Outlanders

## Current Abilities

**Agumented Travel Stomach -** Outlanders have found ways of agumenting their stomachs for permanent travel by tethering mineral intaking pipes to be able to take in nutrients in the air. This means they get the saturation effect when below a hunger level of 15.

**Rejected Inhabitants -** The Outlanders dark past put Sanctum into a kind of psychological trauma. Discriminatory effects began to effect Outlanders as an environmental manifestation of shame and loathing. This effect evinces itself as mining fatigue when in Sanctum and invisibility doesn't work as well.

**Residual Sanctum Essence Technology -** To evade other discriminatory and fearful societies attempts at destroying their race, they developed technologies to tap into the invisible qualities of Sanctum. They now turn invisible when sneaking, but also get brief blindness and slowness when stealthed. This technology fails while in Sanctum

## Lore

The Outlanders are a highly advanced, steampunk, cyborg race of interdimensional nomads who used to hail from the once-great lands of Sanctum before the collapse at the hands of The Ascended Council. Scorned and feared by many races despite current generations having little to do with the sins of the past, the Outlanders find themselves frequently avoiding other races, some due to the scare of prejudice, others due to the prejudice they share themselves. Despite this, a bond of shared trust between an Outlander and a friend is one highly treasured, almost as much as a Nereid family. Even with lots of judgement thrown their way, when one opens up and accepts their race, a great motivation to help share their knowledge of machines and craft to the trusted individuals is reignited, taking after the attitudes of their deceased mod, The Builder, who was always eager to give his knowledge.

### Physiology

Outlanders have a very similar physiology to the predecessor race and humanity, with a couple of key differences. Outlanders have a pure pale white skin, often glistening in moonlight due to its brilliance. Most Outlander hair is also white or grey, with some rare exceptions of black hair. Outlanders also have very small noses, with two long nostrils instead of a nose bridge and dorsum. Generally speaking, Outlander women are often much taller than the men, with the women being an average height of 6'3 (190.5cm) and the men an average height of 5'6 (167.6cm)

Instead of a regular skeleton, outlanders have teirs of metaphysical layers that protects and reinforces their body in a similar fashion to a skeleton. If all five teirs are destroyed, the Outlander will die. This metaphysical layer is quite malleable, making cybernetic enchancements very easy and painless if done correctly. As such, if an extra limb, or mechanical replacement is introduced to their body, instead of rejecting said enhancement, the forces inside the metaphysical layer move to compensate the new or replaced addition. This discovery lead to easy body manipulation and prosthetic replication to become quite popular in Outlander society.

Outlanders also have four, long, pointy ears, however the second pair does not enhance regular hearing. Rather, the second pair of ears fuctions as a machine troubleshooter, their ears picking up special auditorial frequencies that helps them identify the health of a particular machine or contraption. If too many machines are nearby, the ears will temporarily shut off and focus on the singular machine with the loudest frequency to help prevent sensory overload. Some Outlanders have diseases or disabilities that completely remove this limiter, making them much more susceptible to overloading their senses.

Outlanders also have strange bodies that go through the regular aging process up till a certain point. At around adult-hood, the features of many Outlanders stop visibly aging and decaying. Instead, their skin begins to crack like dried mud. Over time, their skin will continue to crack until it begins to appear to shed off, more on that in the mortality section.

In addition to their machine-hearing ears, Outlanders have pure black eyes that allow them to see curcuitry at piping at an intricate level. Their eyes grant them powerful sight over wires, being able to see eletrical currents and the disposition of specific gasses such as steam throughout metal piping. These qualities have led some to call Outlanders "machine-whisperers", a name they have affectionally adopted as positive, despite many other derogatory nick-names stemming from discrimination.

Outlanders also have a unique pair of lungs that take in oxygen and release argon, meaning that unless an Outlander has created a prosthetic throat to help religate this, hypotetically a human could die by the Outlander breathing on their mouth or nose. This also leads many Outlanders to "talk" with their machines in a similar vein to how humans talk to their plants to help them grow.

### Culture

The culture of Outlanders, due to their tragedy-stricken past, is primarily composed of introverted wanderers who travel everywhere, with no apparent home. Many Outlander "villages" reside in mobile camps and light machine enhanced tents, or large mobile fortresses that allow them to move quickly out of areas with great speed and efficiency. An Outlander encampment usually does not stay in the same place for a day, resulting in Outlander settlements and towns being hard to find. Many Outlanders have attuned themselves with Varskspace allowing them extremely easy access to the dimension, their efficiency is so impressive that many races cannot match their travel speed unless one possesses specific Outlander teleportation keys and technologies

Cybernetic and prosthetic steampunk enhancements were not utilized frequently until after the death of The Builder. After their mod's demise, Outlander's found themselves attaching themselves to a different mod, the one that offered them a second chance: The Traveler. The tales of how and why are often passed down in Outlander socities, who claim that he began to "choose" the Outlander people after the loss of his companion, Innominatam, to the Warlord. This act inspired the Outlander people, who began to modify themselves for travel, or even as simple a reason as a fashion statement.

