Genevolvers & Mutamons

Genevolvers

Genevolvers are a human-descended people whose civilization became obsessed with one question: if life is written in blood, flesh, and genes, why should nature have the final word?

Their name comes from the words gene and evolve. To a Genevolver, evolution is not something that should take thousands of generations. It is a process that can be studied, accelerated, redirected, and, if necessary, forced.

Genevolvers are scientists, surgeons, geneticists, alchemists, and experimenters with little respect for the natural limits of the body. They alter genes, provoke mutations, splice traits between organisms, cultivate abnormal tissue, and attempt to create living beings stronger, faster, tougher, or otherwise more capable than anything nature produced on its own.

Their work has produced genuine breakthroughs. It has also produced enormous suffering.

To outsiders, the distinction is often academic.

Methods and Subjects

Genevolver experimentation began with animals. Countless creatures were altered, crippled, killed, or rendered unrecognizable before meaningful progress was made. One branch of this early research eventually contributed to the rise of the Technobeasts, whose ancestors gained intelligence through the work of Professor Alvas and ultimately rebelled against their creator.

In time, Genevolvers turned their attention toward humans and the peoples descended from them.

A subject may volunteer, be purchased, be enslaved, be taken prisoner, be bred for experimentation, or simply be unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of a Genevolver who needs a body. Some Genevolvers carefully select subjects whose existing traits suit a particular experiment. Others work with whatever is available.

There is no single Genevolver procedure. One laboratory may attempt to strengthen muscle fibers. Another may alter the nervous system to increase reaction speed. Another may grow additional organs, change the structure of bone, manipulate the senses, introduce animal traits, or force the body to survive environments it was never meant to endure.

Failure is common.

Success is often worse than it sounds.

Mutamons

A Mutamon is the result of Genevolver biological experimentation.

Mutamon is not an ancestry. It is not something one is born as in the ordinary sense, nor does it replace what the subject was before. It describes what has been done to a living being. In theory, any sufficiently organic creature can be turned into a Mutamon, although humans and human-descended peoples are the most common subjects because Genevolver methods are best understood on that biological foundation.

There is no standard Mutamon body.

Some retain enough of their former appearance to pass at a distance. Others are horribly disfigured: limbs of unequal length, warped skeletons, exposed growths, misplaced organs, unusable additional appendages, distorted faces, unstable skin, or bodies that constantly fight against their own altered biology. Many live in chronic pain. Some cannot survive without medicine, machinery, repeated treatment, or the continued attention of the Genevolver who created them.

A large number of Mutamons are simply failed experiments that happened to remain alive.

The Successful Ones

A small number of experiments produce extraordinary results.

One Mutamon may possess strength far beyond the natural limits of their original body. Another may move with impossible speed. Others may develop extreme endurance, heightened senses, accelerated healing, unusual resistance to poison or disease, or some other highly specialized ability.

Genevolvers refer to these subjects as successful experiments.

The rest of An'kor still calls them Mutamons.

Success does not mean beauty, stability, happiness, or freedom. An enhanced Mutamon may still be grotesquely altered, constantly suffering, mentally scarred, or dependent upon the person who transformed them. Even the rare subjects whose bodies function perfectly have usually paid for their abilities with something they did not consent to lose.

Creation and Ownership

Many Genevolvers consider a Mutamon their property.

Some keep their creations as servants, laborers, guards, soldiers, test subjects, or living proof of their own genius. Particularly valuable Mutamons may spend their entire lives under observation while their creator continues to alter them in search of further improvements.

Others are discarded as soon as an experiment is judged useless. Such Mutamons are left to die, abandoned in remote places, dumped into poor districts, or simply driven away.

Not every creation remains obedient.

A Genevolver who successfully creates a being stronger, faster, or more dangerous than themselves occasionally discovers the flaw in keeping that being chained nearby. Some Mutamons have killed their creators and escaped. A few disappear into the wilderness and live alone, either because they fear what ordinary people will do to them or because ordinary people have already shown them.

Others become criminals, mercenaries, monsters, fugitives, or anything else that allows them to survive.

Life in An'kor

Mutamons are generally despised.

To many people they are unnatural things: reminders of what Genevolvers are willing to do to living bodies and of how easily a familiar person can be turned into something unrecognizable. Their appearance alone is often enough to provoke disgust, fear, hostility, or violence.

They are commonly treated as scum regardless of how they came to exist.

This creates one of the crueler contradictions of An'kor. Genevolvers may be respected for the knowledge and technology their experiments have produced, while the living results of those same experiments are rejected, enslaved, hidden, or blamed for their own condition.

A Mutamon can be victim, weapon, survivor, monster, slave, killer, hero, or all of these at different points in the same life.

The word tells you what happened to their flesh.

It tells you nothing about the person still trapped inside it.