Irradiados

The Irradiated (who refer to themselves as the True Heirs) are one of the strangest, most isolated, and least numerous factions in the Wasteland. Its origin dates back to the times when ancient nations confronted each other, using weapons with increasingly destructive power. In this race to create devices that would allow them to eradicate their enemies, laboratories and factories were necessary in which to design and experiment with new forms of mass destruction. Most of these facilities, located in secret locations with strong security measures, succumbed, like everything else, in the great cleanup that was unleashed after the creation of the Megalopolis and that ended up shaping the Wasteland as we now know it. But one of them, known as Aurora, built inside a gigantic sphere of an ultra-resistant experimental material, survived this catastrophe when it was hermetically sealed.

For generations, its original settlers subsisted, isolated from the rest of the world and the events that followed, thanks to the base's self-sufficient systems. Its inhabitants, descendants of an elite of scientists and researchers, eventually became convinced that they were the only inhabitants of the world, which they would enjoy, in their own right, at the right time. Around these ideas, the inhabitants of the base created a Sophocratic society in which a council, made up of the wisest, dictated the rules of the community. But as the years went by, the corruption of power and the lack of contact with the outside world ended up reinforcing this egocentric conception, which took on pseudo-religious overtones, mixing some of the religions of the World of Yesteryear with its strange beliefs. Those already considered True Heirs were convinced that they had been appointed by a Supreme Intelligence to represent the resurgence of a new and improved human species, atoned for their past mistakes. They established a strict hierarchy among their members, and social norms became increasingly stricter as their ideology became radicalized. But no matter how advanced the base's technology was, the passage of time made it increasingly difficult to contain leaks from the nuclear reactors that provided it with energy. Progressively and gradually exposed to radiation, the inhabitants, against all odds, adapted to this new and lethal environment, as had happened centuries ago with other animal species after nuclear catastrophes. Their bodies, the result of contact with this Sacred Manna, suffered subtle variations, such as skin coloring, which took on fluorescent tints, hair loss and a substantial loss of fertility.

And for some unfathomable reason, now his time has come. The Irradiated have decided to leave their refuge to complete the mission entrusted to them: to make the world in their image and likeness. As their prophecies had already predicted, with the opening of the spherical base The New Man emerged from an Egg. And the fact that they have verified that there are other settlers in the Páramo only means that they must be eradicated as final proof of their dedication.