Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Wall Crawlers
Origins
As recounted in Navinod's post-encounter debrief to Voss and Pixo
Long before the collapse of the old world, there was an experimental biosphere project buried deep beneath the surface of the Austere. Known in pre-collapse files as Project Nyx, it was a sealed subterranean vault meant to simulate long-term survival in hostile conditions—completely isolated from the surface. The project's aim was to test the psychological and physiological adaptations required for a human colony to survive without sunlight, natural ecosystems, or standard atmospheric pressure.
Trapped
The subjects were genetically selected, enhanced for low-light vision, skeletal reinforcement, and oxygen efficiency. Over generations, these test populations were forgotten, abandoned when the Collapse redirected funding and attention to surface crises. Trapped and sealed in darkness, they adapted. The enhancements mutated. Eyes atrophied; echolocation and dermal sensing developed in their place. Their skulls grew denser, more forward-thrusting, with fused bone plating that could crack concrete with a headbutt.Cut off from all but each other, language eroded, replaced by tactile signals and vibratory codes shared across walls and steel beams.
Quest for Up
The population became tribal, driven by a singular goal: climb upward. The echo of ancient instructions embedded in the biosphere AI—“surface viability check: ongoing”—became myth to them. “Up” was salvation. “Up” was purpose. When the relay awakened and the ground trembled, it cracked open sections of the lower vaults, venting ancient corridors into the Austere. The Wall Crawlers—so named by Navinod after witnessing them cling and move across vertical steel with uncanny speed— taking out two-thirds of his force in minutes. They are eyeless, chalk-white in skin, with industrial-hard bone growths where helmets would have once gone. Their strength is disproportionate to their size, a product of both genetic enhancement and generations of muscular overcompensation for the low-gravity vault chambers. They fight with brutal, uncoordinated force—no strategy, only instinct.