Diseased Cores

*Diseased Cores* are orb-shaped mystical artifacts that appear extensively in the Rage Knights Red God universe and are often the item sought out by the protagonists and antagonists in various adventures.

## Creation History

When they were first discovered, they were known to have exhibited strange powers that protected man from harm's way. In later years, especially after Dark Prince's attack on North Star Middle School, the cores suddenly appeared more frequently and became a widespread phenomenon among many people in the United States and various parts of the world at large. With the objects being reported as granting people various wishes, commands and stranger supernatural feats such as healing and restoration, time travel, flight, manipulation over minds and matter and conjuring the likes of fierce and deadly entities living, non-living and those not originating from the Earthly realm.

In following years, the Diseased Cores played a substantial role in law and peacekeeping as well as ware, with the former disgraced police commander, Eugene James leading his forces to Indy Hills High School after staging a School Shooting, and subsequently framing the known Rage Knight Damon Bradley and his friends as the perpetrators of attacking the school by using the Diseased Cores to summon perfected humanoid Diseased replicas of Keith Rainer as well as perception magic-based cores to indirectly influence Bradley and friends decisions and minds via emotion and mind manipulation.

During Bradley's high school years, he, Juno Barone, April Summers and Keido Murasaki battled various Diseased whom had suddenly appeared as a result of not only James' usage of the cores but other officers and law enforcement as well as prejudice peoples such as Bully Tacticians. Eventually Bradley fought Eugene, whom had gained an upperhand of wielding the cores in battle. During this time, he had perfected transforming himself at will due to the cores and could easily transform into a scorpion-spider like entity. He used this form to bring down Bradley, though he was defeated when he relied on the core's for sole strength when he realized he couldn't face the wrath of Bradley's anger and the combined powers of the Rage Sword.

In the years following Eugene's defeat and the destruction of his Diseased Core, the artifacts seemingly vanished with little to no trace. According to Hades however, more of the cores would eventually appear as the number of Diseased corresponded to the number of cruel human thoughts, souls, hearts and actions that directly played a role in the synthesis of the Diseased materializing to life. This proved true when Bradley would graduate from Indy Hills.

### 2011-2014 (Graduation and Engagement Arcs)

A more matured Damon Bradley, whom was now at this point engaged to his longtime girlfriend Cherri Smith, traveled alongside the country defeating Diseased while steadily and occasionally trying to hone in on the identity of the Mysterious Stranger by creating hardware and pieces of software augmentations. Despite Cherri's pleas to not pursue the Mysterious Stranger, Bradley would continually persist and found themselves in various adventures against the Diseased. Bradley would increasingly become surprised to learn that the monsters literally could create the cores at will and even more so, the number of cores only grew based on the number of negative thoughts as well as the creature and superficial people's influence on his mental health.

### AXIS/SHA Takeover Arcs

The terrorist sect AXIS looked for new ways of improving their weapons and used the Diseased Cores as a material for crafting deadlier guns. The cores became a top priority for the U.S. Army to steal from the organization but this proved deadly and futile as the terrorists had a supply of Black Magic-based and Summoning based Diseased Cores at their disposal. Midlore himself led the first wave of attacks against the attacks alongside some of the other Rage Knights such as Aaron Harold and Dill Clay.

### Nomad the Lost Arcs

In the Nomad the Lost adventures, the now empirical and near-sovereign organization SHA following expansion from AXIS seeks the Diseased Cores out extensively and uses the artifacts to attack various members of society including government officials, the UN, the media and people that do not fit their conventional standards of living. During this era, many rebellions and small groups of people plotted against SHA to thwart them and expose their evils to the world and eventually cause them to disband, with these people relying on Diseased Cores themselves to carry out the mission. Most Notably, Midlore West-Stein whom originally founded the company with his departed friend Rupert Kolovsky, chased and engaged the organization for years in hopes of securing the cores and keeping them in safer hands.

After SHA was found guilty and disbanded after a disrupted trial following the attack of Erugi Voxe, Senator McDowell and other members of congress and national lawmakers, declared that former President Bradley and the Neo-Deserters, which consisted of Nomad Bradley, Midlore, Dill Clay, Cecilia Sanchez, Juno and Liam Barone as well as Azia Washington and Rikki West-Stein and Ragorias continue hunting for the cores and promptly turn them into the authorities of the United States Armed Forces so they could not be used in future affairs neither public or private. This led to a number of adventures between Bradley and West-Stein as they traveled across the galaxy seeking out Diseased Cores that may have been sent there by ex-SHA or even Disaster Imperials in the span of the previous fifty years. According to a curious Nomad Bradley, he believed that no matter how many years would pass, the cores would simply multiply and at one point, had become disheartened thinking it was simply because negativity and darkness ruled over the light, leading the universe into an imbalance and thus fulfilling his true purpose for returning to Earth under Buddha's orders.

### Stealing Man Arcs

The Diseased Cores played a substantial role during the attack of the Stealing Man whom had hoped to "infringe" the universe of B2 and gradually erase, alter and destroy the Rage Knights whom had formed in North Star circa 2005/2006. The Society of Bullies had individually collected the cores and were individually using separate cores to summon Diseased and have them attack certain parts of the world. With the combined efforts of Anti-Number, Teen Damon and his adult counterpart and God of Rage Damon Bradley as well as Nomad himself and Midlore, the group chased the society to their locations and collected the cores. Later it was revealed that Stealing Man however, did not need the cores as he already wielded the *Time Sync Crystal* and was secretly manipulating the society of Bullies from behind the scenes as a ruse to lure Nomad Bradley directly to him while he searched for an enigmatic man known as *Mr. Red God X*.

## Types of Diseased Cores

* **Time-based Diseased Cores** allow the user to manipulate the passage of time for brief periods such as replaying events, stoping the flow of time, and rapidly moving or accelerating one or oneself within the moment.
* **Black Magic-based Diseased Cores** allow the user to cast formidable black magic spells. Many of these spells aren't traditional nor basic-knowledge magic however, they are known to be exceptionally rare and powerful spells, some even being wielded in combat by the Diseased themselves!
* **Summon-based Diseased Cores** allow the user to conjure forth the powers of the Diseased themselves, to attack incoming or approaching targets. These cores are considered the deadliest of all, as they can be used with various other methods such Summon Runes and based on however many Diseased or even superficial people are within the area, the core itself can conjure stronger Diseased that such as Catastrophic Lords.
* **White Magic-based Diseased Cores** are whitish-black and sometimes neutral gray cores that allow the user to cast formidable white magic spells. Sometimes with risk of harming the user themselves.

## Trivia/Notes and Disclaimer

***Disclaimer***: *To whom this may concern, the characters in their entirety, while they borrow inspiration from events, ideas, themes and other sources from the original author's life, they are incredibly different and fictional entities inside the Rage Knights Red God and under no circumstance are they expressing a real person's actual views, ideologies, names and likeness to cause harm or defame them. Any names bearing similarities to any person(s) is unintentional unless stated otherwise and under special permission. The Rage Knights Red God is a work of fiction and solely for entertainment and educational purposes. Please note, the series does not represent events that have happened, events to come nor does it condone the very human evils the series itself is/was meant to advocate against. © Khaliq Trevor X.*