The Lore

Seattle, Washington: November 14th, 2177

    They thought they could do it, alone, at that! Tensions were low for once across the globe, no one threatening war against one another. It was far from "world peace", but guns weren't aimed at everyone in the room. But they had to do it. When pitched, it sounded like the plot of another bad sci-fi movie, or maybe the start of an equally bad Marvel movie. Captain America X: Rise of the Cobra. "Super soldiers"! They cried, like it was the perfect plan, and maybe in a perfect world, it was. For decades now, gene therapy was commonplace, used to cure hordes of illnesses, from ALS to Alzheimer's, hell, even for selfish reasons. Sick of your brown eyes and eager for some pretty blue peepers? Go to your plastic surgeon and ask for the "Eye Color Special". He'll have you set up within a week and then you can go home and pray your coworkers actually notice this time- they didn't when you tried out green last year. It was taboo though, their plan, for this time, their super soldiers weren't just going to be beefed up, run longer, jump higher, run of the mill augmented men and women who looked like body builders, no this time they wanted to attempt to fuse animal and human DNA- specifically, reptiles. Why not? Imagine a soldier, stronger, faster, but one that, if his arm is blown off, it rapidly regenerates and he's back on the field in no time. Why not give a sniper the ability to shoot venom like a spitting cobra? Why not give a Navy Seal the ability to stay underwater for longer than possible, without the weight of gear, like a crocodile? Why not, why not, why not?

    And so it was funded. Species were chosen from those with the best chosen abilities, various geckos for superior regeneration, bush vipers and king cobras for their powerful venom, komodo dragons and saltwater crocodiles for sheer ferocity and diving capability, respectively. Within months, a prototype serum was created, the plans created, and referred to in reports as Project Dragon. Initial reports were, of course, met with intense outrage from the public, and so the project was kept under wraps, and it's home base situated at a relatively small lab in the pacific northwest. Testing started small, and in order to keep it hush-hush, they decided to take forgettable, if unwilling, test subjects, the destitute of Seattle, drug addicts, the homeless, prostitutes. People who the majority probably wouldn't even realize weren't sleeping on that one bench in the park anymore. The people who wouldn't be reported as missing. Despite their best efforts, the majority died minutes to hours after being given the serum, colloquially known as Dragon's Blood, while the lab they were stationed in became popularly known as The Nest.

February 23rd, 2184

    For all their best efforts, things of this caliber don't make it long "under wraps". Before they knew it, they were removing more dead bodies from The Nest in the dead of night then they were bringing in new shipments of the city's unwanted. Running out of options, they began "disappearing" entire small US towns under the guise of "evacuation" due to chemical spills, natural disasters, anything they could think of that would allow them to rapidly move hundreds of human beings, and also keep people away from the truthfully safe desert communities. Tension within the US had begun to rise as rumors began to spread, and people began to question why so many disasters were raining down at once. As the loudest of the popular began to accuse the government officials of perhaps committing scientific atrocities on the country's citizens, then too would mysteriously vanish, and the US would remain silent. Within time, the United States had to enact martial law just to attempt some form of order as riots began.

    America was certainly no longer doing this quietly. News spread globally, though it still was technically "just a rumor", and with the threat of war held to their heads, high ranking officials did the next best thing to scrapping years of scientific breakthroughs and study- they bargained. Now with the backing of allies and other major countries, scientists at The Nest has all the subjects they would need, as well as a winded gene pool, and the best and brightest from German, Japan, the UK, Russia, flocked to their humble laboratory, and organized the shipment of their own country's citizens to The Nest. Captured and caged like animals, conditions in The Nest deteriorated, and cruelty reigned, all in the name of science.

January 2nd, 2190

    Dragon's Blood, or Serum 246, was the very first success. The man bestowed with the "honor" of receiving it was only known as Subject #2784, his name and everything else stripped away from him long before the injection. As with every other experiment, they surgically removed his hand, loosely bandaged it, and stuck him in an isolation chamber, waiting for his death as all the other's had succumbed. Much to their surprise, hours passed, a day, two days passed, and in that time, the severed appendage ;had healed over and was showing signs of regrowth. Their first success. Every other subject was immediately injected with variations of Serum 246, in order to test every species gene that they were playing with. If the rest died, so be it, but with even one documented success, Project Dragon could finally move forward. It was that mistake, in that instance, that cost humanity forever.

January 5th, 2190

    The change came rapidly, with little warning. Overnight, the subject had turned restless and feverish,and by the morning, he was slamming repeatedly in to the door of his cell, howling in rage and agony. Exactly 72 hours after his initial injection, hell truly unfolded. He began to seize and spasm, his body morphing and mutating as he ripped his own flesh off his bones. Nearly as soon as the offending flesh was removed, new flesh would grow in it's place, this time, covered in scales. The change took no more than forty-five minutes total before the creature before them was no longer human. For the growth of science, and at the risk of his own life, the leading scientist, flaked by an armed guard entered the cell to attempt to subdue, and dissect, the new creature. By the time the other guard's arrived and put a bullet in the beasts head, the scientist, and his guard, were barely recognizable puddles on the floor. The creature was autopsied, named a Lamia, and further serum production was stopped. Attention immediately turned to handling the several hundred prisoners they had so recently injected with variations of the same serum.

