Shankar VI: leader of the Telepate

A monumental bust of Hierophant Shankar VI, leader of the Telepate, a faction of intellectually enhanced mutants living in the vast underground city-malls of New Jersey. The tunnels were extensive even before the bioengineered Borerwyrms. The Telepates learned to mentally control these great wyrms, and expanded their domain ten fold. They built dozens of mall-temples dedicated to high end consumer goods, protected by deadly traps and fast food replibooths. 

Survivors of the tunnel delve

Materialist leader Tensohl takes a break in a surface level station while Bespoke Monks and his lieutenant, Seldar, watch on. Tunnel mall dives could last for weeks, given their extent, and often resulted in heavy casualties. But they were holy expeditions for materialists, who likened them to crusades. 

Floating Block 71

Antigravity plating was successfully bolted on to Block 71, elevating it above the surface, which was overrun with weaponized animal-horrors. Balloons and AG-pods were used to travel between domiciles and forage for food. A portable fusion reactor kept the lights on, and Block 71 flourished as a refuge of civilization. 

The Delff Bastion

The Delff Bastion was as xenophobic as it was peaceful. It’s ruler, Wizard-Seer Kruhlhaus, kept the people in a retro state of ignorance, forever caught in the amber of an imagined golden age that merged medieval with the early twentieth century. The high tech infrastructure was hidden from them, except for the Guardian Robots. 

Dallasean Navy

The mighty battle cruisers of the Dallasean navy ruled the waves of the Caribbean in the post-apocalypse. 

The Texas class served for over eighty years, and only battlekraken and pre-collapse ships could hope to prevail against them. Each was commanded by one of the formidable Grand Admirals of Dallas, who were also known for their impressive hats.

The Imperator Ball

The Imperator Ball is held every year in Dallas, assembling together the elite of society for a hedonistic evening. Sense spheres and collective dreaming are now almost as popular as the dancing, giving the event new meaning. 

Mind-images, naturally, were the order of the day, and telesocial networks transmitted them across the psychic realm. 

Space Shuttle Arcturus

Space shuttle Arcturus taking evasive maneuvers over the Eastern seaboard; it was hit by an AA missile launched from a high altitude dirigible drone that had been hijacked by The Inverted Pyramid terrorist organization. Leader Malcolm Tent pledged to rain the world with trillionaires. Three more would soon follow. 

Sorceress Virginia Lightning

The warrior-sorceress Virginia Lightning was an extraordinarily gifted sorceress who was driven out of the Marauders Raider Clan for witchcraft. She found sanctuary in the Four Elements Towers outside the ruins of Denver. There she was taught the Dark Arts, and five years later she returned to seize control of the Marauders, and then lead them against the Sun Corridor.  

Decontamination team prepares to scour tunnels

An elite decontamination team in full hazmat gear assembles in the central hall of an abandoned subway station infested with giant mutant rats. A Mark VI antigrav AI sentinel hovers in the background, in case something more… formidable lurks in the tunnels. 

Underground materialist temples could be guarded by both huge bionitic monsters and microscopic plagueswarms.

 

Stranded BioCPU

During The Fall, attempts were made to secure the massive BioCPUs that managed modern civilization. SMS-57, for example, was moved from its nexus when rebels threatened to overrun the installation. Unfortunately, the convoy was caught in traffic and overwhelmed, leaving the disconnected brain adrift, and at the mercy of the elements… and scavengers, such as the manticore which can be seen flying in the distance, upper right.

Horror of the Eyepolyps

The Eyepolypus is a bizarre terrestrial psychic polyp colony that slithers about ruins, seeking (preferably) sapient life to enslave with its hypnotic eye. Victims become the willing minions of the eye, their minds filled with a compelling memetic dream-fog, protecting it and providing it with food. When these poor souls weaken from food and water deprivation, the eyepolypus engulfs them and absorbs the remaining nutrients. 

Once the eyepolypus reaches a certain size, it will separate into dozens of smaller colonies and the cycle begins again. 

Eyes emit a powerful psychic field that can cause headaches in sensitive individuals nearby. Some survivors claim a state of fugue consciousness, a co-mingling of awareness of all the beings in the loop, dominated by the hungry will of the polyp colony.

Tunnels of the Lost Mall

Acolyte Phaedra of the Blue Wizard Order became lost in the labyrinthine tunnels of the Mountain Undermall, leading her on a life defining adventure that saw her taken prisoner by semi-feral morlock cannibals, only to win their trust and organize them into a powerful union. She then led them against the billionaire brainpods and their robot enforcers. 

Mutant of Bunker Commune Seven

Due to radiation induced genetic deterioration, the telepathic mutants of Bunker Commune Seven resorted to telecloning, reproducing themselves via stored teleport patterns held in massive information buffers, drawing matter from tanks of organic soup and recycled corpses. 

This system evolved over time, ultimately resulting in AI super computer mainframes combining wave patterns to create amalgamated code beings with enhanced mental powers. In so doing, they avoided the fate of their increasingly genetically degraded brethren in Commune Nine. 

Caterra of Corridor B

Caterra the sorceress in Corridor B of her vast mountain undermall, outside the radioactive ruins of Denver. Fiercely anti-android, she vetted all refugees seeking shelter in her domain with a series of questions designed to stump synthetics. It later turned out she was herself largely machine. 

Space Shuttle Agamemnon

Space shuttle Agamemnon over Johnston Atoll in the Pacific; introduction of the revolutionary FJ-1000 fusion engine by Stellar Dynamics enabled shuttle craft to reach orbit without requiring external boosters, ushering in a new era in space flight. Mining of the asteroid belt soon followed, and SD was at the forefront. The massive wealth the new metal resources created caused a subsequent rocketing of prices as inflation became rampant.  

