life and need little maintenance, which is why Fortress finds them useful. They can be told apart by their unnatural eye and hair colors, usually.

Androids

Fully mechanical automata, created by the Stone-Birds as...simple exhibitions. They imitate humanity through basic programming, but a few traits of their bodies, such as the skin, lacking blemishes, and having an always uniform coloration and tone to it, lack of hair below the neck, eyes and hair in unnatural colors similar to their New Automate brethren, lack of breathing, and their body occasionally lighting up along certain lines.

It is said that the event that destroyed the Stone-Bird civilization gave them a new form of sentience, which they have, until now tried their best to cherish. Androids live their life through meditation, observation, introspection and a good deal of philosophical thinking, trying to come to terms with their nature.

Golems

A rumor. Golems are, allegedly former constructs made of solid matter (usually not metals  though... usually). The rumors spread to them being somehow tied to Zerua, although their existence exists, for most part, only as rumor of course. Nobody has seen any Golems. Supposedly.

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Ghouls.

Because calling them vampires would be inaccurate at this point. Humans that have been affected by the affliction particles in the air combined with a predominantly colder climate. It tends to half-destroy and half-sustain their bodies, they need a constant intake of WALL power to balance out the effects of their affliction. Ghouls have very pale skin, eyes that change color depending on how full they are, usually going from a pale blue, to a darker shade, until turning purple, and then progressing to crimson, going from full to empty.

Ghouls have incredibly pale skin and their hair often has it's ends freeze/turns a light blue color. They can move very fast, and when full, possess supernatural strength as well. Their physiology is heavily mutated nevertheless, they absorb the affliction-particles in the air and release them as cold gas, that has freezing properties.

Individuals that remain frozen for prolonged periods, eventually transform into ghouls.

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Phoenixes

Strange beings, humans that mutated into Stone-Bird like creatures, but only partway. They are proper bird-people, humans with feathers, and bird talons/claws. Sometimes, their arms are substituted for wings, sometimes the wings just appear, and sometimes the wings are the only thing that appears. Species variation is very common here. Nevertheless, what qualifies them for the status is that they behave similarly to Stone Birds, through using Wall, simulating a form of immortality.

They regenerate, and taking too much damage will eventually put them beyond the regenerative power of their WALL. That is to say, they will begin regenerating, until their WALL expires. Thus, a lot of Phoenixes look for ways to enhance their WALL energy or stick with at least one or two other members of their species, so they can have a better chance at survival, via some amount of WALL transference.


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Goblins

Small, annoying, and... these actually were at no point, human, but a species the Stone-Birds brought with them. Goblins are diminutive, and often chubby, their skin often being peachy in color, they are almost always, entirely bald and seem to be predominantly male, they have large bug eyes, and whiskers and a mouth resembling a catfish. Their legs are bigger than their arms, and they are incredibly agile, capable of jumping large distances in a single bound.

They are...well, not the cleverest engineers, Goblin-made technology is not very efficient, and should only be relied on for some specific applications. However they are great and adaptable technicians, capable of working with and integrating most other forms of technology, and thus are looked to when something needs to be repaired. A lot of them serve Manka, and few are aligned with Fortress.

They live about as long as humans do.


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Plant-humans

Individuals that suffered a transformation/affliction due to dwelling too close to a Nest  as it  fell. The ones that lived on a Nest, that is, a  floating city of the Stone-Birds, when the cities fell, often suffered a Phoenix affliction, but those that found shelter in the ruins, got the other end of the stick, their cells mutating into plant-like ones, their bodies often turning green, and gaining the ability to sprout and control vines, various poisons, and have flowers grow on them. Some even managed to harden their bodies, into wooden forms.

Tree people lead odd lives, a lot of them end up growing roots, and are doomed to a fate of being stuck in one place. Mobile Plant-humans enjoy better circumstances, and thus are often seen around as well. Most of the time, however, they do not interact with civilization, leading  many to label them as ascetics, and mysterious.

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Aquatic creatures.

The good old mermaid myths. A lot of aquatic creatures seemed to mutate into strange beings, gaining size, extra limbs or body parts, increased intelligence, and in some rare cases, humanoid shapes. It seems to have to do with the high concentration of the affliction-particles, in water. Humans that spend just a bit too much time in or around contaminated water, begun transforming into aquatic species, of various forms, shapes and appearances, ranging from the average mermaid design, to some leviathan-humans, and even gigantic tentacled monstrosities.

It seems that multiple people can be bound into a single form by the dense affliction-particles as well, and this has been evidenced to cause great trauma to individuals. There is no real unity between the aquatic species even if they are numerous, compared to most other forms of affliction, likely due to sheer range of afflictions possible here. Aside from that, quite a few of them tend to swim closer to Eyely, and thus are a common sight.

However, due to being aquatic, living in Eyely proper is impossible for most of them. Although, it appears the sentient and relatively human aquatics, do not have any love for contamination, nor need it in any way shape and form, and thus prefer to remain underwater for prolonged periods of time. However, it must be noted that these creatures can in fact survive on the surface, even for prolonged periods, through the ability they have to transform their bodies.

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WALL Beings

Strange entities, made of pure spiritual energy, or so. While the term WALL being was coined for them due to most sightings being of pure beings of elemental WALL, there are also Affliction-Particle Beings, made purely of whatever spread the contaminating essence all over the world. These entities seem to either possess limited sentience, or some form of  alien intelligence. Their interactions have ranged from peaceful, to hostile to outright bizarre.

WALL Beings, which as a term will refer to all varieties of them for convenience's sake (although another proposed name is 'Elementals'), are very rare, and also by their very nature, impossible to destroy. They possess the power to produce more of what makes them up and control it finely, using it, at times, to achieve normally impossible or abstract feats, that border on the realm of 'magic' as some would want to call it.

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