     Euthanasia was decided upon. They began to round them up and methodically put them down. They were corralled in rooms, 150 at a time, lined up and shot- until the jailbreak. Freed from their prison and off to be marched to their deaths, they retaliated, a swarming hoard of people reigning havoc in The Nest. Most died. 100 or so lucky guinea pigs made their break though, and disappeared into the dense Pacific Northwest pine forests, making their ways to civilization to beg for help. By the time they got there, however, it was far too late.

January 7th, 2184

    Blood stained the streets red. The test subjects had gone mad and mutated before reaching Seattle, and as soon as they got there, carved a gaping wound in to the masses. The army, national guard, anyone with a gun and a decent shot, were all called upon to take down the Lamia. One anomaly turned herself in, hands in the air, pleading for her life. She, unlike the other's, seemed to not have turned in to a monster. Despite this, she was shot while attempting to yield to a police officer, as she still looked like all the others. It didn't take more than a day to wipe out all accounted for Lamia, but they had certainly left their mark, for that evening, the hospitals runneth over with injured citizens. All those afflicted were quarantined, but it was far, far too late. The cycle repeated- three days passed, and the several hundred injured turned on their friends, family, caretakers, poured in to the streets from the hospital to attack new prey- far too rapidly it spread clear of Seattle's borders and in to other cities and states. They realized, however, that not all turned in to frothing beasts- most did, for sure, but roughly one in every thousand turned, but did not change.

    Physically they morphed, but mentally, they only lamented their disfigurement and feared for their lives, as those around them screamed 'monster'. The first several batches of these were taken and isolated, experimented further upon, tortured, and eventually destroyed when they offered little. Japanese scientists called these anomalies Naga, and it stuck, and while the public was informed they were generally harmless, it was recommended they were destroyed on sight just as you would any Lamia. The Naga, learning of this, would flee upon changing, finding themselves drawn to, and hiding out, along the banks of any bodies of water- the ocean, the bay, rivers, creeks, streams, any water would do.

February 7th, 2184

    Within a month, the US found itself overrun with Lamia, shredding through every city, every town, leaving wakes of violence, and humans turning, in their path. It was only a matter of time from then, soon countries overseas were experiencing Lamia outbreaks. Governments began to crumble, small nations falling apart in that first month. America began to evacuate surviving humans to emergency bunkers deep in the earth, once created out of the threat of nuclear war, now their only escape from the plague on the surface. This gave the Naga a chance to group up, and try to figure out their strategy. It was during this time of self understanding for the Naga that they first felt it- the first hum, the first stirrings of a mysterious energy within them. Magic.

    The Earth itself whispered to them, and they began to test out these skills. It started small, the ability to slightly shift the water for one, another gained the ability to create sparks of fire from thin air. Each began to develop their own skill, however weak it was. As the popular of Lamia grew however, and new Naga were spawned, as the hum of energy deep in the core of the Earth spilled out, and the Earth seemed to empty of technology and human life, new abilities were found, and existing abilities became stronger.

December 25th, 2546

    In the coming centuries, the Earth fell. Every small or even moderately sized country crumbled, and all that remained of the once extraordinary world powers were small cells of their governments, huddling underground with those who could be rescued. They adapted to it well, sending out scouting parties in the early years, searching for unbitten survivors, supplies, anything they could use. As the above ground population of survivors diminished, however, and supplies ran out, the searches stopped, and they instead began focusing on reclaiming small areas immediately around their bunkers for growing crops and rearing animals, resorting to the most basic forms of survival In those early years, Nagas attempted to take human form and join these groups, few succeeding, and few meeting their end. With the end of human survivors on the surface, however, these compounds were closed to the peaceful creatures, as it became unbelievable to see another human alive above ground.

    Communication resumed between these small communities of humans, and word got around that in some locations, not only were they capturing and testing Lamia in a search for a cure, but some scientists were attempting to catch Naga, to study, collect, and attempt to harness the magic that was growing in the world, specifically, in the rare and elusive Naga. One Dr. Joseph Haught successfully did catch a Naga, however, and kept the powerful beast captive for decades, studying her and testing ways of extracting her powers. Some say he eventually did succeed, harnessing it within her, and in the process, draining her of her life- his body, however, an ill fit for the burning power, succumbed to the intensity of this magic, and his charred corpse was found by some of his colleagues not a day later. They began to pour over his notes to replicate it, though they found it futile.

July 29th, 3077

    Now, a thousand years since that terrible first outbreak, nature has fully reclaimed the Earth, lush forests covering the world where once towering skyscrapers stood, the ancient remains of an Earth long gone laying in the dirt, covered by moss and vines, a dead reminder of what once was. Humans have moved back above earth, sprawling compounds encased in barbed wire and concrete fences now surrounding the entrance to their underground bunkers, those underground sanctuaries now only used for a mixture of storage, and emergency retreats in case of a Lamia attack.

     Cure research has progressed little in the last millennia, to the point where few even bother anymore. Now, the central school of thought seems to be to destroy all Lamia. Researchers are attempting to do this by capturing, not just Lamia, but Naga. Governments push for this intense research of these elusive creatures, as though they are rare, they are less dangerous to deal with. They wish to collect and harness the magic growing stronger, and more unstable, within the reptilian creatures for personal power, few ever learning from the tragic fate of Dr. Haught so long ago. Few have now succeeded in his footsteps, and all who have, have met a similar fate, their bodies unable to withstand the force of the magic. Peace is hard earned, stability is naught, and death, it seems, is inevitable.