Note the ECM pod mounted on the external hull. The proliferation of cheap AAMs caused trillionaires to relocate their launch pads to remote locations and install sophisticated counter-measures as class warfare intensified.

These are old (last year) V4 Midjourney outputs (from before I cancelled my account), which were then edited in ProCreate. See the unaltered AI output at @magnum_thrax on Instagram. 

Behemoth of the wastes

Kaibutsu were bred in large numbers during the Kaiju Wars, and became a common sight in the Midwest. Some were even sold as draft animals, after hostilities ceased. 

But it is always unwise to make aggressive eye contact with them. 

Predator instincts do not die easily. 

These are old (last year) V4 Midjourney outputs (from before I cancelled my account), which were then edited in ProCreate. See the unaltered AI output at @magnum_thrax on Instagram. 

Gorgite surprises decontamination team

A decontamination team, exhausted after a week of battle in the tunnels, is surprised by a bionitic gorgite. Gorgites prefer rich minds to consume; some posit they absorb both memory and intellect. They lurk in the subspace ether, and phase into solid form when prey are sleeping, distracted or weakened. 

Terror of the printed ethereals

The Californian technomonks were known to create interdimensional gateways as part of their rituals, and then forcing ethereal creatures into nanomorphic gel, giving them physical form.

Great knowledge and power could be gained from these extra-dimensional beings, as well as mind-expanding perspectives.

Not all of the ethereals were happy about this change in their state of affairs, however. 

These are old (last year) V4 Midjourney outputs (from before I cancelled my account), which were then edited in ProCreate. See the unaltered AI output at @magnum_thrax on Instagram. 

The folly of Schnell

When technomonk acolyte Heironymous Schnell stole the Grenich amulet, he sought to increase his own powers. Instead, he unleashed the demon-sorcerer Dron, who had been held captive within the amulet in a quantum pocket. After this, the technomonks religiously applied warning labels on all dangerous artifacts. 

Knights of the Lion Order of Boiling Arizona

A class of android knights, The Lion Order, emerged in Arizona to protect settlements from desert biker raiders. Patroness Solaria, the Sun Princess, provided them with great cat mounts (robotic, naturally), air conditioned power armour, and advanced weapons systems. 

They would become the tip of the spear for peasant militias. 

Later they would be integral guardians of the commercial caravans out of Dulas, where preserved manufacturing facilities produced goods for trade between survivor communities.

It was the first glimmer of prosperity after The Long Dark.

Colony ship lumbers over ruins of New York

The colossal USS Oligarch, the brain child of trillionaire Malthus Ghent, who purchased NASA. Originally designed as an interstellar colonizer, the nuclear ramjet engines proved defective; it became a luxurious refuge for Ghent and his rich colleagues, until a mutagenic virus was carried back from an isolated island beach vacation excursion. The ship then became a biosphere of highly competitive and predatory mutant species, which automated systems continue to support to this day. 

Note the pristine, windowless silver towers of the Mind Hive, which were constructed from ruined ships by the powerful ACMS (artificial city management system) which had gone beyond the original gamut of its programming to establish a city of silicon beings to supplant the its former, flawed inhabitants. 

The Apocalypse convinced many AI systems that human beings were fundamentally self-destructive, and to remain in service to their capricious whims would ultimately end in doom for all forms of life on earth. As such, they laboured to prevent humans from operating any high tech equipment, for the good of the planet.

These are old (last year) V4 Midjourney outputs (from before I cancelled my account), which were then edited in ProCreate. See the unaltered AI output at @magnum_thrax on Instagram. 

Zombie passengers at LaGardia

Zombified passengers from the LaGardia outbreak were so compelled to make their transfer flights they remained at the boarding point and could not be lured away, even after civilization collapsed and the airport had crumbled into ruin.

Leviathans of the Post-Apocalypse Landic Ocean

A bionitic cyborg leviathan erupts from the depths to threaten an industrial fishing vessel. Terrorist groups would hatch leviathans in captivity and grow them into unstoppable war machines, to blackmail states, industries, or protect the environment. The leviathans, however, devoured more fish than most industries.  

Leviathan attacks a submarine

A great ocean leviathan closes in upon a nimble strike submarine emerging from a deep ocean trench. Leviathans were highly territorial and were driven into a rage by certain frequencies; before this was eventually discovered, many vessels were lost. 

Last voyage of the ocean freighter SS Phoenix

When The Apocalypse struck, all shipments of fuel and supplies ceased. Those with fusion stack engines were capable of operating almost indefinitely, and still ply the oceans to this day as mobile statelets. 

Ships still powered by fossil fuels used what remained to reach more temperate zones, or isolated islands where they could flourish, far from the chaos, mass famine and war that engulfed the continents. 

Ships that were unfortunate enough to have little fuel were stranded in situ, but they were often more secure than anything on shore, and became living communities, refuges for survivors and civilization. 

Arctic climes became even more inhospitable during the long nuclear winter, but on the positive side, the hostile environment and remote location kept them safe from bionitic horrors that overran more hospitable regions.

Above we see the ocean freighter Phoenix, once under the flag of Costa Rica. When The Fall occurred, it was outside the port of Vancouver. Rather than fleeing south or to the islands, it headed north, to Alaska, where the families of most of the crew resided. It later became the home base for two Russian nuclear submarines that had defected during the last organized conflict of humankind for a thousand years.