Even at an early age, it is very common for a small child to get a modifcation, as Outlander technology has the special ability growing and adapting with the user. A very common modification is to alter one's stomach to be able to take in nutrients in the air and atmosphere, similar to Photosynthesis, to be able to never have to necessarily eat again. Other common modifications include: the ability to convert unused steam into a second jump (a double jump, if you will), extra limbs, sometimes to climb, or to help with intricate proccesses, modified legs to help keep walking travel tireless, or multitool arms with a variety of functions. Their tech is known by many as "nomad tech", due to its frequent use and design suited for travel. However, full metal transformation and conversion of Outlanders is seen as taboo, as they see it as becoming like the relic of their past, the fully machine Automechs.

Most Outlanders almost always wear dark cloaks, and wear victorian-era clothing in addition to their enchancements. It is also currrently popular for Outlander girls to have long messy hair, whereas boys shave their hair and instead get synthetic, metal, or cord replacements instead. Some villages do have males grow out their natural hair, depending on individual town cultures.

#### The Two Reformed Council Members

In Outlander society, there are two lengendary political leaders who were once Council members in Sanctum. Both were equally disgusted with the rest of the Concil's unrestrained use of end magics, and promptly resigned from their posistions as council members, took a small portion of outlanders with them, and left Sanctum, forseeing the ruin it shall experience. These two are known as The Engineer, and The Herald.

##### The Engineer

The Engineer is a powerful, genius female council member who regrets her desertion of her homeland, and wishes to bring it back to its former glory. She leads a proud, formidable people, who fully pride themselves as the Outlander race, and embrace all their faults. The Engineer steers a giant interdimensional mobile fortress that can teleport from dimension to dimension by manipulating the space-time fabrics of Varskspace. Her ingenuity was able to develop a special Outlander beacon that allows the full teleportation of the mobile fortress and its inhabitants into Varskspace.

She has also created other works of genius, such as special magically-infused weapon tech that nullifies Omnitech, and even dampens the impact of Glitchtech. Her torso is specially designed for a variety of uses, being able to change it at will with different sets of torsos. Her most powerful torso is a set of mechanical horse legs, turning her into a steampunk centaur of destruction.

Despite her enthusiatic attitude of reclaiming her homeland and her mechanical genius, her pride and forcefulness often leads many other races to seeing her faction as tyrannical and dangerous. Her hatred of anything Omnidrome has lead to slaughter of many Automech's lives, including Independent ones. Some Independent Automechs who have lost friends or loved ones to The Engineer have tried at revenge, but The Engineer's skills in the art of battle and omnidrome-nullifying technology has always triumphed over the robot's futile attempts.

##### The Herald (WIP)

The Herald is the much more elusive, quiet, reformed member of the Council. He sports a cloak that specializes in conducting electricity from Varskspace, which he uses to manipulate the forces of space-time, albeit a bit differently than Omnitech. Unlike his past colleague, The Engineer, The Herald wants nothing to do with the forbidden lands of Sanctum, seeing them as a wasteland destined for destruction at the hands of The End. The Herald leads his people to a greater understanding of the fatal consequences of the actions of The End, doing his best to prepare them for the annihilation to come. The Herald forsees a future in which all dimensions will become The End at the clutches of The Ruination, and as such is spending his entire existance in attempting to fortify Varskspace as a sort of a "doomsday bunker" dimension. He believes that at the end of everything, as long as he devotes his life to the reinforcement and knowledge of the dimensional fabrics, his people will survive the coming ruination.

Yet, The Herald does share one common trait with that of The Engineer, and that is their expansive intellect. Instead of regular technology, The Herald has adopted Varsktech as his technology of choice, putting equal understanding into magic and machinery. The Herald uses this tech to further increase the dimensional stability of the fabrics of space in Varskspace, and has even been able to create pocket realities located at the edge of Varskspace, extending the expanse to endlessness. This feat has even got the attention of The Traveler, who occasionally watches the actions of The Herald with great interest from a distance.

In present time, The Herald is currently very close to a solution to the amnesiac effects of The Void without the help of Omnitech, which will allow him to expand his knowledge of The Cornucopia even further to new and unknown heights. ***[THIS LORE IS VERY WIP, IT MAY BE CHANGED SOMETIME IN THE FUTRE] [do not read everything as canon for the Heraldbjnb]***

### Mortality and Reproduction

At an old age, the cracking of their skin comes to a maximum. Parts of their skin begin to flake off like ash. At the time of their natural death, the Outlander will become aware of this, and appear to walk into the nothingness, their body completely turning to ash, metal body parts falling off onto the ground. If an Outlander is killed by a weapon, disease, or animal, their body will immediately dematerialize into the ash and blow away in the wind.

Before prosthetic enchantments, Outlander reproduction was essentially the same as human reproduction. However, to escape the pains of child birth, Outlanders came up with an alternative method by creating incubation pods and orbs, in which the fetus will be nourished and created seemingly in a machine. Regular reproduction is now looked down upon in Outlander society, and the people often get their reproduction organs rearranged or changed during mechanical modification.