Tales of a Grimdark World Notepad 1

After the exodus from Panem to the Exoplanet Aeterna, the Gamemakers are divided into three societies, the hive city of Primus, in Craven-001, the Maddened in the shanty town around the Exile Spire and the Clan-Kin of the surface.

Hive Primus

The hive city of Primus is ruled by the Gamemaker Order, still following the same caste system and culture as they did in Panam, on Earth. The humans have also been assigned to castes of their own. Hive Primus is located in Craven-001, a forest of Gothic spires growing from the floor. Built from concrete made from the silicate rock. The settlement is divided into sectors that have differing purpose, such as A-2, a hydroponics sector containing former District Eleven settlers and B-32, a electronics making sector containing setters from District Three.

Each sector is a a spire of its own, growing from the floor like jagged teeth. The spires are predicted to merge in times to come. Life in the spires is highly regimented, and living areas tight. Each setter gets a small pod to sleep in and that is it, shared via hot bunking. Clothing is caste uniforms constituting of colored tunics and pants similar to those worn by the Avoxes of Panam. Food consists of nutri-paste and water, strictly rationed. Everybody follows a strict schedule that is in a chip implanted in their arm.

Castes:

Makers-of-Parts: Former members of District One and District Three, their role is to make the machines, electronics and electrics that the Gamemaker Order relies on. They wear dark blue.

Workers-of-Darkness: Often CI-Class Avoxes, along with people from the former District Four and Six, their role is sewer maintenance, waterworks, tunnel repair, waste incineration and grid relay inspection. They wear black, waterproofed canvas.

Labors-of-Need: The ones assigned to heavy labor, such as quarry hauling, foundry work, rail shifting, construction support and structural demolition, are often IHL-Class Avoxes and people from former District Seven. They wear bright orange, with harnesses for equipment.

Growers-of-Food: Working in the hydroponics farms, these former District Nine, and Eleven people grow the food for Hive Primus. Their role to is to grow, pack and ship the food the Hive relies on. They wear dark green.

Givers-of-Parts: For people with disabilities, the conically lazy, the elderly or ill who cannot work, a grim fate waits them. Shuffled into this caste, they serve as test subjects, organ banks, blood banks and experimental labor, hazard testing. The Order considers them useless for anything else. They wear mid-blue.

Servers-of-Gamemakers: Serving the Gamemakers directly are SD-Class Avoxes who wait on the needs of the High Nobility and Royal Family. They also operate the lifts that connect the floors of the hives. They wear muted cream.

Keepers-of-Law: The Peacekeepers, and those who support them. Most hail from the former District Two and are of Nepali blood. They wear white.

Maintainers-of-Water: Hailing from the former District Four, their role is to maintain and fix water systems, piped in from the nearby Lux Sea and down to Hive Primus. They wear powder blue.

Builders-of-Space, the people of District 12 are assigned to mine and build in order to grow the Hive and as a punishment for their rebel past.

Harnessers-of-Light, former members of District Five, their duties is to maintain the power grids, care for the fusion reactors and keep the artificial UV lights running for the hydroponics sectors. They wear bright yellow.

Weavers-of-Shroud: District Eight has become the caste who use the automated looms and processing plants to make people's caste uniforms, heavy industrial materials like filters for the water systems, the waterproof clothing of the Workers-of-Darkness, and insulating liners for the pod bunks. They wear muted grey.

Wardens-of-Vats: The people of District Ten gained the duty of looking after the insect protein, biochemical fluids such as Gamemaker nutri-fluid and corpse reclamation vats. They wear maroon.

The Maddened

When a Gamemaker develops GDS, they are cast out to the surface via a spire containing a high speed, automatic lift. This Gothic spire pokes from the hive city below, though rock and to Aeterna's surface. This area of the surface is a plains biome with the spire being the only notable feature. The spire is built from the same silicate rock concrete and is surrounded by the ruins of the first landing and a shanty town made from scrap metal, plastics and other sheets of material. These roughly made shacks contain GDS Stage 1 and Stage 2 suffers.

Inside, Stage 1 Gamemakers try to carry on their normal routines and the Stage 2 Gamemakers sit trapped in their hallucinations, obsessions and compulsions. The Stage 1 Gamemakers are the ones looking after their Stage 2 kin, feeding them, giving them hydrogen and protecting them. They also maintain crude machines to produce hydrogen from water and mushroom patches for nutri-fluid. Around the shanty town is a ring of earth cleared of all life by the Order and the Stage 1 Gamemakers, to protect from the ferals.

