Iron Falcon (Skullcrest) New Plague (Dubious canon)

Iron Falcon (Skullcrest) New Plague

The Skullcrests wanted to save the Readymades post nerve degredation. After the sapphires failed, they tried to use what remnant data they had of that + some data on the scourge to try to create a nerve pinch capable of piloting them after the nerve collapse disease took hold.

What resulted is a non infectious (person to person anyway) neurological disease that pilots a persons body with controlled inputs but horrifically stunts their higher brain functioning. They require less food (brains are the most consumptive organ), instead relying on basic food pastes, or god forbid cannibalism (mostly due to supply failures, but this was left in and lowkey encouraged by command for the fervor of the zombified and fear tactics seen in those facing them.)

This disease, like Sapphires, KILLS the host. However, unlike Sapphires, it doesn't revive them nor keep a wiped form of the host's consciousness. (Sapphires have reported a feeling of a blip of consciousness where they feel as if they existed just suddenly lose most memories and gain new skills.) Zombified people (Servitors?) die and are dead. The persons body is taken by a computer system that uses their brain as a CPU. They are unsaveable and uncurable.

Zombification arrays implant a system that can translate computer systems to neurological commands. This process takes around 2-ish hours. During the first ten minutes or so, a person is rescueable, as a map of the brain must be formed before the process can begin. Without Prysmi involved in the process, a CPU interlace cannot be grown and Zombification is incompatible with how symbiosis occurs, meaning even when IFs get ahold of Prysmi, the integration of growable or infectious zombies fails.

Continuing on tho, Servitors have cords surgically implanted in their brains as they still live, slowly being lobotomized by the process. Finally, they're killed once the system begins to boot up. A flash shock instantly bursts key parts of the prefrontal and frontal cortex as well as other wells of "consciousness" and the external CPU takes over.

Servitors are known to then turn palor, a greyish blue or green or even white depending on the initial subspecies of the human host. They will grow spindly and gaunt, with the cables of their spine and bones protruding over time. They have lax and slow movements, and can only recieve commands their CPU understands. They lose sentient functions and therefore active problem solving, original thought, and improvization. They are widely considered too dumb to complete complex tasks, but can perform a specific basic task if their CPU has been programmed for it, requiring an update or external hard drive to do anything beyod that. Combat zombies are the most prized among them, almost entirely consisting of ex-"ready-made" flash clones and ex-clones. They have heightened aggression, very little (if any) self preservation, and very low capacity for multifaceted manuevers. They're (if it can be helped) deployed as part of charger units and used to just kill anything not allied with their handlers (with very little skill in determining that) -- Most of the time, however, they're just used as basic laborers.

It's not a secret that the IF is chalk-full of racists, with most sects hosting an unsaid or even strictly enforced social hierachy. This horror became scarier as, basing themselves on the slave, tuskagee, and native, and prison experiments of united states' past, the Iron Falcon Juntas began servitoring their minority populations. Those in positions of power trying to speak out were silenced or zombified themselves. Surprisingly, very few Hinfolk were zombified (if any) this may however owe itself to Hin's capacity for higher brain function and the like.

During the unification and much later insurrection wars, enemy civilians (and their POC populations) were regularly zombified into servitors. It's a particularly sour spot for the majority global south/POC Solite populations. The extensive genocide of POC was a part of why Dottie Denaley (Dot) sought refuge away from Riversie, joining the military auxiliary in the hopes of doing so.

The discovery of such practices during the insurrection war increased calls to route and depose Iron Falcon sects as well as cut many folks' allyship or collaboration with the group. And it is assumed that Sy is a surviving zombie before the gel connection is made.

IF as white legion???? Slime plague as trial infectious zombification?