on the age of burning
Ouranos Inc.
Beneath the surface of The Waste, in sterilized bunkers of glass and steel, Ouranos Inc. endures. Once a Terran megacorporation, now a self-proclaimed sovereign power, Ouranos survived the Cataclysm not through faith or firepower, but through control of genes, of systems, of the human body itself.
Their people live in tightly regulated habitats where births are licensed and DNA is property. The Biologs, gene-cultists masquerading as scientists, engineer generations like harvest cycles. Every citizen is raw material; refined over centuries into something harder, faster, longer-lived. The crown of this selective process: the Pilots. Snake-eyed, hairless, engineered to link with Suits via Neural Bridges without shattering their minds. Without them, the machines are inert. With them, gods of war.
Their leader, Vassilis Koras, is a myth given form. Whispers say he’s the last of the Terran settlers. That he sheds his skin. That he remembers how the world ended.
Ouranos Inc. does not seek conquest. It seeks continuity. To outlast the chaos. To preserve the project. But in every lab and Pilot pod, one truth looms large:
Perfection demands sacrifice.
The Rustbound
The Rustbound are wanderers, salvagers, and survivors; descendants of those who refused the shelter of bunkers or the chains of Governance. They roam the scorched plains and irradiated ruins of The Waste, cloaked in patchwork Suits and myths older than memory. They, the Cin, lead a loose confederation of clans bound by rust, blood, and code.
To outsiders, they are ‘Roaches - scavengers who stitch together ancient tech with sacred care and reckless abandon. But the Rustbound wear the insult with pride. They are living proof that life endures after catastrophe, no matter how fractured or feral it becomes.
At the heart of their survival are the Cordweavers, engineers, mystics, and medics in one. They graft lost technologies into living bodies and Suits alike, guided by whispered legends and crude logic. Rustbound Pilots are born altered—most blind, some twisted—but all tuned for war in a world that no longer welcomes life.
Their legends speak of CELESTINE, a demon their ancestors unleashed. Of sins that shattered the sky. And of a great Cin-cord that will one day be tied again to bind their fate, avenge the past, and finally set the world right.
Until then, they walk the ash.