The Maddened are divided by hair color in varying parts of the shanty town, eg a yellow district or a red district as it is instinct for Gamemakers to do this. They lack hair color roles, with all colors and shades going the same roles.

Mushroom-Walkers=

Past this clearing, are the embryonic beginnings of mushroom forests made by the Gamemaker nanites eating organic matter. Once a Gamemaker hits Stage 3 GDS, they are cast from the shanty town to join the Mushroom-Walkers. The Mushroom-Walker Tribes use the mushrooms as their main source of food, weapons, armor, tools and other things. Like the Clan-Kin of Panam's Hall of the Forgotten, the Mushroom-Walkers are divided into hair color delimited tribes. These tribes stick to the biome that suits their hair color.

Within that, like Clan-Kin, the pastel haired Gamemakers look after the Den, the dark haired Gamemakers are the hunters and the bright haired Gamemakers are the warriors. The Mushroom-Walkers often wield mushroom-wood spears and atlal darts. Often, they raid the Shanty Town in order to drag away Stage 2 Gamemakers to join their ranks. Given that Gamemakers burn in sunlight, they hide under the four-five feet of mushrooms or in caves. The Mushroom-Walkers communicate though sign languages, but have not been known to devise tap codes.

The Mushroom-Walkers eat mushroom based nutri fluid made from mushrooms turned into dried and turned into powder in mushroom-wood mortars and pestles. These mushrooms are then mixed with water and cold digested in hollow mushroom trunks. The pastel-hairs are assigned to stir the pots and tend to then mushroom patches. Rivel Gamemakers are used as food for their mushroom patches. The Mushroom-Walkers also have prosthetic limb technology: Lost limbs are replaced with wooden analogs with Gamemaker hair tendons.

Some known Mushroom-Walker Tribes include the Watchers-On-The-High-Peaks, Sitters-In-The-Desert-Caves and Guards-Of-The-Yellow-Beach. The Watchers-On-The-High-Peaks have hair ranging from powder blue, to bright blue to dark midnight blue. The Sitters-In-The-Desert-Caves have colors such as sand-yellow, butter-cup yellow and dark yellow. The Guards-Of-The-Yellow-Beach are known for hair ranging from pastel green, to forest green to jewel green.

Hair Colors along the Mushroom-Walkers

Uncommon Colors

The Uncommon Colors are considered abnormalities as they are not one color, but instead are layers, cycling or gradients of color. With the Gamemakers being defined by their color, they are considered an unique fascination.

Phase Drift (“Color-Shift”)

The Color-Shifts are Gamemakers who's hair cycles slowly though the colors of their temperature band over hours or weeks. They are used as a lure to hunt as their shifting hair can entrance prey like other ferals or human escapees. They are also used as living calendars, given that Gamemakers cannot use sun-clocks. By the colors of their hair, the tribe tracks months and seasons to know when they should migrate, harvest specific mushroom patches, or prepare for shifts in surface weather.

Banded Growth (“Layer-Band”)

Gamemakers with hair with distinct, clear color segments growing along the length of the strands as if they was tree rings, made from fluctuating phases during the nanite conversion process. These Gamemakers are considered the Paste-Keepers of the tribe given that they lack paper and books. The hair is considered an unalterable record of past events and climate anomalies. By studying the width and vibrancy of the colored bands, the tribe can read the story of the environmental history of the place and time that they was turned.

They are also considered keepers of tribal law and borders, as their hair bands represent distinct phases of stabilization. The multi-segmented hair stands out to neighboring tribes and acts as an neutral visual marker able to stop accidental territorial wars when crossing mushroom biome to mushroom biome.

Gradient (“Mist-Wave”)

With hair of one color at the scalp and another at the tips, fading between the two, this is caused by electromagnetic interference warping the crystallization of the smart-strands. They are considered the diplomats of the Mushroom-Walkers, as they embody two distinct colors at once. They are considered bridges between tribes that have hair colors matching theirs and are exempt from the rigid geographic boundaries of hair color. Often, they serve as messengers, scouts and trade-negotiators allowed to move somewhat freely.

They also are considered prized warriors as their dual or triple toned appearance breaks up their physical silhouette in the uneven lighting of the mushroom forest. Blending perfectly into the transition zones where one colorful fungal biome blends into another, they serve as ambush predators.

Rare Colors

Very Hot Biomes

Photonic Overdrive ("Glow-Heart"): These glowing haired and eyed Gamemakers are treated as walking deities and are used as living hearths. The Mushroom-Walkers view them as blessed by the fire, and use their glow as a beacon in the dark. Often, they appear in volcanic or hot desert regions.

Ember-Black Phase ("Ember-Hair"): These solid black haired Gamemakers with glowing orange points due to their nanofiber lattice venting thermal energy are seen as walking volcano and therefore treat them with immense caution and respect. Due to the glowing thermal vents looking like trapped embers, the Mushroom-Walkers think they have an unstable core that could explode.

Hot Biomes

Refractive Burn ("Mirage-Strand"): These Gamemakers with their chaotic refractive indices have hair that warps light as it passes though. These Gamemakers are seen with superstitious fear given their shimming and melting appearance. They are considered deeply unsettling and treated as trickster spirts or considered as slipping out of reality.

Oxidation Bloom ("Old-Metal"): Their hair has a base of a warm tone, but is overlaid with a mottled tarnished appearance layer and they are treated as omens and with reverence. The weathered ancient machinery like look leads them to be seen as living relics and so are often brought up to the status of a shaman or elder, even the young ones. Their hair's mottled, oxidized look is considered a sign of profound wisdom.

Cold biomes

Polarized Sheen ("Light-Change"): With hair that changes color strongly and instantly depending on viewing angle, due to polarization-specific lattices are hated and distrusted. The Mushroom-Walkers are very color coded, and tribes are defined by color. As the Light-Change break this rule, and are varying colors from varying angles, they are not trusted. They are treated with deep hostility and paranoia, and are seen as deceitful changelings or spies who are hiding under a false face.

'Frost Fracture Pattern ("Cracked-Hair"): Pale blue or white haired Gamemakers with branching, dark micro-fractures, caused by rapid thermal contraction. These cracks look like fracturing ice and lead them to be seen as tragic figures with fragile souls, broken by their out casting. The Tribes care for them, but they are kept away from conflict as they are seen as likely to shatter under physical or emotional stress.

Very Cold Biomes

Mirror-Hair: With hair, eyes and claws of pure, highly reflective metallic silver that are perfect mirrors reflecting but not carrying color. They are considered things of awe and terror, as a looking Mushroom-Kin sees only an distorted reflection of themselves. They are seen as walking ghosts, but also perfect hunters due to them reflecting any environment they crawl though. The Mushroom-Kin refuse to look them in the eyes, thinking their souls will be trapped in the mirror if they make eye contact.

Transparent Morphology ("Blood-See"): Gamemakers with clear, hair and claws, with silver irises due to the silver Gamemaker blood showing though clear irises, they are seen as voids. They are treated with absolute taboo as lacking color, they belong to no Tribe. Seen as unborn or hollow shells, rejected by the nanites, they are outcast into the unclaimed biomes and forced to wander alone as signs of bad luck.

The Mushroom forests.

Around the shanty town are "mushrooms" made of Gamemaker parts as the nanites only know how to make those. These mushrooms eat biological matter and turn it into the mushrooms. The caps are skinned in Gamemaker synth skin, within that are layers of Gamemaker hair, giving the mushrooms their colors, and then Gamemaker teeth to stiffen. The layers then reverse, another layer of hair and then another layer of synth skin. These mushrooms act as food, shelter, and tool/weapon parts for the Clan-Kin that dwell along these mushrooms.

These mushrooms burned in sunlight like Gamemakers until natural selection weeded out those unable to survive sunlight. The ones that survived grew a thick layer of Gamemaker organ tissue under the hair, colored white to reflect sunlight. In the mushroom forests, the air is saturated with the Gamemaker nanites, leading anybody who breathes them in to be infected. If a person dies after being infected, as long as the brain is not gone, they will rise again as an Gamemaker after a month.

This leads to escaped rebels, Avoxes and other escapees to end up joining the feral Gamemaker ranks and makes settling the wilds very hard. The Order also scouts the forests close to the Spire to press gang any newborns it can to join the ranks of the Low Nobility. Such Gamemakers are dragged underground, dressed in the white rags and assigned to a mentor to begin training.